Although Samoan’s went to the polls on 9 April 2021, the wait for a clear winner of that election is still ongoing, and the outcome could have wide-ranging implications for the region – not only because Samoa is a well-respected Pacific democracy, but also because of...
Young Global Scholars Group
New United States Leadership
In his address to the Munich security conference (his first international speech as president), President Biden told European leaders the US wants to “earn back our position of trusted leadership.” In a clean break from the isolationist policies of his predecessor,...
War crimes, international law, and the global community
How is the emerging global community to deal with alleged war crimes, within the context of contemporary international law and national political integrity? This is one of the more critical questions of the early 21st century. War crimes are many, and...
Global Peacemaking or Peacebuilding?
The weak-kneed efforts at strengthening global security in recent decades are desperately in need of a reset. Nowhere is this more palpably obvious than in Afghanistan, along of course with Syria, Yemen and Libya. But let me focus on Afghanistan, which is my country...
How Should the Global Community Deal with Extremism?
Extremism, in all its forms – political, religious, ethnic, gender, generational – is, in short, an extreme version of a belief system. It can be promoted peacefully, and within the normal bounds of freedom of speech. And it can, of course, spill over into hate...
Understanding Nuclear Disarmament
Following the drafting of the Civil Society Youth Pledge at the Hui in September, and while contemplating what is to follow, Jayden van Leeuwen (YGSG) and I locked in on two key elements of the pledge. The first was the Treaty's Article 12 obligation to take the...
Big Data & Privacy:
In 2018 Cambridge Analytica harvested millions of Facebook profiles, including 64,000 New Zealanders for political campaign purposes, using the information without consent. The scandal illustrated how big data can put the right to privacy at risk. This may have...
How to Prevent Genocide?
The best conflict is one that doesn’t happen. This blog argues that the best global approach (short of a full-fledged military intervention) to prevent a potential conflict from developing into all-out conflict is early intervention. The blog analyses a counterfactual...
UN Peace Keeping and the Global Community:
The United Nations (UN) is a key actor in the international sphere, and plays an integral role in the maintenance of peace and security across the world. One of the key mechanisms for doing so are its peacekeeping operations, which see peacekeepers inserted into some...
The Multilateral Crisis in Trade:
The 2018 G20 Buenos Aires summit saw the Director-General of the WTO lament the multilateral crisis, stating that it is the worst crisis “not only for the WTO but for the whole multilateral trading system since the GATT in 1947”. No doubt, the foundations of trade in...
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Symposium on Nuclear Deterrence and Disarmament
On 8-9 August, the Centre, in collaboration with the Toda Peace Institute (Tokyo), convened a Symposium at the University of Auckland. The primary subject was: Nuclear Deterrence and Disarmament: Conflicting perspectives in an age of tension The symposium was marked...
Humanity Is One Minute From Midnight
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it may be necessary to move the Doomsday Clock forward to just one minute to midnight. The world needs a new global security architecture to constrain nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles, killer pathogens, and the mounting...
Blair Knighthood Shows How History Does Mockery
Proving that history does irony, banks that once feared masked robbers now fear mask-free customers. But does history also do mockery? The 1984 Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu passed away on Boxing Day in Cape Town. Almost a decade ago, Tutu refused to...