Opinions & Insights

Civil society actors play an influential role in supporting human rights.

Trends in urbanization and climate change are altering the nature of human settlements.

A new report by OEF Research explores the links of climate change to urban fragility and underlines how city governments can address the peace and security challenges that arise from influxes of climate migrants.

Researchers in Tanzania explore the importance of biodiversity in Lake Victoria’s colorful cichlid populations.

In the Kenyan part of Lake Victoria, invasive water hyacinth, illegal fishing, and poor water quality are threats to fisheries sustainability.

Lake Victoria illustrates one of the quintessential dilemmas of today’s world: how much short-term gain can humans continue to eek out of a system that is being driven to a potential breaking point?

In the small fishing village of Punta Bonita, peoples’ livelihoods are based on collecting piangua, a mollusk that lives under the nutrient-rich intertidal mudflats in coastal mangrove forests.

Livelihoods in Punta Bonita, Colombia are closely tied to collecting the mollusk known as piangua. Women, who make up a majority of the piangua fishers, tend to be overlooked and underpaid, and meanwhile, piangua are becoming harder to find.

Research on peacekeeping has revealed that peacekeeping has several benefits. However, there is also a relationship between peacekeeping and sexual abuse and exploitation.

With the repeal of the Dodd-Frank act imminent, we reflect on whether consumer-driven governance initiatives, such as the Conflict Minerals Provision, have a role to play in reducing armed conflict.

Fisheries can make conflict worse or better, and conflict can make fisheries worse or better. The result depends on other conditions on the ground, timing, and location of the conflict. But the result is not pre-ordained.

Understanding the links between fisheries and violent armed conflict is becoming increasingly important. This blog from OEF’s Secure Fisheries program shines light on the complicated links of how fisheries can both prevent and cause armed conflict, and how conflict can harm fisheries or cause fisher...

Assumptions underlying election result predictions have been encountering wide criticism. This study, published in the journal Science, reports the results of a multiyear program to predict direct executive elections in a variety of countries from globally pooled data.

In 2016 alone, not only did Hillary Clinton and Keiko Fujimori of Peru lose extremely contentious presidential elections, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye were forced from power. Half as many women hold the highest political office as did in the beginning of 2014.

The city of Buenaventura is a busy and lively seaport on Colombia’s Pacific coast and the largest port city in Colombia, accounting for nearly 60% of all domestic sea trade.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 7, less than one week after Colombians rejected the peace deal negotiated between the government and FARC rebels, underscoring the complexities involved in winning peace.