Policy reports by Kari M . Osland
NUPI COVID-19 Brief, 2020
• Context-sensitivity is key
• Include communities in the design and management of the response
... more • Context-sensitivity is key
• Include communities in the design and management of the response
• Sensitivity to local narratives and knowledge systems
• Counter myths and rumours
• Transparent and legitimate crisis communication
NUPI Report, 2020
Recent years have seen important developments regarding the UN Security Council and the UN Secret... more Recent years have seen important developments regarding the UN Security Council and the UN Secretariat. The Security Council, which has increasingly recognized organized crime as a serious threat to international peace and security—especially in relation to terrorism—has begun using sanctions to deal with organized crime and trafficking in Mali and Libya. Further, serious and organized crime (SOC) police units have been established in several UN field operations, including in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mali. However, there is still no UN-wide policy on organized crime, and the issue has been conspicuously absent from recent strategic documents such as the Action for Peacekeeping Declaration (A4P). This report argues that there is need for a UN system-wide approach to peace operations for preventing and addressing organized crime, and its links to terrorism. To achieve this, UN member states and the UN Secretariat should seek to consolidate and broaden its nascent law enforcement capacity- building police approach into a context sensitive, system-wide approach. Six specific recommendations for the way forward are offered.
NUPI Report, 2020
China’s new, assertive role in UN peacekeeping, especially in Africa, represents a significant sh... more China’s new, assertive role in UN peacekeeping, especially in Africa, represents a significant shift in Beijing’s peace and security posture that is not yet fully reflected in official discourse and rhetoric, but that reflects China’s new confidence with its global power status. Every significant adaptation in its peacekeeping policy has reflected an important shift in the country’s practical foreign and security policy. Tracing and tracking China’s peacekeeping policy and practice is thus a useful proxy for analysing the evolution of its peace and security considerations. In this report Senior Research Fellows Kari Osland and Cedric de Coning consider the medium- to long-term trajectory of China’s peace and security practices by analysing its recent activity in Africa, focusing on how China has used its contributions to the UN peacekeeping missions in Mali (MINUSMA) and South Sudan (UNMISS).
NUPI Working Paper, 2020
Gender parity at all levels in the UN, as a means towards gender equality, is a two-decades old... more Gender parity at all levels in the UN, as a means towards gender equality, is a two-decades old commitment, reflecting core values as old as the UN itself. Despite this, progress on increasing the number of female peacekeepers has been slow and uneven, particularly in uniformed roles – but also in peace processes. This is due to a number of reasons, but in particular a lack of political will, financing and accountability, and resistance to gender equality. We argue that a paradigm shift is needed, both on performance diversity grounds but also on normative equality grounds. To implement already agreed upon benchmarks and resolutions, the UN and its member states need to focus more on the operational value of diversity in fulfilling the tasks at hand, both for national security forces and in peace operations. Gender should be considered a central component in this required diversity. In the current situation where we witness a pushback on support to women’s rights; ensuring diversity should not only be considered a key priority, but also a national and international security imperative.
NUPI COVID-19 Brief, 2020
More women are needed in UN peace operations, both on the grounds of equality and performance. Ma... more More women are needed in UN peace operations, both on the grounds of equality and performance. March 2020 survey data and empirical evidence from the Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network (EPON) highlight the importance of greater gender parity in UN peace operations for missions to successfully achieve their mandated tasks, stressing also the impact of context-specific obstacles and how the absence of enabling and supportive systems means that neither male nor female peacekeepers can perform at their best. Survey findings also point to the risk that the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda – including gender equality in peacekeeping operations – may be treated as a second-tier concern if set against other pressing issues. In the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic and an evolving global recession– this risk is intensified. A continued political and financial commitment to increasing numbers is a prerequisite for achieving greater gender parity and equality. However, in terms of discourse, we need to move beyond having to prove the added value of female participation, which places an extra burden on those concerned.
While over 90 countries contribute police personnel to international peace operations, only a han... more While over 90 countries contribute police personnel to international peace operations, only a handful systematically interview returned police and attempt to gather insights and information on their mission experiences. This report explores a selection of police-contributing countries (PCCs), examining their mechanisms for deploying police officers to international missions, and then, on return from international missions, for collecting information on their experiences. From this overview, we identify good practices as well as gaps in knowledge generation, and offer some recommendations for improving the collection, management and application of mission-relevant police knowledge. Establishing coherent systems for gathering insights from on-the-ground experiences of police officers deployed to peace operations is valuable for building and sharing awareness of what works and what does not work in international police deployments. Such feedback should be used by PCCs to inform and tailor police pre-deployment training programmes, support mechanisms for deployed officers, and post-deployment reintegration practices. The insights of police officers who have served in peace operations can also be applied to enrich what is known about the complex tasks international police are commonly asked to perform, such as supporting the reform and restructuring of host-state police and law-enforcement institutions, and the challenges of undertaking such tasks in specific mission and country contexts.
This policy brief presents the main findings and recommendations from a longer survey-based repo... more This policy brief presents the main findings and recommendations from a longer survey-based report with the same title, documenting the experiences of Norwegian police personnel in international operations from 1989 until today.
The purpose of the survey was to systematically gather the knowledge Norwegian police bring home from international operations, be they peace operations, stabilization missions or other assistance missions. This information is an important source of information for policymakers, practitioners and academics in order to understand the challenges Norwegian police have met, not only in the field but also before deployment and after return. This is meant to provide an improved knowledge base for developing new policy and practice for Norwegian police deployments and international police assistance.
Denne rapporten dokumenterer erfaringer blant norsk politipersonell som har tjenestegjort i inter... more Denne rapporten dokumenterer erfaringer blant norsk politipersonell som har tjenestegjort i internasjonale operasjoner fra 1989 frem til i dag. Spørreskjemaet ble sendt til 440 personer, og det kom inn 277 svar: 78% fra menn, de resterende 22% fra kvinner. Flertallet av dem er fra 41 til 57 år og fortsatt ansatt i politiet. 57% har vært ute mer enn en gang, og 81% av de som har svart, har vært en eller flere ganger i Kosovo, Sør-Sudan, Afghanistan, Liberia, Palestina, Bosnia og Herzegovina eller Haiti (i synkende rekkefølge etter antall).
by Eli Stamnes, Randi Solhjell, Paul Troost, Cedric de Coning, Mateja Peter, Ingvild Gjelsvik, Jon Harald Sande Lie, Niels Nagelhus Schia, Kari M . Osland, Francesco Strazzari, and John Karlsrud
Papers by Kari M . Osland
United Nations Peace Operations in a Changing Global Order, 2018
Despite few success stories (Osland 2014), international police reform is considered increasingly... more Despite few success stories (Osland 2014), international police reform is considered increasingly important in contemporary conflict resolution (UN 2014, 2015a, b, 2016a, b). 2 While the breakdown of law and order may trigger the deployment of a UN peace operation, it is often the (re-)establishment of the rule of law institutions, including policing, that indicates a mission is completed and allows for an exit. 3 The more robust mandates in UN operations, such as in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan, require the international police contribution to not only perform its "traditional" tasks, such as mentoring and training, but also
Recent years have seen important developments regarding the UN Security Council and the UN Secret... more Recent years have seen important developments regarding the UN Security Council and the UN Secretariat. The Security Council, which has increasingly recognized organized crime as a serious threat to international peace and security—especially in relation to terrorism—has begun using sanctions to deal with organized crime and trafficking in Mali and Libya. Further, serious and organized crime (SOC) police units have been established in several UN field operations, including in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mali. However, there is still no UN-wide policy on organized crime, and the issue has been conspicuously absent from recent strategic documents such as the Action for Peacekeeping Declaration (A4P). This report argues that there is need for a UN system-wide approach to peace operations for preventing and addressing organized crime, and its links to terrorism. To achieve this, UN member states and the UN Secretariat should seek to consolidate and broaden its nascent law enforcement capacity- building police approach into a context sensitive, system-wide approach. Six specific recommendations for the way forward are offered
Gender parity at all levels in the UN, as a means towards gender equality, is a two-decades old c... more Gender parity at all levels in the UN, as a means towards gender equality, is a two-decades old commitment, reflecting core values as old as the UN itself. Despite this, progress on increasing the number of female peacekeepers has been slow and uneven, particularly in uniformed roles – but also in peace processes. This is due to a number of reasons, but in particular a lack of political will, financing and accountability, and resistance to gender equality. We argue that a paradigm shift is needed, both on performance diversity grounds but also on normative equality grounds. To implement already agreed upon benchmarks and resolutions, the UN and its member states need to focus more on the operational value of diversity in fulfilling the tasks at hand, both for national security forces and in peace operations. Gender should be considered a central component in this required diversity. In the current situation where we witness a pushback on support to women’s rights; ensuring diversity should not only be considered a key priority, but also a national and international security imperative
The EU and crisis response, 2021
This chapter analyses the EU’s crisis response in the Western Balkans through the lens of EULEX. ... more This chapter analyses the EU’s crisis response in the Western Balkans through the lens of EULEX. By exploring how those immediately responsible for mandate execution and those directly affected by its outcomes perceive EULEX, we discover gaps that highlight the pitfalls of direct and ingrained political interference in the mission’s work. While EULEX has been seen as an important watchdog for preventing further human rights abuses, the EU’s approach to Kosovo and the region continues to be characterised by competing priorities: the EU’s broader political objectives impact the mission’s legal work and hamper the EU in achieving a coherent and impactful rule of law policy. In turn, this decreases the local populations’ trust and approval of EULEX and ultimately undermines the EU’s overall goals of promoting good governance and a European perspective for Kosovo. This tension highlights the incompatibility of the EU’s short-term focus on crisis management and the more longterm focus on crisis transformation. We see this as particularly problematic for an actor whose self-image as a ‘normative power’, is underpinned by an assumption that its influence in the world in gained through ‘the power of ideas’.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
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Policy reports by Kari M . Osland
• Include communities in the design and management of the response
• Sensitivity to local narratives and knowledge systems
• Counter myths and rumours
• Transparent and legitimate crisis communication
The purpose of the survey was to systematically gather the knowledge Norwegian police bring home from international operations, be they peace operations, stabilization missions or other assistance missions. This information is an important source of information for policymakers, practitioners and academics in order to understand the challenges Norwegian police have met, not only in the field but also before deployment and after return. This is meant to provide an improved knowledge base for developing new policy and practice for Norwegian police deployments and international police assistance.
Papers by Kari M . Osland
• Include communities in the design and management of the response
• Sensitivity to local narratives and knowledge systems
• Counter myths and rumours
• Transparent and legitimate crisis communication
The purpose of the survey was to systematically gather the knowledge Norwegian police bring home from international operations, be they peace operations, stabilization missions or other assistance missions. This information is an important source of information for policymakers, practitioners and academics in order to understand the challenges Norwegian police have met, not only in the field but also before deployment and after return. This is meant to provide an improved knowledge base for developing new policy and practice for Norwegian police deployments and international police assistance.