Comment archive

Friday, 19 Jun 2026
Does ‘ceasefire’ still have any real meaning?

We're seeing an incredibly dangerous development where ceasefires are changing character, as conflict parties accept high levels of violence within the label ‘ceasefire’.

Tuesday, 15 Aug 2023
Hard Georgian Lessons for Ending the War in Ukraine

Russia’s all-out aggression against Ukraine, which will pass the 18-month mark next week, is indirectly but strongly connected to the Russo-Georgian war of 15 years ago. In the first week of August 2008, Georgian villages in South Ossetia, a separatist enclave controlled by Russia since 1992, came under heavy artillery ...

Wednesday, 30 Jun 2021
Do Cease-Fires in Syria Work? We Checked the Data.

Our research looks at 10 years of truces in Syria. A missile attack last weekend in northern Syria left a hospital in ruins and further casualties in a residential area. But these types of attacks have become less common in Syria. Although this civil war remains among the most devastating ...

Thursday, 20 May 2021
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Geopolitics of the non-ceasefire

In a series of brief blog posts, researchers of the PRIO Middle East Centre offer their reflections on the unfolding Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The proposition for cessation of violence in the suddenly exploded Israeli-Palestinian conflict appears so natural and necessary that the lack of any progress in its advancement after ten ...

Tuesday, 27 Apr 2021
A Forgotten Mission: Monitoring the Ceasefire in Hodeidah, Yemen

Yemen’s conflict has been described as a forgotten war. Peace, up until recently, has been even more forgotten. The new US administration has begun a new a military and diplomatic track to end the fighting. Biden has made Yemen one of his foreign policy priorities, selected veteran diplomat Timothy Lenderking ...

Thursday, 14 May 2020
COVID-19 in Yemen: Willingness and capacity of conflict parties

This piece is part of our blog series Beyond the COVID Curve. COVID-19 has quickly changed everything from our daily routines, to the policies of governments, to the fortunes of the global economy. How will it continue to shape society and the conditions for peace and conflict globally in the near ...

Friday, 17 Apr 2020
A Global Call: Will COVID-19 bring more peace to the world?

This piece is part of our blog series Beyond the COVID Curve. COVID-19 has quickly changed everything from our daily routines, to the policies of governments, to the fortunes of the global economy. How will it continue to shape society and the conditions for peace and conflict globally in the near ...

Friday, 17 Apr 2020
Ceasefires in the Time of COVID-19

This piece is part of our blog series Beyond the COVID Curve. COVID-19 has quickly changed everything from our daily routines, to the policies of governments, to the fortunes of the global economy. How will it continue to shape society and the conditions for peace and conflict globally in the near ...

Friday, 20 Sept 2019
Fragmentation and External Intervention Hamper Peace in Yemen

The armed conflict in Yemen has grown increasingly complex as existing cleavages have become ever-more entrenched, and new ones are emerging. The conflict in Yemen escalated in March 2015 when a Saudi-led military intervention complicated an already intricate internal crisis. Saudi Arabia’s intent behind the military intervention was to weaken ...

Friday, 24 May 2019
Will There Be Peace in Westeros?

In my last Game of Thrones blog post I looked into whether there were any similarities between the War of the Five Kings and modern war in the real world. I found a surprisingly large number of similarities. Now that we have seen the end GoT, and we know who ...