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Following up on last year's interview, The Broker held another exclusive interview with Ángel Losada, the EU Special Representative for the Sahel. We met with Losada at a timely moment, shortly after the announcement of a new joint force of five S...

Mali’s multi-layered conflicts cannot be understood from a single analytical perspective, it is not one conflict - but a dynamic system of conflicts.

Is France still ‘at home’ in Francophone Africa? The G5 Sahel may well indicate so.

The Sahel has become an economic, social and political breeding ground for violence but donor spending does not seem to address the region's main challenges.

With the start of a new year, the time has come to reflect on what has passed and look towards what is to come in 2017. A shortlist of 5 unmissable articles published by The Broker in 2016 provides a great start.

The new EU migration trust fund's use of development aid and its focus on ‘migration management’ securitizes both development and migration policy and will end up serving neither.

The delicate process of consolidating peace in Mali risks being derailed unless urgent action is taken by Malian actors and their international partners.

Practical and concrete approaches to regional food trade could advance a common political agenda and, thereby, positively impact on the Sahelian security situation

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

Sahel governments in the region have never been more concerned about the fight against terror yet security first approaches struggle to have impact.

The contribution of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) to stability in West Africa seems to be largely overlooked – and for no clear reason. 

The security situation in the Sahel region has become highly volatile over the past years. Due to its geographical position, the Malian state is particularly prone to regional insecurity. As a result of the 2012 crisis in northern Mali, caused by...

The emergence of fragile cities poses a growing security challenge and it is time to develop innovative solutions that are embedded in informal networks.

How will the EU develop its role as an actor in an increasingly multipolar world? Next June we will know, when the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini presents her new global strategy for the European Union External Action Service.

Informal negotiations on peace and security advance efficiency but undermine legitimacy of the Council’s actions

Disarmament, Demobilization and Reinsertion of rebel groups back into society is crucial for peace, but faces challenges.

As supply control policies for illegal drugs achieve partial successes elsewhere, international drug markets are shifting production and transit to West Africa and the Sahel. Facilitated by limited law enforcement and border control, the drug trad...

Linking precarious work to the debate on income inequality shows that precarious work not only affects the ‘losers’ of globalization, but also the ‘winners’.

Since 2012, Mali has been suffering from what at first seemed to be a sudden outbreak of armed conflict which eventually led to a military response by France. At that moment, the conflict was framed predominantly as a battle against the rise of ex...

For more than two years, Mali has been suffering from a sudden eruption of armed conflict. In recent decades, economic, ecological, political and security factors have combined to create fertile ground for conflict. This led to ethnic tensions and...

Unfold all background information Mali’s democracy collapsed after a nine-month civil war. The West-African country that has been cheered internationally for its peaceful multi-ethnic and secular democracy, high growth rates and modern approach...

During the past decade, gangs have become a powerful and violent presence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the ‘Northern Triangle’ of Central America. 1 The particular evolution of the gang phenomenon has been deeply shaped by a series...

Against the background of growing international attention for ownership of development processes at local level, the discussion about non-state governance in fragile settings is extremely timely. Despite general acknowledgement of the importance o...

With only a quarter of the world’s population having access to social protection, the case for expanding it is gaining ground in international discussions. The debate focuses on how best to design social protection, whether it should be universal...

Although the MDGs are arguably the most politically important pact ever made for international development, they harbor several lessons for their successor framework.

The complex relationship between insecurity issues and development can be clarified by including 'development disruptor' goals in the post-2015 framework.

Africa remains doomed. This is what the Failed States Index 2013 claims. Three-quarters of the continent is portrayed as ‘critical’, and the other quarter as ‘in danger’ or ‘borderline’. 

How are inequality and conflict connected? This question has occupied the minds of thinkers and practitioners for many years. The common-sense argument sounds convincing: where there are large inequalities between rich and poor, the latter become...

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Burundi is of little or no geopolitical or strategic importance. Unlike its neighbours, a lack of significant natural resources or celebrity engagement means that only the threat of a slide back into civil war awakens otherwise dormant internation...

Last night I finished reading a beautiful and gripping book, The hare with amber eyes. It’s the biography of a collection of 264 antique Japanese wood and ivory carvings.

The Broker runs an editor's blog on this Human Security theme page. 

How can foreign policy today benefit from complexity sciences?

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.

Part of the current Dutch societal dialogue on nanotechnology is the international dimension: implications of nanotechnology for peace, security and the interests of people in developing countries.

Simon Maxwell is the director of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London. He was one of the initiators of the ERD.