Policy Briefs on Contemporary Peace Research and Practice

This policy brief is based on a security perspective and aims to evaluate the following aspects of COVID-19 responses: 1) institutional and legal preparation; 2) recognition of an ongoing crisis; 3) response networks including the use of information communication technologies (ICTs); 4) transparency and credibility; and 5) learning from past and ongoing experiences. The empirical study focuses on three countries, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, because they have relatively mild infection rates compared with those of some European countries and the United States. This article concludes that high-level awareness is necessary to manage a non-traditional security threat and that a response system endorsed by leadership to act based on a legal framework is essential. Mature civil society is essential for resilience, and ICT tools as part of smart city programmes are necessary to improve the efficiency of the response system.

The near-universal response to the panic created by COVID-19 leads to the conclusion that the number of ICU beds needed to deal with a disaster should become a new norm, and a new way to judge when radical action is needed to respond to a global threat. So what other types of global catastrophes could call for more hospital infrastructure and personnel than is now available? The nuclear bomb is one obvious answer. This Policy Brief, first published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (28 April 2010), applies the number of available intensive care beds as the new measure for potential nuclear catastrophes.

This policy brief is a response to the report on Toda’s workshop, “A Peace Research Agenda for the 21st Century,” in which the author identifies four closely interrelated failings in the current peace research agenda and their far-reaching implications. The intention here is not to belittle the importance or usefulness of a good deal of current peace research, but to suggest the need for a more ambitious and insightful agenda than is presently the case, one which recognises the profound transformation that is gathering pace as the Modern epoch reaches its limits.

The challenge of Covid-19 will either result in innovative systemic change or a reassertion of a status quo that has proven incapable of dealing with this pandemic and with increasing economic, political, social and environmental dysfunctionality. In this statement, Toda Peace Institute Director Professor Kevin P. Clements, examines the dangers and opportunities of the crisis, and identifies the present as a moment of creative possibility from which might emerge a world fit for the rest of this challenging century.

What is the future agenda for peace research in the 2020s? Does peace research still have a distinct identity? What are the norms and values that peace research institutes espouse and can they influence practice in the face of the global challenges we face? This policy brief presents the summary from a meeting of the world’s major peace research institutes, convened by the Toda Peace Institute in December 2019, at which these questions were addressed. The meeting mapped out a new agenda for peace research, based on the main challenges which face the field. Potential for collaborative partnerships between the peace research institutes in these areas and new research directions were identified, and strategies for better integrating research and practice were explored. The meeting also outlined elements of a Code of Conduct for Peace Research institutes.