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Reducing violent conflict in Africa is often cited as a reason for governments to work on lowering CO2 emissions – climate matters, but other factors are more important.

The ongoing conflicts in Mali are often taken as one and portrayed in relation to religious extremism, irredentism or plain criminality, overlooking tensions arising from changing socio-political relations at the local level. This is particularly...

Several years of research on the informal economy in West Africa give a perspective on the Sahel and Northern Mali and the following message for policymakers: invest in the informal sector.

Shelter in the region represents a gap in the protection of refugees, which is in stark contrast with Europe’s professed commitment to human rights and international law.

Although in the long-term the Eurozone needs full democratic control of the monetary union, including competence over labour and social policy, this will not happen soon enough. A feasible alternative is that rights bodies such as the ECSR provide...

Unlike Mugabe, Déby is friendly, at least as far as Western powers are concerned – and, more importantly, he is needed.

The EU migration and refugee crisis has acutely revealed the limits of the Schengen and Dublin systems as well as national reticence to build a European migration and asylum policy. If Europe is not up to the task, can international organizations...

The EU migration and refugee crisis has acutely revealed the limits of the Schengen and Dublin systems as well as national reticence to build a European migration and asylum policy. If Europe is not up to the task, can international organizations...

The main factors contributing to the rise of Boko Haram firstly relate to the internal crisis of Nigeria’s government.

Chad’s approach of engagement in regional governance for peace stands in stark contrast to its approach to governance at home.

In Ethiopia and many African countries, we need a recalibration of developmentalist authoritarianism that feeds exclusion and conflict.

With so many conflicts emerging in Africa, the connections between these conflicts are becoming important. While conflicts are influenced by a diverse array of factors at local, national, regional and international levels, there is a need for poli...

Addressing youth unemployment has become increasingly urgent in the face of a deteriorating security situation where criminal and radical groups have penetrated many parts of Mali.

Liberia has been hit hardest by the Ebola outbreak. It makes sense to focus much attention to this country, as well as its neighbours Sierra Leone and Guinea. But Ebola is not just a crisis for Liberia Sierra Leone, or Guinea. The devastation it c...

A difficult choice looms in the post-2015 debate between accepting a progressive but imperfect starting point for intergovernmental negotiations, and risking losing all the gains made so far.

In his 1963 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, the late US president John F. Kennedy expressed two ambitions for that decade: to commit to a manned moon mission and to end world poverty and hunger. On 21 July 1969, Apollo 11 landed on...

Some insights from the Understanding Risk Forum 2014

The rush for African farmland has created new opportunities for political and customary institutions to extract rents from hitherto poorly monetized land resources. This has facilitated the formation of new alliances shaped around global capital....

Treating food as a purely private good is denying millions of people access to this basic resource. Food should therefore be seen as a commons or public good. It could then be produced and distributed more effectively by a governance system combin...

The fresh eruption of violence in South Sudan illustrates once more the ethnic dividing lines within the countries’ government. In ethnically diverse societies, the division of power and wealth between different groups is a source of conflict, whi...

The fishing dispute between India and Sri Lanka is not only an issue of sovereignty, but also reflects social and economic problems.

A fisheries conflict in Canada shows how power dynamics affect the lives of an aboriginal community.

In spite of the ongoing euro crisis, which does not leave much space for an ambitious global agenda, the EU remains a major global development actor.

African countries need to bring their own social, economic, cultural and political priorities into the post-2015 debate.

As the 1000-day count-down to the end of the Millennium age begins, it is expedient to unearth the hurdles encountered during the 15-year development journey. Though remarkable progress is made on the MDGs, regional imbalances exist.

The global land rush has not lifted small-scale farmers out of poverty, nor has it increased agricultural productivity and food security. Speculative land acquisitions often leave fertile land unused, and deprive local communities of vital resources.

How well or how poorly citizens fare within the borders of their state used to be a no-go area for others to interfere with. But the notion of sovereign equality as the foundation of the international legal order is showing ever more creaks and sq...

A new kind of entrepreneurs, capable to bet on innovation as a social and cultural shared practice to drive change, is needed for food and nutrition security. Some reflections from Latin America.

The ongoing trend of decentralising governance responsibilities to the sub-national level in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is likely to continue in the near future. In order to achieve its objectives, it will be crucial that this tran...

In January 2012 the Indian government formally established the Development Partnership Administration (DPA) within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with a mandate to coordinate India’s overseas development assistance. 

As many of those gathered here in Busan, I feel very excited about the chance we have to collectively shape the way in which development is practiced.

The latest Policy Brief of the Earth System Governance Project - a ten years research initiative, which is sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and the United Nations University...

Strengthening Democratic Institutions for development effectiveness

The ACP Group needs to strengthen itself politically while the EU must be prepared to renew its partnership with ACP countries on equal terms.

On Monday 18 April, a crowd of 120 or so gathered in the hall of the Free University in Amsterdam for a lecture by Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Renmin University of China. In his lecture, the seventh in a series on ‘global...

Tomorrow morning I will board a flight to Santa Fe in New Mexico. I am expecting to land in a Wild West-style landscape, which seems to me particularly well suited for a conference on US foreign policy on Afghanistan. 'Foreign policy as a complex...

The Broker organiseert een online debat over de vraag: wat is de positie van Nederland in een snel veranderende wereld, en wat moet dat betekenen voor het brede Nederlandse buitenlandbeleid en de visie ten aanzien van globalisering en ontwikk...

Five years after its acceptance by the 2005 World Summit, it is time to consider the contribution that the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has made and could make to the prevention of mass atrocities.

It is time to recognize cities as global actors. City networks are reaching across the globe and city governments are collaborating on crucial environmental issues. Coordinating policy at a local level, they are increasingly taking the lead in tac...

On 23 June 2009, the Residence Palace in Brussels hosted the High Level Policy Forum ‘After 2015: promoting pro-poor growth after the MDGs’. The forum was a joint initiative of IDS, DSA, EADI, DFID and ActionAid.

China has reached a critical point in its development. Widespread poverty and growing social inequality are posing daunting challenges for social stability. The Chinese government seems aware of this, but needs to do more to empower the people to...