Over the course of my ongoing research, I have had the privilege of seeing lots of different Proactive Peace projects in action. One of the key questions I keep asking along the way is: how can we, as a wider community, support this work? Of course, there’s more than one answer to this question, and … Continue reading Teach a man to fish?
Proactive Peace Profile: AfriNov, Turning The Tide
Part of what I am hoping to do with my PhD. research, is to be able to describe what Proactive Peace currently looks like in different parts of the world. Too often it seems that peace work isn’t given much attention until violence has already started. And as important as that kind of peace work … Continue reading Proactive Peace Profile: AfriNov, Turning The Tide
Other writing
Newsroom, August 2022 I wrote this article in August 2022 for NewRoom. Follow the link below and have a look: In an age of ‘megacrises’, prevention may be the only option we have left The World Health Organisation says we are in the midst of a humanitarian 'megacrisis'. We need to prioritise prevention and learn … Continue reading Other writing
In Focus: Resource Scarcity and Unstable Economy
This post is an exploration of another conflict risk-factor 'type'—Resource Scarcity and Unstable Economy. I talk about what conflict risk-factors are here, but just as a quick re-fresh, they're the things which increase a community's vulnerability to violent-conflict. They don’t directly spark violence, but they’re the dry kindling that so easily catches alight. I call … Continue reading In Focus: Resource Scarcity and Unstable Economy
The Strength of Peace
ANZAC day is not long gone. I often find it a frustrating day, because despite focusing on war it often fails to reflect on what war really is. It can also have a very individualised approach to remembering, where any reflection on war as a whole is heard as dishonouring the suffering and sacrifice of … Continue reading The Strength of Peace
This is Why Prevention is Important
Why does it so often seem to be the case, that we don’t take peace seriously until war has started? There is much that could be said about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, it seems difficult to pin-point a focus area for a short blog post such as this. But to my mind, this … Continue reading This is Why Prevention is Important
In Focus: Inequality of Economic Access
In this blog, I talk a lot about conflict risk-factors, so I thought it would be worth-while exploring each of them in a bit more depth. Last post, I looked at inequality of political access. This week, I thought I'd focus on Inequality of Economic Access. The name might sound a little clunky, but I … Continue reading In Focus: Inequality of Economic Access
In Focus: Inequality of Political Access
I talk about conflict risk-factors quite a lot, because addressing them is the basis of Proactive Peace Work. So I thought it was about time that I explored these risk-factor types in more depth. In my research, I refer to 5 key types of risk-factor. Over the next few weeks, I'll discuss all of them, … Continue reading In Focus: Inequality of Political Access
What About Climate Change?
When high profile ‘climate events’ occur– be it Cop26, a particularly strong cyclone, or an especially harsh drought– we start to hear questions about how the changing, and increasingly unpredictable climate will affect our future. And when this happens, it is not uncommon to start to hear questions like: ‘will climate change make war more … Continue reading What About Climate Change?
Funding Peace
I’ve recently joined a local trust board. Their remit is to distribute funds to organisations and individuals engaged in peace work. Anyone joining this board is faced with the unavoidable question of what it means to fund peace work in the 21st century. There are two main sorts of work that we immediately think of … Continue reading Funding Peace