Blog post archive

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? ...

Sunday, 23 Oct 2022
Drones over Norway: A Security and Regulatory Analysis

Over the last five weeks, numerous incidents involving drones have made headlines in Norway. These incidents include multiple drone sightings outside oil platforms and energy installations, drone incursions in the vicinity of airports leading to the temporary closure of some of them, and Russian citizens being arrested at Norwegian border ...

Thursday, 30 Jun 2022
Japanese Perspectives on the Ukraine War

Since February 2022, Japan has imposed a series of economic sanctions on Russia, in coordination with allies in the G7, including the freezing of Russian assets and the expulsion of Russian diplomats stationed in Japan. As the first major war involving European great powers in this century, Japanese security analysts agree ...

Thursday, 14 Apr 2022
Putin Is Staking His Political Future on Victory in Ukraine – and Has Little Incentive to Make Peace

Despite stop-and-start peace talks, a resolution to the brutal war in Ukraine appears distant. Major cities in Ukraine are faltering. Civilians, including children, are dying of shrapnel and glass wounds, exposure and thirst. At the same time, Ukraine’s resilience and a coordinated global response means the war is not ending ...

Monday, 28 Mar 2022
Security Logics of Africa’s Divided Position on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Half of the nation states who chose not to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations General Assembly’s extraordinary session on March 2nd were member states of the African Union (AU). In the event, 25 of the AU’s 55 member states either abstained, did not vote, or voted ...

Monday, 28 Feb 2022
Putin’s War Is Stuck, Beware the Rising Risks

Data on the concentration of Russian troops was solid; the diplomatic offensive executed by Moscow was deliberately disagreeable; yet, many experts (myself including) refused to accept the proposition on the coming war as “inevitable”. Denials streaming from the Kremlin were never convincing, but President Vladimir Putin’s reputation as a shrewd ...

Sunday, 27 Feb 2022
We Shouldn’t Be Surprised by Putin’s Invasion

The wheel of history is now in motion. Russia’s gruesome attack on Ukraine disrupts one of the most significant trends in the history of nation states, namely the astounding absence of large-scale wars of invasion and occupation in Europe since the end of World War II. For many years, peace ...

Saturday, 26 Feb 2022
What Do People in Ukraine Want?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 — a drastic escalation of an already devastating armed conflict ongoing since 2014 — violates the right of the people of Ukraine to live their lives in a sovereign state and independently shape their future. While much focus has been on ...

Friday, 25 Feb 2022
No Way around a Dangerous Confrontation with Putin’s Russia

I, along with many other commentators, believed until the very end that war in Ukraine was preventable and would ultimately not take place. Very sadly, and concerningly, I was wrong. Why did I hold out hope so long for the avoidance of war? What does the invasion of Ukraine tell ...

Thursday, 24 Feb 2022
How Did Europe Get into This Predicament? We Must Look in Our Own Backyard

It’s easy to condemn the opposing party in a polarized situation. But it’s more difficult to exercise self-criticism. It’s easy to condemn the opposing party in a polarized situation. Particularly when there are good reasons for such condemnation, as in the current situation. It’s easy to state that Russia’s lust ...

Sunday, 30 Jan 2022
Putin’s Blackmail-War in Ukraine Continues Under Diplomatic Cover

The guns have so far remained silent on the snow-covered Russian-Ukrainian border, but there is certainly no peace there; a rather unusual war is in progress. It is unlike any other wars waged by Russia under the lengthy rule of President Vladimir Putin, who began his first presidential term with ...

Wednesday, 24 Nov 2021
European Union-Belarus Border Crisis: Why the narrative of “hybrid warfare” is dangerous

The 2021 EU-Belarus border crisis was preceded by a rapid deterioration of the already strained European Union (EU)-Belarus relations, in most part due to the Ryanair 4978 incident and the concomitant wide-ranging sanctions imposed by the EU on the authoritarian government of the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has often been referred by the media ...

Tuesday, 23 Nov 2021
Norway Promises to Increase Focus on “Women, Peace and Security”

On Thursday 21 October, the UN Security Council held its annual debate on “Women, Peace and Security” (WPS). Under Kenyan presidency, all the UN member states had the opportunity to give statements on this topic, which has been a permanent feature on the Council’s agenda ever since October 2000, when ...

Monday, 6 Sep 2021
Artificial Intelligence, Warfare, and Bias

When you think about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and war, you might find yourself thinking about killer robots, like those we have seen in movies such as The Terminator. In reality, AI and warfare looks quite different from these popularized images, and today we see many countries around the world exploring ...

Friday, 19 Mar 2021
Closed Borders, but Continued Migration?

Passing a year on from the massive closure of borders globally in March 2020 offers an opportunity to reflect on migration, borders and the pandemic. What has been the impact of closed borders on international migration? And what do some impacts look like: seasonal work, remittances, risk and recognition? Taking ...

Friday, 5 Mar 2021
Climate-conflict research: A decade of scientific progress

The last decade was the warmest on record, with 2020 tied with 2016 for the all-time high average annual global temperature. This 10-year period also saw armed conflicts at severity levels not seen since the Cold War era. Could there be a causal link between these trends? To the frustration ...

Friday, 29 Jan 2021
National Risk Assessments: a political vaccine against the next disaster?

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the political potential of National Risk Assessments (NRAs). The consistent focus of European NRAs on the risk of pandemics while public attention was glued to terrorism demonstrates their relevance to the question of how to prevent and prepare for future disasters – be they natural or ...

Monday, 14 Dec 2020
Revisiting Emergency eLearning

On April 30, 2020, my article “COVID-19 and Emergency eLearning: Consequences of the Securitization of Higher Education for Post-Pandemic Pedagogy” was published in Contemporary Security Policy. In that piece, I argued that securitization theory could help understand the experience of teaching and learning online as an emergency measure, but also ...

Wednesday, 18 Nov 2020
COVID-19: A call for people-centered national security strategy in Africa

Humanity has been extraordinarily challenged by the coronavirus with serious and unprecedented impacts on all aspects of human life and the ways states have been functioning and managing public affairs. COVID-19 may either consolidate global solidarity or it may take humanity on a path toward the demise of globalization and ...

Friday, 30 Oct 2020
Public-Private Partnerships during COVID-19: time to ask some questions

To say that the world was not prepared for a pandemic is an understatement. The point was made early on that in order to overcome COVID-19 and make it to the other side, it was “all hands-on deck”. This included individuals, health experts, governments, the private sector and – the ...

Monday, 25 May 2020
Afghanistan’s road to peace: what about the fighters?

After a year and a half of negotiations in Doha, the United States and the Taliban signed a peace agreement on 29 February. Essentially the agreement provided that the Taliban, in return for the withdrawal of international forces, would not allow Al Qaeda or similar groups to use Afghan soil ...

Friday, 24 Apr 2020
Drones in the Time of Pandemic: Caution Behind the Hype

The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic has mobilized national and international resources of all types, from funding of medical research to financial rescue plans, and has led to widespread state of emergency declarations. While the approaches adopted all over the world have differed from one country to another, an underlying ...

Thursday, 12 Mar 2020
Gender and Preventing Violent Extremism

“We cannot allow the invisibility of women in the area of peace and security to continue,” stated Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ine Eriksen Søreide in her opening of the session on “Gender and Preventing Violent Extremism” in Amman, Jordan. Women are often “invisible” in analyses of violent extremism, whether ...

Friday, 23 Mar 2018
Measuring Women, Peace and Security

Last week, GIWPS together with the International Peace Institute and the Government of Norway cohosted a discussion on linking the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Index to WPS in practice. The WPS Index, launched in October 2017 by GIWPS and PRIO at the United Nations, draws on recognized international data sources ...

Wednesday, 10 May 2017
A Double Message about Safety and Security for Field Research: “Protection Is Crucial” and “Don’t Overdo It”

In January 2016, Giulio Regeni, PhD candidate of Cambridge University studying labour movement in Egypt went missing in Cairo where he did his fieldwork. His body was found a week later in a ditch near the city showing signs of torture and a slow death. His killers have not been ...

Thursday, 23 Feb 2017
After Man? From Singularity to Specificity

When we discuss artificial intelligence, the digital technology that makes it happen, and singularity – the idea that both of them will exponentially take over the progression of society – we refer to them in singular. This is not a coincidence. Both, science and fiction have portrayed AI as a ...

Wednesday, 30 Nov 2016
Digital India: Less Cash, but not Cashless

The past month has seen historic events in India. On Tuesday 8 November 2016, the Modi government announced without prior warning that all 500 and 1000 Indian rupee notes would be rendered valueless more or less overnight. In effect, this meant immediate withdrawal of the largest bank notes in circulation, ...

Wednesday, 23 Nov 2016
Get to Know Your Data Double!

We all have a “data double”. But how well do you really know this other aspect of your identity? Unless you know what your entirely digital identity looks like, you should take responsibility for finding out and, at the same time, contribute to a digital drive to ensure that we ...

Monday, 17 Oct 2016
Give Us Your Phone and We May Grant You Asylum

Images of refugees using smartphones have now become common in the Western media landscape, and everybody seems to have learned that refugees and migrants, too, use smartphones. Indicative of this awareness, European governments are now looking into how to make use of these assets in their identity checks and in ...

Thursday, 18 Aug 2016
India’s Membership of the Missile Technology Control Regime

India became the 35th member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) on 27 June 2016. The MTCR is an informal and voluntary association of suppliers of ballistic and cruise missiles capable of delivering Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and other unmanned aerial vehicles. It was established in 1987 with ...