Africa, tree, birds

The New Scramble for Africa: Shifting Global Dynamics in 2025

Written by Elisa Garbil – 05.05.2025 The New Scramble for Africa is a term that has gained significant traction in recent years to describe the growing competition among global powers over Africa’s vast resources, strategic locations, and emerging markets. Unlike the colonial-era scramble that saw European powers carving up the continent for territorial domination in…

Chasing the Scream - Johann Hari

Chasing the Scream: The Search for the Truth About Addiction – Johann Hari

Written by Elisa Garbil – 02.05.2025 Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari takes us beyond headlines and criminal statistics to confront a far more complex and urgent truth: our global drug policies are not just failing and they are actively producing harm. While it may seem a departure from previous discussions on extremism or gender inequality, this…

Trump attempts to increase consumer confidence and fails

Consumer Confidence Collapses and Brings International Risks

From Wall Street to the Eurozone: Why US Consumer Confidence Collapse Signals Strategic Risk for European Business Leaders The latest collapse in US consumer confidence should serve as a strategic wake-up call for European business leaders. Beneath the headlines of volatile equity markets and fiscal reboots lies a deeper, more structural threat: the world’s largest…

Fraud in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Innovation, Exploitation, and the Future of Financial Risk

Fraud in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Innovation, Exploitation, and the Future of Financial Risk

In the rapidly digitizing global economy, fraud has emerged not merely as a persistent nuisance but as a transformative and persistently international risk. The convergence of digital payments, mobile banking, and artificial intelligence has enabled new efficiencies for consumers and businesses alike, but it has also created fertile ground for exploitation. In 2024, global losses…

Jason Costain

Jason Costain

Jason Costain is a fraud trouble-shooter and the founder of Javloc.com, a boutique fraud consultancy that provides specialist fraud advice. Jason has spent 30 years fighting fraud; building and leading successful banking fraud defence teams for some of the world’s biggest banks. Jason specialises in fraud defence systems, scam prevention, biometric authentication, big data and…

Episode 227: Fraud and KYC with Jason Costain

This week on The International Risk Podcast, Dominic Bowen speaks with Jason Costain, one of the UK’s leading fraud strategists and the founder of Javloc, a specialist consultancy in financial crime prevention. In this deep-dive episode, they examine the accelerating threat landscape shaped by fraud, artificial intelligence, and the unintended consequences of digital innovation. From…

military, men, masculine, militarised masculinity

Militarised Masculinities

Written by Elisa Garbil – 28.04.2025 The global arms trade doesn’t just fuel warzones, it fuels inequality, exploitation, and violence against the most vulnerable and these risks can be observed internationally. While men and boys are often portrayed as the primary actors in conflict, it is women and girls who disproportionately bear the brunt of…

Episode 226: Arms Trade from a Feminist Security Perspective with Anna Provan

Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil Today we’ll dive into the often-overlooked realities of how women and girls experience armed conflict! Whether women are the victims, combatants, or leaders in peace-building. From the risks of gender-based violence and the underrepresentation of women in disarmament efforts to the long-term socio-economic impacts of the global arms trade, this…

Anna Provan, CFFP

Anna Provan

Anna Provan is the Peace and Security Programme Manager at the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP). She has a proven track record of research, writing, public engagement, and capacity-building on the gendered and humanitarian impacts of weapons use and transfer, as well as the wider implications of conflict and militarisation for the pursuit of…