This piece focuses on the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on the African agenda for peace and security. Since its inception, the African Union (AU) has been focused on creating favourable conditions of peace and security as part of its broader Agenda 2063 for achieving “an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens, representing a dynamic force in the international arena”. In adopting its Silencing the Guns flagship project in 2013,…

COVID-19 has brought the world grinding to a halt. As of early August 2020, the greatest public health emergency of the century thus far has registered almost 20 million infected people and claimed over 730,000 lives across all inhabited continents, bringing public health systems to their knees, and causing shutdowns of borders and lockdowns of cities, regions, and even nations unprecedented in the modern era. Yet, as this Article demonstrates—with diverse examples drawn from across…

COVID-19 has exacerbated factors influencing international support for peacebuilding, including a more volatile geopolitical order and changes in domestic priorities in donor countries. Peacebuilding and a conflict-sensitive approach have not yet been at the forefront of the international responses to COVID-19, undermining attempts to ‘build back better’ in a world where negative conflict dynamics are increasingly apparent. This paper takes stock of trends in financial support for peacebuilding, building on ECDPM’s 2018 study ‘Supporting peacebuilding…

News headlines over the last few years have been filled with global scandals involving corruption on an unprecedented scale. They touch virtually every continent, from Asia to Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The scale, magnitude, and sophistication of the operations has increasingly risen to levels that many had not considered possible before. Governments are forever in search of new approaches and tools that can help identify loopholes and entry points for corrupt activities. While the…

Following the remarkable changes brought on by the peaceful revolution in Sudan in 2019, 2020 was set to be a year during which the country could make great strides in delivering on the aspirations of the Sudanese people for change after 30 years of autocratic rule. The sudden arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic thus fell cruelly at a critical moment, with the country having just embarked on its make-or-break transition towards a civilian-led democracy.  …

A year ago, young people across the globe took to the streets to appeal for urgent action to address the climate emergency. This was meant to be the year of ambitious commitments to climate change, but the Covid-19 pandemic has slowed the momentum. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) negotiations have been postponed to 2021, and only 12 countries have submitted revised Nationally Determined Contributions to date. As our attention pivots to…

International migration is intrinsically linked to social, economic and political global transformations, and can be seen as an important aspect of globalization processes (Castles, 2010; de Haas et al., 2020; Held et al., 1999). Along with other international phenomena, migration has historically been affected by seismic geopolitical events, such as the two World Wars, the Cold War, and large terrorist attacks such as 9/11, which can mark turning points in migration governance, as well as…

Brief points: There has been no indication of a reduced commitment to implementing the peace agreement on the signatories’ part, but delays in implementation activities are reported. In Colombia, the Kroc Institute has recorded fewer implementation events for the past few months. In South Sudan, the cantonment sites are near collapse, and training centers responsible for training 83,000 unified national forces have faced limitations. In the Mindanao, phase three of the decommissioning process targeting 14,000…

When the first COVID-19 cases reached the African continent, early estimates painted a dim picture of the impact of the pandemic on the region. Editorialists, public figures and think tanks predicted a widespread outbreak in the face of governments and health systems lacking the capacities to counter it. On 9 March 2020, the first two cases of COVID-19 were announced in Burkina Faso, followed by Niger on 19 March and Mali on 25 March. The…

The general situation in the Sahel-Saharan region continues to be of concern to the African Union (AU) and the international community. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic is adding an additional element to the multidimensional crisis that the Sahel has already been experiencing for a decade. This is resulting in a negative impact, to say the least, on the actions that were underway in the fight against insecurity and for the promotion of sustainable development….