Security assistance to international partners is an increasingly widespread practice, which has also been adopted by European actors. In competitive contexts, coordination for the training, equipping, and support of domestic security actors is often informal, ad hoc, and fragmented. The project 'Security assistance and border management in Lebanon' focuses on recent multi-actor interventions to enhance the capacity of Lebanese security agencies in managing their borders.
Funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the project will analyse the effectiveness of security assistance in addressing the fragmented landscape of security agencies and actors. Furthermore, the project will tackle the interrelated issues of a persistent economic crisis and smuggling. It will also concentrate on mapping coordination initiatives, analysing the changes wrought by the economic deterioration, and capturing people's perceptions of international practices aimed at countering smuggling.
"The case of Lebanon is particularly instructive, especially within the context of a dire economic crisis and an increasingly pervasive environment of cross-border trafficking and illicit politico-criminal networks," said Professor Tholens.
The second project on 'Inclusivity and secrecy: Governing information flows when negotiating peace in complex conflict contexts', funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, investigates the practice of secrecy in relation to peace diplomacy within the context of complex conflicts and global demands for greater public oversight and transparency.
Confidentiality is often considered to be a requirement in contemporary peace diplomacy. When parties involved in armed conflict explore a negotiated settlement, they frequently require secrecy to create space for meetings, test the potential for negotiations, and initiate a pathway to compromises. Providing backchannels and secure locations that ensure the level of confidentiality for the conflicting parties has been a hallmark of post-Cold War peace diplomacy.
This project will examine, compare, and analyse the diversity of secrecy practices and their evolution over time, across different actors and conflict contexts. Simone Tholens, in partnership with Øystein H. Rolandsen from the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), will collect new qualitative data on secrecy practices among peace professionals and key organizations (such as the African Union, the Vatican, and the Mediterranean Women Mediators Network), and explore how secrecy has been practiced in conflict contexts, including Ethiopia, Syria, and Ukraine.
"Recent trends challenge the conventional approach to peace diplomacy: there is an increased demand for transparency in international politics in general, and peace processes specifically. There are also more complex and fragmented conflicts that question established norms of secrecy," Tholens added on the relevance of this project.