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Latest Policy Briefs and Reports
Reconstructing the ‘New Syria’: Peacebuilding and Political Transition After Assad
Report No.214 - March, 2025 • By Larbi Sadiki and Layla Saleh
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.
Cooperative Security, Arms Control and Disarmament
Exceptionalism and Rules-Based Order: From Biden to Trump
Report No.213 - March, 2025 • By Sverre Lodgaard
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.
Climate Change in Pasifika Relational Itulagi
Report No.212 - March, 2025 • By Upolu Lumā Vaai
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.
Social Media, Technology and Peacebuilding
Mapping Digital Pathways to Peace: Exploring the PeaceTech in Sri Lanka
Report No.211 - March, 2025 • By Emma Jackson
This report examines the landscape of digital peacebuilding in Sri Lanka, exploring how technology is being leveraged to promote social cohesion, social justice, and human security in a post-war context. Through a literature review and over 30 interviews with stakeholders, the research maps existing digital peacebuilding initiatives and analyses their potential contributions as well as challenges. Key findings highlight innovative uses of social media, digital literacy programs, and online platforms to counter hate speech, misinformation, and bridge societal divides. However, significant obstacles remain, including the digital divide, language barriers, funding constraints, and government restrictions on online spaces. The report concludes with recommendations for advancing digital peacebuilding in Sri Lanka through multi-stakeholder collaboration, contextualized approaches, and ethical use of technology.
The Beautification of 21st Century Wars
Report No.210 - February, 2025 • By John Keane and Almantas Samalavičius
In this interview, John Keane argues that the public beautification of war is among the oddest features of the terrible meta wars of our century. With the help of communications media, war becomes an elaborately staged, picturesque tableau designed to transfix audiences and wall them off from war’s horrors. Savagery and ghastliness are no more. War becomes bloodless. It undergoes a form of beautification more subtle and more insidious than ever happened in the era of radio, film, and television. However, a new type of rebel journalism does something that is powerfully different. It does more than problematize meta wars by chipping away at their beautification. The new rebel journalism keeps alive and nurtures political hopes for an end to war.