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Riding or Reaping the Whirlwind? An Account of the EU’s Engagement with Insecurity in Northern Nigeria. EU Diplomacy Paper No. 9, November 2014

Friel, Eleanor (2014) Riding or Reaping the Whirlwind? An Account of the EU’s Engagement with Insecurity in Northern Nigeria. EU Diplomacy Paper No. 9, November 2014. [Working Paper]

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    Abstract

    The relations of the European Union (EU) with Africa are increasingly spreading beyond the domain of humanitarian and development cooperation. The continent’s growing potential is producing vast webs of interlinkages in the realms of energy and commerce, among others. At the same time, such interdependencies bring with them increased vulnerabilities to insecurity on the continent. Nigeria exemplifies such a dilemma. The country has just taken the top spot as Africa’s largest economy. Of late, however, violent Islamic extremism ravages the north of the country, threatening the stability of one of Europe’s foremost energy suppliers and a growing trade partner. Thus, this paper sets out to uncover the EU’s response to such a crisis, as well as examining the factors lying behind this response. While the study argues that the issue is potentially ‘Europeaniz-able’ from a member state perspective, deep engagement is seen to be held back by the absence of an effective entry point for securitization with this important ally, as well as the intractability of the EU’s purported multi-functional approach to the idiosyncrasies of the conflict in question, in which not only transnational terrorist groups, but also the central government are centrally implicated in deepening insecurity.

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    Item Type: Working Paper
    Subjects for non-EU documents: EU policies and themes > External relations > development
    EU policies and themes > External relations > EU-ACP
    EU policies and themes > External relations > conflict resolution/crisis management
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > College of Europe (Brugge) > EU Diplomacy Paper
    Depositing User: Professor Sieglinde Gstoehl
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 20 Dec 2014 21:43
    Number of Pages: 48
    Last Modified: 20 Dec 2014 21:43
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/58684

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