Opinions & Insights

There are many questions we need to wrestle with if we want to seriously take on achieving a world beyond war. These are the central questions OEF asked a forum of global thought leaders to deliberate.

Any global development strategy benefits from collaboration, especially when dealing with issues of considerable complexity and scale. In this post, we discuss social network analysis (SNA) - a useful and adaptable research and evaluation method that can be used by non-profit organizations to assess...

If Myanmar’s government would need no pretext to roll back national political reforms, why might minority groups cause any provocation with escalating violence? OEF Research Jay Benson wrote this blog on the Wilson Center’s New Security Beat.

Local ownership of peacebuilding activities makes sense in theory, but is rarely put into practice in UN peace operations. Guest author Sarah von Billerbeck explains more in this blog based on her talk at OEF Research's scholar-practitioner series at the UN.

We live in the most peaceful time humans have ever known, but you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

World peace has a bad rap but the truth is, peace has been doing pretty well in the 85 years since World War II.

Some assume climate change will lead to increased conflict. Climate change is certainly a threat to the well-being and livelihoods of people around the world, but the relationship between climate and violent conflict is not as straightforward.

Despite dealing daily with what might seem like uphill battles, Sanam Anderlini remains emphatically positive that with hard work and resources peace is possible. We agree. So how do we get there?

There are competing perspectives about the role of civil society in weakly institutionalized democracies. At times, the destabilization caused by mass mobilization can seem challenging to democratic governance.

Amid a growing chorus of dissatisfaction with the UN Security Council’s inability to prevent armed conflict in places such as Syria and Crimea, OEF and ACUNS convened a discussion on how to fairly assess the Council and whether its current structure helps or hinders it from fulfilling its mission.

Networks of non-state actors have proved to be a more sustainable force in countering piracy than military boots and warships.

What if the main problem with peace isn’t that it is naïve but that it is misunderstood?

If we allow our reaction to barbarism to be dictated on the fly and by the perpetrators themselves, we condemn the global community to ongoing terror. We need to think differently.

OEF Research’s sister program, Oceans Beyond Piracy, can draw reference to the central theme in Ambassador Swanee Hunt’s work: gender parity.

Global governance is one of the most critical subjects in international relations scholarship and policymaking today.

The expectation is that state and non-state actors should be on the same team, but in reality, they are often playing against each other.