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Latest Policy Briefs and Reports
Contemporary Peace Research and Practice
Peace Research – An Uncertain Future
Policy Brief No.72 - May, 2020 • By Joseph A. Camilleri
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.
Contemporary Peace Research and Practice
Confronting the Covid-19 Crisis: Danger and Opportunity
Director's Statement No.71 - April, 2020 • By Kevin P. Clements
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.
Social Media, Technology and Peacebuilding
Conflict and Social Media: Activism of Civil Society for Peace Between India-Pakistan
Policy Brief No.70 - March, 2020 • By Qamar Jafri
This policy brief examines the work of civil society activists in India and Pakistan and explains how the social media strategies of civil society activists can ease the risk of war and violence and improve the prospect for long-term peaceful relations between both countries. Having experienced four wars between 1948 and 1999, peace efforts on the part of civil society activists have existed for many years. Civil society’s use of social media for peace is a new trend. This policy brief endeavours to add new insights on civil society’s use of social media to support peace and attempts to enhance existing dimensions to the question of how to respond to the rising conflicts between nuclear countries India and Pakistan – an issue that can no longer remain unnoticed by members of civil society and the international community.
Contemporary Peace Research and Practice
A Peace Research Agenda for the 21st Century: Report on an International Workshop (6–8 December 2019)
Summary Report No.69 - February, 2020 • By Hugh Miall
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.
Environmental Peacebuilding and Climate Change: Peace and Conflict Studies at the Edge of Transformation
Policy Brief No.68 - December, 2019 • By Judith Nora Hardt and Jürgen Scheffran
This Policy Brief presents a comprehensive review of the literature on environmental conflict and peacebuilding. It traces the development of the field from its beginnings in the 1980s until today, identifying several distinct stages which are characterised by specific research questions, approaches and findings. Based on this literature review the authors address major gaps and shortcomings as well as problematic implications of the research so far. A critical approach is developed which can inform Environmental Peace and Conflict Studies in the future, taking up incentives from the field of Anthropocene Studies and the concepts of ‘sustaining peace’ and ‘sustainable peace.’ The Policy Brief concludes with some recommendations that can give direction for a new wave of research which is currently emerging.