Regional Renaissance - Security in a globalized World

Recent developments in the regions of the South led to a perception of a “renaissance of regional cooperation”. While in the past many ambitious regional projects were doomed to remain patchwork, a number of promising regional approaches to security policy have developed in the course of the past decade. The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, in the framework of its project “Regional Renaissance – Security in a Globalized World,” has looked into perceptions of security and security risks in the regions of the South.
Special focus has been given to the role played by regional organizations and security arrangements. With the aim of strengthening regional security dialogues, the Friedrich-Ebert- Stiftung has, together with numerous partners, conducted a number of conferences in the regions themselves – in Brazil, China, Mozambique, Egypt, India, Jamaica, and Uzbekistan. Conferences held in Berlin, Brussels, and New York have served as a platform for an exchange of the experiences made with the various approaches towards regional security cooperation. These conferences also helped to feed this information back into the debates underway in the North.

In Occasional Paper N° 25 “Bound to Cooperate? - Security and regional cooperation”, Jochen Steinhilber sums up the most important results of this issue focus.