‘Terribly and Terrifyingly Normal’: Political Violence Targeting Women

New Data Confirm Political Violence Targeting Women is on the Rise 28 May 2019: Women around the world are facing unprecedented levels of targeted political violence. According to new data on political violence targeting women collated by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) – in partnership with the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at…

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Climate crisis: 6 million people join latest wave of global protests

Six million people have taken to the streets over the past week, uniting across timezones, cultures and generations to demand urgent action on the escalating ecological emergency. A fresh wave of climate strikes swept around the globe on Friday with an estimated 2 million people walking out of schools and workplaces. Organisers say that during…

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Russia and Ukraine in 2019: More conflict ahead?

In Russia, the new year will kick off with price increases — the value-added tax (VAT) will jump from 18 to 20 percent. Among other things, the government hopes that this will at least partially compensate for cuts made to the health and education systems. Authorities deemed these cuts necessary due to the fall of…

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Time for peace in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict

Twenty years ago today, Turkey announced Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Öcalan had been captured in Kenya and brought back to Turkey. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the organisation he led, had been fighting the Turkish government for 15 years, seeking national liberation for Turkey’s Kurdish minority. When the PKK was established, it was illegal in Turkey…

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A solitary peacekeeping mission on the edge of Europe

For nearly a decade, peacekeepers backed by the European Union have kept watch over a shaky peace at the far corner of Europe – along the contested boundary left after the Georgian-Russian war. The patrol is the EU’s only peace mission of its kind. It also remains the only dispassionate witness and deterrent to flare-ups…

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Book Review: Orientalism

Orientalism & Cultural Imperialism;Edward Said’s Viewpoint By Hamed Kazemzadeh (Hkaze065@uottawa.ca)Conflict Studies ProgramSaint Paul University – University of OttawaBook Review: Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.ECS 5101: Identity – Based Conflict (Fall Semester 2018)Supervisor: Professor Enkelejda Sula Raxhimi (esraxhimi@ustpaul.ca) Published in Internal Journal of ACPCS – Winter 2019 (N.8); pp. 24-26 A. IntroductionOrientalism is…

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Women in the North Caucasus Conflicts: An Under-reported Plight

Women in the Russian republic of Chechnya have never been under such pressure as they are today. Yet not much has been written about their role, their place in society, and their rights in Chechnya and in other North Caucasus conflicts. For more than two decades since 1994, the armed conflict between Russian federal forces…

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Strengthening community-level peacebuilding in Rwanda

The genocide in Rwanda destroyed the social fabric in the country. The past 21 years have been marked by efforts to rebuild it. Jean De Dieu Basabose, Peace Direct’s local correspondent for Rwanda, examines one such attempt. Post-genocide Rwanda has been marked by efforts to rebuild the social fabric which was destroyed during the terrible…

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Reaching a Durable Peace in the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

The 2018 “Velvet Revolution” in Armenia raised hopes for a long-lasting peace in the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but sticking points remain. Ruben Elamiryan That the revolution radically changed Armenia’s power structure and the whole of the ruling elite  provoked multilayer expectations and hopes among those who had considered further compromise on the status quo of…

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