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Latest Policy Briefs and Reports
Climate Change and Conflict in the Pacific Workshop: Prevention, Management and the Enhancement of Community Resilience
Summary Report No.74 - May, 2020 • By Rosemary McBryde, Jenny Bryant-Tokalau and Volker Boege
In September 2019, Toda Peace Institute held a workshop which facilitated dialogue between three groups of Climate Change experts. The aim was to generate shared analysis of challenges and, wherever possible, joint or coordinated practical responses. The meeting was structured to have a ‘triangular’ format. First, contributors working in the international realm presented their analyses to scholars and practitioners from Pacific Island countries and Japan. Second, Pacific Islanders presented their local and regional research findings, and their practice-based approaches, to the international and Japanese experts. In a third step, Japanese presenters outlined the state of the debate in Japan for the benefit of the Pacific Islanders and international experts. This policy brief draws together the main challenges and perspectives that emerged from that meeting, with illustrative case studies and recommended approaches for linking academic research, policy and practice.
Social Media, Technology and Peacebuilding
Social Media Impacts on Conflict Dynamics: A Synthesis of Ten Case Studies & a Peacebuilding Plan for Tech
Policy Brief No.73 - May, 2020 • By Lisa Schirch
In 2019, the Toda Peace Institute’s research programme on “Social Media, Technology and Peacebuilding” published a series of policy briefs exploring the impact of social media technologies on conflict dynamics in ten countries: three in Latin America, three in Africa, three in the Middle East and South Asia, and Northern Ireland. On November 13, 2019, the ten authors met together with 30 practitioners, scholars, professionals, faculty and students working at the intersection between technology and peacebuilding at a workshop held at the University of San Diego Joan B. Kroc School for Peace Studies. This report draws together key themes from the case studies presented in the ten policy briefs, and concludes with recommendations for governments, tech companies, legacy media, and civil society, particularly peacebuilders.
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.