Category: Staff blogs

Policy déjà vu – all over again

By Professor Roger MacGinty. It might be a function of my advancing years, but I have noticed a set of policy-driven debates coming around again. These were debates that occupied scholars and policy-makers twenty years ago and they are now back again. Here are a few...

Where’s the reconciliation?

by Roger Mac Ginty.December 16 is South Africa’s national reconciliation day. I am just back from a trip there and I was struck by the absence of reconciliation in everyday life. As ever, a short trip in a massive and varied country only affords a snapshot (I was in...

Questioning humanitarian action in Madagascar

by Eleanor Davey. From the Rova of Antananarivo, a former royal site set high on a hill, the view over the Madagascan capital extends for miles. ‘Tana’ – as it is nicknamed – was founded in the seventeenth century, adopted as the capital under French colonisation, and...

The UN’s (Wonder) Woman Problem

by Dr Róisín Read.24 October marks United Nations Day and, as my colleague notes, there is much to admire in the UN, alongside some of its more problematic elements. Unfortunately, this blog is about one of those problems, specifically, the UN’s woman problem.This...

Two cheers for the UN

by Roger Mac Ginty, HCRI Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies.United Nations Day is 24 October. It is easy to criticise the UN. Where shall I start? Slow decision-making, weak leadership, expensive, often focused on conflict manifestations rather than conflict...

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