You want to find interesting analyses, reports, articles and papers on peace and conflict issues from around the world?
This page provides links to a selection of the best critical and constructive materials – the essential stuff we benefit from ourselves every day by browsing the net. We want to share it with you.
Just click below at what catches your interest – read, download or send the whole page to a friend. TFF’s idea works, and it works for you.
Peace, nonviolence & other good news and thoughts
UK going to support a world court The British government will formally break ranks with the US on Friday by supporting the creation of an international criminal court to prosecute those responsible for genocide and other crimes against humanity. (The Guardian).
Towards a peace agreement in Burundi ? – and what Clinton should do At the August 28 signing ceremony for a Burundi peace accord, President Bill Clinton should pledge U.S. support for prompt, effective justice to punish serious crimes committed during the war, Human Rights Watch said today. Clinton is scheduled to appear at a signing ceremony to mark the end of a civil war that has pitted Hutu against Tutsi in Burundi, and that has cost the lives of well over 100,000 people in the last six years. From All African.com. And the mediator, Nelson Mandela, proposes Burundi’s Assembly speaker as interim president.
Toward a new internationalism “What has really disappeared is the kind of middle-ground, mixed economy often lauded in the Cold-War years. Social democratic and Keynesian strategies, supposedly the result of a class accord, are no longer viable under today’s global neoliberalism. But all of this merely points to the need for a much more radical, universal, internationalist strategy, rooted in national realities and struggles as the only way forward for the movement” – say the editors of Monthly Review.
Truth and reconciliation commissions – can South Africa export them? When the fighting in Burundi stops, Ntsebeza believes that the devastated nation should use South Africa’s TRC as a model to begin healing rifts in a peaceful way. “No experience of any one country can be exported to any other country, but there is something to be said for South Africa” and its relatively peaceful transition, Ntsebeza says. (From The Christian Science Monitor)
Armament, the new Cold War & militarism
The Kursk affair – are you sure you got the whole truth? “There can hardly have been a better example of the media acting as adjuncts of government than their coverage of the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk. From the start, there was to be little deviation from the storyline &endash; as familiar as it is comforting. A decrepit submarine manned by a worthy but incompetent and underpaid crew went down to the bottom of the Barents Sea. The cause of the accident was almost certainly the shoddy level of maintenance..” – writes George Szamuely at Antiwar.com.
China’s hand in Africa’s wars In a bid to develop a market for its arms industry, China has dispatched four military delegations to sub-Saharan Africa in the last few months. South Africa and the United Nations have worked to resolve the region’s conflicts. But China’s new policy &endash; really intended to get the People’s Liberation Army out of the Chinese economy &endash; threatens to create a miniature but destabilizing arms race in southern Africa. (Stratfor).
Israel may have as many as 200 nuclear weapons New satellite photographs published on the internet indicate that Israel could have made enough plutonium for up to 200 nuclear weapons, US scientists say. (From BBC). See also the Christian Science Monitor on this. But where else did you see the first-page story about that?
The US assesses the world reaction to BMD A classified U.S. intelligence report predicts that if the United States deploys a national missile defense system, China would likely add to its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent while Russia would continue reductions in its nuclear force, U.S. government sources said on Tuesday. (From Muzi.com).
World (dis)order, globalization – imperialism
UN strapped for cash According to the reports that have leaked so far, the U.N. mission to Kosovo (UNMIK) faces both a power shortage and a security crisis due to depleted funding. The European Agency for Reconstruction, which has paid for Kosovo’s electricity since the end of NATO’s bombing campaign last year, expects that UNMIK’s accumulation of unpaid power bills will lead to a power crisis this winter. From July to January, the KPC will not receive funding at all, reported London’s The Times. (Stratfor).
Clinton to visit Nigeria and Tanzania President Bill Clinton will, sometime this month, pay a state visit to Nigeria. Much is being made of this trip and the chance it holds out to restore the country on to the global diplomatic map. After the benighted years of military rule, and the concomitant alienation of the country from the comity of nations, a visit from the American president is welcome. From Tempo, Lagos. And the assistant secretary for African Affairs explains the significance of the President’s visit to Nigeria and Tanzania. From AllAfrica.com
The Balkans and Kosovo/a
NATO’s takeover of smelter in Mitrovica, foreseen by Diana Johnstone in February Comparison of two documents, a November 1999 International Crisis Group (ICG) paper on the Trepca mining complex, and a February 2000 article in the Toronto Star by ICG consultant Susan Blaustein, provides an exceptionally clear glimpse into the workings of the “international community” (Emperor’s Clothes).
Figures on Serb killings put too high, the West admits – nowNato officials conceded last night that their wartime estimates of the number of Kosovo Albanian civilians massacred by Serb forces might have been too high. They were reacting to findings by forensic experts for the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague who are preparing to complete their work in Kosovo after exhuming about 3,000 bodies. (Guardian).
What was the truth then, what is it today? The media…
Newsinsider Reports on Korea, Kosovo, NATO propaganda, truth and lies – and spies. Numerous stories here.
Media and the US elections – critical analyses The rlationship between media and politicians is the hidden disease of American electoral democracy. Advertising – money paid to the media poutlets – is the single highest campaign expence.
The US as a world order problem
Why Pentagon and State Department hate peace in Korea The problem is that peace in Korea upsets the Pentagon’s applecart. For years, North Korea has been the Pentagon’s dream come true, a perfect bogeyman to drum up support for obscene defense spending. Tiny, impoverished, technologically backward North Korea was built up into a threat so insidious it could be used to justify the additional $60 billion the Pentagon plans to spend on a National Missile Defense (NMD) shield over the next fifteen years. But the accord has already helped take the steam out of Star Wars (as did the recent missile test failure). From The Progressive.
The US ‘Plan Columbia’ – disturbing questions about real agenda Clinton visits Columbia. He promotes “Plan Colombia”, which many observers see as a vehicle his State Department has devised to permit the US to enter the counter-insurgency war against the FARC guerrillas under the cover of “counter-narcotics”. Plan Colombia is the biggest aid package every offered to a Latin American country. Yet it is opposed by many in Colombia who have no sympathy with the guerrillas, because they believe it will provide no exit from the quagmire of 30 years of conflict. Far from bringing peace, they believe it will drag the country deeper into bloodshed. (From The irish Times/Common Dreams).
US weapons exports soaring No wonder some use these weapons and no wonder we then ‘need’ to intervene to stop the killing! (From Muzi.comNews).
Human rights, “humanitarian” intervention & peacekeeping
US elections – what’s in it for women? Women’s votes — not our rights — are key on the campaign trail. First and foremost, the definition of “Woman” that informs most discussions of “the women’s vote” is profoundly limited. When candidates or reporters speak of the gender gap, they’re speaking of white women — and especially young, white, middle-class mothers, the “soccer moms” who’ve garnered so much ink in recent years. But soccer moms aren’t the voters primarily responsible for the gender gap–women of color, often invisible in these discussions, are. (From FAIR).
Independent panel looks at UN peacekeeping in the future – and changes UN philosophy The Panel concurs that consent of the local parties, impartiality and the use of force only in self-defence should remain the bedrock principles of peacekeeping. Experience shows, however, that in the context of intra-State/transnational conflicts, consent may be manipulated in many ways. Impartiality for United Nations operations must therefore mean adherence to the principles of the Charter: where one party to a peace agreement clearly and incontrovertibly is violating its terms, continued equal treatment of all parties by the United Nations can in the best case result in ineffectiveness and in the worst may amount to complicity with evil. No failure did more to damage the standing and credibility of United Nations peacekeeping in the 1990s than its reluctance to distinguish victim from aggressor. (From the UN)
Underdevelopment, alternative economics and sustainability
20 million lives at stake – but who talks about ‘humanitarian intervention’? “As you can see from the fact sheet that was handed out, we still believe that over 20 million people are at risk if this crisis is allowed to spiral into a true famine. The US Government is treating this crisis as the highest priority humanitarian emergency in the world currently. So far, USAID and the Department of Agriculture have committed over $575 million in humanitarian assistance to the relief effort…” says USAID deputy assistant administrator, Leonard Rogers.
The coming water shortage The number of people living in countries facing severe or chronic water shortages is projected to increase more than four-fold over the next 25 years, from an estimated 505 million people today to between 2.4 and 3.2 billion people by 2025, according to Population Action International (PAI). (From IPS/OneWorld).
Af Svenska Irakkommittén mot de Ekonomiska Sanktionerna (SIES) 13 september 2002 FN:s ekonomiska sanktioner mot Irak har nu pågått i tolv år och drabbat det irakiska folket med svåra lidanden. Enligt FN:s egna siffror har mer än 1,5 miljoner människor, varav ca 600 000 barn, dött som en direkt följd av sanktionerna. Dessutom har ett lågintensivt bombkrig mot landet pågått under dessa år. Av all denna förödelse- orsakad huvudsakligen av amerikansk och brittisk politik- har Saddam Husseins brutala och diktatoriska regim snarast stärkts än försvagats. Nu förbereder USA under president Bushs ledning ett storskaligt bombkrig mot Irak som kommer att innebära ett ännu större lidande för civilbefolkningen. Ett sådant krig kommer dessutom att ytterligare undergräva freden och säkerheten i världen. Att upprätta en demokratisk regim i Irak är det irakiska folkets angelägenhet och får enligt folkrätten inte ske med krigshandlingar utifrån. Folkrätten och FN:s stadgar måste respekteras. Vi vädjar till...
LONDON – So far so good, at least on the wider level. While internally Iraq seems on the edge of chaos, the much heralded clash of civilizations between the Muslim and Judaeo-Christian worlds has yet to become apparent. We have anger and despair aplenty in the Arab and Muslim worlds. But very little rushing to the standard and there was no great pilgrimage of warriors to join the fight, as happened when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan twenty years ago, and then, having driven the Red Army out, were left to ferment in that mountainous redoubt. With the armaments supplied by the CIA the mujahidin were transformed into Al Qaeda that became, for a relatively brief moment as these things go, ‘the greatest threat to the homeland that America has ever known.’ Nevertheless a ‘Cold War’ between much of the Muslim world and the West is certainly in full swing. Winston...
Af Svenska Irakkommittén mot de Ekonomiska Sanktionerna (SIES) 13 september 2002 FN:s ekonomiska sanktioner mot Irak har nu pågått i tolv år och drabbat det irakiska folket med svåra lidanden. Enligt FN:s egna siffror har mer än 1,5 miljoner människor, varav ca 600 000 barn, dött som en direkt följd av sanktionerna. Dessutom har ett lågintensivt bombkrig mot landet pågått under dessa år. Av all denna förödelse- orsakad huvudsakligen av amerikansk och brittisk politik- har Saddam Husseins brutala och diktatoriska regim snarast stärkts än försvagats. Nu förbereder USA under president Bushs ledning ett storskaligt bombkrig mot Irak som kommer att innebära ett ännu större lidande för civilbefolkningen. Ett sådant krig kommer dessutom att ytterligare undergräva freden och säkerheten i världen. Att upprätta en demokratisk regim i Irak är det irakiska folkets angelägenhet och får enligt folkrätten inte ske med krigshandlingar utifrån. Folkrätten och FN:s stadgar måste respekteras. Vi vädjar till...
Peace will not result from any “peace” plan circulated to date. Neither will it emerge from warfare – as the elites of NATO, EU, Russia, and Ukraine seem to finally recognise after avoidable, unspeakable losses of people, trust and physical, socio-economic destruction. And horse-trading based on military ‘security’ guarantees reveals only peace and conflict illiteracy. TFF is critical of the widespread and severe misuse of the word peace – as if it did not require any knowledge. But we do not engage in geopolitical-military commentarism or dismissive criticism of present-day Realpolitik and its militarist mindset. Indeed, we do not believe that mainstream political and media elites are aware that they know woefully little about peace and peace-making or see it as a professional field. Thus, we do not expect they would acquaint themselves with a portfolio like this. TFF concentrates on constructive, visionary thinking grounded in the science and art of peace and in our 40 years...
TFF on Substack
Discover more from TFF Transnational Foundation & Jan Oberg.
Af Svenska Irakkommittén mot de Ekonomiska Sanktionerna (SIES) 13 september 2002 FN:s ekonomiska sanktioner mot Irak har nu pågått i tolv år och drabbat det irakiska folket med svåra lidanden. Enligt FN:s egna siffror har mer än 1,5 miljoner människor, varav ca 600 000 barn, dött som en direkt följd av sanktionerna. Dessutom har ett lågintensivt bombkrig mot landet pågått under dessa år. Av all denna förödelse- orsakad huvudsakligen av amerikansk och brittisk politik- har Saddam Husseins brutala och diktatoriska regim snarast stärkts än försvagats. Nu förbereder USA under president Bushs ledning ett storskaligt bombkrig mot Irak som kommer att innebära ett ännu större lidande för civilbefolkningen. Ett sådant krig kommer dessutom att ytterligare undergräva freden och säkerheten i världen. Att upprätta en demokratisk regim i Irak är det irakiska folkets angelägenhet och får enligt folkrätten inte ske med krigshandlingar utifrån. Folkrätten och FN:s stadgar måste respekteras. Vi vädjar till...
Peace will not result from any “peace” plan circulated to date. Neither will it emerge from warfare – as the elites of NATO, EU, Russia, and Ukraine seem to finally recognise after avoidable, unspeakable losses of people, trust and physical, socio-economic destruction. And horse-trading based on military ‘security’ guarantees reveals only peace and conflict illiteracy. TFF is critical of the widespread and severe misuse of the word peace – as if it did not require any knowledge. But we do not engage in geopolitical-military commentarism or dismissive criticism of present-day Realpolitik and its militarist mindset. Indeed, we do not believe that mainstream political and media elites are aware that they know woefully little about peace and peace-making or see it as a professional field. Thus, we do not expect they would acquaint themselves with a portfolio like this. TFF concentrates on constructive, visionary thinking grounded in the science and art of peace and in our 40 years...
Af Svenska Irakkommittén mot de Ekonomiska Sanktionerna (SIES) 13 september 2002 FN:s ekonomiska sanktioner mot Irak har nu pågått i tolv år och drabbat det irakiska folket med svåra lidanden. Enligt FN:s egna siffror har mer än 1,5 miljoner människor, varav ca 600 000 barn, dött som en direkt följd av sanktionerna. Dessutom har ett lågintensivt bombkrig mot landet pågått under dessa år. Av all denna förödelse- orsakad huvudsakligen av amerikansk och brittisk politik- har Saddam Husseins brutala och diktatoriska regim snarast stärkts än försvagats. Nu förbereder USA under president Bushs ledning ett storskaligt bombkrig mot Irak som kommer att innebära ett ännu större lidande för civilbefolkningen. Ett sådant krig kommer dessutom att ytterligare undergräva freden och säkerheten i världen. Att upprätta en demokratisk regim i Irak är det irakiska folkets angelägenhet och får enligt folkrätten inte ske med krigshandlingar utifrån. Folkrätten och FN:s stadgar måste respekteras. Vi vädjar till...
Peace will not result from any “peace” plan circulated to date. Neither will it emerge from warfare – as the elites of NATO, EU, Russia, and Ukraine seem to finally recognise after avoidable, unspeakable losses of people, trust and physical, socio-economic destruction. And horse-trading based on military ‘security’ guarantees reveals only peace and conflict illiteracy. TFF is critical of the widespread and severe misuse of the word peace – as if it did not require any knowledge. But we do not engage in geopolitical-military commentarism or dismissive criticism of present-day Realpolitik and its militarist mindset. Indeed, we do not believe that mainstream political and media elites are aware that they know woefully little about peace and peace-making or see it as a professional field. Thus, we do not expect they would acquaint themselves with a portfolio like this. TFF concentrates on constructive, visionary thinking grounded in the science and art of peace and in our 40 years...
OK, Trump did not get it. But he got a full endorsement of a possible future US regime change in Venezuela. And that is what Ms Machado has advocated. On October 10, 2025, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado. The citation praised her “tireless work promoting democratic rights.” But Ms Machado has openly called for U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, stating on CBS: “The only way to stop the suppression is by force—U.S. force.” She or her party has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S. government-backed body known as a CIA front organisation and for supporting regime-change operations worldwide. And in 2018, she sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asking him to use “force and influence” to help dismantle Venezuela’s government—citing alleged ties to terrorism, Iran and narcotrafficking. This year’s NATO Norwegian prize...
PRESS RELEASE – 6 OCTOBER 2025 LAY DOWN YOUR ARMSPEACE PRIZE FOR 2025 is awarded Francesca Albanese The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories – as the person who, in accordance with Alfred Nobel’s will, has “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations and for the abolition or reduction of standing armies as well as for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Francesca Albanese has forcefully and unwaveringly worked against Israel’s full-scale war on the occupied Palestinian territories, in particular Israel´s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. She has confronted Israel’s systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity in a truly global outreach. Further, she has brought governments, international organisations and people’s groups together to underline the responsibility of the world at large to act and to stop arming, enabling, and profiting from Israel’s ongoing criminal actions. But first of all, Albanese...
Officially, the drones were not identified. By simply thinking critically – which journalists and selected experts no longer do – there may be a good reason for that. And this article will never be mentioned in Denmark… Drones over Denmark. No damage. No trace. No answers. Yet the headlines scream “Russian threat,” and Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen speaks with a certainty that defies logic: “We don’t know they were Russian—but we know Russia is the biggest threat to Europe.” It could be nobody else – unless you make an interest analysis which I did two days ago. This is not security policy. It’s theatre. And the audience is being played. Let’s rewind. These drones—unphotographed, untracked, unclaimed—appear and vanish like ghosts. Airports shut down. Panic spreads. Military budgets swell. And the narrative hardens: Russia is behind it. But what if that’s not just wrong but deliberately misleading? Here’s a hypothesis for...
