Since seizing power in a coup on February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military has launched a violent crackdown against anti-coup protesters—a campaign of terror that may amount to crimes against humanity. With violence spreading, there are fears that the country is slipping toward full-scale civil war and state collapse. The international community has appeared almost powerless […]
Read moreregion: Asia and the Pacific
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UN political engagement in Nepal between 2002 and 2018 has long been considered a successful example of sustained and innovative support to a critical peace process. Many governments in the broader region, however, have largely eschewed international assistance in resolving conflicts, perceiving it as an unnecessary infringement on state sovereignty or a threat to regional […]
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In recent decades, sanctions have increasingly been used as a foreign policy tool. The UN Security Council has imposed a total of fourteen sanctions regimes alongside those imposed autonomously by the EU, the US, and other countries. Despite efforts to institute more targeted sanctions regimes, these regimes continue to impede or prevent the provision of […]
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Myanmar simultaneously faces multiple armed conflicts and crises, each with its own challenges. In Rakhine state, the government’s persecution of the Rohingya people has led to massive displacement, as have decades of armed conflict in Kachin and northern Shan states. Combined with chronic underdevelopment, these humanitarian crises have left people without access to adequate healthcare, […]
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Spanning a period of twenty-one years, the Vietnamese “boat people” exodus was the last major refugee crisis of the Cold War. The international response agreed on in Geneva in 1979 was in line with Western Cold War values, but by 1988 it had begun to unravel. The new international response took the form of the […]
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On July 5th, the International Peace Institute, together with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea, held a seminar in Vienna on the North Asia Peace Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI). The event was designed to increase awareness of NAPCI among Vienna-based institutions, and to enable NAPCI to learn from such institutions like the […]
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The US has reasons to be invested in the success of rival superpower China and should be wary of the consequences for the US of Chinese failure. This was a key point of Thomas J. Christensen’s book The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, which he discussed at an IPI Distinguished Author […]
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On January 20th, Mongolia’s new Foreign Minister Purevsuren Lundeg visited the IPI Vienna office and gave an informal briefing on Mongolia’s contemporary foreign policy priorities and challenges. He described his country’s highest priorities as domestic stability, good relations with Mongolia’s two neighbors China and Russia, and links to “third neighbors,” particularly the United States, the […]
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South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se says a military conflict could be in the cards in northeast Asia, a region plagued by historical, regional, and security-related tensions, and he warned that the cost of keeping and testing nuclear weapons will be so high that it could threaten the survival of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s […]
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Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Myanmar Vijay Nambiar said that over the past four years, the country has achieved remarkable progress in terms of democratic and political reform, but that ethnic tensions between the Buddhist majority and the Muslim minority still pose a serious threat to Myanmar’s path to reform and stability. At a […]
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