At the closing plenary of COP30 in Belém, United Nations (UN) Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell affirmed that “climate cooperation is alive and kicking, keeping humanity in the fight for a liveable planet”. 195 Parties approved the Belém Packages, intended to strengthen global climate policy. The adopted text set ambitious financial targets and launched two new initiatives: the Global Implementation Accelerator and the Belém Mission to 1.5°C. However, taking place amidst an…

From ancient caravan routes to modern highways, life in Mali has long depended on the free movement of people and goods. Recently, however, attacks on oil trucks by al-Qaeda affiliate, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), have brought life in many cities to a standstill. The southern and western regions of the country have not previously experienced militant Islamist activity at the scale observed in recent months. This blog post explores the intersection of the current security and…

What does it mean to resist when there are no slogans, no marches, no chants, only grief? This piece argues that the Women, Peace and Security agenda—despite its historic contributions—has often reduced women’s political agency to visibility, voice, and institutional participation. A feminist lens invites us to look beyond this framing and recognise the everyday, intimate, and affective forms of resistance through which women remember the dead, survive violence, and hold broken communities…

Discussions at the Berlin Security Conference 2025, one of Europe’s largest annual events on security and defense, shared similar conclusions: Plan A, credible deterrence, must be pursued vigorously so that Plan B, defense, never comes into effect. Related discussions concerned European resilience, the Swedish model of “Total Defense,” NATO’s European pillar, the endurance of the “Transatlantic bond”, and industrial capabilities. While the Women, Peace and Security Agenda found its way into the…

The 2014 Israeli memory law making November 30 the Day to Mark the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from the Arab Countries and Iran was initially presented as belated recognition of long-marginalised communities. Yet beyond historical justice, the law reflects broader political motives shaping Israel’s expanding landscape of memory legislation with the aim of consolidating a particular national narrative. By examining the history of the Syrian Jews, this blog article shows how the law…

Twenty-five years after the adoption of the United Nations (UN) Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, India continues to present itself as a committed advocate abroad while maintaining silence at home. The image of women in peacekeeping uniforms serves as proof of progress, even as women in India’s conflict affected Kashmir, Manipur, and Chhattisgarh confront militarization, displacement, and loss. Their daily acts of care, resistance, and survival show that India’s engagement with WPS…

The persistence of political corruption and violence in the Philippines is best understood as habitual individual adaptation to a criminogenic environment. Actions arise from the interaction between personal values and the moral norms of the surroundings; between what people see as right and what their environment treats as acceptable. In the Philippines, permissive societal and elite social norms make political corruption – and to a lesser extent, violence – appear justifiable and ordinary,…

2025 marks 25 years since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS). The WPS Agenda recognizes that women’s participation, protection, and prevention of violence are central to achieving sustainable peace. While often discussed as a formal policy framework adopted by states, the agenda is not simply a UN document but the result of decades of sustained advocacy by women’s and feminist movements around the world. It emerged through…

After billions lost to flood control fraud, ghost projects, and political kickbacks in the Philippines, the current flood control scandal is just the latest in a long line of corruption cases. This article looks at how officials and their accomplices profit while weak oversight and entrenched practices ensure that patterns repeat, suggesting efforts to curb corruption by focusing on the structural determinants that enable it.

Over the last eleven years we have witnessed the rise and subsequent fall of feminist foreign policy. Initially heralded as a progressive answer to power politics, several states have recently dropped their feminist foreign policies, announcing that they will continue implementing the policy substance without the ‘feminist’ label. One way in which states want to achieve this is by pursuing the Women, Peace and Security agenda with renewed vigour. Given these developments, can the Women, Peace…