Ethics of War and Peace

The main objective of the several ethics-related projects at PRIO is to increase awareness and knowledge of normative questions in international affairs, inter alia, by considering the challenges posed by terrorism, humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping and by asking how these challenges can be addressed using the Just War tradition and other normative frameworks as points of departure.

In 2001, the researchers were involved in several different areas of research, lecturing and publication, including the ethical dimensions of negotiations, the new ‘war against terrorism’, NATO’s development and strategic doctrine, and the teaching of ethics in military settings. Several articles in Norwegian and international publications have appeared as a result of the activities of these projects. In addition, two major book projects are in preparation for publication in 2003–04; these are an anthology on benchmark texts within the ethics of war and peacemaking and a collection of articles addressing questions of ethics, war and nationalism. In 2002, the research on NATO’s normative challenges will continue in a project on the morality of air bombardment as a form of warfare.

The ethics projects taking place under this umbrella have been funded as a Strategic Institute Programme by the Research Council of Norway. Additional funding has been received from the Norwegian Ministry of Defence and the Earhart Foundation.