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Latest Policy Briefs and Reports
Social Media, Technology and Peacebuilding
Unpacking Affective Polarization in Afghanistan: Ethnic Politics, Elite Competition, and Online Divisive Content
Policy Brief No.193 - June, 2024 • By Qasim Wafayezada
Affective polarization has been a persistent feature of Afghanistan’s society and politics in the past decades. However, with the return of the Taliban, the country has witnessed heightened affective polarization along ethnic and ideological lines, intricately linked with the elite’s behaviour and social media use. This article attempts to conceptualize the complex causal relations of affective polarization, elite behaviour, and social media platforms in Afghanistan’s fragmented social and political landscape.
Climate Change-Induced Community Relocation in Fiji: Challenges and Ways Forward
Policy Brief No.192 - June, 2024 • By Paulo Baleinakorodawa and Volker Boege
This report addresses the challenges of planned relocation, looking at cases in Fiji, and it presents a specific promising community engagement approach that is pursued by the peacebuilding NGO Transcend Oceania in its work with Fijian communities. Transcend Oceania’s approach encourages a shift away from the conventional ‘victimhood’ discourse; affected communities see themselves as active agents rather than entirely dependent on external assistance. This approach offers some insights that can provide guidance for other relocation endeavours in the Pacific and more generally.
Narendra Modi’s War on Civil Society on the Cusp
Policy Brief No.191 - May, 2024 • By Debasish Roy Chowdhury
This Policy Brief draws attention to thousands of civil society organizations which have died in the attack launched by India’s right-wing government that sees them as an internal threat to the state. The fate of many more, like India’s tottering democracy itself, hangs on the result of the ongoing election.
Capturing and Decapturing Democracies: Notes from India
Policy Brief No.190 - May, 2024 • By Debasish Roy Chowdhury
This Policy Brief addresses the question: How can right-wing populism be electorally reversed, and is democracy automatically restored when it is? A southern state in Modi’s India has important lessons as the world’s biggest election plays out.
Cooperative Security, Arms Control and Disarmament
Reflections on R2P as a New Normative Settling Point
Policy Brief No.189 - May, 2024 • By Ramesh Thakur
This Policy Brief is a reflection on the origins, progress, setbacks, and current status of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the international community’s organising principle for responding to the threat or outbreak of mass atrocity crimes inside sovereign jurisdictions. While the articulation, refinement, institutionalisation, and consolidation of such a norm is one thing, the question remains: has R2P made a difference in practice? This question is addressed by Ramesh Thakur, a former UN assistant secretary-general, and a Commissioner and one of the principal authors of R2P.