Reporters Without Borders (RSF) launched a new awareness campaign last week about the persecution of journalists and news media in Libya (Figure 1); since the end of the Libyan revolution in 2011, RSF has reported a number of murders, abductions, and physical attacks or acts of harassment targeting journalists.[1] This trend is not unique to…
Does the use of remote violence indicate weakness in a non-state conflict actor? Forms of ‘remote violence’, such as roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), enable armed groups to attack targets that they do not have the capacity to face directly. As a result these weapons have been described as ‘weapons of the weak’…
In February 2012, Boko Haram members burned down three schools in the town of Maiduguri in north-eastern Nigeria. The group claimed that the attack was provoked by indiscriminate student arrests in Islamic schools by state forces (IRIN, 4 October 2013). In this instance, schools became sites of retaliation against government actions perceived as repressive by…