Comment archive

Wednesday, 17 Jun 2026
Norwegian peace diplomacy - is it facilitation or mediation? And why this matters.

It is a tradition in Norwegian peace diplomacy to say they are “only facilitators”, and theories on mediation are seen as of little relevance.

Wednesday, 15 Nov 2023
Is the Time Ripe for Peace Diplomacy Regarding Ukraine?

In the war between Russia and Ukraine, the distance between the parties seems insurmountable. Ukraine has proposed a ‘peace formula’, and various other peace plans have also been put forward. Now Ukraine’s supporters are starting to signal that the time is ripe for diplomatic solutions. On 20 February next year, ...

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 ...

Wednesday, 19 May 2021
The Pitfalls of Peacemaking

The revelations in the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) of Terje Rød-Larsen’s links to Jeffrey Epstein are a reminder that personal goals, dreams and ambitions can become entwined in professional choices in unfortunate ways – including for well intentioned foreign policy actors. The International Peace Institute in New York, ...

Friday, 7 Dec 2018
The Unintended Consequences of Killing Jamal Khashoggi: A Backgrounder on the Yemeni Peace Talks

This week the spotlight is on Sweden and UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths: On Wednesday representatives of the Yemeni government and Houthi rebels arrived in Stockholm to find solutions to what the UN described as the ‘worst [humanitarian] crisis in the world’. The Saudi Arabia-led nine-member coalition has been at ...