A blog by the Global Governance Centre, Graduate Institute, Geneva
Reportage by our associated researchers and colleagues based on their experiences conducting fieldwork around the world.
By Lys Kulamadayil – This post reviews the 2020 agricultural reforms in India from a legal perspective. In doing so, it seeks to make sense of farmers’ adamant opposition to the reforms. It suggests that their protests should be understood as a rejection of food capitalism.
This article assesses the localization workstream under the so-called Grand Bargain of humanitarianism. It highlights the underlying reasons behind lack of progress on localization, which hinge on vested interests and apathy, and their implications for local organisations.
By Miriam Bradley – The ICRC’s work on urban violence has led to significant and surprising shifts in its humanitarian boundaries—shifts that may damage its ability to carry out its core mandate.
By Dennis Rodgers – Thinking about order provision in spatial, organisational, and authoritative terms shows how gang governance has evolved locally and reveals examples of “gangsterisation” at the national and global levels.
By Kristin Bergtora Sandvik & Dennis Dijkzeul – While localization is high on the agenda for humanitarian actors, at present, humanitarian governance does not support the localization agenda. To understand better why, we explore three issues underpinning humanitarian governance: the problem construction, consolidation and growth of the sector, and the sorting of civilians. We conclude that the localization agenda is important, but for it to succeed a fundamental change of the humanitarian system is needed.
By Jerome Bellion-Jourdan – Getting traction towards a legally binding instrument to regulate the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises would require consensus-building. In the meantime, much remains to be done to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
By Nina Reiners – What happens if the independence and expertise of UN human rights treaty bodies is threatened by its own members?
By Max Crisp – Interpreters play a crucial (yet often underappreciated) role in the processes of global governance.
A researcher at the Global Governance Centre, Dr Cannon presented a paper on the effects of financing reforms for international organisations (IOs).
By Stéphanie Perazzone – Repopulating ‘international’ conceptualizations and practices of governance with the experiences of ‘real people’ allows us to identify their ignored transformative potentials.