...its 50th anniversary. We would like to use the year to look back on the eventful history of the IFSH and at the same time take a look at current challenges and developments. What are the central security policy debates today and how can our work contribute to peaceful coexistence? In short: what constitutes peace research today?
Established as a foundation on 11 June 1971 in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the Institute can look back on many years of dealing with questions of peace and security. From the very beginning, the Institute's work has focussed on the interplay between research and the concrete handling of current security policy challenges.

Peace and security research

Our research provides orientation in a time of profound upheaval and crisis. For the IFSH’s focal topics are directed towards the central societal challenges of our time, be it the question of why we are experiencing increasing societal polarisation and why societal cohesion is increasingly being called into question, or what security risks technological change brings with it and why we may experience a new global arms race in the future; or what the consequences of climate change are for security and peace; or how international organisations can secure peace worldwide and, above all, whether the European peace project can still have a future – and what that future will be.

Independent research is more indispensable than ever

Especially today, analyses and evaluations by independent scientists and scholars are indispensable in informing political and social debates. For we are facing complex challenges in all these fields. Our researchers contribute to addressing these challenges in the interest of a security policy that is consistently compatible with peace. Since the IFSH’s founding, the focus of our research has been on a comprehensive approach to security policy issues.