The Nordic Africa Institute, the Dag Hammarskj ld Foundation and the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs hosted a seminar in Uppsala, Sweden, on 15 and 16 December 2011, that brought together AU, EU and UN officials closely involved in peace operations in Africa. The seminar's purpose was to allow participants to compare their experiences of the different support models that have been used to date in Sudan and Somalia. International support for African peace operations provides opportunities but also poses challenges. This report examines four of these challenges in some detail: the AU Commission's limited capacity to plan and manage peace operations; insufficient political engagement by African member states with AU peace operations; the short-termism and self-interest of some of the AU's partners; and the need for UN Security Council permanent members to value and ensure a shared AU-UN strategic vision. The report also includes policy recommendations for resolving these challenges.

The current resurgence of religion confronts Westphalian International Relations with a fundamental challenge. The rise of a variety of religious fundamentalisms on a worldwide scale brings back to centre stage the question of the righful role religion should play in world politics. In 'Religion and International Politics', Ludwig Gelot demonstrates that the transnational and religious dimensions of the phenomena call for the develpoment of a new analytical framework and interpretive categories. As a matter of fact, the secularist, materialist, and positivist assumptions at the heart of modern international relations are inadequate for the proper understanding of fundamentalism. Likewise, Samuel Huntington's thesis of the Clash of Civilizations is found to be wanting. The author concludes that the most challenging dimension of the return of religion is its questioning of the West's reliance on reason as the sole source of knowledge and authority.