Conflicts are not only national or transnational, but above all local. This means that simply considering the international or national perspective in mission mandates will never be enough; policies have to be translated into concrete workable programmes at community level. So how can peacekeeping missions contribute to sustainable resolutions and prevent conflicts from reoccurring?...
Fatai Adegboye is one of our many part-time PhD fellows who also works for another UN body — in this case the World Food Programme (WFP) in Damascus, Syria. He came to Maastricht for our unique PhD Dual Career Training Programme in Governance and Policy Analysis (GPAC²). The questions are posed by course leader Dr. Mindel van de Laar. ••• Can you describe your daily work in Damascus? FA: I am a Business Support Manager at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), Syria Country Office....
At the outset of the 2011 Syrian revolution, Syrian women played an active role in protests and grassroots mobilisation. They played leadership roles in local committees. They organised and participated in demonstrations and sit-ins. However, with the militarisation of the uprising, women have been sidelined and their voices marginalised in military and political decisions. ...
Predicting the future is a minefield, but undoubtedly one of the toughest challenges for the new UN Secretary-General will be how to steer the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO). Not only because it is one of the most expensive activities of the system, but also because it needs to reconcile two of the core values of the UN: the maintenance of international peace and security, on the one hand, and human security, on the other....
When people ask me where I come from, my thoughts inevitably take me way back in time to the early 1930s and to a place on the other side of the globe, the Japanese city of Hiroshima. This is where my story starts. During those years of economic crisis, tens of thousands of Japanese people, including both my mother’s grandparents, decided to emigrate to Brazil, in the genuine belief that they would soon be back home, having made a fortune after a few years of hard labour in the coffee bean plant...
A recent news article focused on the UNU-MERIT Master’s thesis ‘Competition for Talent: Retaining Graduates in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine’ by Julia Reinold. The article looked at the advantages and disadvantages of living in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine (EMR): the tri-national crossroads between Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Considering graduate migration and personal experiences, it examined the many efforts made to reduce border barriers by the Foundation Euregio Meuse-Rhine...
Five years on from the Great East Japan tsunami and the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, we revisit an article by Prof. Luc Soete, our founding director. Does Europe face similar nuclear risks? Recent developments in Belgium do not bode well. ••• On 11 March 2011, I was attending a conference in Brussels on Europe’s future energy policy, when Japan was hit by an earthquake. During the coffee break we were transfixed by the images coming out the country. At first it seemed that Japanese socie...
Climate change is one of the most pressing global challenges for the international community. Linked to a growing list of natural disasters – from droughts and desertification to floods and melting ice caps – climate change poses an existential threat to all of humanity. Against this backdrop, a coordinated international response is not only warranted but desperately needed. Acting as the main forum for dialogue and collective action, the United Nations (including all agencies, funds and program...
Every March 8th the international community honours women for their many and various achievements in the struggle for gender equality. For centuries women’s movements have fought for the rights and freedoms of women and girls – but not in a zero-sum game. Already in 1792 British author and activist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote: “I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.” The movement has seen many successes, even in the last few months. In December 2015, Saudi Arabia b...
As a migration researcher as well as a first-generation migrant descended of migrants, mobility has been a major feature of my adult life. I find it difficult to separate my own migration story from that of my ancestors because it is precisely their decisions and trajectories that enabled my own....