Category Civil Society

Johns Hopkins SAIS Faculty and Fellow Reflections: The War in Ukraine at One Year

One year after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) faculty and SAIS Foreign Policy Institute fellows explain the current state of the war, the varying international responses to it, and…

Colombia sunset viewing the green surroundings of Minca

Can the Government Police Itself? Colombia’s False Positives Scandal and its Lessons for Atrocity Prevention

Introduction In April of 2022, a Colombian general and ten other servicemembers admitted that they had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.[1] It was the first time that senior Colombian military officials admitted to wrongdoing since the systemic killing…

Toolkit for a Successful Movement: Digital Tools in Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement

In 2014, hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Taipei to protest the Cross-Strait Services Agreement—a free trade agreement between Taiwan and Beijing—believing it would give the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) too much political and economic control over the island. The protesters wielded social media and the internet to communicate, inform and mobilize. These tools did not work in a vacuum, however, and understanding their interactions with conventional media and offline associations becomes crucial. This paper demonstrates how, through one-way and interactive communications, the participants of the Sunflower Movement used digital tools to realize their demands.