CSS Blog NetworkThe CSS Blog features the analyses of CSS experts, entries in the CSS Mediation Perspectives series and graphics produced by the CSS, which cover a range of international relations and security-related issues.
This week’s featured graphic compares the results of two Freedom House reports on political freedom and Internet freedom, which suggest there’s a link between the two.
For more on how Internet freedom is in retreat, read Julian Kamasa’s CSS Analysis in Security Policy here.
This week’s featured graphic provides an overview of Algeria and Egypt’s top trading partners. Russia’s absence from the top five trading partners list of either country highlights that despite Moscow’s revival of its ties with Cairo and Algiers, it remains overshadowed by other actors in the economic sphere.
To find out more about Russia’s strategy in the Middle East and North Africa, read Lisa Watanabe’s chapter for Strategic Trends 2019 here.
Large scale events like the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors are changing how we volunteer during disasters. This graphic points out objectives, principles and suggested actions to help the coordination of volunteers in the immediate aftermath of a disaster event.
For more on the integration of spontaneous and emergent volunteers in disaster management and civil protection, read Tim Prior and Florian Roth’s CSS Risk and Resilience Report on Volunteerism in Disaster Management.
This week’s featured graphic maps the domestic coalitions in the Libyan conflict and their international supporters. For an insight into UN mediation in Libya, read Lisa Watanabe’s CSS Analyses in Security Policy here.
Image courtesy of Wikicommons. The standoff between armed members of the Branch Davidian group and the FBI in Waco, Texas, descends into violence.
Mediation Perspectives is a regular series of blog contributions by the CSS Mediation Support Team and occasional guest authors.
To what extent do religious narratives shape conflict behavior? Many scholars agree that narratives are important: People get angry when they perceive injustice, they reach out for stories to help explain why that injustice exists, and then some of those stories propose or rationalize violence as a solution to the injustice. For this reason, peacebuilders should seek to understand religious narratives as possible framings of a given context of conflict.
