Blogs & Opinions

Reversing Conflict Minerals: Let’s Formalize Artisanal Mining for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies

Dec 2, 2020 | Jorden de Haan

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is a largely informal industry, known for its close relations with armed conflict, organized crime, human rights abuses, and corruption.…

Climate War in the Sahel? Pastoral Insecurity in West Africa Is Not What It Seems

Nov 30, 2020 | Leif Brottem

As violence in Mali and Burkina Faso reached a ten-year high this year, the West African Sahel appears to be experiencing the perfect storm of climate stress,…

Women, Peace, and Security: This Is How We Win

Nov 29, 2020 | Kelley E. Curie

Brave women, stepping forward and refusing to be ignored, have been critical to shifting the trajectory of ... threats to international peace and security.

This idea — that women’s…

Women, Peace and Security in Cameroon: The Missing Voices of the Anglophone Crisis

Nov 27, 2020 | Corinne Aurelie Moussi

The 21st century has been marked by growing calls to promote the inclusion and participation of women in peace processes as well as recognise their unique…

Fire, Conflict and Land Systems in the Middle East

Nov 27, 2020 | Lina Eklund

Since 2019, the author has been involved in a Marie Curie project on fire and conflict in the Middle East: FIRE – Fighting Insurgency Ruining…

The Environmental Cost of Conflict

Nov 26, 2020 | Naghi Ahmadov

On 9 November, the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a Russia-brokered agreement to end the military operations in Karabakh that had started on 27…

Deforestation, Dying Rivers Leading to Water Wars

Nov 25, 2020 | Michael A. Bengwayan

An eerie calm exists over the villages of Fedelisan, Sagada and Dalican of Bontoc of Mountain Province, Philippines. It is because, there is no telling…

Can Promotion Groups Help Strengthen Women’s Access and Control over Land?

Nov 24, 2020 | Ibrahima Dia

In Senegal, women’s ‘promotion groups’ have traditionally been vehicles for helping women share resources, ideas and experiences to increase income. But they are also –…

Re-Envisioning Climate Action to Sustain Peace and Human Security

Nov 17, 2020 | Catherine Wong, Stephen Gold, Samuel Rizk, and Cassie Flynn

A combination of crisis, conflict, climate change and COVID-19 means that we live in truly unprecedented times. In complex contexts, the message of environmental protection…

Global Water Security & Sanitation Partnership (GWSP) – Rising to the Challenges of 2020

Nov 16, 2020 | Jennifer J. Sara

The year 2020 has been shaped by interlocking crises: the COVID-19 pandemic that threatens to roll back years of hard-won development progress, the struggles of…

Masculinity Is the Unspoken Undercurrent in Trumpism and the Fracking Debate

Nov 16, 2020 | Zack Rearick

Deindustrialization emasculates. It hits at men’s pride and devalues a kind of blue-collar physicality that has traditionally been revered (glorified in culture) and rewarded (paid…

Will Bangladesh Ever See An End To Gender-Based Violence?

Nov 16, 2020 | Rosie Pasqualino

Acid and dowry-based attacks have been particularly prominent in the country, though sexual, physical, psychological and economic abuse has been recognized as forms of abuse…

In the Caribbean, Climate Change Is a Gender Issue

Nov 16, 2020

Caribbean countries are vulnerable to climate change and its impacts, including rising sea levels, extreme and unpredictable weather (including natural disasters), drought and flooding, biodiversity…

Integrate Gender When Designing Climate Policy

Nov 16, 2020 | Mara Dolon and Jessica Olson

The team of people tasked with coordinating the global climate change negotiations for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in 2021, we recently learned, consists…

The Ancient Band of Shepherds Taking on a NATO Land Grab in Montenegro

Nov 13, 2020 | Pablo Dominguez

While all eyes were focused on elections in the US, few noticed that a new government was to be sworn in in Montenegro. Shepherds and…

A Danish Approach to the Arctic

Nov 12, 2020 | Zach Simon

Today, climate change has brought Greenland and the Arctic back into the spotlight. Changing conditions, such as diminishing ice sheets, provide new opportunities for Russia…

Digging in the Past: A New Look at the Customary Land Conflict in Liberia

Nov 12, 2020 | D. Otheil Forte

In 2018, the Land Rights Law of Liberia was passed into law. This was a good hundred years after the government formally declared “perfect, complete and absolute”…

A Digital Revolution to Save Nature and Build Peace

Nov 12, 2020 | Wim Zwijnenburg

The revolution in space-based technologies is creating a wealth of opportunities to track environmental degradation and its impact on lives and livelihoods. From rapid urbanisation…

The Psychological Barriers Preventing Environmental Protection in War

Nov 12, 2020 | Gabriela Kolpak and Klaudija Visockyte

It’s a widely held view that environmental damage is inevitable in war. But is it possible for us to better protect it, or are we,…

The Weaponisation of Environmental Information in the Era of Fake News

Nov 12, 2020 | Doug Weir

Environmental disaster? War crime? Ecological terrorism? A polarised and omnipresent social media is turbocharging the manipulation of environmental information during conflicts. While the use of…

South Sudanese Women on the Move: Their Roles in Conflict and Peacebuilding

Nov 2, 2020 | Marisa O. Esnor

Enduring violence, climate change and other environmental crises force people in South Sudan to flee their home towns. Women and girls face gender-specific challenges and…

Protecting Women with More than Words

Nov 2, 2020 | Margot Wallström and Dan Smith

While the global conversation about protecting women and girls has improved in the 20 years since the adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution…

Recent Oil Spills in Central Yemen

Nov 2, 2020 | Eoghan Darbyshire

Report on recent oil spills, including two on land, one at sea with potential impacts on biodiversity, and one near-miss on an oil pipeline pumping…

DRC: A History of Pillage, Destination Unknown

Oct 30, 2020 | Africa Report

Congo's history is a long litany of theft and conflict. From the slave trade, to the brutal Belgian colonisation, to the Cold War manipulation and…

Climate Change Is a Security Issue: An Interview with Geoff Dabelko

Oct 29, 2020 | Cindy Zhou

“Climate change fundamentally impacts the political economic stability of a country,” said Dabelko. In the case of the Syrian Civil War, many experts point out…

How to Build a More Equal World

Oct 26, 2020 | Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

Just as the World Health Organization identified COVID-19 as a pandemic, UN Women launched our analysis of the global status of women’s rights, showing limited…

Key Player in War on Climate Change? The Pentagon

Oct 26, 2020 | Michèle A. Flournoy

To its credit, the DoD has already been investing over $1.5 billion of its annual research and development budget in new energy technologies. In the past,…

Climate Change as an Unconvential Security Risk

Oct 23, 2020 | Cullen Hendrix

As security threats go, climate change is not the wolf at the door, threatening to blow the house down. Rather, it is thousands of termites…

The Environmental Collateral Damage of the South China Sea Conflict

Oct 13, 2020 | Ryan McNamara

Tensions in the South China Sea increased last April when a Chinese coast guard ship sank a Vietnamese fishing boat near the Paracel Islands—a fiercely…

COVID-19 Recovery - A Missed Opportunity to Fight Climate Change and Gender Inequality?

Oct 13, 2020 | Sven Harmerling

There is a real risk that women will not be able to take advantage of new green jobs as countries overlook gender in pandemic stimulus.COVID-19…