To see the full list of Policy Briefs, click here.
Latest Policy Briefs and Reports
Peace and Security in Northeast Asia
Building Stable Peace on the Korean Peninsula: Turning Armistice into a Stable Peace Agreement. Tokyo Colloquium 2019 Report (February 2019)
Summary Report No.32 - February, 2019
After missile launches and threats of ‘fire and fury’ in 2017, international relations on the Korean peninsula have improved in 2018. The inter-Korean peace process pursued by President Moon Jae-in and Chairman Kim Jong-un and the summit meetings of 2018 suggest there may be an opportunity for consolidating this improvement. This raises three central questions. How can the Korean peninsula be denuclearised? What are the prospects of a formal declaration of the end of the Korean war? How can the armistice be turned into a permanent peace agreement?
Peace and Security in Northeast Asia
Prospects for Denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula: Lessons from the Past for a Nuclear-Free Future
Policy Brief No.31 - February, 2019
The efforts of the international community to prevent, freeze or stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme experienced many ups and downs since 1985 when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) joined the NPT.1 Phases of promising agreements with plans for reintegrating a weapon-free North Korea into the international community were superseded by periods of heightened tensions with bellicose policies of the North Korean government and retaliatory hostile responses and maximum pressure by the US government.
Cooperative Security, Arms Control and Disarmament
Exploring New Approaches to Arms Control in the 21st Century: Building Lessons from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs)
Summary Report No.30 - November, 2018
The international arms control regime is in peril, concluded a meeting of leading arms control officials, scholars and policy advisers from the US, Europe and Russia. This group was brought together by a consortium of international think tanks—Toda Peace Institute, NUPI, Chatham House, Clingendael and the Council on Strategic Risks—in a track 1.5 workshop held in Oslo, Norway in October 2018.
Climate Change and Migration Crises in Oceania
Policy Brief No.29 - November, 2018
“Climate-induced migration” is often perceived as potentially leading to political instability and violence, and thus, as critical. Oceania is considered a prime example for this assumed linear causality, since sea level rise and other effects of anthropogenic climate change are threatening to displace large numbers of people in the region. The policy brief scrutinises this perception by critically engaging with the securitization of climate-induced migration in the Pacific region, with a particular interest in who defines what a crisis is, when and where. Its central claim is that without contextualised knowledge of the relevant power structures which determine a) who defines what can be considered a (migration) crisis, b) how human mobility challenges pre-established ideas of citizenship, belonging and national identity, and c) how climate change figures in these topical fields and political processes, we cannot fully understand the potential effects of climate-induced migration.
Social Media, Technology and Peacebuilding
Digital Blooms: Social Media and Violence in Sri Lanka
Policy Brief No.28 - November, 2018
The policy brief outlines key snapshots of Sri Lanka’s social media landscape as it stood at the time of writing, in early August 2018, and offers some recommendations aimed at civil society’s use of social media for conflict transformation. Background Note: Primary research informing this policy brief took place between 2014-2018 as part of work conducted with the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA). Other observations arise from data analysis and further research as part of on-going doctoral studies at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago, New Zealand.