Comment archive

Monday, 21 Sept 2026
Predicting conflict fatalities with temporal fusion transformers

Introducing a performant, yet interpretable deep learning algorithm for conflict forecasting.

Monday, 1 Dec 2025
Peace and good institutions save lives from floods

Why do some countries succeed in minimising the human toll of floods, while others face repeated catastrophes? The answer lies not only in meteorological or economic conditions, but also in political ones.

Friday, 18 Jul 2025
Adding a new piece to the puzzle: How the UN Peace and Security Data Hub can support peace and conflict research

By offering structured, publicly accessible and regularly updated data on various aspects of UN peace support, the UN Peace and Security Data Hub opens new avenues for empirical research and policy-relevant analysis – not least for forecasting platforms like VIEWS.

Friday, 3 Feb 2023
Bias in Economic Models Ignores the Impact of War in Poor Nations

New research shows that existing economic forecasting models vastly underestimate the impact of conflict on marginalized countries. National income for war-torn nations like Afghanistan, Niger and Yemen could be up to 50 to 70 per cent lower than existing estimates by the end of the century. When considering what our ...

Friday, 30 Dec 2022
The Results of a Prediction Competition Suggest the Fog of War Can Be Partially Lifted

We may never be able to eradicate political violence like what is now seen in Ethiopia, or in the deaths and damage wrought around the Colombo region in Sri Lanka. As Plato noted, “Only the dead have seen the end of war”. But a more realistic goal may be within ...

Friday, 12 Feb 2021
In 2016, I identified four future developments that would justify the Trump-Hitler comparison. Here are the results.

In 2016, comparing president-elect Donald Trump to all-time villain Adolf Hitler seemed overdrawn. It ultimately proved to be exaggerated in 2021, with the transition of power to Joe Biden completed. However, during his presidency, Trump has taken actions similar to the ones the Nazis used to consolidate their power. This ...

Thursday, 4 Feb 2021
Can We Predict Civil War?

Since 2010, almost 700,000 people have been killed as the direct result of warfare. But war kills and injures far more people than those who die directly on the battlefield. War destroys health systems, increases infant mortality, reduces life expectancy, increases poverty, and deprives children of education. If we could ...

Friday, 6 Mar 2020
Improved Data to Assist in the Prevention and Management of Conflicts

Today, the Praia City Group on Governance Statistics is launching its Handbook on Governance Statistics. The Praia Handbook on Governance Statistics provides improved data that can assist in the prevention and management of conflicts. What is the Handbook about? the … handbook is in itself nothing less than a historical ...

Friday, 26 Jan 2018
Grievances, Accommodation, and the Decline of Ethnic Violence

The finding that violent conflict has declined, especially after the Cold War, has generated a great deal of interest. Much of the initial debate focused on whether the claim itself is correct, but the finding itself seems robust in the sense that that the number and severity of violent conflicts ...

Wednesday, 6 Sept 2017
Information Technology Can Help Build Peace. This Is How.

In a recent episode of the caustic sitcom “Silicon Valley,” the hard-luck start-up protagonists attend a big technology convention. They stumble across an app called PeaceFare, a game that lets players “build peace” on their phones by giving virtual money to virtual homeless people or virtual corn to virtual starving villagers. ...

Wednesday, 2 Aug 2017
Being Policy Relevant in Peace Research means Forecasting

Driven by the ever-increasing availability of (big) data, as well as computational power and resources, we are currently witnessing an important academic debate about the promises and pitfalls of predicting social and human behavior. Given its potentially disastrous consequences, the prediction of armed conflict and political violence more generally, not ...

Thursday, 12 Jun 2014
Peace on Earth? The Future of Internal Armed Conflict

The last 20 years have seen a gradual decline in the number and severity of internal armed conflicts worldwide. This trend is partly due to widespread improvements in factors such as education levels, economic diversification, and demographic characteristics. These factors are projected to continue to improve for the remainder of ...