With a new Global Peace Index countries can be ranked according to their ‘state of peace’. The GPi is intended to highlight the relationship between global peace and sustainability. The index, based on 24 indicators, provides measures of the extent to which a country is at peace internally and with other countries.   read more >>

Are shared democratic values and norms within political systems the most important factors in promoting peace between countries, or common economic interests? New econometric research shows that, in the case of India and Pakistan, trade with other countries increases the chance of peace.   read more >>

Ineke Malsch is the director of Malsch TechnoValuation, and a consultant on technology and society. The title of this weblog is a literal translation of the Dutch project title 'Nanorecht en Vrede'. The aim of this project is to introduce the international dimension in the Dutch national public dialogue on nanotechnology, by focusing on potential future implications of nanotechnology, its applications on global peace and security, and on the interests of people in developing countries, o...   read more >>

Eight years of UN administration in Kosovo have brought stability, but not reconciliation or consensus on the country’s status. The international administration had sufficient manpower, money and time, but has suffered from the lack of international agreement on Kosovo.   read more >>

Collecting data on conflict resolution trends began in the 1960s with the early empirical research by the Correlates of War Project. 1 However, little international follow up on the study was done until the surprisingly optimistic findings of the Human Security Report appeared in 2005. 2 The study reported a decline in armed conflict and war fatalities, and its findings increased interest in conflict resolution research.   read more >>

Since the end of the Cold War, rapid progress in commercial technology, along with the War on Terror and international peace enforcing missions, have been driving precision and remote control warfare. But these weapons do not fulfil the promise of ‘bloodless’ war.   read more >>

As instruments of peacemaking, global institutions like the United Nations are not really popular. In the stiff ‘new-speak’ of the modern policy sciences we should evaluate these institutions in terms of their accountability, policy targets accomplished, customer orientation, governance-to-cost ratio and policy efficiency. This is unjustified.   read more >>