Opinions & Insights

Social media can be a double-edged sword—used not only for supporting peacebuilders on the ground, but in hybrid warfare and in radicalizing young populations, shows OEF program Our Secure Future in their blog.

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.

After participating in online brainstorming for NATO’s Innovation Hub, OEF's Our Secure Future program began to think more deeply about the utility of social media in peace and security operations.

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...

The latest blog from OEF’s Our Secure Future program details how gender blindness can negatively impact the work of a peacekeeping mission.

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.

As part of our sister program Shuraako’s Somaliland Investment Forum, I facilitated a discussion on challenges and solutions for fisheries in Somaliland.

Repression is an often overlooked consequence of coup attempts, say Jonathan Powell and OEF Research’s Curtis Bell in their recent post on the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog.