Publications

The private sector is an intrinsic part of the ecology of conflict-affected societies, through its implication in dense networks of external and local actors, combined with practices which directly affect the security of individuals and groups in the everyday. In contrast to the prevailing liberal peace view in which business is framed as an indispensable component of macro-economic reforms, and a mechanism for peace and transition through building free-market democracies, the paper uses empirical examples from the Balkans, Middle East and Central America to show that the supposed benefits of corporate involvement in conflict and transition environments are mitigated by a human security perspective in which the impacts on vulnerable individuals and societies are often perverse and contradictory.

Everyday civilian and military activities have become highly dependent on cyberspace. This creates new vulnerabilities both to accidents and to intentional threats. Malevolent individuals and organisations may, without any physical presence, infiltrate all possible networks, including the most sensitive ones. Every individual as well as governmental, non-governmental and business organisation may be targeted. Hence the growing concern for cybersecurity, which reflects the changes taking place in broader approaches to security - from the security of nations and territories to the security of individuals and communities.

Given Libya's everyday anarchy and violence, there is a strong temptation to take a “security first” approach. Yet this would repeat a principal weakness of European policy between the fall of Gaddafi and the start of the civil war. After 2011, European policy in Libya was based upon heavy doses of “local ownership”, in reaction to the failures of the top-down approach in Iraq. This ran up against the limited capacity of the Libyan government to assess its needs, let alone to devise overall policies for which to request international assistance.

This paper examines EU approaches to justice for gross human rights violations in conflict- affected environments. It starts with a discussion of the significance of justice from a human security perspective and emphasises how a spectrum of abuse and criminality – human rights abuse, organised crime, corruption – is at the heart of today’s conflicts. The paper then assesses

EU justice policies and practices in relation to three human security principles: the primacy of human rights, a bottom-up approach and a regional approach.

This paper argues that even though EU policies in the DRC integrated different components of human security – namely human rights protection, the restoration of law and order, and effective multilateralism – in practice these policies have had mixed success in realizing the objective of human security. This can be explained by three main reasons: (i) EU policies are based on a number of premises about how peace and human security can best be achieved, but these premises are overly simplistic, and in most cases tend to overlook or are disconnected from complexities on the ground; (ii) since the end of the transition in 2006, the EU saw its influence as dominant diplomatic and conflict management actor gradually weakening, and has focused on its role as a development actor, with a specific focus on the implementation of technical projects…

FES London and LSE (February 2016): Europe in the twenty-first century finds itself in the midst of interlocking crises. The EU as a new type of 21st century political institution should be equipped with a set of second generation human security instruments, as the Berlin Report states. This report is the result of a joint project of FES London and the LSE and provides a new framework for a common European Foreign and Security Policy, aiming at the stabilisation and sustainable resolution of ongoing conflicts.

The European Union (EU) has resorted to sanctions on several occasions in the last two decades, led by the assumption that restrictive measures would be less invasive and harmful than war. This paper discusses sanctions from a human security perspective. Specifically, it assesses the extent to which the EU has been aligned with a human security approach in using restrictive measures. The paper examines EU sanctions practice in relation to two principles of human security: human rights and a bottom-up approach.

Despite Europe’s mass investments in border controls, people keep arriving along the continent’s shores under desperate circumstances. European attempts to ‘secure’ the borders have quite clearly failed, yet more of the same response is again rolled out in response to the escalating ‘refugee crisis’. Amid the deadlock, this paper argues that we need to grasp the mechanics of the European ‘border security model’ in order to open up for a shift.

This report traces the EU’s policy response to the conflict in Syria. It argues that in the EU’s efforts to assert influence against the Assad regime through threatening – and eventually – withdrawing from EU-Syrian partnership agreements and imposing

sanctions, the EU has actually reduced its influence in the region. Instead this dis-engagement has exposed the EU to increasing humanitarian costs (particularly with the refugee crisis), and increasing threat of extremism. This report thus considers what the EU should do in responding to the conflict in Syria, particularly in engaging with justice approaches to conflict resolutions, including an engagement with civil society.

This paper analyses multiple policy instruments used by the EU and their effects in the Western Balkans from a conflict networks perspective, developed by the authors. The conflict network perspective is an agential approach to the effects of networks on peacebuilding outcomes that analyzes relations rather than actors or categories. It allows us to capture an enduring character

of relations developed through war-time violence which are sustained and reworked in the context of a local political authority in response to the international peace-building efforts.