Comment archive

Tuesday, 29 Aug 2023
In the Israeli Democracy Protests, the Flag Has Become the Contentious Topic – The Occupation Is Not.

For the past few months Israel has experienced mass demonstrations both for and against the attempted judicial “reforms” by the current right-wing government. A striking visual theme of these protests have been the ubiquity of the Israeli flag. The use of national symbols like the Israeli flag is nothing unusual for Israel’s right-wing ...

Friday, 9 Apr 2021
Karaoke politics: the Bulgarian election results in limbo

On 4 April, while some countries celebrated Easter and spring break, Bulgarians all around the world cast their votes in one of the most exciting parliamentary elections in decades. In Majorstuen, Oslo, over 500 people waited for up to 3 hours at the Bulgarian embassy to exercise their right to ...

Monday, 12 Oct 2020
Collection of PRIO Research on Racism, Inequality and Discrimination

Introduction For over six decades, our mission here at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) has been to produce research for a more peaceful world. We analyze the conditions, causes, and dynamics of the political and social processes that create conflict or peace, and communicate this knowledge to policymakers, stakeholders, ...

Tuesday, 18 Aug 2020
Fighting Racism and Decolonizing Humanitarian Studies: Toward Mindful Scholarship

Addressing racism and decolonizing humanitarian studies is urgent, and as scholars we need to step up our efforts. Partnerships between scholars and conflict-affected communities are as unequal as ever, and the disparities between humanitarian studies in the global North and global South remain large. Dorothea Hilhorst here introduces the importance ...

Sunday, 5 Jul 2020
Oppression and Regime Survival: Will Trump’s reactions to the Black Lives Matter movement bring about his exit?

Since George Floyd’s brutal killing by the police in May, demonstrations have spread to more than 2,000 major cities and villages in the United States. Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) is probably the most widespread movement in the country’s history. In addition, we have seen huge global support, with demonstrations in ...

Monday, 9 Mar 2020
PRIO Has the Leading Experts on Protests

How does a country’s security apparatus react to a protest movement? And what happens in the aftermath of successful protests? PRIO is conducting three major research projects about protest movements, securing its position as an international leader in this field. In 2019, the world experienced a surge of non-violent protest ...

Tuesday, 3 Mar 2020
Boris Nemtsov Still Marches with the Russian Opposition

PRIO Director Henrik Urdal included Russian NGOs standing against the rise of autocracy, and personally Alexei Navalny, in his short-list of candidates for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. Last week, Russian opposition remembered Boris Nemtsov, murdered five years ago, by a march in downtown Moscow, which gathered some 25.000 people. ...

Tuesday, 7 Jan 2020
The Rise and Fall of the Twitter Revolution

The year 2019 ended with a new wave of non-violent protests. In every corner of the world there have been huge movements gathering. This marks the end of a decade that opened with the Arab Spring; a decade that might go down in history as the decade of mass protests. ...

Sunday, 3 Nov 2019
The Time Has Come to Define the Lebanon We Want

Lebanon’s protests have brought the country to a pivotal moment. It’s now paramount we act carefully and with the lessons from the past in mind. This piece originally appeared online in The New Arab. In the week since then the situation has continued to rapidly evolve. We will publish a new ...

Tuesday, 29 Oct 2019
We checked 100 years of protests in 150 countries. Here’s what we learned about the working class and democracy.

The success of mass protests depends on who is doing the protesting.