On 25 April 2013, the UN Security Council established a 12,600-strong peacekeeping force for Mali. The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission will take over and continue the security and stabilization mission initiated in January 2013 by the French-led military...

This report responds to the question of how we might approach and understand the Boko Haram insurgency. In providing an answer, the report addresses three main controversies within the field of Boko Haram studies. First, whether local grievances or religious radicalisation is the main driver of...

In 2013, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) was established by UN Security Council Resolution 2100 to support peace-making and -building in Mali in order to prevent further destabilization of the Sahel. MINUSMA has come to represent the...

As violence and insecurity increase and the Sahel situation deteriorates further, understanding the main causes and drivers of conflicts is of growing importance. Recently, the assumption that climate change is causing violence and displacement in the region has become prominent, and this has...

The global arena for development cooperation is in a state of flux, as the conventional drivers of economic and social progress have seen rapid transformations in the last years. In the South, new powers have (re)emerged and now represent proper alternatives to conventional North-South...

The past decade ushered in an almost historic backslide towards more autocratic forms of governance. Today, for the first time in almost thirty years, the world has more closed autocracies than liberal democracies, and the past two years alone have seen nine new countries move into this...

2015 is the deadline by which the 193 UN Member States have committed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and when discussions on a possible future framework will have to be concluded. Since the MDGs were designed in the 1990s the world has witnessed profound changes, and the...