Diplomacy & Defense Think Tank News

The connection between the policy fields of energy and health may be hard to grasp at first glance. Nevertheless, the negative externalities resulting from the consumption of fossil fuels are clearly identified. In January 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) named climate change and air pollution as two of the greatest challenges to human health. A differentiated look at infrastructure, availability and quality of energy supply and healthcare as well as at access to both shows how closely intertwined these policy fields are. No modern hospital can operate without secure elec­tricity supply and efficient cold chains are essential for storing vaccines. In line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the two policy fields must be designed and interlinked in such a way that they contribute to human security beyond national borders and take planetary boundaries into account. It is necessary to bring health and energy together and to create synergies between them. This would be an important step towards a swifter implementation of the SDGs.

Saskia Gamradt 2019-03-13T17:33:00Z

Nach der historischen Niederlage im Januar hat die britische Premierministerin am Dienstag Abend eine weitere politische Schlappe im Unterhaus erlitten. 391 Abgeordnete stimmten gegen das von ihr mit der EU verhandelte Austrittsabkommen, nur 242 dafür. Damit herrscht 16 Tage vor dem geplanten EU-Austritt Großbritanniens weiterhin große Unsicherheit und die politische Krise vertieft sich.

La santé a occupé une place centrale dans les élections de mi-mandat de novembre 2018 qui semblent avoir marqué la fin d’années de controverses autour de l’Obamacare. De nouveaux thèmes occupent aujourd’hui le devant de la scène dans les discussions aux États-Unis. Angèle Malâtre-Lansac, notre directrice déléguée à la santé…

Massenproteste, Korruption, zunehmende Verrohung des politischen Klimas: wo steht Serbien ein Jahr nach der Neuformulierung der EU-Westbalkanstrategie, in der es von der EU-Kommission als „Vorreiter“ der nächsten Erweiterungsrunde gelobt wurde? Befindet sich das westbalkanische Land, das seit Dezember 2015 EU-Beitrittsverhandlungen führt, noch konsequent auf EU-Kurs?

Challenges related to security, politics and the economy

En 2019, comme il y a soixante-dix ans à l'époque des pères fondateurs, l'Europe a pour mission de protéger l'essentiel : la paix et la liberté. Le président français peut être l'aiguillon d'un retour de l'Europe à ses fondamentaux.

Via un article publié simultanément dans vingt-huit journaux européens - qui a fait l'objet de nombreux…

Le débat fait rage autour du "bonus-malus" sur les cotisations patronales d'assurance-chômage souhaité par le gouvernement pour faire reculer l'excès de recours à des emplois courts, une forme d'exception française dont on se passerait volontiers. Malheureusement, il n'échappe pas à la caricature.

D'un côté, nous avons un patronat qui n'a pas de mots assez durs pour stigmatiser une "taxation des contrats courts" qui…

Presserende behov for at revurdere politiske prioriteter

Saskia Gamradt 2019-03-12T10:41:00Z

Societies that have experienced violent conflict face considerable challenges in building sustainable peace. One crucial question they need to address is how to deal with their violent past and atrocities that were committed – for example, whether perpetrators should be held accountable by judicial means, or whether the focus should be laid on truth telling and the compensation of victims. Transitional justice (TJ) offers a range of instruments that aim to help societies come to terms with their history of violent conflict. Systematic, empirical analyses of TJ instruments have been emerging over the last years. This Briefing Paper summarises the policy-relevant insights they provide regarding the main TJ instruments: trials; truth commissions; reparations for victims; and amnesties. Reviewing academic literature on the effects of transitional justice in post-conflict contexts, three main messages emerge:

• Initial evidence suggests that transitional justice can help to foster peace. Contrary to concerns that actively dealing with the past may deepen societal divisions and cause renewed conflict, most statistical studies find either positive effects or no effects of the various instruments on peace.
• Research indicates that amnesties can help to build peace, though not as a response to severe war crimes. Contrary to strong reservations against amnesties at the international level (especially on normative grounds), several academic studies find that amnesties can statistically significantly reduce the risk of conflict recurrence. However, the most extensive and recent study also shows that this effect varies depending on the context: amnesties can contribute to peace when they are included in peace agreements, but have no effect after episodes of very severe violence.
• To effectively foster peace, trials should target all perpetrators involved in the conflict, not only the defeated party. A likely explanation for this finding from a recent study is that otherwise domestic trials can be used by the victorious party to punish and repress the defeated side. More generally, donors should be aware that if a political regime is able to instrumentalise a transitional justice process, for instance after a one-sided victory or in an undemocratic environment, the process is often not conducive to peace.

Reviewing the literature also makes clear that important, open questions remain:

• Can transitional justice contribute to a deeper quality of peace that goes beyond the absence of violence? TJ should be able to foster reconciliation and mend broken societal relationships. However, if and how TJ can affect social cohesion after conflict needs to be better understood.
• How do various transitional justice instruments need to be combined? Both the academic literature and policy documents suggest that it is important to find the right mix of instruments, but more systematic analyses of successful combinations of TJ instruments are necessary.
• What role does donor support play in processes of transitional justice? Although transitional justice can be strongly domestically driven, such as in Colombia, donor funding often facilitates these processes. However, we still know too little about the effectiveness of such support.

Johanna Frank 2019-03-12T08:18:00Z

Félix Arteaga. Comentario Elcano 5/2019 - 12/3/2019

Seguimos asociando ciberseguridad con la seguridad del ciberespacio, pero cada día que pasa aparecen nuevas realidades que asociadas a la ciberseguridad pero que tienden a desbordarla.

Ana Ayerbe. ARI 33/2019 - 12/3/2019

Las industrias españolas deben tomarse en serio la ciberseguridad para no verse afectadas por ciberataques, pero también para aprovechar las oportunidades del emergente mercado global de ciberseguridad.

Gianluca D’Antonio y Miguel Olías de Lima Pancorbo. ARI 32/2019 - 12/3/2019

La transformación digital obliga a redefinir el concepto de ciberseguridad para asegurar que los nuevos elementos no asociados a las tecnologías de la información tradicionales (core IT) quedan recogidos en el enfoque más amplio de la Seguridad Digital.

Vicente Moret Millás. ARI 31/2019 - 12/3/2019

El despliegue de las nuevas redes de comunicaciones 5G está poniendo de relieve la existencia de una competición geopolítica por el control e implantación de las nuevas tecnologías.

The authors argue that in order for Germany to do justice to its claim of outlawing lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) internationally, the Federal Government should first define the term “human control”, for example in a strategic document from the Federal Ministry of Defence. The aim should be to facilitate the regulation of the development and use of LAWS – at the international level – thus making the issue of military robotics politically manageable.

The international framework for negotiating the regulation of LAWS is currently the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. A Common Position of the EU member states that demands human control – or, better still, suggests proposals for its design – could have a decisive influence on the negotiations.

 

 

New article discusses how China has become flexible with the principle of non-intervention

Le 26 février, le Ministre des Affaires étrangères iranien, Mohammad Javad Zarif, annonçait sa démission sur son compte Instagram. La raison de celle-ci ? Le Guide suprême, l’Ayatollah Khamenei, avait dans la journée reçu la visite de …