'In January 2022, in a bid to stem a tide of violent attacks and kidnappings in north-western Nigeria, the government labelled the armed groups involved in the violence as "terrorists". The relationship between these groups and the internationally designated terrorist groups Boko Haram and Islamic State in West Africa Province in north-eastern Nigeria was unclear. But the decision illustrated growing concern that violent extremism might spread to the country's north-west. It also raised questions about the types of measures that were needed to prevent escalation of violence...'

Upper Nile is in chaos. A once durable alliance between the national government in Juba and the Padang Dinka in Malakal has given way to a much more uncertain situation, in which the regime of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir sets feuding elites against each other. Disorder has proved an effective tool of rule.

The UNDP and the Small Arms Survey presented the findings of a joint report on violent extremism in the southern Libya borderlands and North-Western Nigeria, during an event at Geneva Peace Week 2022.

The Sahel is home to a number of marginalized borderlands—such as Libya’s southern border region—characterized by the movement and activities of various armed groups, the absence of strong state institutions, and the prevalence of disparaged communities. Potentially, the combination of these factors makes the subregion more exposed to risk and individuals raised in such borderlands can be especially vulnerable to recruitment by violent extremist groups.

The archive of the Human Security Baseline Assessment (HSBA) for Sudan and South Sudan project is a set of pages centralizing older updates and versions of HSBA documents and publications from the former HSBA website. All documents in the archive include a time stamp with the respective date of publication and are listed in chronological order. The archive is divided into the following categories:

On 6 July 2022, the Small Arms Survey’s Security Assessment in North Africa (SANA) project hosted a public discussion on Libya, with two of its seasoned experts, Jérôme Tubiana and Jalel Harchaoui, who discussed the issue of migrants in Libya—the need for care, rehabilitation, and legal pathways out.

The increasingly sophisticated arsenals of guided light weapons held by non-state actors pose an international security threat. These include man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS) and anti-tank guided weapons (ATGWs)—systems operable by a single user or a small crew, where the weapons’ missiles are either manually targeted or self-guided after launch. Such systems have been used by armed groups to attack commercial airlines, military aircraft, and governmental targets, as well as to degrade military and peacekeeping operations.

The Small Arms Survey’s Mapping Actors and Alliances Project for South Sudan (MAAPSS) held its seventh closed-door webinar on Thursday 4 November.

The Security Assessment in North Africa (SANA) Expert Briefings are a 5-part webinar series that is taking place (almost) every Tuesday from 11 May until 15 June 2021 at 2pm Geneva time. Each live webinar briefing features one of our SANA experts addressing contemporary security issues in North Africa and Sahel-Sahara region, and reflecting on the questions received from the audience.