Putin and Assad at the Khmeimim airbase.
The civil war in Syria will soon enter into the seventh year, with around 400,000 people dead and over 12 million displaced. Although the so-called Islamic State has been militarily defeated in Raqqa, no one party is in control of the country—and there is hardly much hope that the tragedy will end soon. Turkish offensive on Afrin has just opened another page in this tragic story.Read More
By Vitoria Basham Using and maintaining military force as a means of achieving security: a flawed idea? In my recent article published in Security Dialogue I critique the longstanding idea that military force and the maintenance of strong armed forces provides security. This idea forms part of the social contract between liberal democratic states and… Read more »
Tuesday 9 January Reports of clashes between government and SPLA (IO) forces in the Wunu’Lyet area, 10km outside Juba. Wednesday 10 January General Thomas Cirillo, leader of The National Salvation Front, denied reports that he has agreed with the exiled and former SPLA chief of staff, Paul Malong to form a coalition to fight President… Read more »
By Maria Eriksson Baaz and Judith Verweijen At a time when colonial revisionism is seemingly on the rise and articles calling for re-colonization are published even in renown critical journals (though clearly and comfortably not without controversy), turning a critical eye towards ourselves as ‘critical’ scholars might be seen as ‘navel-gazing’ or even as dangerously… Read more »
The scientific evidence for climate change is unequivocal, and the scientific community continues to refine our understanding of the impacts of these changes. Many of these physical changes, such as heatwaves, droughts and sea-level rise, are projected to adversely affect human wellbeing. The scope of these impacts has prompted serious concern that climate change may… Read more »
By Elke Krahmann Many actors have embraced performance as a measure for the effectiveness and legitimacy of their international governance activities, ranging from the United States government to the World Health Organization and the World Bank. In my recently published article in Security Dialogue, “From performance to performativity: The legitimization of US security contracting and… Read more »
Humanitarian actors, faced with ongoing conflict, epidemics, famine and a range of natural disasters, are increasingly being asked to do more with less.
The international community’s commitment of resources has not kept pace with their expectations or the growing crises around the world.
Some humanitarian organizations are trying to bridge this disparity by adopting new technologies — a practice often referred to as humanitarian innovation.
Virtual Identity / Pixabay
This blog post, building on a recent article in the ICRC Review, asserts that humanitarian innovation is often human experimentation without accountability, which may both cause harm and violate some of humanitarians’ most basic principles.Read More
Tuesday 2 January The Troika (the US, the UK and Norway) called on the armed factions to end all military operations, while threatening to impose individual or group sanctions on those violating the December 2017 cessation of hostility agreement. Radio Tamazuj Factbox: “Protection camp populations in South Sudan” Wednesday 3 January The SPLA claims opposition… Read more »
By Julia Welland In contemporary Britain, the figure of ‘The Soldier’ is increasingly visible. S/he (although the figure is, of course, nearly always a ‘he’) appears in documentaries, in art and museum exhibitions, in Armistice Day commemorations, guarding the 2012 Olympics, in ‘boot camp’ exercise regimes, in schools, as the ‘real heroes’ of reality TV… Read more »
By Sergei Prozorov Contemporary critical security studies increasingly turns to the problematic of political theology. This interest and inquiry into the theological origins of today’s political concepts and categories enables more effective critical interventions in contemporary politics. “Messianism” is one of the less explored aspects of political theology in security studies. While its connotations of… Read more »