Opinions & Insights

Legitimacy and trust in government are important for peace. But what happens when this trust erodes? People’s perceptions are not always based on rational criteria. We are ripe for manipulation regardless of what kind of political system we live under.

Governing fairly is an essential element in creating peaceful societies. That’s what David Cortright, Conor Seyle, and Kristin Wall argue in their new book Governance for Peace. In peaceful societies, people rely on governance institutions to solve conflicts—they do not take up arms to fight their c...

In our first post in a new series on elections in dictatorships, we discuss the first presidential election to take place in Egypt for the first time since 2014 and the strategies of hosting elections, even noncompetitive ones, for dictators by coup.

Mixed migration takes many forms, including climate- or conflict-induced displacement, economic migration, asylum-seeking, forced labor, smuggling, or human trafficking. This is the first of five blog posts looking at mixed migration from different governance angles.

International investments are growing a successful fishing industry in Bosasso. A new tool from Secure Fisheries can help identify new locations around Somalia that will benefit from development and capacity building.

Between 1993 and 2010, 11 percent of militarized interstate disputes involved fisheries, fishers, or fishing vessels.

“If you’re interested in conservation, you’d better be interested in conflict. So argues Dr. Tim McClanahan, one of the world’s most highly cited fisheries academics.

Threats by terrorist and militant organizations are becoming increasingly transnational, posing serious challenges to single country-focused UN missions. This fourth blog in our UN Peacekeeping series calls for making peacekeeping less state-centric through local and regional collaboration.&nbs...

Something happened in the American West over the past 200 years, part of a global trend. It used to be that when there were tensions between locals here—disagreements over water use, or mineral rights, or just feuds that went back and forth between families—eventually someone would be killed.

The Jeddah Agreement to the Djibouti Code of Conduct brodens its scope to include a range of illicit maritime activities. Somalia is the most recent state to sign on, reflecting the increasing recognition that states must comprehensively govern their martime spaces.

How will the FARC women fit into the very socioeconomic structure they have been fighting against for more than five decades?

World Fisheries Day highlights the centrality of fisheries to food security, economy, and culture in coastal communities.

Coups are relatively rare now, but back in the 1960s and 1970s there were years when over a dozen coups occurred, mostly in Sub Saharan Africa.

Analysis of satellite imagery used to require specialized technical skills, a computer with massive processing capabilities, and lots of time and money. Not anymore.

Rebel groups, transnational criminal networks, and terrorist organizations exploit poor maritime governance to undermine political stability around the world.

Somalia lays half a world away from the tropical Pacific Ocean, but El Niño-driven changes in the Pacific affect marine fisheries in Somali waters.