Post-9/11, the world is witnessing increasing violations of international law, especially International Human Rights Law (IHRL) and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in conflict situations, specifically where powerful states are involved, on the one hand, and a lack of consequences for these violations, on the other.
During the BJP election campaign, in an elections rally, Narendra Modi asked, in the context of nuclear weapons: “What do we have then? Have we kept our nuclear bomb for Diwali?” – as reported in The Hindu 21 April 2019. He went on to add that India had the capability to launch nuclear attacks from land, air…
As warfare has altered over the decades with the shifting of the ‘centre of gravity’ and the notion of the cold war evolving into Hybrid warfare, so diplomacy and the domain of what was referred to as ‘foreign policy” – but now is more cohesively understood as a state’s external policy – have also altered…
By Shireen M Mazari Background The Kashmir conflict has once again come centre stage in the aftermath of the continuing violence being perpetrated by the Indian Occupying security forces against unarmed Kashmiris. Also, for the first time a UN body finally took the initiative with the publication of the first ever Report by the Office…
This year (2018), we heard the word ‘hybrid warfare’ ad nauseum within Pakistan and also in many Western strategic and leadership circles – as if this were a new discovery, a new type of warfare confronting states. So those who in the course of normal democratic politics would have been regarded as mere critics of…
UN Women is all set to mark 16 days of activism against gender-based violence but unfortunately it has failed to include violence against women in conflict zones within this agenda. Yet this is a critical aspect of violence against women and its impact on family and societal structures. Ironically, given the recent scandals that have…
By Dr. Shireen M Mazari The inadequate response on the part of the state and government (both the previous PML-N government and the caretaker) on Kashmir in the wake of the first-ever report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released on June 14, 2018 is astounding and reflects a…
by Dr Shireen M Mazari Pakistan gets placed on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Grey List. The US threatens Pakistan on multiple counts but we remain silent. India increases its cross-LoC and Working Boundary attacks, but Pakistan does not raise the issue in the UN (at least not effectively). India gets membership of three…
By Dr Shireen M Mazari At the 2017 EU Non Proliferation and Disarmament Conference in Brussels on 12-13 December 2017, the same arguments put forward decades earlier came forth on the same issues. The perspectives remain the same, as do the arguments, although some new issues have come centre-stage now. For instance, North Korea has…
by Amina Afzal Director Strategic Studies Institute Islamabad (SSII) In April 2016, India took a significant step towards completing its nuclear triad with the test of its K-4 intermediate-range, submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from India’s first indigenously-produced nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant. A month later, a Pakistani foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz, issued a policy statement at the United Nations General Assembly…