State and societal resilience as a strategic priority of the external action of the EU:

Recommendation to the consultation process

By: Dr. Ingrid Nyborg1
The problem the initiative on resilience as an EU external action priority aims to tackle is
wide-ranging. While the EU recognizes the utility of the resilience concept, the concept’s
latent pitfalls should also be addressed. This paper therefore aims at bringing forward some
such pitfalls, or rather conceptual issues, that may be important to think through as the EU
further develops resilience as a strategic foreign affairs priority.
As the leader of a large-scale EU funded Horizon 2020 research and innovation project
(“Community Policing and Post-Conflict Police Reform” – ICT4COP), which is related to many
aspects of the EU’s Global Strategy, the EU’s external action priorities are of great scientific interest
to me. This includes state and societal resilience.
Taking an ethnographic, bottom-up perspective, the ICT4COP study, which covers 11 countries in
four regions within and beyond the EU’s neighborhood, confronts challenges inherent in the
concept of resilience. How the concept is approached, how it is understood and how it is practiced,
will have effects on the states and societies in which the external action works, the EU’s work itself,
and ultimately how the goals of the EU’s Global Strategy are reached.
Aspects of Resilience on the Security Dimension
Whereas there is a huge body of inter-disciplinary scientific work on resilience in all its aspects, in
light of the ICT4COP research project, this present paper concerns the broad security dimension of
resilience, in particular as related to SDG 16. On this dimension, and in line with the principle of a
joined-up approach to achieving its external affairs objectives, I believe the EU, in the coming
consultation process, should pay particular attention to some interrelated aspects of state and
societal resilience:

 The EU could do worse than drawing heavily on the EU security sector reform framework,
in which human security sits at the core;
 The problems disadvantaged groups face should be especially important in EU policies and
mechanisms to advance state and societal resilience;
The Global Strategy unequivocally states that the EU, in its joined-up approach, “will systematically
mainstream human rights and gender issues across policy sectors and institutions”. Observing this
commitment in the resilience initiative is imperative. Moreover, in the security sector reform
framework (JOIN (2016) 31), by emphasizing human security as its fundament, the EU wants to
“understand security in its wider context”, including but not limited to “understanding and
factoring in” power relations and existing conflict dynamics.
A Conceptual Challenge
In the Global Strategy, resilience is defined as “the ability of states and societies to reform, thus
withstanding and recovering from internal and external crises.” Meanwhile, one of the problems the
resilience initiative seeks to respond to, is “[r]esilience as a measure of adaptability (…) the capacity
to maintain the core functions of a state (…)”.

1 Associate Professor Norwegian University of Life Sciences and Project Leader ICT4COP
A conceptual challenge may thus arise, which the coming consultation process ought to address.
On the one hand, policies to support state and societal resilience may underpin and strengthen
human security and human rights objectives. Yet on the other hand, if the policy emphasis is on
institutional resilience more or less exclusively, there is a risk that political stability for its own
sake, rather than human security-inspired reform efforts, prevails.
The concept of resilience allows for both outcomes. How the EU responds to this challenge will
affect vulnerable groups in particular.
Such groups – the ‘have nots’ – are further disadvantaged in crisis situations. Structural inequality
makes it more difficult for these most vulnerable groups and individuals to access resources and to
receive adequate relief during and following crisis situations. Strengthening institutions that are
not commonly trusted – for instance police and security authorities – for the sake of stability may
very well come at the cost of perpetuating the mistrust: Institutions that are not trusted generally
are not trusted in critical situations, either.
Resilience: It’s in the eye of the beholder
Preliminary findings of our research in, for instance, South Asia, indicate however that partnerships
between police and justice bodies, and local dispute resolution institutions, may work towards
building such trust. On a different token, we see in other regions, especially Central America, that
local security provision is the remit of official as well as unofficial security institutions.
The lesson we can take is that the specifics of the local context inform communal understanding of
security and of the social and political ability to respond to adverse circumstances. State and
societal resilience, it can thus be said, is in the eye of the beholder.
Consequently, to reach the EU’s overall external affairs objectives, striking the right balance of
stability and reform becomes vital for the resilience initiative. This is where the Global Strategy and
the SSR framework lead by example. Both put human security in the preferential position.
The human security concept, as elaborated in the 1994 UN Human Development Report, has the
“legitimate concerns of ordinary people” and the “protection” of these from environmental, social
and political hazards at the center.
Recommendation
The recommendation of this paper is therefore that to achieve a coherent policy framework and
guide the EU’s external action in the field, as well as collaborate fruitfully with Member States and
international partners, the resilience initiative needs to account for human security thus
understood.
Furthermore, when detailing out policies and mechanisms on the broader security dimension of
resilience, the EU should use the Global Strategy’s emphasis on reform and the SSR framework’s
emphasis on understanding security in its wider context as a guide for the resilience initiative.