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Begin New Search Topic International Cooperation Political Geography Global Focus Content Type Special Report Publication Year within 3 Years Publication Year within 5 Years

1. Using Risk Analysis to Shape Border Management: A Review of Approaches during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author:
Kelley Lee, Julianne Piper, and Jennifer Fang
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
The near universal adoption of travel measures by governments to control the spread of COVID-19 has proved controversial during the pandemic. National responses have been highly varied and frequently changing, and the use of travel measures—ranging from advisories and screening to quarantine, testing, immunity certification, and restrictions on entry—has been poorly coordinated across jurisdictions. Particularly in the early stages of the crisis, this created chaos for travelers and the travel sector, and caused significant economic and social harms. Many governments also failed to clearly communicate the rationale for using travel measures, the evidence underpinning them, and the measures’ role within overall pandemic response strategies. There is now substantial evidence that these measures’ early and stringent use by some governments during the initial stages of the pandemic slowed the importation of the virus and reduced its onward transmission. Yet, there is also growing recognition of weaknesses in the quality of evidence available to inform policy decisions. Evaluating the appropriateness of travel measures and applying them effectively during future public-health emergencies will depend on international consensus on methodologies that lead to a more harmonized and coordinated approach and to greater public trust in policy decisions. This report presents a comparative analysis of 11 publicly available methodologies used to assess travel-related risks during the pandemic—those of Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States, International Civil Aviation Organization, International Air Transport Association, World Health Organization, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and European Union. It offers a set of lessons learned and recommendations, including a proposed decision instrument that could improve the use of risk analysis for border management during future public-health emergencies.
Topic:
Security, International Cooperation, International Organization, Governance, Border Control, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Global Focus, and United States of America

2. External Processing: A Tool to Expand Protection or Further Restrict Territorial Asylum?

Author:
Pauline de Oliveira and Nicholas Feith Tan
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
Access to territorial asylum is under significant pressure in many corners of the world. Pushbacks at borders as well as pandemic-era mobility restrictions have prevented many asylum seekers from reaching their destinations. And new and ongoing crises, including those in Afghanistan and Ukraine, have highlighted the need to offer protection closer to where vulnerable populations live, and for high-income countries to find ways to share responsibilities with the low- and middle-income countries that host the overwhelming majority of people in need of international protection. This has led to renewed interest in external processing, which involves conducting part or all of the asylum procedure outside a destination country’s territory. Notably, even as countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom have adopted policies to offshore asylum processing to countries such as Papua New Guinea and Rwanda in hopes of deterring spontaneous arrivals, there is growing interest in using external processing in ways that complement existing territorial asylum and expand, rather than restrict, protection opportunities. This report—part of the Beyond Territorial Asylum: Making Protection Work in a Bordered World initiative led by MPI and the Robert Bosch Stiftung—highlights the opportunities that external processing offers as well as the challenges to its implementation and the risks it could pose to territorial asylum. It explores three categories of external processing policies implemented or proposed to date: humanitarian visas, emergency evacuations, and external processing centers. The report also identifies key conditions that must be present for external processing to occur in a protection-sensitive manner.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Governance, Refugees, Asylum, Visa, and Immigration Policy
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Australia, Rwanda, Papua New Guinea, and Global Focus

3. Rising to the Challenge: Building Peaceful, Just, Equal and Inclusive Societies in a Divided World

Author:
David Andersson
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
This report analyzes the global state of play of SDG16+ while identifying tangible, cross-cutting solutions to advance its targets of peace, justice, equality, and inclusion universally. With both an eye to the SDG Summit and set against a context of SDGs backsliding and a polycrisis, it lays out six strategic approaches by which SDG16+ can and has been advanced, drawing upon regional, national, and subnational examples. These approaches highlight efforts to rebuild trust and reduce polarization, with people-centered policies speaking lived daily realities; demonstrate the need to build evidence on SDG16+ interlinkages and their application in practice, with better data as a driver for innovative change; unpack participatory approaches, including the meaningful inclusion of civil society and subnational actors, and make clear the need for smarter SDG16+ financing. It concludes with opportunities for urgently needed advocacy, policy development, and collaboration on SDG16+ in the immediate and medium terms within UN and IFI contexts. This publication is designed to complement other recent SDG16+ community partner reports, with key messages reflecting both an HLPF Pathfinders Member States Statement (with Colombia and Switzerland), as well as the statement prepared by the Global SDG16+ Coalition, co-drafted by the Pathfinders Secretariat with other members of the Coalition.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Sustainable Development Goals, Equality, and Inclusion
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Addressing the Continuing Phenomenon of Enforced Disappearances

Author:
Diane Webber and Khaola Sherani
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
An enforced disappearance is the “arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty” by state agents or their proxies, followed by a refusal to acknowledge or disclose the fate of a seized individual. Unlike arbitrary detention, which may also involve arrest and inhumane treatment, enforced disappearances frequently leave families with no information as to the victim’s whereabouts or status. In many cases, it is ultimately revealed that the victim was killed rather than detained. Enforced disappearances violate multiple human rights, including the right to security and dignity of person; the right not to be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; the right to liberty; the right to humane conditions of detention; the right to a legal personality; the right to a fair trial; the right to a family life; and the right to life. The phenomenon of enforced disappearances first emerged as a state practice during the Nazi era but became widespread under the military regimes in Latin America during the 1960s. The Commission for Historical Clarification in Guatemala found that from the mid-1960s until the 1996 peace agreement, security forces and “death squads” carried out approximately 45,000 enforced disappearances against anti-government forces and suspected opponents, including members of Mayan communities. The governments of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru developed a transnational cooperation mechanism called “Operation Condor” to share intelligence about political dissidents for the purposes of carrying out transnational enforced disappearances. The practice of enforced disappearances was soon taken up by governments in other parts of the world, as well. In Sri Lanka, for example, Amnesty International estimates that there have been “at least 60,000 and as many as 100,000 cases of enforced disappearance” since the 1980s. The problem persists today, occurring at a large scale in many countries in the context of both armed conflicts and repressive, unaccountable regimes. The Syrian Network for Human Rights reported that from 2011 to 2021, the Syrian regime carried out 102,000 disappearances to suppress dissent during the civil war. Meanwhile, China’s Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL) decree empowers authorities to detain foreign or Chinese nationals for a period of six months without disclosing their location. A Spain-based rights group, Safeguard Defenders, claims that between 27,000 and 57,000 people have gone through China’s RSDL system since 2013, citing data from the Supreme People’s Court and the testimony of survivors and lawyers. Altogether, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UN Working Group) has recorded more than 59,000 cases of enforced disappearances across 110 countries since 1980, including 651 new cases originating in 30 countries in its most recent annual report. More than 46,000 cases remain unresolved. The international community was slow to respond to the growing problem of enforced disappearances, initially addressing the problem only as part of broader “ad hoc working groups” on human rights issues in countries like Chile and Cyprus. It was not until 1992 that the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which condemned acts of enforced disappearance as violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and called on states to prevent, eradicate, and punish acts of enforced disappearance under criminal law. The international legal regime has since expanded: in 1996, the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons (Inter-American Convention) entered into force, and in December 2010, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (Enforced Disappearance Convention) came into force. Enforced disappearances can also now be prosecuted as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Topic:
International Cooperation, International Criminal Court (ICC), Humanitarian Crisis, and Legal Sector
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Creating a New Energy Strategy for a Post Ukraine War World

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman and Paul Cormarie
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
There is every reason for the U.S. to focus on the dangers of climate change and the need to change the sources of its energy supplies to reduce carbon emissions. The new Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden signed on August 16, 2022, is an important step toward achieving these goals. At the same time, the U.S. needs to work with its European strategic partners to permanently reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas exports and work with Asian partners like Japan and South Korea to ensure that they will not confront a similar threat in the future from China.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, International Cooperation, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Allocation of Climate-Related Risks in Investor–State Mining Contracts

Author:
Martin Dietrich Brauch, Perrine Toledano, and Cody Aceveda
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment
Abstract:
As the effects of climate change continue to worsen, mining projects, the communities surrounding them, and their host states are increasingly at risk of being affected by environmental disasters, with devastating social and economic consequences. Risk allocation provisions included in investor–state mining contracts, often considered boilerplate and replicated in agreements without careful consideration or negotiation, could potentially help the parties assign responsibilities between themselves and limit their losses in those cases. However, traditional risk allocation clauses within existing mining contracts, formulated before the world acknowledged the severity of climate change, do not adequately allocate climate-related risks and impacts between states and companies.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, International Cooperation, United Nations, and Risk
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Mediating the political transformation of non-state armed groups Workshop report

Author:
Berghof Foundation
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Berghof Foundation
Abstract:
Together with the United Nations DPO DDR section, our team working to improve international support to transformation processes of non-state armed groups after wars and conflicts, organised a workshop with international experts in Berlin.
Topic:
International Cooperation, United Nations, Governance, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Multilateral Trade Arrangements and Climate Provisions

Author:
Emily Benson, Sparsha Janardhan, and William Alan Reinsch
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
This new paper from the CSIS Scholl Chair in International Business assesses sectoral standards bodies, evaluates environmental provisions in trade agreements, and explores opportunities for addressing climate concerns in newer trade arrangements, such as the recent announcement to negotiate a deal on green steel and aluminum between the European Union and the United States. As this paper seeks to demonstrate, binding agreements with clear enforcement mechanisms are best suited for ensuring that parties meet their climate change obligations as outlined in various bilateral or multilateral agreements. Since concluding agreements that are both binding and have clear enforcement capabilities are not always possible or politically desirable, pursuing a mixed approach—one based on best practices from a diverse set of trade architectures—may be the most viable approach that produces the most tangible outcomes. This paper evaluates climate provisions in trade architectures and makes recommendations for including climate provisions, including sectoral standards, in trade arrangements in a way that encourages increased multilateral collaboration in a WTO-compliant manner.
Topic:
Climate Change, International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, and Multilateralism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. Creating Accountability for Global Cyber Norms

Author:
James A. Lewis
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The year 2021 saw all UN member states agree in the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on a framework for responsible state behavior in cyberspace, based on norms developed in the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) in 2015.1 The OEWG formalized global agreement on the 2015 norms. This consensus agreement means that the framework for responsible state behavior is now politically binding for all member states. Global agreement on the obligations for responsible state behavior is a substantial step forward in building international cybersecurity in a rules-based environment. Unfortunately, international experience since 2015 has shown that agreement on norms, even when politically binding, is by itself not enough to ensure their observation or create stability in cyberspace. This has shifted discussion from what norms are needed to how to build accountability and what to do when norms are ignored. While the norms agreed to by all member states will ultimately reinforce international stability, to make progress, it will be necessary to develop a collective diplomatic strategy to improve the observation of norms and increase accountability when they are ignored. A strategy of sustained engagement and the imposition of consequences is necessary for norms to have effect. Our assumption is that accountability for malicious cyber actions can only be strengthened if there are consequences for a state’s decision not to observe norms. If nothing else, a failure to take action in response to transgressions seems to only encourage opponents. An immediate task is to define the conditions for collective action. There has been an initial and informal agreement among like-minded democratic nations that accountability requires the imposition of consequences for a failure to observe norms, but several issues must be addressed. These include agreement on standards for attribution of the source of a malicious action and agreement on a proportional, lawful, and effective response. A collective approach is essential if efforts to create accountability are to succeed, and any response to a cyber incident will require political heft and sustained engagement.
Topic:
Security, International Cooperation, United Nations, Cybersecurity, Accountability, Transparency, and Cyberspace
Political Geography:
Global Focus

10. The Winding Road to Marrakech: Lessons from the European Negotiations of the Global Compact for Migration

Author:
Lena Kainz and Camille Le Coz
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
In the summer of 2018, negotiations of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration suddenly became front-page news, drawing far more attention than nonbinding UN agreements before it. The compact’s proponents argued it would help address transnational issues related to migration, while its opponents alleged it posed a threat to state sovereignty and would lead to an increase in migration to Western countries. Although the European Union was initially one of the driving forces behind the pact, as public demonstrations multiplied, these divisions culminated in the fall of the Belgian government and nine EU Member States voting against the compact or abstaining. This report from MPI's Transatlantic Council on Migration explores how the compact negotiations triggered a multilayered institutional and political crisis in the European Union. It charts how the pact became a proxy for broader debates about how external migration policy is decided within the European Union, especially when doing so touches on multiple policy areas, and about democratic accountability in handling nonbinding international agreements. This analysis, which draws in part on interviews with policymakers from EU institutions and Member States, offers lessons learned for public communications about migration policy and assesses the implications of these events for the European Union’s external migration policy, including its implementation of the compact and role in multilateral migration matters.
Topic:
Development, International Cooperation, International Organization, Migration, Governance, European Union, and Immigration Policy
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus