Connections between violence and health have been revealed in a number of ways, not least through the World Health Organisation’s recognition of violence as a public health problem. Anna Gillions asks what we can learn from reviewing approaches to violence from the health and social care sector.
Government policy and practice consistently treat asylum and migration as security issues to be tackled via hard borders and military enforcement. Libby Ruffle describes how, in its Nationality and Borders Bill, the government is closing the door on those risking their lives in dangerous channel crossings in a desperate search for safety from war and repression.
With the ultra-infectious Omicron variant looking set to sweep the world, Paul Rogers argues that the greatest global security challenge facing us is to heed WHO advice and ensure rapid world-wide vaccination against COVID to reduce the risk of new, more lethal variants of the virus emerging in future.
After a year of cancellations due to the COVID pandemic, thousands of arms dealers and military representatives from across the world once again travelled to the UK to attend a string of arms fairs in the autumn. Kirsten Bayes from CAAT, was part of supporting the resistance to them and argues that now more than ever we need to highlight the insecurity they breed.
In this essay, first published in a new volume by the Foreign Policy Centre and Peaceful Change Initiative, Richard Reeve analyses whether, after an era of catastrophic foreign military interventions and amidst talk of ever wider deployments and campaigns, there are still positive internationalist roles that the British Armed Forces could be fulfilling.
This briefing paper from Rethinking Security and UNA-UK compares the external consultation processes of the recent Integrated Review with previous UK security reviews. It aims to inform better practice and contribute to Rethinking Security’s Alternative Security Review project.
Will COP26 deliver the political action necessary to tackle climate breakdown? Probably not, says Paul Rogers, but the experience of the 1970s World Food Crisis suggests that its intense highlighting of the climate crisis and the inadequacy of political leadership can and should catalyse much more urgent pressure for radical change in the next few months and years.
Paul Higate argues that ‘counter-terrorism’ strategy in Afghanistan and elsewhere has been grounded in persistent ideas of racial hierarchy that value the lives of ‘deserving’ British troops well above those of contracted foreign personnel, let alone ‘disposable’ local allies and proxies.
Despite a consensus that preventing violence is better and cheaper than trying to cure or contain it, almost all governments persist in vastly over-resourcing coercive responses. Ashley Macmillan argues for proactive and inclusive peace and security policies to be as normal as preventive measures in public health.
Preventing or countering ‘violent extremism’ (P/CVE) is a highly contentious field that has increasingly characterised counter-terrorism policy, in the UK and internationally, over the last 20 years. Joel Busher, Tufyal Choudhury and Paul Thomas assess the implications of current efforts to ‘mainstream’ P/CVE into other policy areas.
The unfolding tragedy of Afghanistan has eclipsed reporting of the COVID pandemic while a fourth wave of infections is sweeping the Earth. Paul Rogers argues that global vaccine inequality risks those in all countries as the Delta variant tests the limits of current vaccines.
Is a lack of political stamina to blame for the catastrophic failure of the West’s 20-year war in Afghanistan? Or, as Paul Dixon argues, did the generals spend decades spinning an unwinnable war as unlosable?
Rethinking Security 