Conflict Resolution and Peace Research

During this academic year, the programme has completed and submitted the final report on a research project, ‘Natural Resources, Conflict and Consciousness: Dissecting People’s Movements in Odisha,’ funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) New Delhi. This study investigated people’s movements in Odisha around the issue of (un)fair distribution of natural resources.

The Programme also worked on two book projects: Gandhi in Twenty-first Century: Ideas and Relevance and Varying Dimensions of India’s National Security: Emerging Perspectives. Both the books have been accepted by Springer Nature for publication..  

The final report of the project is being written and it will be submitted by end of April 2020.

The legacy of conflicts and their varying types in history from the ancient & medieval times continue to occur in present-day national, international (geopolitical) and regional (socio-political-economic) rifts. The interconnections of S&T components like GIS, ITeS, satellite technologies, equipment and instruments of conflict, communication technologies, and several others that directly or indirectly effect on germination, spread, and diffusion of conflict, are the area of work. 

Disputes in the maritime domain are as old as the history of the clash of civilizations. The earliest known disputes were mostly intermittent and short term. Geography, technology, law, and geopolitics play a decisive role in the protraction and settlement of such disputes. The higher consumption rate of the world due to an increased population, its dwindling natural resources, slow economic growth, environmental challenges, and several associated reasons are all hastening the approach towards the oceans for sustenance. This sustenance would require replenishment of its economic and consumable resources. The race to secure interests and resources from the maritime domain would become paramount. This would lead to competition and conflicts. Such competitive pursuits for resources would add to the legacy of (maritime) disputes from historical to concurrent sources to become the new raison d'être for (maritime) conflicts in the near future.  The research here would focus on the old and new conflicts and their maritime dimensions to provide assessment and analysis. 

Conflict Weekly is an academic endeavor to track, interpret and analyze conflicts and peace processes across the world with a special emphasis on South Asia. Conflict Weekly brings to the research community every Wednesday as a weekly alert of events, updates, and analyses on potential and ongoing peace processes and conflicts in the world. 

In 2020, the Conflict Weekly initiative was supported by the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC). From April 2021, IPRI partnered with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS). The Conflict Weekly is, currently, published as a joint initiative by the IPRI at NIAS and the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation (KAS) India Office. 

On 8 February 2021, scholars from NIAS took part in a series “Abortions, Legislations and Gender Protests” as part of the Global Politics, Young Voices workshop. The presentations included case studies of Honduras, Argentina, Poland, and Thailand that identified three trends across the geographical boundaries. The workshop produced a set of commentaries on the same.

Marking the publication of the 50th edition of the Conflict Weekly, the IPRI) organised a young scholars’ workshop to analyse the top conflicts in 2020 from different regions in the world. The workshop aimed to provide an insight on the conflicts and peace trails through 2020 into 2021. The workshop’s outcome included a set of commentaries on different conflicts..