Partnerships for the goals – DDRN

Apply for a Research Communication Internship with DDRN.dk

Arne Wangel — Mon, 04 May 2026 06:58:59 +0000

DDRN is seeking Research Communication Intern(s) for 3 to 4 months during the Autumn semester 2026.

Do you want to sharpen your skills as a science journalist working with Global South and the UN Sustainable Development Goals?

We are looking for someone studying communication, sustainable development, international development cooperation, or any other scientific field contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Even better, surprise us with something completely different in your background that you still strongly believe qualifies you for the position as an intern with the DDRN.

DDRN.dk is an independent on-line media communicating research on sustainable development by South researchers and by Danish universities. Its membership includes researchers, students, aid practitioners, consultants, private and public entities.

DDRN’s main communication language is English, and you must have very strong skills in written English. Proficiency in the Danish language is not a necessity.

You can work within one or more of these areas:

Write on research addressing South-North divides, global challenges, and the UN SDG, e.g., by interviewing faculty at Danish universities or visiting Global South researchers,
Communicate research of your own as you prepare for thesis writing
Join the editorial process during the weekly review of incoming scripts from the DDRN network of South-based science journalists.

The internship offers the opportunity to:

Develop and sharpen your skills in research communication and science journalism,
Challenge your creative skills on social media to attract readers to new articles on DDRN.dk,
Network with fellow students, academics, and science journalists in Denmark and in Global South countries,
Work with DDRN projects with South NGOs to build project support skills.

The internship is unpaid, but if you are eligible for SU and will have your internship credited as ECTS points at your institution of study, you will continue receiving SU during the internship.

If you are studying at a university in an EU country other than Denmark, you have the opportunity through your university, to apply for an Erasmus+ Traineeship grant: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/opportunities/opportunities-for-individuals/students/traineeships-for-students-abroad to facilitate your transfer and stay in Denmark

Workplace: Foreningshuset, Sundholm 8, 2300 Copenhagen S. (Amager), Denmark

Several other NGOs are based in the same building as the DDRN office. Thus, there is an opportunity to network and meet practitioners, who are engaged in international development.

Send your application to Editor-in-chief Arne Wangel, e-mail: info@ddrn.dk before 30 May 2026. We look forward to receiving your application!

One Century of Arctic Governance: Cooperation, Sustainability, and Emerging Geopolitical Strains

Florin-Madalin Nicu — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:00:01 +0000

The Arctic region has increasingly gained prominence as an area of global strategic, environmental, and socio-economic importance. Given its already fragile ecosystems, diverse Indigenous cultures, minerals, and other valuable, unexploited natural resources, the Arctic has become a central focus of international governance efforts. Arctic policy encompasses the strategies, agreements, and institutional frameworks developed by the eight Arctic states, namely Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Canada, Russia, and the United States, in collaboration with international organizations and non-governmental actors, to regulate and manage the region.

Throughout the past century, the Arctic has experienced progressive landmark treaties, national policy strategies that acted as various environmental awareness policies, scientific assessments for further conservation, and advocacy reports that have influenced the evolution of Arctic governance and the bonding role of the region to serve as a point of convergence among various great powers as well. These documents reflect shifting global priorities, including territorial administration, resource utilization, environmental preservation, and the recognition of Indigenous rights. This paper examines key policy milestones from early twentieth-century agreements to contemporary cooperative frameworks. Particular attention is given to three interconnected themes that have shaped Arctic governance: environmental protection, Indigenous rights, and economic development. Collectively, these themes demonstrate the transformation of the Arctic from a geographically remote and politically contested region into an important arena for international cooperation and sustainable governance.

Early Foundations of the Arctic Policy

The Svalbard Treaty should be regarded as one of the main attempts to establish Arctic policies, as this treaty not only changed the perception of various actors over the Svalbard region, which previously was regarded as a no man’s land, but it also attributed to Norway full control of the region with the condition of preserving the region as it is relevant for the Arctic. Initially, the Svalbard Treaty was signed by 8 most relevant countries in the region and outside of it at the given time, which include: the USA, the UK, India, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Relevant articles that enshrine the extent to which Norway is entitled to ownership, to engage in different activities, and what kind of responsibilities the state should bear throughout their proceedings, under the quality of Norway being the inheritor of these lands, are stipulated in articles 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. The article 9 and 10 can be regarded as cornerstones for turning the region into an economic, non-militarized, and environmentally protected zone meant to be accessible, firstly to all great and regional actors for cooperative purposes and then for others who would be interested in being involved. The article 10 also introduced the possibility for Russia to join at any given time after the moment of ratification, proving flexibility and integration to multilateral commitments from the signatory majority of that time.

Later, in 1970, the Arctic witnessed further individual commitments meant to protect the Arctic. The Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act represents a foundational instrument in the development of modern Arctic governance and has significantly influenced subsequent regional cooperation mechanisms, including agreements negotiated under the Arctic Council. By establishing stringent pollution prevention and regulation standards, and other norms that enforce a direct liability over the subjects to which these provisions were applicable, the Act anticipated key principles later embedded in Arctic Council frameworks, particularly the emphasis on environmental protection, emergency response coordination, and sustainable maritime activity (https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/a-12/fulltext.html).

The Act’s precautionary regulatory approach contributed to the normative development of cooperative environmental governance reflected in the 2011 Arctic Council Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue, the 2013 Agreement on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response, and the 2017 Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation. These agreements collectively reinforce state responsibility for multilateral engagement and commitment, which also included environmental risk management and cross-border emergency coordination, all of which align with the regulatory philosophy established by the Canadian legislation.

Moreover, the Act helped legitimize expanded coastal state jurisdiction in ice-covered waters, a principle later codified in international law and reinforced through Arctic Council policy coordination. As a result, the legislation served as an early model demonstrating how national environmental regulation could shape regional governance norms and facilitate multilateral cooperation in the Arctic.

By the late 1980s, shifting geopolitical conditions created new opportunities for Arctic cooperation, particularly on transboundary environmental issues. A decisive turning point occurred in 1987 when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev delivered the Murmansk Speech, proposing the Arctic as a zone of peace and advocating expanded cooperation in environmental protection and scientific research. This initiative directly encouraged Finland to promote multilateral environmental governance in the region.

These efforts culminated in the 1991 Rovaniemi Declaration and the establishment of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), adopted by the eight Arctic states. Although non-binding, the AEPS created the first structured framework for circumpolar environmental cooperation. It identified key environmental threats, emphasized shared responsibility for ecosystem protection, and formally incorporated Indigenous participation through observer and later Permanent Participant roles. The creation of specialized working groups institutionalized scientific monitoring and policy coordination, establishing operational mechanisms for regional governance.

The AEPS provided both the political momentum and institutional architecture necessary for the creation of the Arctic Council in 1996 through the Ottawa Declaration. Building on AEPS structures, the Council expanded cooperation beyond environmental protection to include sustainable development, resource management, and Indigenous knowledge integration. Collectively, these initiatives transformed ad hoc diplomatic engagement into a formalized governance system, positioning the Arctic Council as the central forum for multilateral Arctic cooperation.

Growing geopolitical tensions have strained Arctic cooperation. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, collaboration within the Arctic Council was largely suspended, weakening cooperation in all sectors, including environmental and Indigenous governance mechanisms that previously defined Arctic stability. Although limited technical cooperation has resumed, diplomatic coordination remains restricted, while increasing military activity threatens long-standing environmental monitoring and emergency response frameworks.

Recent developments within the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland demonstrate both risks and opportunities. Denmark’s 2025 Arctic Council chairmanship stresses international law and cooperative governance, while Greenland’s updated foreign and security strategy seeks stronger Indigenous and regional representation in Arctic decision-making.

Maintaining Arctic cooperation is therefore essential. Preserving multilateral governance safeguards fragile ecosystems, supports Indigenous communities, and prevents geopolitical escalation in a region critical to global climate stability.

The weakening or potential collapse of the Arctic Council would directly affect SDGs 13, 14, 15, and 17, undermining the scientific cooperation and coordination over a wide range of activities, including climate monitoring and biodiversity protection. The Council supports projects funded by millions annually, including over 40 initiatives financed by Canada alone. The European Union has also committed significant resources, including €15 million for Arctic observation systems and broader climate research programs worth €93.5 billion.

The future effectiveness of European climate and sustainability policies may therefore depend on whether multilateral Arctic governance can adapt to geopolitical tensions while maintaining scientific and environmental collaboration. Assessing the opinion and vision of field experts is imperative to analyze how IGOs and other high-level officials should steer their policies for preventing isolation and drawbacks in the related domains of activity that have the Arctic region as the core subject of political, social, cultural, environmental, and economic interest.

Florin-Madalin Nicu is a student of the BACHELOR’S PROGRAM OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS at Eurasian National University “L.N. Gumilyov”, Kazakhstan

What the Black Loyalists Tell Us About America

Adrian Ganic — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 11:31:57 +0000

History can be construed for political purposes, often to the detriment of marginalised groups who find themselves underrepresented in the mainstream narrative. The way history is written also determines which lessons are taken from past events. A politicised historiography risks obscuring the real mechanisms driving history, leading to an inability to act efficiently when old socio-political and economic problems arise in a new form.

One such example is the way the struggle of Black Loyalists—individuals of African descent who fought for the British during the American Revolution (1775–1783)—is overlooked in the dominant historical narrative in the United States.

The American Revolutionary War is often framed as a conflict between freedom and oppression, with the American rebels on the side of freedom—“all men are created equal”, as is stated in the Declaration of Independence issued in 1776.

Such freedom was not the experience for the 20% of the population who were enslaved. Historian Edmund Morgan, in American Slavery, American Freedom, named this contradiction the American Paradox. From that perspective, the equality of the US founders—men like George Washington—and people who looked like them depended on and was sustained by the inequality of their African slaves.

Further complicating matters, Lord Dunmore, the British Governor of Virginia, in 1775 issued a proclamation granting freedom to slaves who abandoned their masters and fought against them. Although Dunmore’s Proclamation only applied to Virginia, some estimates claim that up to 100,000 slaves from all over what was to become the United States escaped to British lines.

For Dr Tad Stoermer, External Lecturer at the Center for American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, the story of the Black Loyalists highlights the way history can get skewed to serve political aims. In his upcoming book, A Resistance History of the United States, the Black Loyalists are one of the case studies used to show US history as shaped by struggle. Not against outsiders such as the British, but through confrontation with the very system established after the American Revolution.

A Resistance History of the United States

According to Dr Stoermer, the master narrative of the US founding is that the state and the institutions the revolution created—the US Constitution, separation of powers, the Electoral College, etc.—are inherently good because they were founded on principles of democracy and equality; “all men are created equal”.

Both sides of the political spectrum share this view, although articulated in different ways. The conservative reading is based on the idea of Originalism, meaning that legal texts, including the Constitution, should be interpreted as they were understood at the time of adoption. For instance, the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court, in 2022, overturned Roe v. Wade, a previous decision recognising the right to abortion in all 50 states, arguing that in the original text of the Constitution, there is no mention of abortion rights. Instead, the issue should be left to the states. This perspective makes extending rights to previously excluded social groups an arduous task.

Crucially, liberal forces in the US also end up reproducing a version of Originalism. The progressive movement, even while in favour of more expansive rights and protections for minorities, often assumes, like its conservative counterpart, that the state founded in 1776 is, at its core, just. The shortcomings of the system, in this narrative, are due to malign individuals and movements corrupting the original institutions and their purpose. By accepting this “Patriot Myth”, both sides have “created a ceiling on all possible opposition”, Dr Stoermer contends.

This conclusion is not new. In An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, the historian Charles Beard argued in 1913 that it is possible to view the US political system as an arrangement designed from the outset to protect the property rights of a rich minority by preventing majority rule and constraining the power of the state legislature from limiting gains on capital through checks and balances.

“So if the institutions are failing, if they are captured, if they in fact are operating against the rights of the people, you cannot escalate outside of them because they are inherently legitimate … All opposition has to get channelled through these pre-ordained, accepted ends. And if they don’t work, then you just have to live with the results. That is not what is shown as having achieved gains in US history,” Dr Stoermer continues.

How have gains been achieved? The argument in A Resistance History of the United States is twofold. Firstly, the book posits that most of the progress in protecting human rights in the US over time has come from resistance to the establishment, not as a result of the establishment’s inherent morality. The experience of the Black Loyalists illustrates that this tension existed from the start.

Secondly, that resistance towards what Dr Stoermer calls abusive authority is a gradual process that begins with protest and legal opposition when a government misuses its authority, escalating if the system fails to correct the injustice. Due to blocking forces within the state, such resistance takes time, and battles over particular rights—abortion, for example—may have to be fought over and over.

The story of the Black Loyalists is also instructive. To avoid re-enslavement, they were evacuated to other British colonies in North America as defeat in the Revolutionary War became inevitable. About 800 arrived in the Bahamas, where they had to struggle to maintain their freedom.

Black Loyalists in the Bahamas

“My main character, for example, Prince Williams, is enslaved. He’s freed by certificate for his military service in the British Army, and then he comes to the Bahamas, and somehow he shows up in a newspaper ad as a runaway [slave]. He has to fight for his freedom a second time,” Dr Christopher Curry, Associate Professor of History at the University of The Bahamas and author of Freedom and Resistance: A Social History of Black Loyalists in the Bahamas, told DDRN.

Prior to the American Revolution, the Bahamas were largely underdeveloped. The settlement of both Black and White Loyalists had a transformative effect. By 1790, several new islands were settled, the colony’s white population doubled (3,500), and the black population tripled (6,500).

Freedom and Resistance shows how Black Loyalists had to adapt their politics and actions depending on their local circumstances—sometimes violently confronting racial inequalities, sometimes seeking out white patronage for personal advancement, acquiring land and even owning slaves. Black Loyalists also established social and religious institutions, such as churches and schools. In fact, we know that Prince Williams eventually regains his freedom because he is listed as an owner of the property that will eventually become Bethel Baptist Church, which still exists today.

Moreover, the Black Loyalists contributed to the political development of the Bahamas. They understood the rights afforded to them as free subjects of the British Empire, using them to protect their freedom and laying the groundwork for deeper inclusivity. “There was a franchise act passed in 1833, allowing persons of colour to get elected to the House of Assembly. The decade-long struggle for that political right would not have happened if you did not have the Black Loyalists, who began the foundational work in the 1780s and 1790s, agitating for their rights in courts, demanding that they be considered free persons,” Dr Curry says.

As in the United States, the Black Loyalists have traditionally been excluded from the mainstream historical narrative in the Bahamas, which instead glorifies the White Loyalists. Dr Curry explains: “Since the White Loyalists were the ones who had access to power, wealth and most of the land, monuments and so on were built for them. Their story got told because they had the power and the opportunities to do that.”

Today, a lot of work is done to highlight the Black Loyalists’ role in Bahamian history. For instance, with the help of Dr Curry and other scholars from the University of The Bahamas, the country revised its history textbook for high schools in 2025. The new textbook incorporates recent scholarship on Bahamian history, with a particular focus on the Black Loyalists and other previously overlooked groups.

Freedom: A Tenuous Process

Above all else, Freedom and Resistance emphasises just how fragile freedom can be. In doing so, Dr Curry says, “it opens an interesting Pandora’s box to thinking about what the American Revolution actually achieved, and how freedom is often tenuous and murky when it crosses transnational borders”.

In the case of the United States, a method for going beyond the Patriot Myth could entail something similar: “If you can engage people in a conversation about what the American Revolution was really all about, you can detach that discussion from an appreciation that this nation-state [the US] is the best way to support those [liberal] principles,” Dr Stoermer says.

The American Revolution was, as the name suggests, a continental—even transatlantic—event, with battles fought in what is now the United States, Canada, several Caribbean countries, Portugal, Gibraltar, Spain, Guatemala, France, Ireland, and off the coast of North Africa. Like other major revolutions, it had many causes and outcomes, the political systems in the Bahamas and the United States being two of them.

Dr Stoermer concludes: “If you care about democracy, if you care about [liberal] principles, then you need to understand that [the US political] structure isn’t serving them. Why? Because it was not created to. That’s the conversation for me.”

Adrian Ganic is a M.Sc., THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE and a DDRN CORRESPONDENT

Development Studies in Flux: A field in crisis or in transformation?

Iraide Arcos Fabrega — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 22:06:23 +0000

What is happening to Development Studies? Once conceived as a multidisciplinary field with its own identity, it increasingly resembles a space where researchers hold “double loyalties”: they belong to traditional disciplines but conduct research on development. In Sweden, this trend is especially stark. “Out of more than 100 PhD programmes in Sweden of relevance for development, none were trained purely within Development Studies,” says Professor Fredrik Söderbaum.

Söderbaum is a professor of Peace and Development Research at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg. In 2021, he initiated a debate as chair of a roundtable session entitled “Development Thinking in Flux – Continuity and/or Change” at the DevRes Conference on Advancing Sustainable Transformation, organised by the Swedish Development Research Network (SweDev). The discussion centred on how “development research” should be defined and where the field is heading.

Four years later, we speak with Söderbaum to revisit those questions and explore the insights shaping the future of Development Studies. In this article, we examine the multiple dimensions of the field, the tensions that define it and the evolving process of decolonising research. We ask: how has the field evolved in recent years, and what might its future look like?

Development studies as a multidimensional (and fragmented) field

A key feature of the current status of Development Studies is the ongoing internal fragmentation. The scholar Andy Sumner describes this reality as ‘unity in diversity’, suggesting that the field can no longer be understood as a homogeneous body of knowledge, but rather as a space divided by at least four major schools of thought. These differ significantly in how they define ‘development’, whether it can be considered a universal process, and what the role of academic knowledge should be in the face of global inequalities. Rather than offering a synthesis, Sumner aims to make these differences visible and encourage dialogue between them.

For Fredrik Söderbaum, this fragmentation is reflected very concretely in academic practice. Most researchers in development do not identify exclusively with Development Studies, but maintain what he calls ‘dual loyalties’: they belong to other established disciplines, such as economics, political science, sociology or peace studies, and approach development issues from these perspectives. In this scenario, Development Studies functions less as an autonomous discipline and more as a meeting place for diverse approaches.

This situation has fed a persistent tension between disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. For years, this debate was framed in almost exclusive terms. However, Söderbaum points out that researchers have begun to accept that both perspectives must coexist. Disciplinary specialisation provides methodological rigour and academic recognition, while interdisciplinary approaches allow for a holistic view of complex processes that cannot be reduced to a single dimension, whether it is economic, political, or social.

The case of Sweden illustrates these tensions well. According to Söderbaum, Development Studies are currently institutionally weak: there is little specific funding, few dedicated academic spaces, and no PhD programmes exclusively identified with the field. These weaknesses are reinforced by the sudden funding scrap in the field due to the current government’s action, which has been remarkable considering the substantial funding that Development research previously received. This situation contrasts with the United Kingdom, where Development Studies continue to be the subject of active debate and have more consolidated institutional structures.

From a critical perspective, it can be argued that Development Studies, at least in Sweden, have become a ‘field without a home.’ Too disciplinary, they risk losing sight of the big picture; too interdisciplinary, their academic rigour may be called into question. The challenge, as Söderbaum suggests, is not to resolve this tension, but to learn to live with it.

“Global South”: A key concept on debate

The concept of the Global South, central to Development Studies, is the subject of ongoing debate. For Fredrik Söderbaum, one of the main difficulties lies in the reality that the term defines. In its most widespread version, the Global South is defined as a geographical category that groups together low-income countries. This interpretation, he warns, is simplistic and obscures the diversity of political, economic and social trajectories that exist between and within these countries.

In contrast to this view, other approaches understand the Global South as a relational category, linked to structural inequalities rather than territorial boundaries. From this perspective, the ‘South’ is not limited to certain countries but can also be found in impoverished regions and communities of developed economies. Söderbaum recognises the analytical value of this interpretation, but points out that, taken to the extreme, it can blur the concept to the point where it becomes difficult to operationalise in empirical research.

This conceptual ambiguity is not an isolated problem, but a reflection of the broader tensions running through Development Studies. When the fundamental categories of the field become unstable, comparing cases, formulating diagnoses, or designing coherent interventions also becomes more complex.

These discussions inevitably open the door to another central debate: who produces knowledge about development and from what perspectives, a question that lies at the heart of efforts to decolonise research.

Decolonising research: despite progress, it remains a utopian ideal

According to Fredrik Söderbaum, the process of decolonising research can be understood in terms of two core dimensions. The first is representation: who produces knowledge about development and from where. The second is perspectives: which theoretical frameworks, concepts and ways of understanding development are considered.

In recent years, progress has been made on both fronts, especially in terms of representation. The presence of researchers from the Global South in international academic debates has increased, and there is greater critical awareness of the extractive dynamics that have historically marked the production of knowledge in this field. The debate on decolonisation is now open and visible and has contributed to questioning assumptions that were previously taken for granted.

Nevertheless, limitations remain profound. Söderbaum points out that many researchers from the Global South continue to pursue their careers at universities in the Global North, which reproduces structural inequalities in access to resources, funding, and academic recognition. Regional differences are marked: while in parts of Asia, such as China, knowledge production has grown significantly, in Africa, changes are slower, and no substantial transformation is expected in the short term.

From this approach, decolonisation appears to be a morally desirable goal, but one that is difficult to achieve fully. Without institutional reforms that modify the structures of funding, publication and academic evaluation, there is a risk that the debate will remain at a symbolic level.

Regarding the perspectives, the issue becomes more complex. Decolonial perspectives exist both in North and South, and they both remain weaker than mainstream. Whereas in the North, they appear to be stronger, they are often appropriated by mainstream actors and not always aligned with development problems and agents in the Global South. In the South, a division is clear: while for some, decolonising perspectives are a priority, for others, it has no importance at all.

A field in crisis or in transformation?

Development Studies is not facing a crisis of relevance, but rather a crisis of identity. Far from disappearing, the field continues to generate research, attract scholars and drive fundamental debates on inequality, power relations and social transformation. However, it does so from a fragmented position, marked by conceptual, institutional and epistemological tensions.

As both Andy Sumner’s proposed framework and Fredrik Söderbaum’s reflections show, this fragmentation is not necessarily a weakness. Rather, it can be understood as the result of a field that resists simplifying complex realities. Development Studies is the only field which, at least potentially, addresses development in a holistic manner. The challenge is not to restore a lost unity, but to create spaces for dialogue between different approaches, diverse disciplines, and unequally represented voices.

In a global context marked by multiple conflicts, abandoning development research is not an option. The task, as Söderbaum suggests, is to continue doing development studies, and it is essential to do so from a critical, conscious, and open approach to diversity.

Here, it is also appropriate to add that this weakness has been reinforced by the fact that the current government suddenly scrapped all funding for development research in Sweden—a field that has previously received rather substantial funding.

Iraide Arcos Fabrega is a Graduate in Political Science with a minor in Environmental Governance. DDRN CORRESPONDENT

Teaching Swedish Exceptionalism: An In-depth Look at Sweden’s Civic Orientation Programme

Adrian Ganic — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 12:48:39 +0000

The topic of migration has gained increased salience over the past decade, with anti-immigrant parties growing in popularity across the Global North, achieving significant electoral success. These movements have used their increased influence to push for stricter migration policies. Yet, despite migration inflows decreasing, they have not ceased. For example, over 4 million people migrated to countries in the European Union in 2023, and roughly 1.6 million to the United States.

Ample research exists on how to best assist recent migrants to settle into their new contexts. Civic orientation—educational classes designed to teach migrants about the host country’s values, laws, and social norms—is the primary tool used by states in the Global North to “integrate” migrants into the labour market and society. Civic education, moreover, can be used by the state to promote certain values and norms, creating a national identity. Historian Jeffrey Mirel, for instance, has found that civic education played a key part in redefining American identity during the early 20th century. Similar processes can be seen in other countries.

Simon Bauer, Assistant Professor in Swedish as a Second Language at Stockholm University, in March 2025, defended his PhD thesis, titled Locating, Constructing, and Disciplining Self and Other: A Discourse Ethnography of Civic Orientation. The thesis analyses the discursive constructions present in Sweden’s Civic Orientation for Newly Arrived Migrants programme. The programme has been active since 2010 and is offered to migrants who have recently obtained a residency permit.

Dr Bauer’s study was conducted as a multi-level ethnography, meaning it analyses civic education from multiple perspectives—through media narratives, policy documents and in-person interviews with students and civic communicators. DDRN recently interviewed Dr Bauer, discussing his thesis and how to improve Swedish civic education going forward.

How Civic Education in Sweden has Changed Over Time

Q: Why were you drawn to study civic orientation?

I’ve always been interested in ideas connected to identity and groups. I’ve previously looked at more explicitly political movements, at political Zionism and how that grew out of European nationalism, and at different Islamist groups looking to reestablish the caliphate after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Then I thought it was cool to get to look at Sweden, which is the country where I grew up, from a similar perspective—thinking about how Sweden actually presents itself, how Sweden is made into a nation.

To get to do that through a course such as civic orientation, where the state actually explicitly has to define what it is, because it’s telling people about “well, this is Sweden and this is how things are here”. I believe that it’s at the sort of boundaries between who we are and who they are—self and other—that we can really start to define different group settings and different ideas of community.

Q: Your PhD dissertation is of course on this topic. Could you tell me a little bit about it?

I could show, for example, how Swedish media discourse has gone from talking about democracy and human rights as universal values to more and more describing them as Swedish values. Within that context, it’s not so strange that, in the classroom, we see that when we talk about gender equality and human rights, or when teachers or civic communicators, as they’re called, talk about these topics, they’re talked about as Swedish values. There’s this general political understanding that’s been increasing over time that these [values] are fundamentally Swedish.

What Civic Education Tells us About the Swedish State

I think another interesting finding is the very disciplinary way in which civic orientation has been taught in the classes that we have observed, whereby Swedishness is assumed as the more—or as the most—scientific way of living. I didn’t expect to see it as strongly. We also see some of this in Swedish schools, where we teach children about, for example, food and health, which we also see in civic orientation—how much water you should drink, how many vitamins you should eat, and where to find them.

[These values] are taught to adults as sort of value-neutral, scientifically-based ideas, but it’s actually teaching people how to be Swedish. [Migrants’] previous experiences and knowledge are discussed, but used to understand why they’ve been wrong before and how they can now live in a better way as Swedes. But “Swedes” in this context is disguised as scientific.

There are cases [in civic education] where people are told that they should eat rye bread rather than white bread because rye bread is healthier. People were also told what foods to bring into work, that they should not bring smelly food boxes because that would annoy Swedish people. In one of the classes, women were told they had to do pelvic exercises as they got older to prevent urine leaking during menopause.

It’s also the system as a whole. The civic orientation classes are part of the wider establishment programme, only a small part of the Swedish migration regime. [Students] usually have a lot of other things that they also need to attend. Their time is quite tightly controlled. Part of it is also the state making people follow these very specific steps at a very specific rate and at a certain time. It’s about becoming complicit in the system and getting used to what it’s like living in Swedish bureaucracy.

Q: What do you think are some consequences, negative and positive, of the system you’ve described?

I think one of the positive things about civic orientation that Sweden has done very well, but which is at risk of being taken away due to recent suggestions, is that it has been given in migrants’ first language. Civic orientation classes can be a great place for people to ask questions about everyday things. I think [civic orientation], when it works well and people attend, can also be a great way for the Swedish state to inform people against disinformation campaigns, for example.

But I do think, on the other hand, that when you also tell people about what to eat, what to drink, and how to do specific things. In some of the classes, students were given an exact hour when they had to put their children to bed. When there are also many things like this, then people just think, “Why are we learning about this?”.

When students are given information they think is obvious or not relevant, the risk is that the things that are actually important or helpful, like: In Sweden, it is illegal to hit children, it is illegal to abuse your wife, or your husband for that matter. When this important knowledge is given alongside a lot of strange information, these things might also be seen as less important. I think the state is doing itself a disservice by trying to talk about these things under the same breath.

Q: Does this tie into the more nationalist outlook in civic orientation today, into the process of universal ideas being framed as Swedish?

I think it does. The need for these courses, firstly, shows that the state thinks this is such important information that everyone needs to know it. There are now further suggestions and proposals to have testing both for permanent residency and for citizenship, based on both Swedish language skills and civic information and knowledge. So, what’s taught in these courses will determine whether someone can stay safely in Sweden or not.

So this becomes another step in enforcing this boundary that I was talking about between who we are in the Swedish state and who you are outside it, and what you need to know and do to step into this community.

“It shouldn’t be seen as easy”

Q: Do you have any thoughts on how to reform civic orientation in Sweden?

It’s always hard with specific ideas. I am also not sure I’m the one who should say exactly what to do. But I do think that the idea of dialogue that’s been prominent in Swedish civic orientation, at least in the policy documents, is good and should be encouraged.

I think that what’s been lacking more is more training for the communicators, because what the state is trying to do here is extremely hard. This is something that there are decades of research in many different disciplines—education, linguistics, and political science on how to do. It’s not just something that you can throw someone into and expect them to do very well.

Yes, some very conservative people migrate to Sweden. Some people migrate to Sweden exactly because they’re very progressive and they’re persecuted. So, to really see that the people in the classroom are actually people. Facilitating this kind of open dialogue is extremely hard, but I think [civic education] is an extremely hard thing to do, and it should be seen as that. It shouldn’t be seen as easy.

Adrian Ganic is a M.Sc., THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE and a DDRN CORRESPONDENT

Nordic Talks: Fostering Equitable Nordic South Research Partnerships for the SDGs

Yiling Lyu — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 04:37:42 +0000

The Nordic Talks series, funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers, serves as a vital platform for dialogue and knowledge exchange between Nordic and Global South researchers, focusing on practical and policy-oriented solutions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The three sessions provided rich insights into diverse yet interconnected themes: direct cash transfers, research capacity building, and sustainable agricultural practices. These discussions highlight a crucial foundation: that mutual dialogue is a powerful bridge connecting the Global North and South.

The first talk, “Just give all the money to the poor?”, challenges conventional development aid models by exploring the potential of social cash transfers. While this idea sounds promising, the insight is vital: aid must be part of a more concrete, grounded plan. True understanding comes not only from talks but from deeper discourses and shared experiences. This means listening beyond researchers to include youth voices and the perspectives of normal folks, ensuring solutions are co-created and truly responsive to local needs.

The second talk, “Building research capacity for sustainability assessment in Tanzania”, underscores the importance of long-term institutional collaboration. The partnership between the University of Southern Denmark and Sokoine University of Agriculture exemplifies how knowledge transfer can empower Southern institutions to lead sustainability efforts. To build on this, we must encourage more than conversations; we should foster tangible exchange programs. Sending enthusiastic students from the North to study and live in the South, and vice versa, would create a generation of practitioners with firsthand understanding, designing solutions from the ground up rather than from the air.

The third talk, “Reducing pesticides in agriculture in Nepal”, brings together expertise from Nepal and Denmark to tackle the urgent issue of pesticide overuse. This holistic approach shows that environmental sustainability and human well-being are deeply intertwined. It reinforces the idea that achieving a better world requires this kind of practical, cross continental partnership focused on specific challenges.

Together, these talks illustrate the value of Nordic South research partnerships as a model of mutual learning and shared commitment. The way forward must involve expanding these dialogues to include a wider range of voices, especially youth, and creating concrete mechanisms for engagement, such as student exchanges and community-based projects. By doing so, we move beyond theory to foster the deep, practical understanding necessary to achieve the SDGs and create a more equitable and sustainable world for all.

Yiling Lyu is a Master student at University of Copenhagen with a major in African Studies, and a DDRN intern.

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How Insights from Central Asia can Strengthen Global Democracy

Adrian Ganic — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 18:43:16 +0000

Central Asia is home to over 80 million people but is often overlooked and seen by many as a peripheral region. Central Asian countries also do not feature in classic academic works on authoritarianism around the world.

A consortium of 14 educational institutions was recently awarded a 60 million SEK grant to study authoritarian legal landscapes in Central Asia, funded by the European Union and the Swiss State Secretariat for Research, Education and Innovation (SERI). The project, called Sociology of Authoritarian Law: Insights from Central Asia, is headed by Dr Rustamjon Urinboyev, Associate Professor at Lund University. The project will examine how society, law and politics interact in Central Asian countries.

Sociology of Authoritarian Law: Insights from Central Asia is the first doctoral network led by Lund University under the EU’s Horizon Europe funding programme and will include 17 PhD students from universities in Europe and Canada. In addition to PhD dissertations, the project will produce academic articles, books and policy briefs. A central aim of this research is to translate it into strategic intelligence and policy insights for policymakers in the EU and beyond, who seek to advance democracy, good governance and the rule of law in authoritarian contexts, says Dr Urinboyev, who recently sat down with DDRN to discuss the project.

Understanding the Significance of Authoritarianism in Central Asia

Q: Why should we study authoritarianism in Central Asia?

Because it can serve as an archetypal region to study authoritarian law and legality. Authoritarianism has different forms, and Central Asia includes several types of authoritarian states. Turkmenistan is a super authoritarian regime resembling North Korea, to some extent. There are also relatively liberal authoritarian regimes in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan, for example, is often seen as a hybrid political regime, combining authoritarian and democratic elements. In between, we have Uzbekistan, which was heavily authoritarian but is now opening up to the world. Then there is Tajikistan, which is drifting towards repressive authoritarianism.

This [regime variety] means that the tools, theories and frameworks we develop in the context of Central Asia can be used to study authoritarian regimes in other parts of the world.

Q: What is the Sociology of Authoritarian Law: Insights from Central Asia project, and why is it important?

The [project] is connected to my personal journey. I come from Uzbekistan, which is an authoritarian regime. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan and many other post-Soviet countries, including Russia, Georgia and Kazakhstan, became laboratories for international development assistance. The EU, the US and many Western donors invested a lot into the rule of law, good governance and democratisation programmes. But, so far, despite millions of dollars and euros spent on these development programmes, we have disappointing results. When the Soviet Union fell, there was euphoria, and we expected that democracy would become a universal form of governance. But after three decades, we know that authoritarian tendencies are resilient. These global developments influenced the design of this research project.

Using Local Dynamics to Strengthen Democracy

I also felt, growing up in Uzbekistan, that Western-centric paradigms and understandings of how authoritarian regimes work don’t fit the local context. We need new tools, new paradigms and new frameworks to understand what keeps authoritarian regimes so resilient. As a sociologist of law by education, I think looking at the legal landscape in authoritarian regimes can give us a more nuanced understanding. The legal system [in authoritarian countries] is a less politicised arena of communication between citizens and the state because, in authoritarian regimes, unlike democracies, channels of communication and daily interaction between citizens and the government take place through legal institutions, not political institutions. This means that we need to examine legal and societal dynamics to gain a better understanding of how authoritarian regimes operate.

Q: Can you give an example of such local dynamics?

The idea actually came from a wedding I attended outside Tashkent, [the capital of Uzbekistan]. Usually, guests are seated in rooms depending on social status. I ended up in a room with the leader of the community, a local politician, local businessmen and a police official. While we were eating, the community leader, as a representative of the people, started talking about social problems and addressed the local government official, “You have resources, and we have problems here. Why don’t you solve this problem?”.

At the same time, the community leader mentioned an instance of corruption. So did the police officer. It was a company that received money from the state to plant trees, but it wasn’t doing that. The local businessmen also pointed out the extreme checks by the tax office and the problems with doing business. The state official gave promises and said they would fix these issues. People are not passive. People can actually bring their concerns to the attention of state officials—not via state institutions but through these kinds of informal domains of society.

Very often, Western development actors have the understanding that legal and governance reform is a technical matter and if the right Western-style institutions are transplanted into the fertile soils of authoritarian regimes, change will come. [To advance democracy], it’s better to understand the local dynamics and maybe develop programmes based on these local structures and local level power geometries.

Research Partnerships on a Large Scale

Q: Let’s talk about the research partnership aspect of the project. How will it work in practice?

We wanted to onboard scholars from different disciplines—criminology, sociology of law, political science, economics, business science, public administration, anthropology. We also tried to bring partners with expertise in Central Asian studies.

According to the project design, we will have three research streams, and the 17 PhD students will be split into these streams. Each research stream will have stream leaders, and each PhD student will have two academic supervisors at their home institution. In addition, we are appointing two regional mentors for each PhD student from Central Asia to support the PhD student in doing fieldwork. We are collaborating with governments, civil society, the business sector, think-tanks, and international organisations [in Central Asia] to offer alternative career tracks to students. As part of the PhD training, there will be a [six months] compulsory non-academic segment. They might go to a think tank or the prosecutor’s office in Uzbekistan, for example, to do their internship or practical work, trying to understand the non-academic market.

[These local partners will also] enable PhD students to conduct fieldwork safely and give them access to the grassroots level of society. Otherwise, we know that authoritarian regimes are usually closed, and it’s not easy to collect data.

Mitigating Inequalities Between Researchers in the Global North and South

We try to treat all partners equally. Usually, researchers in the Global South produce and collect data, while the knowledge producers and the researchers [who publish academic articles and books] are based in the West. We want to change this by fostering collaboration and ensuring that knowledge is disseminated in both ways. That’s important. This has to do with my background. I want to contribute to ameliorating the inequalities in knowledge production between the Global South and the Global North.

Q: Do you have any ideas on how to improve research cooperation between the Global North and Central Asia or the Global South more generally?

More funding, especially more targeted funding to regions outside the West, and I think Central Asia is still under-represented. It is often seen as a peripheral region between China and Russia, but the EU has shown a renewed interest in Central Asia, evidenced by the recent summit between EU and Central Asian leaders in Samarkand, so things are changing.

Also, I think another reform proposal would be to build the competence of researchers and scholars outside the West. The EU’s MSCA Staff Exchange funding scheme, for example, where I’m currently leading three projects, is a good initiative that gives possibilities for researchers outside the West to enhance their capacity.

Adrian Ganic is a M.Sc., THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE and a DDRN CORRESPONDENT

Reducing Chemical Pesticides in Agriculture in Nepal – a Planetary Health Issue

Lise Josefsen Hermann — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 15:26:14 +0000

Integrated pest management and nature-based solutions is an urgent matter to reduce the dangerous use of chemical pesticides in the production of most of our food worldwide. Nepali Professor Sundar Tiwari from Bharatpur, Nepal, dialogues with Danish Erik Jørs, associate professor in occupational medicine.

How can the use of chemical pesticides be reduced drastically worldwide without affecting the production? What consequences do these pesticides have for farmers and consumers health? And how does it affect the planetary health?

That are some of the points discussed by the Nepali researcher and professor Sundar Tiwari from Agriculture and Forestry University in Bharatpur, Nepal, who has been specializing for years in biological pest control and sustainable agriculture. In a recent recorded podcast, a part of the Nordic Talks series, he dialogues with Danish Erik Jørs, a senior physician and associate professor in occupational medicine at Odense University Hospital and University of Southern Denmark, who a large part of his working life has spent leveling global inequality in countries like Nepal, Uganda and Bolivia, focusing on pesticide poisoning in several parts of the world.

Nordic talks are dedicated to addressing the UN’s sustainable development goals and is a series of talks addressing the biggest global challenges through conversations with some of the brightest minds in the Nordics and the counterparts from around the world.

Sundar Tiwari has been working with biological pest control methods and has also been involved in research in Nepal focusing on nature-based solutions as an alternative measure to pesticides. And then he has been engaged – together with Erik Jørs – in training of farmers.

Erik Jørs has been working with pesticides since 2001, where he started a collaboration with Bolivia due to a high number of human poisonings by chemical pesticides. Later on, he started out in Uganda and Nepal.

“The extensive use of chemical pesticides is of global concern, because people are facing many challenges in agriculture and especially in the intensive agriculture they are using high dose of pesticides, which are going to affect our whole ecosystem, society, farming communities including environment and biodiversity, “ says Sundar Tiwari and continues: “People are affected by cancer in many Nepalese villages and we have been facing many environmental challenges – we are losing our aquatic biodiversity. We cannot see fish in our rivers and streams. We are losing our bees, which are very important for pollination, and also some butterflies. We’re losing these good insects, and that’s going to affect our ecosystem and our biodiversity,” explains Sundar Tiwari.

Erik Jørs has especially been focusing on farmer’s health related to the use of chemical pesticides: “…because every time they go to the field and they might have contamination of the chemical pesticide. In short run the farmers they might experience vomiting and other health related issues. But in long run this pesticide contamination and everyday consumption of the pesticide is going to affect their whole health system including cancer, blood cancer, breast cancer etc. These are some health-related issues in case of the farmers,” explains Erik Jørs.

But he is also very worried about the environmental affectation: ”It’s actually planetary health that we are talking about. It’s not only affecting the health of humans – causing deaths and poisonings, nervous diseases, cancer, problems with the fertility and so on, but it’s also affecting the fertility of the land and the preservation of the land where we are growing our food. So, if we can’t grow the amounts of food we want due to problems pesticides killing the good insects which are maintaining the ground fertile, then we will have problems with the with the lower harvests and maybe even starvation,” says Erik.

According to Sundar Tiwari, the majority of farmers in Nepal are still practicing traditional farming, but there is a big challenge or pressure created by many people migrating from the rural to urban areas, where people are focusing on increasing the production. Traditional farming has many good practices to learn from:

“They have their own practice of the cultivation like they use a local variety. They use mixed cropping, intercropping and they have a very good mechanism of maintaining the biodiversity. So, they also use some bio pesticide in local level using many plant materials together and they make a solution and they spray. So, this is a kind of biological pest control,” says Sundar Tiwari.

An important and well-known tool in the work of reducing the use of pesticides is the so-called integrated pest management – a principle promoted for years by UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO. Both Erik and Sundar have been working according to those principles.

“We teach farmers as far as possible to avoid chemicals. It’s cheaper for them and often it’s not necessary to spray with pesticides. But farmers need to know for example, if the insects in their field are beneficial or harmful to the crops, so they don’t spray the beneficial ones. And then they should use traditional methods, good farming practices including selection of the best seeds, how to water the plants when they are growing and give maybe traditional manure from the cows or whatever they have available to them,” says Erik Jørs and Sundar continues:

“So, we are integrating all methods, whatever available to the farmers. For example, seed selection. If you have a good seed, it is going to be germinated very well, and it’s can be very healthy. And the healthy plant is not going to be attacked as easily by insects and diseases. If there is no insects and diseases, then farmers are not using chemical pesticide. Similarly, if you have a very good fertilizer in the soil, for example, potash or some silica, so if you integrate into the nitrogen and that crop is very healthy. That is integrated pest management. We integrate all methods so that we can reduce the pest population in the farm. The nature is full of biological control, but we are wiping out that biological control agent from the nature because of the chemical pesticide,” says Sundar Tiwari.

Also, with a consumer perspective there is a great advantage of trying to avoid the chemical pesticides in our food production: “We have tested different food items and, in many cases, we have actually found the maximum residue levels of pesticides (by WHO) have been surpassed in many cases. That means, that there is a danger for human health. Not only for the farmer spraying but also for the consumers. Nowadays we are talking a lot in Denmark about the residues of pesticides in our drinking water. And in many of the wells, pesticides have poisoned our drinking water and now we are drinking our water but contaminated with pesticides,” tells Erik Jørs.

“In Bolivia we found that children who have been exposed to pesticides during their mother’s pregnancy they do not perform as well as children without that pesticide exposure during pregnancy. So, we also have to think about the future generation when we talk about pesticides and prevention of poisonings. An important issue if we want farmers to reduce the use of pesticide and use pesticides safely when needed,” says Erik – who underlines, that at the from his perspective, it is not necessary to make radical changes and it is important to take social issues into account:

“Integrated pest management doesn’t say no to pesticides, but they say minimize the use and do only use pesticides if you are in the danger of losing your crop. Many farmers in low-income countries cannot afford to lose their crop. Then they will starve and eventually suffer a lot from that. So, they have to reach out for the ultimate solution. If they can’t find another way to combat the pest or they have a big attack of pest and they can use pesticides. But they must protect themselves and they must use the pesticide in a proper manner,” says Erik.

“It’s necessary with interdisciplinary work collaboration to minimize this problem. Many people, many organizations have been working trying to reduce pesticides, but I think it’s also very important that government prohibit the most toxic ones and demands that the farmers gets educated and take courses in proper handling of pesticides. Many low-income countries want to be able to feed themselves and be able to grow crops that can be exported. But you have to put rules on that. For example, in the EU, we control the food coming from Africa, or other parts of the world to see if they comply with the maximum residue levels that we have in the EU. I think it’s important with some kind of political strong engagement. And we have the FAO, we have the WHO, they have their guideline on this. But it’s difficult because there’s also a strong lobby from the industry producing pesticides,” says Erik.

He mentions a responsibility from the financial system: “In some cases, loans to farmers are tied to the use of pesticides. The bank wants to reassure that the loan is paid back. So, they don’t want the farmer who take a loan to grow this crop, to lose it. So, the deal is: Okay, you can have the loan, only if you guarantee that you buy this packet of pesticides too. That is an unhealthy policy to promote. So political leadership is crucial if we want to reduce the use and amount of pesticides used, “ says Erik Jørs.

And it is urgent to make a shift in the commodities production worldwide, because as many scientific studies documents, it is not sustainable if we just continue business as usual: “If we continue this farming practice we will face a human, biodiversity and environmental crisis. Research also says pesticide use contributes to increase of non-communicable disease to human beings. In the end it will affect the food and nutrition security. And if our environment is polluted, our water, air and soil is polluted, then what happen? Then you cannot get a good future. Our children will be affected. Future generations will be affected. We will be sick. The whole ecosystems will be affected by chemical pesticides,” warns Sundar Tiwari.

“If we don’t minimize the use of pesticides, then we’ll end up with problems like infertile soils, lack of bees to pollinate our plants and grow the crops. We will end up with many more poisonings especially in low-income countries. So, I really think it’s time to make a big effort and swap to more ecological farming. Not saying that we totally can avoid the use of pesticides, but at least we can minimize it a lot;” said Erik Jørs.

Lise Josefsen Hermann is a freelance journalist who has been reporting from Latin America for 15 years. She has received grants from Earth Journalism Fund, GABO Foundation, Journalism Fund, National Geographic and Pulitzer among others. Her work has been published in media like Al Jazeera, BBC, Danwatch, Dialogue Earth (former China Dialogue), Deutsche Welle, Danish Broadcasting Corporation, El País, New York Times, and Undark Magazine.

Nepali researcher and professor Sundar Tiwari from Agriculture and Forestry University in Bharatpur, Nepal, who has been specializing for years in biological pest control and sustainable agriculture in dialogue with Danish Erik Jørs, a senior physician and associate professor in occupational medicine at Odense University Hospital and University of Southern Denmark.

https://ddrn.dk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Nordic-Talks-Jors-og-Sundar.mp3

The Rise of Avant-Garde Courts in a Multipolar World

Adrian Ganic — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 15:23:43 +0000

Many countries in the Global South have expanded their influence in recent decades, with nations outside the traditional West seeing a significant increase in their share of global GDP. Such a rise in economic power has allowed Global South actors to start challenging traditional institutions. For example, China has become an alternative source of development finance and the BRICS have formed a significant economic bloc. A less discussed but arguably equally important aspect of this global transformation is the shift from a Western-dominated international legal landscape towards a multipolar one.

Mikael Rask Madsen, Professor of law at Copenhagen University and Director of the Centre of Excellence for International Courts and Governance (iCourts), in 2024 received funding from the Carlsberg Foundation for a research project called Decentring Legal Power: Avantgarde Courts at the Frontiers of the Global Economy (AVANT-COURTS) spanning 2025 to 2030. The project will study how global processes enable new courts and litigation hubs to emerge and gain relevancy.

AVANT-COURTS, which is still in its initial stages, will explore three distinct but related “empirical spaces”—as Professor Madsen, who recently sat down with DDRN for an interview to discuss the project, calls them:

New Economic Spaces
Outer Space
Virtual Spaces

New Economic Spaces

New Economic Spaces refers to the rise of English-language international economic courts in the Global South and their competition with traditional Western courts. Examples include the Qatar International Financial Court, the Dubai International Financial Court, and the China International Commercial Court (CICC). These and other similar legal institutions have sprung up in response to particular policy goals of their host countries.

China’s CICC aims to handle disputes related to its Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure investment programme worth over $1 trillion. The Gulf States, meanwhile, see the development of international courts as part of a larger strategy to diversify their economies from dependence on oil and gas.

Becoming financial and legal hubs may be a way to attract investment. “It’s part of a complex transformation of [the Gulf States] that some might even call court-washing—they are trying to transform their economies towards something more sustainable, and one way of attracting capital is by providing somewhat trustworthy courts,” Professor Madsen explains. Other countries, such as Kazakhstan, seem to be following this blueprint, establishing the Astana International Financial Centre Court in 2018. In this way, courts are becoming an explicit part of global capitalism, with states using them to grow their economies and pursue strategic initiatives.

The establishment of new international courts is not without its challenges, however. A major obstacle to overcome is that these new courts lack a mechanism to ensure that rulings made in their countries, Kazakhstan, for instance, are recognised and enforceable in other states. This is because the new international commercial courts are state courts—courts that are part of a country’s legal system. Current global treaties for recognition and enforcement, such as the New York Convention, only cover arbitral tribunals, which are panels of independent arbitrators chosen by disputing parties to resolve disputes outside state courts privately. Being part of a state’s formal judicial system also questions the fairness and legitimacy of the new international courts. To make up for it, some of the courts can appoint foreign judges.

One might argue that Western judicial institutions are similarly biased towards the interests of Global North countries, but, as Professor Madsen points out, there are crucial differences: “Courts in the old West—Europe—were set up as public courts, typically with broad jurisdiction. But these [new international commercial] courts are deliberately set up to further particular projects … Western courts have a very high degree of autonomy which they have gained over a very long time. Some more than others, obviously. But that process means something. At the end of the day, that’s what makes a difference between a court and what looks like a court.”

Outer Space

The second empirical space, Outer Space, refers to how new courts disrupt established international dispute resolution practices in space law. Outer space has legally been a common good since the adoption of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty in 1967. The treaty affirms, among other things, that all countries are free to explore outer space and that any one nation cannot claim outer space. The Space Treaty and other subsequent UN treaties have created a legal architecture where space law is resolved between governments—a system which is challenged by the emergence of the private space industry.

The commercial space market is rapidly growing. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for example, partnered with NASA and sent two astronauts to space in 2020, the first time a private company had done so. McKinsey & Company estimates that the sector will be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035. This structural transformation is causing a scramble where “law, and particularly dispute resolution, gets mobilised and the first [country] to set up a space court was Dubai. They used the model of the new economic courts to create a space court [in 2021],” Professor Madsen said.

“It’s truly a frontier zone of law. If you smash your [commercial] satellite into another satellite somewhere in outer space, we don’t know for sure where that conflict will be resolved,” he added.

Virtual Spaces

The third and final empirical space under investigation is called Virtual Spaces and encompasses the clash between public law and corporations, using private law, vying for control of online content. Public law manages relations between individuals and the state, including areas like human rights and criminal law. Private law governs the relationship between individuals and private entities, such as contracts and property disputes. A crucial difference is that public law is enforced by governmental institutions for the public interest in line with constitutional practices. In this empirical space, AVANT-COURTS will limit its inquiry to freedom of speech.

Companies such as Meta, X and various Chinese platforms have created court-like institutions to settle freedom of speech disputes. For instance, the Meta Oversight Board rules on which content is allowed on Facebook and Instagram, famously suspending Donald Trump in 2021 after the January 6 United States Capitol attack. The ban was lifted in 2023.

This privatisation of dispute resolution for freedom of speech issues can blur the line between public and private law and weaken human rights protections. Professor Madsen explains: “If you look at [the Meta Oversight Board’s] jurisprudence, how they define freedom of expression, compared to a public court like the European Court of Human Rights, you’ll immediately realise that [Meta’s] conception of freedom of expression is different and essentially driven by an underlying commercial interest. So, in a very subtle way, the legal categories, the fundamentals, in this case of democracy, changes because of these new institutions.”

The three empirical spaces may seem distinct, but the common theme is that states such as the United Arab Emirates and China, along with private firms like Meta, seek to expand their authority as they become more influential. This transfers power from Western governmental and judicial instances. A part of this global shift is the creation of legal institutions catered towards particular commercial goals, be they private or state-backed. Consequently, argues Professor Madsen, the idea of independent courts detached from any specific project is fundamentally challenged.

Conducting the Project

The AVANT-COURTS project has several components: Emerging legal hubs will be identified and mapped out. The law produced by new international courts will be systematically analysed using computational and legal methods. And how geoeconomic and political processes enable such hubs will be studied.

There will, moreover, be an element of fieldwork, including archival research. For this, Copenhagen University will partner with local educational institutions. Currently, only Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in Qatar has been officially onboarded. “This is what you call first-generation scholarship,” Professor Madsen said. “There’s a whole job in, with a coding expression, the archaeology of this. The question is, what are [these courts] doing? No one really knew until we started looking at it.”

Adrian Ganic is a M.Sc., THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE and a DDRN CORRESPONDENT

Charcoal Consumption in East Africa: A Climate Change Dilemma

Adrian Ganic — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 07:53:19 +0000

The fight against climate change demands that nations decarbonise their energy grids, but this transition puts contradictory pressures on many Global South countries. For instance, charcoal is the primary energy source for households in Tanzania and Uganda, dictating the social and political economy of livelihoods, gender relations, informal economies, ethnic relations and private sector growth. A sudden transition away from charcoal risks overlooking such complex dynamics.

To investigate these structures, Copenhagen University has partnered with Makerere University, Uganda, and St. Augustine University of Tanzania—receiving Danida funding for a four-year project (2023–2027) called Charcoal Conflict in Climate Change’s Decarbonisation Dilemmas: Knots of Livelihood, Nutrition, Communities, Gender, Migration & Energy in East Africa. The project includes extensive fieldwork in Tanzania and Uganda and aims to shape ideas on climate justice and global policies by centring voices from the Global South.

The initiative is led by Ole Wæver, Professor of Political Science at Copenhagen University and head of the Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts (CRIC).

DDRN recently interviewed Dr Susan Mlangwa, post-doctoral research fellow for the Charcoal Conflict project and lead investigator, Tanzania, part-time lecturer at St. Augustine University, and deputy country director for Tanzania at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, as well as Dr Sylvie Namwase, lead investigator for Uganda, lecturer at Makerere University School of Law, and post-doctoral research fellow at the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC), Makerere University.

This is the second research collaboration between Dr Wæver and Dr Namwase. They previously cooperated on a project on militarisation, sustainable growth and peace in Uganda, which concluded in 2024.

The importance of studying charcoal consumption in Tanzania and Uganda

Q: So, Dr Susan, you notified the team about the call for proposals?

Dr Mlangwa: Yes. Some of my colleagues, actually past colleagues of my late husband, would always send me calls for such projects. And, this time, when they shared a call, I remembered that Sylvie was working in Denmark. So why not give it a try?

After finishing my PhD, I worked with the Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs as the head of research and evaluation and continued to work on projects advancing [human] agency in terms of [disease] prevention behaviour. Not only through what we get from institutions, NGOs, hospitals and educators. But also what the peoples’ prevention initiatives themselves say about those interventions. Rather than imposing a change in social behaviour, you should actually work with the people themselves to understand how it can work better.

When we conceived this project, I saw myself looking at the same area of my expertise: How are the people navigating energy transitions? Are they doing it through what they’ve been told to do, or is there a level of agency going on?

Dr Namwase: It’s a lot that we are unpacking. It is the dilemmas of the energy transition within the broader context of climate change and we are exploring these issues from a multidisciplinary perspective.

It’s three universities, and each team is bringing a unique perspective. The University of Copenhagen, specifically the Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts [CRIC], brings the international relations perspective. Then we have the Makerere University School of Law, specifically under the Human Rights and Peace Centre [HURIPEC], bringing the law and policy perspective. St. Augustine University in Tanzania provides the sociological, anthropological, conflict and geographical lens to the problem.

By acknowledging that, yes, we have a problem. We are destroying our environment. And, yes, on the other hand, there is a problem if the voices that are working for good, although unintentionally, end up enacting results that are oppressive. We need an intermediate discussion, discourse. This is why this project is important. It will provide the space for that discourse.

Q: Do you have any preliminary findings?

Dr Mlangwa: It is a bit too early to be conclusive. So, the preliminary results will basically only be from observations in Uganda.

We are seeing that these things are really intertwined at the micro level. You see that communities are heavily relying on firewood and charcoal due to affordability and accessibility. But when you look at the regional and national level you find things like government bans on charcoal production and attempts to cut deforestation that create economic hardship for those dependent communities. We see governments using the police in policy enforcement to regulate charcoal production. But, at the same time, it encounters things like corruption and weak institutional capacity. At the macro level, charcoal production contributes to carbon emissions and climate change. This is also a fact.

The way I see the data, it’s material that, on the one hand, is systemic and, then, on the other hand, is nested—meaning that it builds on each other. If you want to come up with policies which will work you have to do a multi-level analysis. This needs an interdisciplinary approach.

“If the government is going to impose a total ban on charcoal, it’s almost as if they just want to kill us”

Dr Namwase: We have been very deliberate in speaking to cultural institutions and then also to communities that practice particular cultural aspects tied to the question of production and use of charcoal vis a vis preservation of specific tree species. We are also being deliberate on language to maintain the local language and references. And, of course, we are also very intentional about reflexivity.

In fact, early on, before we went to the field, we had a methodology and epistemological seminar as a multidisciplinary team, where each side shared key aspects to look out for that are common in their own fields so that we could all learn from each other.

In summation, the initial findings [from the legal perspective] are that the government and the state are using top-down militarist approaches, which are resulting in injustice and dispossession for quite a number of people. It is not engaging and offering alternative and affordable alternatives for these communities, and to a large extent, women are being particularly affected by these bans. Once the bans are put in place, what happens, as Dr Susan said, is that charcoal production does not stop. It continues.

Because of the additional burden of bribing the numerous police and military officers you find on the way, [charcoal] ends up becoming expensive once it reaches Kampala. That then affects the profit margin of women [selling food at markets] and the youth, by the way, as well. Youth are also engaging in businesses that rely on charcoal. For instance, Rolex-making. I don’t know if you know about Rolex. It’s a special street food here in Uganda, which consists of chapati and fried egg. It is a very popular food among the youth because it’s cheap and affordable.

And there is no room for people to negotiate and say, “Maybe give us more time” or “Where are the alternatives?”. In fact, what we found in quite a number of cases is that there is a sense of despair. Because on two or three occasions, we’ve had respondents saying that “if the government is going to impose a total ban on charcoal, it’s almost as if they just want to kill us”.

Research Aims

Q: Is the aim for your research findings to be translated into policy?

Dr Namwase: There is flexibility in what we can produce in terms of outputs. So, for instance, policy briefs are not out of the question. We should also have policy briefs at the end, with which we engage the key stakeholders—the ministries [in Tanzania and Uganda].

Then the whole point, of course, is also getting people to move away from charcoal because, ultimately, we want to protect the environment. Uganda and Tanzania are losing a lot of forest cover. But we want it to be done in a fair way, in a way that is not dispossessing people. That is not forcing them into a state of despair where they feel left behind by their governments. So we are aiming for the whole package if I’m to say that. Influencing policy, but also getting people to transition in a fair way, with energy justice in mind.

Dr Mlangwa: I think that’s correct. We actually looked at the whole package. We aim for people to move away from the energies which are harmful to them healthwise and environmentally. We intend to trigger action-oriented programs and projects through the dissemination of our results. We hope it can trigger collaborations, initiatives and interventions with the different players in this space.

We are also anticipating that, from our results, there can be some kind of reorganisation of the discourse not only in the academic world but also in the international organisations, the ones dealing with climate. [Our results] can also trigger a re-examination of how the whole issue of climate mitigation and implementation has been going and how it can change for the better with more voices from the Global South. That’s also a very keen aim of ours, to change the discourse in these international spaces.

Research cooperation between the Global North and South

Q: Switching focus now. What are the main strengths of research partnerships between countries in the Global North, Denmark in this case, and the Global South?

Dr Namwase: The main strength of such partnerships is, first and foremost, the logistics. We are in contexts where research is maybe not as much of a priority for our governments as other competing interests and needs. So funds are being channelled into other things and yet new knowledge is required to inform policy. Collaborations such as this open up access to funds that allow us to do meaningful work by going on the ground and interacting with the affected communities.

Also, secondly, is the cross-pollination of ideas and disciplines. It’s an opportunity to enrich each other because we can learn from the Danish way of doing things, which I must say I really admire. And I think that is somehow rubbing off on us. At least I can speak for us here at HURIPEC. And, on their end, we challenge them in terms of decolonial approaches because it is true that when you’ve grown up in Europe, you have a certain way that you see yourself in the world and a certain way that you’ve been given knowledge about the world. We can challenge that from a decolonial perspective.

Another strength of the collaborative research grants with Denmark is the PhDs. Africa suffers a very low PhD percentage rate per capita compared to global percentages. The charcoal project supports one PhD from Uganda and one from Tanzania. So the grants help build the much-needed expertise on the continent through scholarships for local PhDs.

Dr Mlangwa: I think Dr Sylvie did a good job exhausting it. I just want to continue emphasising that cross-pollination is really the greatest, and it’s not only for the South but everyone. Because I know this is very important in academic career advancement and professional development. So feeding into each other through such collaborative research is a win-win for both sides, as well as for our professional development.

Q: Do you have any ideas on how to improve research cooperation between Denmark and your respective countries?

Dr Mlangwa: l think there should be a player who coordinates the three countries. It would have been good if we could have an institution which is our monitor or a coordinator taking an audit of everything. It’s a lesson learned for everybody to do the audits themselves, but I’ve seen many collaborations where there is such [a coordinator]. They are more efficient and cost-effective.

Dr Namwase: I very much appreciate the opportunity to collaborate, and I’ve already given the reasons why I find it such a rare opportunity, at least from where I’m sitting. But with that said, I think one of the issues that could be looked into is the issue of overhead percentages that go to the Global South universities. It could be a problem that we have as Global South universities, but it is a thing that the universities also want to get their hands on the [international] funds that are coming to particular research centres. So perhaps there should be some specific percentage that is put aside for the central university and then a percentage for the department.

The second is the issue of travel visas. I can tell you the visa question is such a headache. It’s very disorienting and demoralising. I don’t know if it has changed, but it was quite notorious right after COVID. You could go three months without your passport because you’ve submitted it for a visa. On this project, we had a colleague who got his visa on the day and then had to travel [to Denmark] and return to Tanzania the same day.

Dr Mlangwa: Yes. That was painful.

Dr Namwase: It’s really not necessary because we sit back and feel like, “Okay, are we like some of the biggest criminals or what?”. And it can ruin it. You know that imbalance in the team? It’s a reminder that there is that hierarchy.

Adrian Ganic is M.Sc., THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONIMCS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE and a DDRN Correspondent