Publications and Resources

This report captures the key insights and debates from a two-day international conference on the Pact for the Future, convened by the CCDP and the Toda Peace Institute on 30–31 January 2025. The conference explored pressing questions, such as: What role can the Pact for the Future play in strengthening global peace and security? How can it address the growing challenges of multilateralism at a time when international cooperation seems increasingly fragile? What opportunities does it offer for advancing inclusive governance and conflict prevention? This report sheds light on the Pact for the Future’s implications for peace and security and the opportunities it presents for more effective and inclusive global governance.

This report identifies emerging dynamics and key challenges for both peacemaking and political transition after the downfall of dictator Bashar Assad's in Syria in Dember 2024. Events have unfolded against a backdrop of a region reeling from a 15-month long genocide in Gaza, a war and tenuous ceasefire in Lebanon and a new US administration under Donald Trump who maintains close ties with Gulf leaders. The report begins by mapping out the key actors and the latest political and security developments in the roughly three months since Assad’s fall. It then moves to identifying extant issues necessary for the country’s move out of war and into the uncertain terrain of political transition. It concludes with policy recommendations for Syrian civil society and political as well as regional and international actors.

This report examines the idea of American exceptionalism and the move from a Biden to a Trump presidency. After World War II, the new international order was unthinkable without American leadership. The USA was indispensable. The perception of excellence made Americans distance themselves from the old world’s corruption and colonial entanglements, and belief in their own moral superiority convinced the rulers that the USA had to lead the world by setting a good example and by using force if necessary. Now, the new president believes that to make America great again, the relationship with the outside world must become less burdensome. With a presidency centred on domestic affairs and the combination of lack of respect for liberal values and norms; dismantling of international commitments; focus on military strength, but not on war; preference for bilateral agreements; and unpredictability—all of it underpinned by a strong political mandate at home—Trump believes the USA should become a showcase for the rest of the world to admire.

This report will offer an alternative way of approaching the climate crisis from a Pasifika relational itulagi. It offers the story of Pasifika communities as they understand the climate crisis through the lens of their own ways of knowing and being and why such is critical to reforming climate policies and strategies. It will provide some examples of how communities deal with issues and crises at the communities-based level from an ethical and relational itulagi, and also highlights why spirituality has to be the key to the climate discourse. When we miss spirituality, we miss understanding in depth the integrated multidimensional structure of communities, which could consequently lead to a misrepresentation of the Pasifika household in climate discourse.