About the author(s):
Rogier is a researcher at the Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA) and works at the Dutch National Prosecutor’s Office. He holds LL.M-degrees from Utrecht University and the University of Nottingham. Before taking up his current positions, he was an associate legal officer in Chambers at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and a legal adviser at the International Humanitarian Law Division of the Netherlands Red Cross.
Rogier is an adjunct-lecturer at the Hague University of Applied Sciences, where he teaches international humanitarian law, and he co-convenes the Hague Initiative for Law and Armed Conflict.
IRIN News, which recently became independent of the UN, has launched a special feature up called “Forgotten conflicts: Drawing attention to the wars we neglect”. It explains that at present “there are more than 40 conflicts unfolding in countries around the world. Many of them don’t get the media or policy attention of the wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or Ukraine, and they may not have the same geopolitical or economic importance. But the toll of decades-long conflicts – from Colombia to the Ogaden, from Kashmir to Western Sahara – is just as devastating for the people who live there.”
In a series of special features, IRIN “examines the root causes, human cost and potential for peace” of such conflicts. The first ones are Casamance (in West-Africa), South Kordofan (Sudan) and southern Thailand.
Each feature includes information about the conflict, states and graphs (like the ones below), as well as informative and personal stories about the conflict and the impact on those involved.
Although for more in-depth analyses you probably need to continue going to (paid) armed conflict databases such as SIPRI, “Forgotten Conflicts” is a useful new tool to get initial information about the various ongoing (non-international) armed conflicts around the world.
