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…

Nach den Gewalttaten in Aschaffenburg (2025), Mannheim (2025) und Magdeburg (2024) kreiste die öffentliche Debatte vermehrt um die unklare Motivlage und die mentale Gesundheit der Täter. In allen drei Fällen war kein eindeutiges Motiv, wohl aber eine psychische Erkrankung von den ermittelnden Sicherheitsbehörden festgestellt worden. Aus der Politik gab es daraufhin mehrere Vorstöße zur…

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…

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…

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…

Die Europäische Union plant in einer neuen Initiative, Forschungsbeziehungen und Forschungsergebnisse strategischer in die Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik einzubinden. Angesichts der zunehmenden geopolitischen Rivalität soll die europäische Forschung einen stärkeren Beitrag zur diplomatischen Resilienz leisten. Als außenpolitische Zielsetzung ist dies durchaus richtig – dennoch entstehen, so…

A Amazônia brasileira é um lugar perigoso para ativistas sociais, especialmente aqueles que lutam por direitos fundiários e pela proteção ambiental. Em nosso estudo recente, publicado no Journal of Peace Research, constatamos que altos níveis de desmatamento estão fortemente associados ao assassinato de ativistas. Argumentamos que isso se deve ao caráter altamente territorializado dessa prática…

At the African Union, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda has been institutionalized both through dedicated new structures and through mainstreaming into existing structures. In this blog article, Camille Vern sheds light on an instance of the latter, examining the AU Panel of the Wise as an actor implementing the WPS agenda as part of its conflict prevention mandate. How does the panel…