Blog post archive

Friday, 14 Feb 2020
Is Legal Technology a New ‘Moment’ in the Law and Development Trajectory?

Introduction This post addresses an emergent field of inquiry for critical geography, namely the transnational dissemination of legal technology for rule of law purposes. Whereas critical attention has been given to digital humanitarianism and the “marketization” of displacement through Big Data (Burns 2019; Taylor and Meissner 2019), little focus has ...

Tuesday, 25 Jun 2019
Can Businesses Play a Role in Peace and Sustainable Development?

The role of business in society is as contested as ever. Business can help grow local communities, or they can exploit them. Economic growth can bring states together as it did the European Union, or it can help trigger conflict if the benefits are not distributed equitably, as we have seen ...

Wednesday, 22 Aug 2018
Eid, Islamic finance and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

Muslims all over the world are celebrating Eid-ul-Adha, the ‘festival of sacrifice’ or the Greater Eid. The other Eid, Eid-ul-Fitr is the festival which marks the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting. This is when many Muslims pay their annual zakat – a religious tax equivalent to 2.5 percent ...

Wednesday, 1 Aug 2018
Producing Reliable Data for SDG 16: The Case of Conflict Data

In 2015, the United Nations stated unequivocally in the last progress report for the Millennium Development Goals that “conflict remains the largest obstacle to development”. Yet, reducing conflict and violence in the world was never a target in and of itself under the MDGs. This changed with the inclusion of Goal 16 ...

Thursday, 8 Mar 2018
No Peace Without Women!

The recent #MeToo campaign was a watershed moment that has brought global attention to the issue of violence against women and has shown us how women continue to be objects of exploitation. Violence is manifested in so many different ways, from intimate partner violence, domestic violence, rape, honour killing to ...

Friday, 25 Sep 2015
War is Development in Reverse

The UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals are ready for adoption. For the first time, the UN will measure the incidence of one of the most controversial, but important, development indicators: the amount of armed conflict in the world. On 25 September this year, a UN summit will adopt the new ...

Wednesday, 17 Jun 2015
The Reality of Firearms Trafficking

The film The Lord of War and high profile trial of Victor Bout helped to seal in the public imagination the image of an illicit arms trafficker as being someone who smuggled planeloads of Kalashnikovs around the world and into war zones. Such characters do exist, but the reality of firearms trafficking ...