Opinions & Insights

The Jeddah Agreement to the Djibouti Code of Conduct brodens its scope to include a range of illicit maritime activities. Somalia is the most recent state to sign on, reflecting the increasing recognition that states must comprehensively govern their martime spaces.

How will the FARC women fit into the very socioeconomic structure they have been fighting against for more than five decades?

World Fisheries Day highlights the centrality of fisheries to food security, economy, and culture in coastal communities.

Analysis of satellite imagery used to require specialized technical skills, a computer with massive processing capabilities, and lots of time and money. Not anymore.

Coups are relatively rare now, but back in the 1960s and 1970s there were years when over a dozen coups occurred, mostly in Sub Saharan Africa.

Rebel groups, transnational criminal networks, and terrorist organizations exploit poor maritime governance to undermine political stability around the world.

Somalia lays half a world away from the tropical Pacific Ocean, but El Niño-driven changes in the Pacific affect marine fisheries in Somali waters.

Groups that have longstanding animosity are not bound to harm each other; they need populist leaders willing to fan the flames, who believe that encouraging violence against civilians will bring some benefit. Demagoguery is not inevitable. People of diverse nations, faiths, and political parties tol...

The second half of the twentieth century showed marked declines in both the number of major wars and the deaths associated with them.

The Myanmar military brutally attacked Rohingya civilians. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and leader of Myanmar, didn’t condemn the attack. Why not? Social science has answers.

The world’s ocean coalition is increasingly recognizing that ocean health and human security are inextricably linked.

A new analysis of conflict data begs the question: do the data show a random risk of major war, or is there evidence that the decline in wars over the past 70 years is related to external causes?

Everything should be going wrong in Tunisia. In 2011, the Arab Spring revolutions engulfed half of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) with the promise of democratization. But these revolutions failed to secure democracy. Tunisia is the stand-out; it has avoided all-out civil war like that in Sy...

In spite of many warnings of a coup in Venezuela, they have all been wrong. Why?

While Colombians signed a peace treaty in November 2016, anger and resentment remain on all sides. The government is working to reincorporate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and other rebels into mainstream Colombian society. But can Colombians truly find peace when neither side ac...

Our team’s on-going field work on Lake Victoria was designed to look at big fish – Nile perch, tilapia, and the Lake’s biggest catfish, the imposing Bagrus docmac – and little fish alike. Several team members, both on the boats and abroad, are madly (quite literally) obsessed with biodiversity of th...