Randi Solhjell | University of Oslo (original) (raw)
Policy reports by Randi Solhjell
by Eli Stamnes, Randi Solhjell, Paul Troost, Cedric de Coning, Mateja Peter, Ingvild Gjelsvik, Jon Harald Sande Lie, Niels Nagelhus Schia, Kari M . Osland, Francesco Strazzari, and John Karlsrud
Papers by Randi Solhjell
Internasjonal Politikk, 2015
Gender Discourses in International Security Policy IR feminists have to a large extent challenged... more Gender Discourses in International Security Policy IR feminists have to a large extent challenged male-dominated and masculine-oriented security policy thinking. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) has played an important role in our recognizing and including women's and men's roles and contributions on issues relating to peace and security. However, there is a gap between the feminist IR contribution and international security policy and practice. Based on experience in the field, this article exemplifies the gender discourses in a peace operation in the DRC Congo. The prevailing discourses are about women who need protection and women as potential peacemakers. These representations are a more sellable idea to the UN Security Council and the militarized peace operations. The author argues that the UN largely has a malestreamed approach to gender perspectives in the core areas of UN operations, namely in militarized protection and state-building.
Both system have many potentials. The authorities in charge of customary law acknowledge their li... more Both system have many potentials. The authorities in charge of customary law acknowledge their limitations in handling GBV cases, and many are also motivated to include perspectives from youth and women in today's Liberia. As the customary systems are available and affordable to most of the populace, there is much to be said for empowering and strengthening their roles and also improving communication with the statutory system. The statutory system is overburdened and could benefit from stronger working relations with the customary system.
Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 2013
It is well acknowledged that womenand men, girls and boys are bothactors in and victims of war an... more It is well acknowledged that womenand men, girls and boys are bothactors in and victims of war andpost-conflict situations. Militaryand peace operations reflect thesegender dynamics and genderequality less in their missions.
Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 2017
Criminology & Criminal Justice, 2018
As different social groups are directly and indirectly confronted with diverse forms of police pr... more As different social groups are directly and indirectly confronted with diverse forms of police practices, different sectors of the population accumulate different experiences and respond differently to the police. This study focuses on the everyday experiences of the police among ethnic minority young people in the Nordic countries. The data for the article are based on semi-structured interviews with 121 young people in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. In these interviews, many of the participants refer to experiences of “minor harassments” – police interactions characterized by low-level reciprocal intimidations and subtle provocations, exhibited in specific forms of body language, attitudes and a range of expressions to convey derogatory views. We argue that “minor harassments” can be viewed as a mode of conflictual communication which is inscribed in everyday involuntary interactions between the police and ethnic minority youth and which, over time, can develop an almost rit...
Critical Criminology, 2018
Policing and Society An International Journal of Research and Policy, 2020
Research has highlighted the harmful effects of targeted police practices and the subsequent low ... more Research has highlighted the harmful effects of targeted police practices and the subsequent low trust in the police among ethnic minorities. However in spite of this research, there still exists a relative lack of knowledge on the day-today relations between ethnic minority youth and the police and on the perceptions that ethnic minorities have of procedural justice. Furthermore, comparative and cross-nation research is needed. This study, using data from 121 in-depth interviews, investigates how ethnic minority youth living in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden describe policing practices. Our findings indicate that descriptions were quite similar in each of the four Nordic countries. While on the one hand, ethnic minority youth felt suspected by the police for no justifiable reason, thereby creating strong feelings of procedural injustice and unfairness, on the other hand, they described encounters, where they felt protected by the police and in general trusted the institution of the police. As such ambiguity has often been neglected, this article highlights the positive perceptions of the police but also argues that targeted police practices can undermine notions of procedural justice, trust in policing and a sense of belonging.
Theoretical criminology, 2021
Outside of criminology, dominant conceptions of postcolonial statehood in the Global South as 'fr... more Outside of criminology, dominant conceptions of postcolonial statehood in the Global South as 'fragile' or 'failed' have long been criticized. In criminology, however, the theoretical outcomes of this critique have been scarce. In this article we therefore ask how ideals and practices of transnational criminal justice are informed by and productive of specific (Global North) conceptions of statehood. Exploring encounters between transnational and local criminal justice in the context of international state-building in Mali and Liberia, we observe frictions in which statehood divergences and global hierarchies become apparent. Through penal aid, we argue, a particular kind of penal statehood is produced wherein the options of how to perform penality are increasingly limited by the embeddedness in global power asymmetries.
Critical Criminology, 2019
This article focuses on the perspectives of young ethnic minorities in the Nordic countries who h... more This article focuses on the perspectives of young ethnic minorities in the Nordic countries who have experienced various forms of “police stops”, i.e. situations where the police stop them without any reference to a specific event of which the youth are aware. Analytically, the debate is positioned through an intersectionality approach of (un)belonging to majority societies. Across the Nordic countries, we found that the young people described five social markers as reasons for being stopped, namely clothing, hanging out in groups, ethnicity, neighbourhoods and gender. We argue that the police stops explicate how the young men in particular are often forced to think about themselves in terms of “a threat” to the majority and the attributes they have that make them seem like criminals.
There is an abundance of political science literature characterizing specificities about the "Afr... more There is an abundance of political science literature characterizing specificities about the "African state" and politics in pathological categorization, adding to an already pervasive negative description of these states. While this tendency to think of the non-West as an extension of Europe both conceptually and its own experience of what is the life of "states" has already been recognized (see Chakrabarty 2000), I argue that we should instead look how statehood is performed on an everyday basis in Africa as a counterpoint to abstract and decontextualized models of statehood. In this respect, I propose an interpretive and relational way of seeing the state as practices created, sustained and challenged through the people living and performing the experience of statehood. By analyzing how social actors – state institutions, private companies and citizens – are accessing, enjoying and interpreting the meaning of water as a public good in the city of Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, I demonstrate how they call the state into being. The practices and expectations related to water leads to a considerable and enduring pressure on the de facto state.
Stabilisation is often interpreted as a matter of military interventions in so-called ‘fragile st... more Stabilisation is often interpreted as a matter of military interventions in so-called ‘fragile states’, and/or as technical and development solutions to what we argue are political problems. However, an often poorly understood stabilisation strategy is the revised International Security and Stabilisation Support Strategy for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This strategy engages communities and authorities at local and national levels in dialogues, in order to identify causes of and develop solutions to conflicts. Stabilisation in the DRC, we argue, becomes a matter of targeting deep-rooted political and economic manipulations in the country’s eastern region. This strategy, if fully endorsed, provides the first coherent and thorough approach to stabilisation in the DRC, an exit strategy for the UN mission (MONUSCO) and an opportunity for learning for other UN operations.
Sexual violence has been endemic to warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the pa... more Sexual violence has been endemic to warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the past decade, and the international community has focused considerably on measures to address this issue. Most prominent is United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820 (2009) on sexual violence in war. The UN has appointed a Special Advisor in the DRC with a task force against sexual and gender-based violence, and developed a Comprehensive Strategy on Combating Sexual Violence in the DRC (19 March 2009). The Comprehensive Strategy is a strategic plan involving four focal areas for combating sexual violence: (i) combating impunity for cases of sexual violence, (ii) prevention and protection against sexual violence, (iii) security sector reform and sexual violence and (iv) multisectoral response for survivors of sexual violence.
International responses to the conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border... more International responses to the conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) bordering Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda have been widely criticized as inadequate. The region is poorly understood by the international community. The general international preference for working with states and institutions -in a region where none of these exists in the form familiar to the West -complicates responses significantly.
The Journal of Modern African Studies, 2014
Responsibility to Protect and Women, Peace and Security, 2013
Global Responsibility to Protect, 2012
Helping states to fulfil their duty to protect their citizens and those seeking refuge within the... more Helping states to fulfil their duty to protect their citizens and those seeking refuge within the sovereign terrain of the given state belongs to the second pillar of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The R2P concept, however, relates as much to preventing mass atrocities as to halt already on-going ones. This article emphasises the gender dimensions of prevention of and protection against violence and other threats, in order to stress the importance of implementing and mainstreaming gender into R2P. The case study of interest here is the UN support mission to Chad and the Central African Republic (MINURCAT) that provided a fairly encouraging, albeit short-lived, example of gender-responsive prevention and protection measures at the community level for refugees and IDPs in eastern Chad. Chad exemplifies a case with low-intensity conflicts and responses made at the local level, like the MINURCAT-supported community conflict resolution initiative, proved constructive in preventing violent responses. Here, deliberate integration of female police officers was a first step towards facilitating contact with women not allowed to talk to male strangers. Further, ensuring gender training for the entire police unit as an integrated part of their protection responsibility helped in avoiding male-as-norm approaches. The forced withdrawal of the UN was questioned as premature. However, the security situation has remained fairly stable, and the government seems able to provide at least some of the more hard-end forms of protection measures, although rule of law and other forms of protection for vulnerable groups remain elusive in eastern Chad.
Forum for Development Studies, 2013
Forum for Development Studies, 2008
We discuss recent progress in the development of cognitive ontologies and summarize three challen... more We discuss recent progress in the development of cognitive ontologies and summarize three challenges in the coordinated development and application of these resources. Challenge 1 is to adopt a standardized definition for cognitive processes. We describe three possibilities and recommend one that is consistent with the standard view in cognitive and biomedical sciences. Challenge 2 is harmonization. Gaps and conflicts in representation must be resolved so that these resources can be combined for mark-up and interpretation of multi-modal data. Finally, Challenge 3 is to test the utility of these resources for largescale annotation of data, search and query, and knowledge discovery and integration. As term definitions are tested and revised, harmonization should enable coordinated updates across ontologies. However, the true test of these definitions will be in their communitywide adoption which will test whether they support valid inferences about psychological and neuroscientific data.
Internasjonal Politikk, 2015
Gender Discourses in International Security Policy IR feminists have to a large extent challenged... more Gender Discourses in International Security Policy IR feminists have to a large extent challenged male-dominated and masculine-oriented security policy thinking. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) has played an important role in our recognizing and including women's and men's roles and contributions on issues relating to peace and security. However, there is a gap between the feminist IR contribution and international security policy and practice. Based on experience in the field, this article exemplifies the gender discourses in a peace operation in the DRC Congo. The prevailing discourses are about women who need protection and women as potential peacemakers. These representations are a more sellable idea to the UN Security Council and the militarized peace operations. The author argues that the UN largely has a malestreamed approach to gender perspectives in the core areas of UN operations, namely in militarized protection and state-building.
Both system have many potentials. The authorities in charge of customary law acknowledge their li... more Both system have many potentials. The authorities in charge of customary law acknowledge their limitations in handling GBV cases, and many are also motivated to include perspectives from youth and women in today's Liberia. As the customary systems are available and affordable to most of the populace, there is much to be said for empowering and strengthening their roles and also improving communication with the statutory system. The statutory system is overburdened and could benefit from stronger working relations with the customary system.
Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 2013
It is well acknowledged that womenand men, girls and boys are bothactors in and victims of war an... more It is well acknowledged that womenand men, girls and boys are bothactors in and victims of war andpost-conflict situations. Militaryand peace operations reflect thesegender dynamics and genderequality less in their missions.
Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 2017
Criminology & Criminal Justice, 2018
As different social groups are directly and indirectly confronted with diverse forms of police pr... more As different social groups are directly and indirectly confronted with diverse forms of police practices, different sectors of the population accumulate different experiences and respond differently to the police. This study focuses on the everyday experiences of the police among ethnic minority young people in the Nordic countries. The data for the article are based on semi-structured interviews with 121 young people in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. In these interviews, many of the participants refer to experiences of “minor harassments” – police interactions characterized by low-level reciprocal intimidations and subtle provocations, exhibited in specific forms of body language, attitudes and a range of expressions to convey derogatory views. We argue that “minor harassments” can be viewed as a mode of conflictual communication which is inscribed in everyday involuntary interactions between the police and ethnic minority youth and which, over time, can develop an almost rit...
Critical Criminology, 2018
Policing and Society An International Journal of Research and Policy, 2020
Research has highlighted the harmful effects of targeted police practices and the subsequent low ... more Research has highlighted the harmful effects of targeted police practices and the subsequent low trust in the police among ethnic minorities. However in spite of this research, there still exists a relative lack of knowledge on the day-today relations between ethnic minority youth and the police and on the perceptions that ethnic minorities have of procedural justice. Furthermore, comparative and cross-nation research is needed. This study, using data from 121 in-depth interviews, investigates how ethnic minority youth living in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden describe policing practices. Our findings indicate that descriptions were quite similar in each of the four Nordic countries. While on the one hand, ethnic minority youth felt suspected by the police for no justifiable reason, thereby creating strong feelings of procedural injustice and unfairness, on the other hand, they described encounters, where they felt protected by the police and in general trusted the institution of the police. As such ambiguity has often been neglected, this article highlights the positive perceptions of the police but also argues that targeted police practices can undermine notions of procedural justice, trust in policing and a sense of belonging.
Theoretical criminology, 2021
Outside of criminology, dominant conceptions of postcolonial statehood in the Global South as 'fr... more Outside of criminology, dominant conceptions of postcolonial statehood in the Global South as 'fragile' or 'failed' have long been criticized. In criminology, however, the theoretical outcomes of this critique have been scarce. In this article we therefore ask how ideals and practices of transnational criminal justice are informed by and productive of specific (Global North) conceptions of statehood. Exploring encounters between transnational and local criminal justice in the context of international state-building in Mali and Liberia, we observe frictions in which statehood divergences and global hierarchies become apparent. Through penal aid, we argue, a particular kind of penal statehood is produced wherein the options of how to perform penality are increasingly limited by the embeddedness in global power asymmetries.
Critical Criminology, 2019
This article focuses on the perspectives of young ethnic minorities in the Nordic countries who h... more This article focuses on the perspectives of young ethnic minorities in the Nordic countries who have experienced various forms of “police stops”, i.e. situations where the police stop them without any reference to a specific event of which the youth are aware. Analytically, the debate is positioned through an intersectionality approach of (un)belonging to majority societies. Across the Nordic countries, we found that the young people described five social markers as reasons for being stopped, namely clothing, hanging out in groups, ethnicity, neighbourhoods and gender. We argue that the police stops explicate how the young men in particular are often forced to think about themselves in terms of “a threat” to the majority and the attributes they have that make them seem like criminals.
There is an abundance of political science literature characterizing specificities about the "Afr... more There is an abundance of political science literature characterizing specificities about the "African state" and politics in pathological categorization, adding to an already pervasive negative description of these states. While this tendency to think of the non-West as an extension of Europe both conceptually and its own experience of what is the life of "states" has already been recognized (see Chakrabarty 2000), I argue that we should instead look how statehood is performed on an everyday basis in Africa as a counterpoint to abstract and decontextualized models of statehood. In this respect, I propose an interpretive and relational way of seeing the state as practices created, sustained and challenged through the people living and performing the experience of statehood. By analyzing how social actors – state institutions, private companies and citizens – are accessing, enjoying and interpreting the meaning of water as a public good in the city of Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, I demonstrate how they call the state into being. The practices and expectations related to water leads to a considerable and enduring pressure on the de facto state.
Stabilisation is often interpreted as a matter of military interventions in so-called ‘fragile st... more Stabilisation is often interpreted as a matter of military interventions in so-called ‘fragile states’, and/or as technical and development solutions to what we argue are political problems. However, an often poorly understood stabilisation strategy is the revised International Security and Stabilisation Support Strategy for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This strategy engages communities and authorities at local and national levels in dialogues, in order to identify causes of and develop solutions to conflicts. Stabilisation in the DRC, we argue, becomes a matter of targeting deep-rooted political and economic manipulations in the country’s eastern region. This strategy, if fully endorsed, provides the first coherent and thorough approach to stabilisation in the DRC, an exit strategy for the UN mission (MONUSCO) and an opportunity for learning for other UN operations.
Sexual violence has been endemic to warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the pa... more Sexual violence has been endemic to warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the past decade, and the international community has focused considerably on measures to address this issue. Most prominent is United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820 (2009) on sexual violence in war. The UN has appointed a Special Advisor in the DRC with a task force against sexual and gender-based violence, and developed a Comprehensive Strategy on Combating Sexual Violence in the DRC (19 March 2009). The Comprehensive Strategy is a strategic plan involving four focal areas for combating sexual violence: (i) combating impunity for cases of sexual violence, (ii) prevention and protection against sexual violence, (iii) security sector reform and sexual violence and (iv) multisectoral response for survivors of sexual violence.
International responses to the conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border... more International responses to the conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) bordering Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda have been widely criticized as inadequate. The region is poorly understood by the international community. The general international preference for working with states and institutions -in a region where none of these exists in the form familiar to the West -complicates responses significantly.
The Journal of Modern African Studies, 2014
Responsibility to Protect and Women, Peace and Security, 2013
Global Responsibility to Protect, 2012
Helping states to fulfil their duty to protect their citizens and those seeking refuge within the... more Helping states to fulfil their duty to protect their citizens and those seeking refuge within the sovereign terrain of the given state belongs to the second pillar of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The R2P concept, however, relates as much to preventing mass atrocities as to halt already on-going ones. This article emphasises the gender dimensions of prevention of and protection against violence and other threats, in order to stress the importance of implementing and mainstreaming gender into R2P. The case study of interest here is the UN support mission to Chad and the Central African Republic (MINURCAT) that provided a fairly encouraging, albeit short-lived, example of gender-responsive prevention and protection measures at the community level for refugees and IDPs in eastern Chad. Chad exemplifies a case with low-intensity conflicts and responses made at the local level, like the MINURCAT-supported community conflict resolution initiative, proved constructive in preventing violent responses. Here, deliberate integration of female police officers was a first step towards facilitating contact with women not allowed to talk to male strangers. Further, ensuring gender training for the entire police unit as an integrated part of their protection responsibility helped in avoiding male-as-norm approaches. The forced withdrawal of the UN was questioned as premature. However, the security situation has remained fairly stable, and the government seems able to provide at least some of the more hard-end forms of protection measures, although rule of law and other forms of protection for vulnerable groups remain elusive in eastern Chad.
Forum for Development Studies, 2013
Forum for Development Studies, 2008
We discuss recent progress in the development of cognitive ontologies and summarize three challen... more We discuss recent progress in the development of cognitive ontologies and summarize three challenges in the coordinated development and application of these resources. Challenge 1 is to adopt a standardized definition for cognitive processes. We describe three possibilities and recommend one that is consistent with the standard view in cognitive and biomedical sciences. Challenge 2 is harmonization. Gaps and conflicts in representation must be resolved so that these resources can be combined for mark-up and interpretation of multi-modal data. Finally, Challenge 3 is to test the utility of these resources for largescale annotation of data, search and query, and knowledge discovery and integration. As term definitions are tested and revised, harmonization should enable coordinated updates across ontologies. However, the true test of these definitions will be in their communitywide adoption which will test whether they support valid inferences about psychological and neuroscientific data.
Forum for Development Studies, 2011
Routledge, 2019
This book argues that the way in which we use the concept of "state" in many African countries mu... more This book argues that the way in which we use the concept of "state" in many African countries must involve a deeper engagement of the complex workings of state-society relations, rather than a master narrative of European state formation. Dimensions of African Statehood explores the concept of "statehood" as a set of daily practices that govern and generate effects through the voices of those performing and living the state. The book is based on extensive, firsthand research on the delivery of and access to public goods as expressions of statehood in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. A public good, a field long dominated by economic models, can be seen as a power relation rather than a universal, positive good. By unpacking the meaning of "whose public," the book offers an avenue for a dynamic and multilayered understanding of practices that express and shape statehood. The assessment of statehood as presented in this book is an invitation to contribute to the new era of what statehood entails in regions different from the Global North. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of politics, African studies, and governance.