• SMALL ARMS:Small Arms Survey 2005: Weapons at War • HUMAN RIGHTS: Report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission to Zimbabwe • POST-CONFLICT: Establishing Law and Order After Conflict • ARMED CONFLICT: A Dossier of Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005 • HEALTH: HIV and National Security: Where Are the Links? • INT'L LAW: Afghanistan: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: 1978-2001 • PREVENTION: Disengagement and Its Discontents: What Will the Israeli Settlers Do? • RESOURCES: The Freeport Mine and the Indonesian Security Forces • DEVELOPMENT: Development, Inequality, and War in Africa • TERRORISM: Suicide Terrorism as Strategy: Case Studies of Hamas and the PKK • ARMED GROUPS: Demobilization and Reintegration of Paramilitaries in Colombia • GOVERNANCE: A U.S. Approach to Governance and Security in the Gulf of Guinea SMALL ARMS Small Arms Survey 2005: Weapons at War Small Arms Survey Small arms are responsible for the majority of direct conflict deaths, clearly outweighing other types of arms, finds the 2005 edition of the Small Arms Survey. Depending on the nature of the fighting, which varies from one conflict to another, small arms cause an estimated 60 to 90 per cent of all direct war deaths. In focusing on armed conflict, the Small Arms Survey 2005 affirms that small arms play a defining role in all phases of contemporary conflict—by causing injury and death during conflict, by allowing conflicts to persist through ongoing arms transfers, and most significantly by exacerbating armed violence during critical ‘post-conflict’ phases. The Survey reports that ‘post-conflict’ regions often experience higher levels of firearm violence than they did before, or even during, armed conflict. Beyond the estimated 100,000 direct deaths, contemporary wars also cause a larger but unquantifiable number of indirect deaths due to conflict-related social disruption, which leads to malnutrition, starvation, and deaths from preventable diseases. Research shows that small arms also play an important role in these deaths, by restricting the access of humanitarian and relief organizations to vulnerable populations. Continue Reading More on Small Arms, Light Weapons and Landmines HUMAN RIGHTS Report of the Fact-Finding Mission to Zimbabwe to assess the Scope and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina United Nations On 19 May 2005, with little or no warning, the Government of Zimbabwe embarked on an operation to "clean-up" its cities. It was a "crash" operation known as "Operation Murambatsvina", referred to in this report as Operation Restore Order. It started in the Zimbabwe capital, Harare, and rapidly evolved into a nationwide demolition and eviction campaign carried out by the police and the army. Popularly referred to as “Operation Tsunami” because of its speed and ferocity it resulted in the destruction of homes, business premises and vending sites. It is estimated that some 700,000 people in cities across the country have lost either their homes, their source of livelihood or both. Indirectly, a further 2.4 million people have been affected in varying degrees. Hundreds of thousands of women, men and children were made homeless, without access to food, water and sanitation, or health care. Education for thousands of school age children has been disrupted. Many of the sick, including those with HIV and AIDS, no longer have access to care. The vast majority of those directly and indirectly affected are the poor and disadvantaged segments of the population. They are, today, deeper in poverty, deprivation and destitution, and have been rendered more vulnerable. Continue reading More on Human Rights POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION Establishing Law and Order After Conflict RAND Corporation The United States' nation-building missions in Iraq and Afghanistan largely have been unsuccessful in establishing law and order in the two nations, according to this RAND Corporation study. Analyzing current and past levels of political violence, crime rates, rule of law metrics, and public opinion polls, researchers found that nation-building operations in the two nations have fallen short of their goals. By contrast, U.S. and allied nation-building efforts have been more favorable in the recent cases of Kosovo and East Timor. Researchers compared U.S. and allied efforts in reconstructing internal security institutions in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq with the missions in Panama, El Salvador, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and East Timor. Internal security institutions include police, justice, and military structures. The report recommends that the United States should devote as much attention to planning post-conflict internal security as to planning the combat phase of nation-building operations. Continue reading More on Peace Operations and Post-Conflict Reconstruction ARMED CONFLICT A Dossier of Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005 Oxford Research Group // Iraqi Body Count This is the first detailed account of all non-combatants reported killed or wounded during the first two years of the continuing conflict. The report, published by Iraq Body Count in association with Oxford Research Group, is based on comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 media reports published between March 2003 and March 2005. Data has been extracted from a comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 press and media reports published since March 2003 According to this report, 24,865 civilians have been reported killed, almost all of them as a direct result of violence, between 20 March 2003 and 19 March 2005. The population of Iraq is approximately 25,000,000, meaning that one in every thousand Iraqis has been violently killed since March 2003. Women and children accounted for almost 20% of all civilian deaths. In terms of who was responsible for the killings, it is estimated that US-led forces accounted for 37% of civilian victims, anti-occupation forces (or insurgents) for 9%, and post-invasion criminal violence for 36%. More than half of civilian deaths involved explosive devices. Continue reading More on Armed Conflict HEALTH AND SECURITY HIV and National Security: Where Are the Links? Council on Foreign Relations The HIV/AIDS pandemic is affecting the security of states throughout the world, weakening economies, government structures, military and police forces, and social structures. Authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Laurie Garrett, the report finds that states with high rates of HIV infection in their productive labor forces and uniformed services have managed to remain intact, from the village level on up, through a plethora of coping mechanisms. But many of these nations are "coping" with HIV while also experiencing massive poverty, tuberculosis, drug-resistant malaria, regional conflicts and a host of other serious challenges. HIV is exacerbating each of these problems, and they, in turn, are straining mechanisms designed to cope with AIDS to the point of failure. These effects are being felt long before the great wave of AIDS illnesses and deaths have occurred in most of these countries, and are predicted to worsen deeply over the coming ten years. Continue reading More on Health and Security INTERNATIONAL LAW Casting Shadows: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: 1978-2001 Afghanistan Justice Project The Afghanistan Justice Project (AJP), an independent research and advocacy organization, on 17th July, released a 168-page report documenting war crimes by political leaders and armed factions during every phase of the war in Afghanistan, 1978-2001. The report is the result of more than three years of field research by the organization. The Afghanistan Justice Project noted that in September 2005, Afghanistan will hold parliamentary elections. The candidates for parliamentary seats include persons against whom there is credible evidence of responsibility for war crimes. Some are named in the report. Although there is no mechanism in place for excluding those persons from running for office, the Afghanistan Justice Project urges that the records of candidates should be open to public scrutiny. Continue reading More on International Law, Justice and Accountability CONFLICT PREVENTION Disengagement and Its Discontents: What Will the Israeli Settlers Do? Crisis Group As Israel begins its disengagement from Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank, the international community should ensure withdrawal is complete and followed by a credible peace process. Although it will affect only a small minority of the settler community and cover only a small portion of the occupied territories, the current disengagement will have profound implications for both Israel and Israeli-Palestinian relations. This process must lead to far more substantive territorial withdrawals and settlement evacuation, an end to the armed confrontation and the reining in of militant Palestinian groups. If disengagement is mishandled, accompanied by violent settler resistance or Palestinian attacks, the prospects for peace would be much bleaker. This background report describes the disengagement plan, maps out the settler constituencies that are bracing for it, and assesses the resistance scenarios being contemplated. Continue reading More on Conflict Prevention NATURAL RESOURCES Paying for Protection: The Freeport Mine and the Indonesian Security Forces Global Witness The relationship between mining company Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold and the Indonesian military - controversial since the unexplained killings of three teachers working for the company in 2002 - comes under renewed scrutiny in a report by Global Witness. After the killings, Freeport revealed payments by its local subsidiary totalling US$10.3 million in 2001 and 2002 for military and police protection of its mine in Indonesia's rebellious Papua province. Freeport said these payments were for infrastructure, travel, food and other legitimate costs for the military and police, but the company has not told the whole story. "Paying for Protection: The Freeport Mine and the Indonesian Security Forces" reveals that prior to April 2003, large sums appear to have gone directly to individual military and police officers, not to the Indonesian government. Most troubling, payments totalling US$247,705 appear to have gone to General Mahidin Simbolon, a controversial figure who held a senior position in the Indonesian military command covering East Timor in 1999, where soldiers and militiamen committed crimes against humanity that included at least 1,200 murders. Continue reading More on Natural Resources and Armed Conflict DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY Development, Inequality, and War in Africa Economists for Peace and Security The four horsemen of the apocalypse – war, disease, hunger, and displacement – characterize many African lives. Indeed, about twenty percent of Africans live in countries seriously disrupted by war or state violence. The cost of conflict includes refugee flows, rising military expenditure, damage to transport and communication facilities, reduction in trade and investment, and diversion of resources from development. The World Bank estimates that a civil war in an African country lowers its per capita output by 2.2 percentage points annually. The 800,000 estimated deaths (11 percent of the population) from genocide in Rwanda represented perhaps the highest non-natural casualty rate in history. Other African emergencies in recent years include Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, and Uganda. This article relates how the political economy of African states affects humanitarian emergencies, defined as a human-made crisis in which large numbers of people die and suffer from war, state violence, and refugee displacement. Humanitarian emergencies are directly correlated with declining incomes, high income inequality, competition for extraction of mineral wealth, military centrality as defined by military expenditure as a percentage of GNP, and conflict tradition. In contrast to a widely-held belief, ethnic differences are a symptom, not a cause, of conflict. Continue reading More on Development and Security TERRORISM Suicide Terrorism as Strategy: Case Studies of Hamas and the Kurdistan Workers Party Center for Contemporary Conflict Ali Wyne asks why some terrorist organizations employ suicide terrorism to advance their objectives, while others do not. Wyne examines why Hamas — the central terrorist organization operating within the Occupied Territories — has gradually escalated its employment of suicide terrorism, while the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a separatist group operating in Turkey, has gradually abandoned it as a component of its broader strategy. He discusses the activities of these groups within the context of two competing explanations of suicide terrorism: those which focus on religious motivations, and those which focus on strategic motivations. Wyne believes while the first set of explanations is meritorious in some instances, that the latter set of explanations is much more broadly applicable — and, as such, is more legitimate. Continue reading More on Terrorism NON-STATE ARMED GROUPS To End a War: Demobilization and Reintegration of Paramilitaries in Colombia Bonn International Center for Conversion This paper studies the prerequisites and implementation of the current disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DD&R) process of paramilitaries in Colombia. It treats DD&R as an integral part of the peace process. The report covers especailly the so called "collective demobilization" of right-wing paramilitaries and the demobilization of individual fighters. The report stresses the need for more technical support in the implementation of the DD&R process as well as improved monitoring and an evaluation. The report recommends special DD&R programs for female and disabled ex-combatants, and a small arms and light weapons collection program; it also discusses the impact of international support measures. Finally it formulates recommendations geared at participants and supporters of the DD&R process. Continue reading More on Armies, Paramilitaries and Non-State Armed Groups GOVERNANCE AND SECURITY A Strategic U.S. Approach to Governance and Security in the Gulf of Guinea Center for Strategic and International Studies An exceptional mix of U.S. interests are at play in West Africa's Gulf of Guinea. The region starkly illustrates both the challenges and the promise of efforts to foster democracy, respect for human rights, poverty alleviation, counterterrorism, regional conflict prevention and peacekeeping, and to curb HIV/AIDS and other infections diseases, organized crime, corruption, and instability. Also at stake are rising U.S. interests in the region's energy sector, already prominent and set to expand even further in the coming decade. At the same time, many countries in the region are vulnerable to instability and violence, stemming from vast internal disparities in wealth, poor governance, a lack of state capacity, and rising criminality. Continue reading More on Governance and Security Compiled by Robert Hartfiel Human Security Research is produced by the Human Security Centre at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC. The Human Security Centre produces the annual Human Security Report and is funded by the governments of Canada, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. For more information on human security visit the Human Security Gateway, an online research and information database that contains a broad range of human security-related resources. To subscribe to Human Security Research , send an email to hsc.list@ubc.ca with 'subscribe HS Research' in the subject field or click here. To unsubscribe, please reply to this message with 'unsubscribe HS Research' in the subject heading. |
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