Bryony Lau

A practitioner guide This guide will acquaint development practitioners, those funding surveys, international and local NGOs, consultants and think tanks with the use of surveys in preventing or countering violent extremism (CVE). Surveys are a powerful and flexible tool with many potential applications to CVE. This guide will help practitioners en… Read more

How we describe violence—riots, insurgency, terrorism, genocide, ethnic cleansing—is always politically charged even when it is well-intentioned. Language shapes our understanding of the perpetrators, their motives, and the legitimacy of their cause. It names patterns of violent behavior, drawing parallels across very different political contexts…. Read more

The new set of post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals includes for the first time a target that specifically sets out to promote peaceful and inclusive societies, marking an increase in awareness that peace and security is critical for sustainable development.

Devising quantitative measures of state weakness is big business in the development industry. As awareness of the importance of institutions to growth and peace has spread, development practitioners and policymakers have been served an ever-expanding smorgasbord of state fragility indices (see here, here, and here). Countries receive a numerical score based on a range of indicators deemed to capture the ability of states to serve their people.