The Human Security Centre is pleased to announce that the UK parliament’s Defence Committee has published our submission on future force 2020 as official evidence. You can read or download the full report here.

Sanctions have become an increasingly popular method of discouraging groups, states and individuals from violating international law and norms. Blacklisting groups became particularly popular after 9/11, after which a number of anti-terrorist legislations were passed by the UN and its member states, including UN Security Council Resolution 1373, the US Patriot Act and the UK Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill.

Whilst both Vietnam and the US suffered a massive trauma as a result of the conflict between the two countries, the status the war occupies today in these nations is more as a set of personal tragedies, rather than a cultural and institutional monolith that defines the relationship between them. If handled correctly, enhanced collaboration could offer the prospect of massive and almost cost-free foreign policy benefits for both countries.

The Somali terrorist organisation, al-Shabaab, have not been having a very good month. Firstly, they have been suffering a string of defeats in their conflict with the Somali government and African Union forces, capitulating and allowing key towns to be captured with little in the way of resistance.

On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives backed plans proposed by President Obama to curtail the threat posed by ISIS (also known as ISIL or the “Islamic State”).

The 2014 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit in Wales was billed as arguably the most important for the alliance following the Cold War. Against a backdrop of tension in Ukraine and unrelenting chaos in the Middle East, the stakes are both immediate and long-term.

When the most recent state in the world celebrated its third anniversary in July this year, it was amid renewed ethnic violence and a protracted refugee crisis influencing both the country and the wider region. Having fought for independence from Sudan for decades, the South Sudanese state established in 2011 exhibit all the signs of a weak, and possibly failing, state.

Hastings Ismay, the first Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), famously stated that NATO was meant to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”[1] Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it would be difficult to argue that NATO had been unsuccessful in attaining these goals. Russia no longer posed a substantial threat to NATO member states, substantial amounts of American political will and troops remain committed to Europe, and a resurgent and militaristic Germany is a laughable thought.

There has been an emerging tension between liberal top-down peacebuilding and the growing belief that grassroots bottom up solutions are required alongside wider national level approaches. Intervention and peacebuilding in Africa have largely been shaped by militaristic, externally led, top-down approaches. These approaches have had varying degrees of success, with local populations often feeling alienated from peacebuilders and their externally imposed, ill-fitting intervention strategies. These interventions have historically shown a disregard for cultural context and local processes that are key to building sustainable peace during and after conflict.

Though the Islamist insurgency of Boko Haram has been raging in Nigeria since 2009, perhaps the defining moment of the conflict was the 14th of April this year, when militants kidnapped over 200 female students in Chibok, with the intent of selling them into slavery, or else marrying them to members of the group.