Peace, justice and strong institutions

‘’Plato or Plumo’’. There is no other way I could start this article than by mentioning the famous intimidating words of Pablo Escobar, the drug lord who reigned not just Colombia but entire Latin America in the 1970s. It literally...

Coronavirus restrictions and sexual assault are intensely debated these days among the Danish public. Even though these discussions are not necessarily interrelated, we have seen that sexual violence and violence against women more broadly have surged worldwide during the Covid...

The Independent Research Fund Denmark - Humanities has granted DKK 1.2 mill. to an international network of researchers, who will explore how young people in West Africa navigate streams of information in crises of security, health, and migration. Project leader: Heidi Bojsen, Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University

The Independent Research Fund Denmark – Social Sciences has granted DKK 2,7 mill. to Postdoc Paul Austin Stacey, Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University. Illegally accessed resources comprise an expanding, billion-dollar sector in many sub-Saharan African countries. The new project is focusing on illegal gold mining in Ghana.

Sulayman Mpisi Babiiha’s PhD experience represents the epitome of perseverance of an academic. His account is touching, but because he speaks with so much calmness, I can take it in with some ease. He has been pursuing his PhD certificate for ten years and he won’t give up the hope yet.

A recent initiative of the first Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation in Colombia creates hope in the research-ambience in the country and expectations of stronger budgetary prioritizing of this central area for development in the country.

Some of Kenya’s most celebrated scientists and researchers congregated in a hotel in Nairobi, to celebrate the world anti-microbial week. Apart from the jaw breaking scientific recommendations that came at the end of the two-day event to research more on taming the abuse of drugs, was scientists needed to interact more with the public.

Achieving UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) requires careful attention to the risk of potential contradictions between the individual goals. For instance, how do we make energy both clean, affordable and accessible? Tanzanian Doctoral researcher Thabit Jacob’s scholarly contribution highlights the complexities of the global green energy transition. Especially the challenges in the sub-Saharan countries where most people are living without electricity.

It is an October morning at Gulu University in northern Uganda. Outside Agatha Alidri’s office clouds start to gather. We expect it to rain any time from now.  A Problem Based Learning (PBL) workshop is going on in the block opposite, facilitated by two professors from Aalborg University in Denmark. Alidri paces up and down. She is fast in her steps and when she stops to listen to someone she gives them maximum attention. The will to help is written all over her face.

While mixed migration to the industrialised world captures most media and political attention, the reality is that approximately 85 percent of the worlds refugees and asylum seekers are hosted in so-called developing countries. Uganda is, as a low-income nation at the size of the UK, hosting more than any other African country. Uganda, further has the world’s third largest refugee population, after Turkey and Pakistan, with more than 1.3 million refugees by September 2019, of which more than one million has arrived since 2017.

Many Ugandans are quick to identify themselves by tribe - 56 tribes there are in total. They like to describe themselves, and are also often described by others, as humble, welcoming and peaceful but Uganda’s political history hardly reflects the peaceful part. When I visit Associate Professor Charles Amone on a July afternoon, Kyambogo University is in recess so it is generally quiet. His reflections paint a picture of a country less united than the world may be led to think – a crisis that fuels inequality and conflicts from within.

A dusty road leads me to Pece Primary School on the outskirts of Gulu town, a city in the northern Uganda. Just opposite the school, is a signpost that reads: “Gulu University Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies [IPSS].” It points towards a sizeable block sitting on an enclosed acre of land. The building’s cream walls and green roof have greyed due to age, Dr. Stephen Langole is a social scientist, who has studied different aspects of post war life in  northern Uganda. This time we are going to talk about his PhD thesis, UrbanYouth in Post-conflict Northern Uganda: Networking Livelihood Resources.

How do the world’s most vulnerable inhabitants, living in refugee camps, areas of conflict, and developing countries engage with international legal practices, and economic markets? Emerging blockchain technologies are developing to improve upon the ‘legal-limbo’ that many of the world’s most vulnerable citizens find themselves in.

Corruption represents a major obstacle in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. The activity hampers economic growth and increases poverty, depriving the most marginalised groups of equitable access to vital services such as healthcare, education and water and sanitation. Development practitioners should now start to modernise their approach to preventing petty corruption from hindering their agendas and look towards new technologies.