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Begin New Search Topic Conflict Political Geography Global Focus Content Type Policy Brief Publication Year within 5 Years Publication Year within 25 Years

1. The Social Side of Climate Change Adaptation: Reducing Conflict Risk

Author:
Farah Hegazi and Katongo Seyuba
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
In developing countries, the effects of climate change interact with factors such as underdevelopment, high dependence on natural resource-based livelihoods, inequality, weak state institutions and marginalization to increase the risk of insecurity and violent conflict. Along with sustainable development and climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation is another key entry point for addressing climate-related security risks. However, key social factors that could positively influence adaptation outcomes and ultimately mitigate climate-related security risks are often overlooked. This SIPRI Policy Brief offers insights into the importance of social capital for facilitating climate change adaptation and preventing and resolving natural resource-related communal conflict in developing countries. The policy brief recommends: (a) improving trust between communities and governments through collaborative processes for knowledge exchange, setting priorities and determining appropriate climate change adaptation practices; and (b) increasing knowledge of climate change among traditional and local leaders to strengthen local conflict resolution mechanisms.
Topic:
Climate Change, Conflict, Risk, Social Capital, and Adaptation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. UN, EU, and NATO Approaches to the Protection of Civilians: Policies, Implementation, and Comparative Advantages

Author:
Joachim A. Koops and Christian Patz
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The protection of civilians (POC) in armed conflict has become a core strategic objective for the United Nations system and for UN peace operations in particular. The UN, however, is not the sole actor engaged in POC. The European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), among other regional actors, have been developing their own policies and approaches to POC. While the significant overlap in these organizations’ member states and interorganizational developments create an opportunity to coordinate and synergize their POC policies, their approaches to POC differ—in some cases substantially. As the EU and NATO are both in the process of reassessing their strategic direction against the backdrop of new conflict scenarios, there is a need to reflect on the differences and similarities between these three organizations’ approaches to POC, their comparative advantages, and the future direction of the POC agenda. At a time when international peace operations and protection efforts are under intense political and operational pressure, such an understanding could also lay the foundation for more informed and effective interorganizational cooperation on POC. Toward this end, this paper examines the conceptualization of POC in the UN, the EU, and NATO, lays out the core POC policies and approaches of the three organizations and examines their approaches to implementing these policies in the field. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for the UN, the EU, and NATO to strengthen POC efforts within and between the three organizations: Adapt POC to new operational realities; Revitalize discussion on POC within and between the organizations; Improve POC training, preparedness, and institutionalization; and Focus on both passive (harm mitigation) and active approaches to POC.
Topic:
NATO, United Nations, European Union, Conflict, Civilians, Protection, and Regional Organizations
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Vaccine Equity in ConflictAffected Areas: The Challenges of Development, Production, Procurement, and Distribution

Author:
Katherine DeLand
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
While the wide-ranging impacts of COVID-19 are being felt in all countries and communities, the pandemic is having a disproportionately large impact on vulnerable populations, such as people living in areas affected by fragility, conflict, and violence. Vaccines hold enormous promise to mitigate these impacts, but the complications inherent to armed conflict make accessing vaccines especially challenging. Even when countries do receive vaccines, they often face challenges in rolling out vaccination programs, whether because they lack adequate capacity or because the doses are set to expire or are not acceptable to the communities set to receive them. This issue brief focuses on the challenges of equitably distributing COVID-19 vaccines to populations in conflict-affected areas. It begins by looking at general issues related to the development, approval, production, procurement, and distribution of vaccines. It then examines the particular challenges to distributing vaccines in conflict-affected areas both before and during the vaccine rollout. The report concludes with several recommendations for stakeholders and policymakers to improve the delivery of vaccines in conflict-affected areas: Redistribute global resources to increase the supply of vaccines to conflict-affected countries; Increase the transparency and predictability of global vaccine supplies; Enhance cooperation and coordination at the national and local levels to deliver vaccines to conflict-affected areas through existing humanitarian response mechanisms; and Ensure that vaccination campaigns in conflict-affected areas adhere to humanitarian principles.
Topic:
Health, Conflict, Vaccine, COVID-19, and Humanitarian Response
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Expanding Conceptions of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence among Military Peacekeepers

Author:
Gretchen Baldwin
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
UN peacekeeping missions tend to frame conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) narrowly both in terms of who its victims are and who is best placed to address it. The victims of CRSV are usually assumed to be women and girls, and there is often an expectation that women peacekeepers will be better able to address CRSV than men. These assumptions reflect the frequent conflation of CRSV with “violence against women and girls,” as well as with “sexual and gender-based violence.” They also reflect the broader conflation of “women” and “gender” throughout UN policy documents and training resources for military peacekeepers. This issue brief explores how the UN system currently understands CRSV and SGBV, how this understanding affects the responsibilities, roles, and perceptions of military peacekeepers, and how UN policies—especially those focused on military women’s participation in peacekeeping—might be more inclusive. It draws on desk research as well as interviews with practitioners, UN personnel, and academic gender experts, as well as insights shared in several closed-door, expert-level workshops. The paper concludes that the current narrow understanding of CRSV harms victims of sexual violence who are not women and girls, including men and boys as well as sexual and gender minorities. Beyond the victims, narrow understandings of CRSV also harm women peacekeepers. Those pushing to increase the number of uniformed women peacekeepers often emphasize their added value in preventing and responding to CRSV. This assumption can perpetuate the idea that women peacekeepers’ primary added value is their gender identity and saddles them with additional responsibilities, often without adequate training, resources, or authority.
Topic:
Security, United Nations, Peacekeeping, Women, Conflict, Sexual Violence, and Peace
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Reclaiming Power, Restoring Peace: Key Findings from ICAN’s 2022 Women, Peace, and Security Forum

Author:
Women's Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL)
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN)
Abstract:
This briefing paper collates the perspectives and approaches of 63 women peacebuilders from 39 countries, members of the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL), who gathered in spring of 2022 during ICAN’s 9th Women, Peace, and Security Forum “Reclaiming Power, Restoring Peace”. Drawing on their analysis and experiences and reflecting on the decade that followed the first ICAN forum in 2012, the paper seeks to inform international policy debates and offer recommendations for programming.
Topic:
Security, Climate Change, Diaspora, Women, Conflict, Peacebuilding, and Activism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Policy Journal by Women of Color: WCAPS Pipeline Fellows Publication

Author:
Adenikè Adegbidi, Beza Gebremariam, Caroline Mendoza, Clémence Kouamé, and Desiree Raymond
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation (WCAPS)
Abstract:
The WCAPS Pipeline Fellowship Program provides an opportunity for college and university students, as well as young adults and early career professionals, to develop a broad understanding of the different dimensions of peace, security, and foreign policy through engagement with WCAPS members, to include young, mid-career and senior level women and men. Oftentimes, the WCAPS Pipeline Fellowship program serves as an introduction to these career paths for young women of color and allows them to seamlessly integrate into the WCAPS community and beyond, thus creating the pipeline we aimed for. The program started locally in Washington D.C. and has since expanded to include participants from across the globe. This most recent cohort had participants from four continents. This dynamic group of women learned about a variety of topics to include Redefining National Security (RNS), emotional intelligence, Women Peace and Security (WPS), and international law as it relates to peacebuilding. WCAPS is very proud to present the policy papers these young women wrote, following months of rigorous research, coordination, and collaboration.
Topic:
Security, Climate Change, Migration, Race, Terrorism, United Nations, Water, Peacekeeping, Women, Food Security, Refugees, Conflict, Representation, Peace, Gender, and Femicide
Political Geography:
Latin America and Global Focus

7. Four reasons why the New Agenda for Peace should focus on nationally led violence prevention strategies

Author:
Céline Monnier
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
Over the past few years, the prevention of violence has gained new momentum at the United Nations (UN). However, the UN still lacks a comprehensive strategy to transform these commitments into action. The UN Charter mostly focuses on the prevention of international conflicts, while lethal violence is nowadays mostly concentrated within countries. Both member states and the UN have increasingly acknowledged the need to use a different approach to prevention, including through the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG 16) and the UN-World Bank report, Pathways for Peace. However, the operationalization of this approach remains unclear. The New Agenda for Peace is an opportunity for the UN to clarify its approach to the prevention of violence within a country (violent crime, violent extremism, and non-international armed conflict).
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, United Nations, Conflict, Violence, and Peace
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Strengthening Data to Protect Healthcare in Conflict Zones

Author:
Rohini Haar and Susannah Sirkin
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Attacks on healthcare in situations of armed conflict have been reported at alarming levels over the past two decades. In response to this problem, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2286, which urges states to collect data on attacks on medical personnel, transport, and facilities. This data is essential to understand the scale and scope of the problem, protect health services and workers, prioritize resources to those most impacted, prevent future attacks, and hold perpetrators accountable. This paper examines why data on threats to and attacks on healthcare in conflict is important to protection, advocacy, and investigation and how it can be improved and harmonized. It provides an overview of existing data-collection efforts—namely, the Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA) and the database produced by the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC) in partnership with Insecurity Insight—and identifies challenges and gaps at both the policy and technical levels. This paper concludes with the following recommendations for the World Health Organization (WHO), other UN entities, UN member states, and NGOs: The World Health Assembly should adopt a resolution calling on WHO to address the major concerns in the structure and operation of the SSA; WHO should make technical improvements to the quality and presentation of data in the SSA and be open to a range of data-collection methodologies; Other UN agencies, governments, and civil society organizations should take steps to improve the collection and sharing of data on attacks on healthcare to improve protection, prevention, and accountability; and Governments, NGOs, and other actors should increase the funding and capacity of existing data-collection initiatives.
Topic:
Health, Humanitarian Aid, United Nations, Conflict, UN Security Council, Data, and WHO
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. Transforming the Systems that Contribute to Fragility and Humanitarian Crises: Programming across the triple nexus

Author:
Vittorio Infante
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Conflicts and shocks linked to climate change are more frequent and intense, leading to poverty and inequality, exacerbating these phenomena and people’s vulnerability. In this context, humanitarian relief, development programmes and peacebuilding are not serial processes; they are all needed at the same time to tackle the systemic inequalities that trap people in poverty and expose them to risk. The triple nexus, or programming across humanitarian-development-peace pillars, thus means creating synergies and common goals across short-term emergency response programmes and longer-term social change processes in development, as well as enhancing opportunities for peace so that individuals can enjoy the full spectrum of human rights. This briefing paper aims to identify the tensions and dilemmas that Oxfam faces when programming across the nexus and sets out new policy to address these dilemmas, building upon Oxfam’s 2019 discussion paper on the triple nexus.
Topic:
Development, Inequality, Humanitarian Intervention, Conflict, and Peace
Political Geography:
Global Focus

10. Digital Technologies and Civil Conflicts: Insights for peacemakers

Author:
Camino Kavanagh
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
Most attention relating to digital technologies and conflict has focused on cyber or information operations between states.1 Yet, it is civil conflicts that have increased in number and become more protracted over the past decade due to a number of factors, including their increasingly internationalised character.2 Moreover, it is in these contexts that societies are more vulnerable and likely to be more affected by the misuse of digital technologies; and it is in these contexts that states show less restraint in their behaviour and can cause more harm to civilians. Mediating or facilitating a solution to civil conflicts, already an enormously difficult task, is compounded by the ways in which numerous actors use digital technologies to disrupt or delay conflict resolution efforts. For mediators and others engaged in peacemaking efforts, understanding these challenges is critical to designing already charged engagement strategies. This Conflict Series Brief attempts to shed light on some of the risks associated with the use of digital technologies that can negatively impact mediation or negotiation efforts in civil conflicts, and examines how peacemakers might address them. Hence, rather than elaborating on the positive uses these technologies offer to mediators, which are already addressed by an emerging literature, we focus on clarifying the additional challenges conflict parties’ use of digital technologies impose on peacemakers. Specifically, this Brief: highlights how digital technologies can undermine peacemaking efforts; summarises the international law, norms and other such measures applicable to the behaviours of the conflict parties in their uses of digital technologies; and suggests a broader approach to stakeholder analysis. On this basis, we illustrate and visualise an analytical framework (see page 4) suggesting how these three main aspects might be flexibly addressed depending upon the specific context. The final section offers some concluding remarks and recommendations.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Conflict, Peace, and Digital Policy
Political Geography:
Global Focus