The PRIO – GWPS Women Peace and Security Index is now available as a US edition, with scores for each of the 50 individual states and the District of Colombia.[1] With the US election today, highlighting ongoing struggles and gender-related conflicts, we ask; what does gender have to do with it? It turns out, quite a lot.
In October, North Cyprus experienced a highly contested leadership election after a COVID-imposed delay. This stirred new debates over the realism of a possible federal solution for Cyprus. During his five years in office, Mustafa Akıncı, the left-wing candidate running for re-election, had expressed strong support for federation and had been critical of the Turkish government’s role in the island and the region.
In the election, he was beaten by the main right-wing party’s candidate, Ersin Tatar, who had the backing of the Turkish government and promised to push for other solutions to the Cyprus Problem, including recognition of their state. In this blog post, Mete Hatay at the PRIO Cyprus Centre provides background and analysis of the current developments.
Photo: Özdemir Tokel, by permission
The literature on de facto states usually discusses a “parent state” and a “patron state.” The “parent state” is the one from which the de facto entity has, for whatever reason, broken away.
The “patron state,” on the other hand, is the entity that sometimes facilitates the separation and certainly aids the unrecognized entity once it is on its own, protecting, supporting, and sometimes recognizing it. For example, Russia acts as the patron state or protector for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while Georgia is their parent state.Read More
Photo: Getty Images CC BY
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 focus of this piece – the technology sector. This piece will shed light on the power and impact of public-private partnerships during states of emergencies, illustrate the blurring of lines between the private and public sector and argue that while these partnerships are a necessary part of COVID-19 response, we must continue to ask critical questions.
Helga Hernes, Senior Advisor at PRIO, at the international conference ‘Women, Power and Politics’ at the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, 14–15 November 2013. Photo: Julie Lunde Lillesæter/PRIO
Helga Hernes coined the term ‘state feminism’ in the mid-1980s. At the time, suggesting that the state could be women friendly and an ally in the struggle for women’s rights was controversial. A decade and a half later, however, the term had become widely used. ‘State feminist’ is indeed the best description one can find for Helga Hernes. She has used her academic as well as her political positions as platforms for advancing gender equality and women’s rights at a national level. In 2006, she arrived at PRIO, bringing her scholarly, activist and political experience to inform research associated with UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.[1]
Helga Hernes was born in Western Prussia (now part of Poland) in 1938. She experienced war and its consequences as a child, grappling with her country’s history as she grew up, and becoming deeply disappointed with how slowly German society came to a recognition of responsibility. In her late teens, inspired by her American grandmother, and by encounters with a benign American occupying force in Germany, she left for the United States. There, she pursued her education at top-ranking institutions, while engaging in both the anti-Vietnam war protests and the struggle for civil rights.
In Norway, which she made her base in 1970, Helga Hernes has left a mark in many societal domains:[2] as an activist against nuclear arms and for gender equality; as an academic pioneering gender research and heading several national institutions; as a politician serving as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time that the Cold War came to an end; and as a civil servant, where she drew on her personal network and institutional knowledge. She has always been modest about her own achievements, and this interview offers a rare opportunity to gain closer insights into what she stands for, and what her many contributions have been. A foreigner who made Norway her home, Helga Hernes could see clearly what to most Norwegians seemed entirely natural about their society. Throughout, she has shown a consistent commitment to academic quality in pursuit of a just and peaceful world.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee named this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, recognizing the World Food Program (WFP) for “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”
As the ongoing confrontation between the US and China has entered the technological and digital realms, we are pushed to rethink the relationship between individuals, nations and the entire world as more fluid than it has ever been before. While we grapple with these changes, the EU is on the right path ahead, but other countries are at risk of being left behind.
Johan Galtung lecturing in 1968. Photo: Henrik Laurvik / NTB / Scanpix
The banner on the front page of PRIO’s Annual Reports and other publications proudly reads:
Independent • International • Interdisciplinary
These three key points for PRIO today, as well as other important features of contemporary peace research in Oslo, can be traced back to PRIO’s founder, Johan Galtung. He turns 90 today.
Is there a risk that the ‘open science’ agenda obscures the need for effective research communication?
In the context of ‘open access week’ and the necessary and justified focus on openness in science, whether of data or of publications, it is worth reflecting on the interplay between ‘open science’ agendas and research communication goals.
Photo: Viktor Forgacs
Åshild Kolås. Photo: PRIO/Ingar Haug Steinholt
What I think we should do more of, as researchers, is to reach out to ordinary people, especially those who live in the places where we have travelled and gathered material. We used to call them informants, but they are actually participants. And then, for our research to be useful to them, we have to communicate back to them. Unfortunately, this is not a part of what we are taught to do. Researcher education is about translating from the empirical to the theoretical. This is not just a literal translation, but a cultural one as well, which separates us from our participants. What needs to be translated in both directions, or brought into a dialogue, is actual understanding, between the society we study and the world of academics and people who work in international organizations, in ministries and in development aid. What we too often see, even in qualitative research, is a one-way representation of the society we study, targeting an academic audience.
