As we move towards the draw-down of foreign forces in Afghanistan, openSecurity asks Afghan, Pakistani and international experts what needs to happen in the region to establish peace.
Northern Ireland is held up as an exemplary case study of building sustainable peace. Recent violent activity from dissident republicans poses real threats, but isn't likely to establish a 32 county republic. So why continue?
The military approach, sole government policy since the 1980s, has failed. Hawkish voices are no longer able to dominate discussion and portray the Kurdish question solely as a security issue. Can a solution best be found through democratic means?
Standing between the government, FARC and international mining companies are the indigenous people of Cauca: unarmed, but capable of reducing a sergeant to tears.
Decades of war have led to generations of Afghan refugees in Iran. Their treatment under the current regime is worsening, but why now?
Amongst memories of the cataclysmic violence that spread across Sri Lanka and which still marks this time of year as Black July, instances of incredible individual bravery and compassion stand out. But can the government match the honour of its people?
In seven years of independent control, South Sudan has not diversified its economy. Now the domestic agricultural sector languishes and international agri-businesses procure land for export markets. This failure could fuel conflict, if real change is not made.
The New York-based Women’s Media Center’s Women Under Siege Project has been using modern technology, from e-mail to YouTube to Twitter, to carry out ground-breaking research into sexualized violence as it unfolds in Syria.
The rise to political power of the Ukrainian far right party, Svoboda, was recently halted by a new electoral law. But there are further security issues connected to the far right's increasing support that have not been stopped in their tracks.
A riot in Uganda's Rwenzururu kindom left a mother and child dead, pointing to a divisive trend in Ugandan politics which runs against the cosmopolitan experience of many young Ugandans.
The western Balkans are caught between internal dynamics acting to couple borders with national myth-making, and post-modern Europeanizing forces hoping to nurture cosmopolitan polities.
For all the Government of South Sudan's rhetoric, real investment in the country's future has been slow to begin. Even before independence, there were sufficient resources to truly begin building the nation, resources that were squandered in Juba.
