Blog post archive

Monday, 21 Oct 2024
Civil Society Participation in International Criminal Justice

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is in trouble. To commentators and observers of the Court, one crisis seems to lead on to the next, so that the field of international criminal justice has been described as being in ‘perpetual crisis’. Following a brief ‘revitalization’ of the Court due to its ...

Tuesday, 29 Aug 2023
Curtains for Wagner: Can Russia’s Show in Africa Go On?

The fall of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group and its impact on Russian activities in Africa: diminished authority of President Putin, fading diplomatic influence, and declining mercenary power pose challenges to sustaining interventions on the continent. The abrupt end to the spectacular career of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss of the Wagner Group ...

Monday, 7 Aug 2023
Manipur Tragedy

Manipur, one of the states of Northeast India, has been the site of so-called ‘ethnic violence’ since early May, forcing more than 60,000 people out of their homes, while at least 160 people have been killed. But is this really an ‘ethnic conflict’ or ‘ethnic violence’ between Meiteis and Kukis? ...

Friday, 21 Jul 2023
Exit UN, Enter the Wagner Group? The UN’s 10-year-old Mission in Mali is Ending

On 30 June, the UN Security Council had been expected to extend the mandate of the UN’s mission in Mali (MINUSMA) for a further year. On 16 June, however, the Malian foreign minister asked the UN to withdraw from the country. Instead of extending the UN’s mission, the Security Council’s ...

Monday, 10 Jul 2023
The Wagner Mutiny Damages Russia’s Policy in Africa

The resonance from the June 24 mutiny attempted by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss of the notorious Wagner group, remains strong, despite the attempts by President Vladimir Putin to demonstrate a swift restoration of stability in Russia. Domestic Weakness The full impact on the ability of Russian troops to withstand the ...

Tuesday, 4 Jul 2023
Failures of Putin Regime Distort Russian Political Perspectives

Questions about the drivers, participants and consequences of the Wagner Group mutiny on June 23 and 24 are set to remain unanswered as the Russian leadership finds it necessary to close that shocking page. Business as usual President Vladimir Putin has executed a sharp turn from describing Yevgeny Prigozhin’s escapade ...

Tuesday, 27 Jun 2023
Mutiny Undercuts Russian Intrigues in the Global South

The weekend mutiny of the Wagner Group, pathetic as it may look in hindsight, is certain to affect Russia’s ability to sustain its aggression against Ukraine and to repel the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive. But it will also resonate in a much wider sense. Russian intrigues One of these wider impacts ...

Wednesday, 5 Apr 2023
It’s Time To Rethink Myanmar's Ethnic Armed Organizations

As Myanmar’s armed resistance against the February 2021 coup enters its second year, calls for ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), sometimes known as ethnic revolutionary organizations, to unite and bolster ties with the resistance movement grow louder. This sentiment resonates not only among international observers but has also been expressed by ...

Monday, 12 Oct 2020
Collection of PRIO Research on Racism, Inequality and Discrimination

Introduction For over six decades, our mission here at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) has been to produce research for a more peaceful world. We analyze the conditions, causes, and dynamics of the political and social processes that create conflict or peace, and communicate this knowledge to policymakers, stakeholders, ...

Monday, 13 Jul 2020
The Legacy of White Violence in the US

On September 29, 1919, in Phillips County, Arkansas, a deputy died while trying to break up a labor meeting of black farmers. The next day rumors swirled about an impending black insurrection. In response, a white mob of up to 1,000 strong formed and indiscriminately attacked blacks across the county ...

Monday, 9 Mar 2020
PRIO Has the Leading Experts on Protests

How does a country’s security apparatus react to a protest movement? And what happens in the aftermath of successful protests? PRIO is conducting three major research projects about protest movements, securing its position as an international leader in this field. In 2019, the world experienced a surge of non-violent protest ...

Thursday, 25 Apr 2019
Why Did ISIS Attack Sri Lanka?

The terrorist attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday have spawned many questions about the return of violence to Sri Lanka after a 10-year hiatus following the defeat of the Tamil Tiger (LTTE) terrorists in May 2009. The first thing to understand is that the terror ...

Friday, 7 Dec 2018
The Unintended Consequences of Killing Jamal Khashoggi: A Backgrounder on the Yemeni Peace Talks

This week the spotlight is on Sweden and UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths: On Wednesday representatives of the Yemeni government and Houthi rebels arrived in Stockholm to find solutions to what the UN described as the ‘worst [humanitarian] crisis in the world’. The Saudi Arabia-led nine-member coalition has been at ...

Wednesday, 20 Dec 2017
Inter-group Conflict: The Role of Weak State Structures and Exclusion

Why do non-state groups engage in violent conflict with each other? Non-state conflict has been widespread in several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including D.R. Congo, Sudan, Somalia and Burundi. This type of fighting includes both formally and informally organised groups who fight each other without engaging the state, such as ...

Friday, 8 Apr 2016
Suicide Bombing ≠ Religious Fervor

Is it just religious fanatics who blow themselves up as suicide bombers? Bernt Hagtvet, Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo, has been active in the Norwegian media lately, stating that only religion (he focuses mostly on Islam) brings the fervor to commit suicide attacks as part of ...

Thursday, 7 Jan 2016
Governments Don’t Outsource Atrocities to Militias. Here’s What Really Happens

Refugees are fleeing Syria in such astonishing numbers because armed groups continue to target civilians with violence. That’s what we heard in September when the U.N. Human Rights Council discussed the most recent report of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria. The commission’s chair, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, made a plea ...

Monday, 7 Dec 2015
How did the San Bernardino Killers Obtain the Guns used to Commit the 2 December Massacre?

The guns were bought in a shop. How did the 13 November Paris Killers get their Guns? How did the Paris Killers Acquire their Guns?

Wednesday, 25 Nov 2015
The Threat from ISIS is not Military

For more than a decade, alarmists have essentially argued that, because the 9/11 attackers proved to be good with box-cutters, they would soon be able to fabricate nuclear weapons. And now, after the dramatic and horrible Paris terror attacks, a similar process of alarmed exaggeration seems to be happening with ...

Monday, 20 Jul 2015
How Can States and Non-State Actors Respond to Authoritarian Resurgence?

Two weeks ago, the Monkey Cage ran a piece by Matthew Baum and Phil Potter suggesting that the policy of “democracy-promotion” has gone out of style.[1] I think they’re right that in many circles democracy-promotion is politically passé and that, more broadly, democracy advocates are really having a tough couple ...

Monday, 29 Jun 2015
The "Resister’s Toolkit"

In his article in the May 2015 issue of APSR, Evgeny Finkel makes a splash by arguing that exposure to “selective repression” (such as surveillance, beatings, arrests, and torture) helps dissidents to develop a robust skill set with which to maintain enduring resistance later on. He supports this argument with ...

Monday, 20 Apr 2015
Is Boko Haram a Roving Bandit?

In recent months, Boko Haram has devastated a number of communities across a vast swath of Northern Nigeria, and even reaching into Chad, Cameroon and Niger. Although Boko Haram has some territorial control in the border regions near Lake Chad, its attacks do not occur in a consistent geographic area, ...

Friday, 23 Jan 2015
Boko Haram does not have the Fire Power of the Islamic State

Boko Haram’s influence and cruelty is still increasing. On the 3rd of January the Islamist group first attacked Baga, situated at the riverside of Lake Chad in the north of the State of Borno. They then came back several days later and demolished the entire city and its surrounding villages. ...

Wednesday, 14 Jan 2015
How did the Paris Killers Acquire their Guns?

At present we have very little information on the guns used last week by Saïd and Chérif Kouachi to commit a massacre at the offices of the publication Charlie Hebdo; and by Amedy Coulibaly in several shootings in Paris. They were armed with Kalashnikov pattern guns, however as nearly 200 ...

Sunday, 8 Jun 2014
The Taliban are an Organized Fighting Force

A new UN report blames the Taliban for a sharp rise in violence against civilians. The Taliban are an organized fighting force. They combine a relatively strong central command with a networked structure in which each of the various factions operate with considerable independence. Establishing control over certain territories has been ...

Thursday, 8 May 2014
Activists, Authorities and the Problem of Telling the Difference

Discussion about who killed Anna Mae Aquash of the American Indian Movement in the 1960s raises some interesting thoughts regarding what takes place when governments and challengers square off against one another. Underlying most research on the topic and popular understanding is the idea that governments and challengers represent different ...

Thursday, 17 Apr 2014
Rwanda, Remembrance and Research: Or, How Rwandan Violence Taught Me to Embrace Subnational/Disaggregated Conflict Studies and Integral Conflict Research

Fourteen years ago I began a journey to understand the political violence that took place in Rwanda during the year of 1994. Toward this end, I brought with me the skills that I had at that time: 1) an interest in media as well as government-generated data and content analysis, ...

Tuesday, 1 Apr 2014
Female Empowerment in DR Congo

In January 2014 PRIO researchers Gudrun Østby and Ragnhild Nordås went on a two-week fieldtrip to Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu, DRC. The main purpose of the visit was to launch the new collaborative project, “Female Empowerment in Eastern DRC”, funded by the Research Council of Norway. This project ...

Friday, 31 Jan 2014
Old Wine in an E-bottle (or, The Text that Mistook Itself for a Tactical Shift)

On January 24th Barbara Walter wrote a fascinating blog entry entitled “The Text that Changed the World”. It noted that the “Ukrainian government” had issued a text message to “thousands of protesters” effectively telling them that they had been busted (i.e., they were identified as participating in a protest event). ...