International Crisis Group

The EU can agree on immigration—but only if it gets its act together.

Europe needs to be clear about the challenge it faces. It is not one of security. Nor is migration an invasion: migrants moving from South to North constitute 1 percent of the global population. Human history, demographics, economics, climate change, and conflict suggest migration will stay. To assert otherwise is to follow in the footsteps of Canute’s courtiers beseeching their king to hold back the tide.

The link between conflict and flight—a key dimension of current mass movement—must be forcefully made. In September 2016, the world convenes in New York to discuss large movements of refugees and migrants. Europe should lead with ambition: through radical rethinking of how best to treat refugees (Are camps fit for the twenty-first century?); through considerably ramping up support to frontline states; and through recommitting to those institutions—the UN Security Council and the office of the secretary general—best placed to manage the prevention and effective resolution of conflict.

The tragedy of death—over 2,500 in the Mediterranean so far in 2016 alone—and dubious deals to keep migrants at bay weaken Europe’s leadership and fray the international legal order: a heavy price for an unattainable goal. Managing, not preventing, should be Europe’s strategy. That means creating safe pathways and common asylum policies, upholding international law, and committing to burden sharing.

- Jonathan Prentice, Director of the London office and senior adviser for advocacy at the International Crisis Group

SOURCE: Carnegie Europe

The peaceful election in March 2015 of President Muhammadu Buhari, a former army general, raised hopes that some of Nigeria’s most pressing security problems could soon be tamed. One year later, the new government has struck at the Islamist Boko Haram insurgency. But Nigeria is sliding deeper into other difficulties.

FULL COMMENTARY (Via Crisis Group)

Photo: Anadolu Agency/Stringer

SOURCE: Crisis Group

The formation of a transitional government following Riek Machar’s return to Juba in April marked the most significant milestone of the August 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS) that ended the twenty-month civil war. Yet the ARCSS, designed to address a war primarily fought between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-In Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) in the Greater Upper Nile region, is an imperfect solution to other conflict fault lines, notably in the Equatoria region. Conflicts there are driven by a combination of national governance issues – federalism, security sector reform and a new constitution – that the ARCSS addresses – and localised grievances. Though the Equatorian conflicts appear to be on the wane, the agreement’s ability to address national political and security governance issues as well as regional-specific questions about the status of Equatorian opposition forces will determine if they revive.

FULL REPORT (Via Crisis Group)

Photo: AFP/Samir Bol

SOURCE: Crisis Group

Devolved government in Kenya’s newly formed north-eastern counties, designed to address decades of political marginalisation and underdevelopment, has been undermined by dominant clans monopolising power and growing corruption. Violent clan competition and antipathy between elected county elites and the remaining national administrative structures have allowed the violently extremist Al-Shabaab movement to expand and operate with relative impunity across large areas of the North East. Its attacks exposed security-service disarray and caused a sharp reversal of already stretched state services in this vast and poor region that shares a porous 680km border with Somalia. To end the violence and capitalise on devolution’s potential, county elites must be more inclusive of minorities, cooperate across local boundaries for inter-county peace and recognise the continued role for neutral national institutions. National government should recognise where pragmatism can trump convention and back new security approaches that combine national and county responses.

FULL REPORT (Via Crisis Group)

Photo: REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

Source: Crisis Group

Spiralling protests against a draft constitution have left 23 dead and hundreds injured in Nepal in two weeks. An over-militarised security reaction and inadequate political response from the centre threaten to fuel deep-seated ethnic, caste and regional rivalries less than a decade after the civil war’s end. The major parties should recognise the depth of discontent and the fundamental challenge this poses to the legitimacy of the proposed constitution. A hastily-passed document, weeks after mobilisation of security forces to counter citizens’ protests against it, is unlikely to be the social contract Nepal needs.

FULL ALERT (Via Crisis Group)

Photo:  AFP/Manish Paudel

Source: Crisis Group