Unsurprisingly, informal peace talks “to determine whether common ground exists for [a] lasting solution to the Cyprus problem” fell short earlier this month. The UN-led 5+1 conference, attended by the leaders of Northern and Southern Cyprus as well as the foreign ministers of the “guarantors” of Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, resulted in nothing […]
Lessons from the Ebola Outbreak Previous responses to public health crises such as the Ebola outbreak of 2014-16 have highlighted the importance of gender dynamics in designing communication and intervention strategies. Because such outbreaks exert unequal impacts across gender and socio-economic strata, it is critical for emergency response interventions to consult women-led, grassroots-level, civil society […]
Last week’s lethal shooting of 18-year-old Syrian refugee Ali El Hemdan could work to demoralize Turkey’s 3.6 million Syrian refugees as they grapple with increased hardship amid the COVID-19 pandemic. On the afternoon of April 27, Hemdan was shot and killed by a police officer after allegedly failing to stop for violating Turkey’s nationwide stay-at-home […]
Özge Sönmez Vardar is Program Director at YUVA Association, an Istanbul-based NGO that tackles issues relating to ecology, human rights, and poverty eradication simultaneously. In 2019, Özge was selected by the Malala Fund to be a Gulmakai Champion from the Syria region, for her work supporting girls’ education, especially refugee girls’ access to education and […]
In March 2019, Rukmini Banerjee (President of HasNa) traveled to Nepal to attend the South Asian Regional Institute for the Study and Practice of Strategic Nonviolent Action organized by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Center for Social Change, National Network for the Families of the Disappeared, and Department of Conflict, Peace, and Development Studies, […]
Earlier this month, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) partnered with Nepal’s Center for Social Change (CSC), Department of Conflict, Peace, and Development Studies, Tribhuvan University, and the National Network of the Families of the Disappeared (NEFAD) to organize a week-long, intensive training program on non-violent civil resistance. The Asian Action Institute was held […]
On November 26, the Kurdish Policy Research Center hosted a conversation at the National Press Club with Ismail Beşikçi on the history of the Kurdish Question, from Sykes-Picot to last year’s referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan. Beşikçi has been studying and writing about Kurdish politics since the 1960s. His work has been very controversial in his native […]
This past Thursday, HasNa hosted the third gathering in our DemoSapiens discussion series, co-hosted with MetaCulture. DemoSapiens comes from the Greek demos, meaning “people” and sapiens, meaning “wise,” because the series is designed to allow us to learn from one another’s wisdom. This third episode really leaned into that intention; there was no presentation and the entirety […]
The United States Institute for Peace‘s November 19 event on the path to peace in Afghanistan was a fascinating conversation between scholars who are experts on Afghanistan and military actors with the power to affect change on the ground. It was a very interesting practical example of the integrating different areas of expertise in the […]
On October 2, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies hosted a fascinating discussion with Christian evangelist Rob Schenck. Schenck spoke earnestly about conviction and faith and his recent turn away many mainstream evangelical political positions. Rob Schenck framed his life story around three main conversions. His first conversion was purely religious; as a […]
