HAVANA, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Hurricane Ike charged toward Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico as a ferocious Category 4 storm on Saturday, while Tropical Storm Hanna drenched the U.S. Atlantic coast after barreling ashore in the Carolinas.

Ike's top sustained winds reached 135 miles per hour (215 kph), making it an 'extremely dangerous' Category 4 on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

KAIPTC has become West Africa's Operational Level Focus for Conflict Prevention and Peace Studies. Delivering courses to military and civilian personnel involved in Peace Support Operations throughout the world, it will lead original and challenging research into the causes and subsequent management of conflict and the promotion of peace.

This paper quantifies the impact of terrorism and conflicts on income per capita growth in Asia for 1970–2004. Panel estimations show that transnational terrorist attacks had a significant growth-limiting effect. Transnational terrorism reduces growth by crowding in government expenditures. An internal conflict has the greatest growth concern, about twice that of transnational terrorism. For developing Asian countries, intrastate and interstate wars have a much greater impact than terrorism do more...

This note discusses the increasing use of community driven approaches in conflict environments. It underscores the appropriateness of such approaches in countries emerging from conflict as a mechanism for social and physical reconstruction. The note presents a framework for a nuanced, conflict-sensitive implementation of community driven programming, based on a disaggregated analysis of the ten-year period following the end of war.

In 2007, 414 natural disasters were reported. They killed 16847 persons, affected more than 211 million others and caused over 74.9 US$ billion in economic damages.

Even if a greater diffusion of disaster occurrence across countries was noted, the toll of human impacts remained concentrated across a small number of disasters and countries. Despite no 'mega disaster' being reported, the 10 most important disasters in terms of mortality, victims, and damage accounted for 55.6%, 85.2%, and 66.2% more...

At the requested of the U.S. Departments of State and Defense in January 2008, the United States Institute of Peace conduct an independent assessment of the process by which projects funded under Section 1207 of the National Defense Authorization Acts of FY 2006 and FY 2007 were developed, reviewed, and approved for funding. The Institute agreed to conduct the study because the 1207 program is an example of the U.S. military’s growing involvement in integrated “whole-of-government” approac more...

The areas around refugee or internally displaced persons (IDP) camps are notoriously dangerous. Yet every day, millions of women and girls venture out into this danger, risking rape, assault, abduction, theft or even murder, in order to collect firewood to cook with or to sell in order to survive.

The Women's Commission is pushing for solutions that reduce displaced women's and girls' vulnerability to gender-based violence (GBV) as they collect firewood. Physical protection strategies, such more...

The Crisis and Risk Network CRN (the former Comprehensive Risk Analysis and Management Network) is an initiative for international dialog on security risks and vulnerabilities, risk analysis and management, emergency preparedness, and crisis management.

A pioneering Master program designed to strengthen and develop the security policy expertise and crisis management skills of executives and professionals.

A part-time Executive Master program offered by ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in cooperation with CIS - Center for Comparative and International Studies HKA - Swiss Armed Forces College and leading academic partner institutions in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Applications are no more...

Facts on International Relations and Security Trends (FIRST) is a free-of-charge service for politicians, journalists, researchers and the interested public. FIRST is a joint project of the International Relations and Security Network (ISN) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The integrated database system contains clearly documented information from research institutes around the world. It covers areas in the field of international relations and security, such more...