• HUMAN RIGHTS:Counting the Cost: Twenty Years of War in Northern Uganda • DISPLACEMENT: A Global Overview of IDP Trends and Developments in 2005 • CONFLICT PREVENTION: UN Arms Embargoes: An Overview of the Last Ten Years • PEACE OPERATIONS: Peace Operations in Africa • HEALTH: Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A Nationwide Survey • PEACEMAKING: "Conflict Syndrome" and the Demise of the Oslo Accords • DEVELOPMENT: Economic Impact of Peacekeeping - Final Report • HUMANITARIAN AID: Trends and Issues in Military-Humanitarian Relations • INTERNATIONAL LAW: Guatemala in the 1980s: A Genocide Turned into Ethnocide? • GENDER: Fuel Alternatives and Protection Strategies for Displaced Women and Girls • RESOURCES: Governance, Mining and the Transitional Regime in the DRC • FOREIGN POLICY: Human Security on Foreign Policy Agendas HUMAN RIGHTS Counting the Cost: Twenty Years of War in Northern Uganda Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda Northern Uganda is trapped in a deadly cycle of violence and suffering. After 20 years the war shows no signs of abating, and each passing day takes a greater toll on the women, men, and children affected by the crisis. Each month more than 3,500 people die from easily preventable diseases, extreme violence and torture. Hundreds of children are abducted and abused, or killed in battle. Nearly two million people are forced to live in squalid and life-threatening conditions, dependent upon relief and denied access to incomes and education. It is a humanitarian catastrophe of dreadful proportions, fuelled not only by terrible acts of war and violence, the continuing failure of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to cease its brutal campaign of violence against civilians, and the failure of both the Government of Uganda (GoU) and the international community to uphold their legal obligations to secure the protection, security, and peace for the civilian population. After 20 years, the time has come for all parties involved to act decisively. It is time for the LRA, the GoU, and the international community to fully acknowledge the true scale and horror of the situation in northern Uganda, and to act resolutely and without delay, both to guarantee the effective protection of civilians and to secure a just and lasting peace. Continue Reading More on Human Rights DISPLACEMENT Internal Displacement: A Global Overview of Trends and Developments in 2005 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre Although the number of people internally displaced within their own countries by conflict decreased slightly during 2005, the global internal displacement crisis remained at an alarming level, according to this report. “The report clearly shows that most governments in countries affected by conflict fail to live up to their responsibility to prevent arbitrary displacement and ensure the safety and well-being of their displaced citizens”, said Elisabeth Rasmusson, head of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. “Even worse, the very governments that have committed themselves under international law to protect and assist their citizens are in many cases among the main perpetrators of arbitrary displacement.” Internally displaced people – or IDPs – are among the most vulnerable victims of conflict. Some 23.7 million people were internally displaced at the end of 2005 (down from 25.3 million in the previous year), more than half of them in Africa. Over two million people were driven from their homes in 2005 alone, nearly 600,000 of them as a result of the Zimbabwean government’s crackdown on urban shanty dwellings. Hundreds of thousands of others were uprooted by the conflicts in Colombia, DR Congo, Iraq and Sudan. Continue reading More on Refugees and Internally Displaced People CONFLICT PREVENTION UN Arms Embargoes: An Overview of the Last Ten Years Control Arms Campaign UN arms embargoes are systematically violated and must be urgently strengthened if they are to stop weapons fuelling human rights abuses, according to a report 1 being presented to the UN Security Council today (Mar. 16). According to the Control Arms Campaign, every one of the 13 UN arms embargoes imposed in the last decade has been repeatedly violated. And despite hundreds of embargo breakers being named in UN reports, only a handful have been successfully prosecuted. “Over the past ten years systematic violations of United Nations arms embargoes have met with almost no successful prosecutions. Unscrupulous arms dealers continue to get away with grave human rights abuses and make a mockery of the UN Security Council’s efforts, “ said Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s Secretary General. Control Arms campaigners will today appeal to the UN Security Council for states to strengthen the enforcement of UN embargoes. They will argue for a raft of new measures, including the urgent agreement of an International Arms Trade Treaty. This Treaty would enable governments to act in unison to strictly control conventional arms transfers, thereby creating the conditions for UN arms embargoes to be properly respected. Since the Campaign began in October 2003, over 45 countries have stated their support for such a treaty. Continue reading More on Conflict Prevention PEACE OPERATIONS Peace Operations in Africa International Peace Academy What are the priorities for boosting regional and global capacities to respond more consistently and more quickly to violent and destabilizing conflicts in Africa? How can peace operations in Africa be improved to further increase the odds that such conflicts do not recur and development can proceed? In the past year, international attention has concentrated on expanding capacity to conduct peace operations in Africa. To this end, African leaders have set upon improving the African Union (AU)’s ability to handle security and humanitarian problems on the continent. However, despite the enormous need and noble pledges of support, external commitments to support peace operations and related capacity-building in all of Africa amounted to only about USD 3 billion in 2004, a meager sum in comparison to commitments elsewhere. The existing gap between aspirations and realities suggests that more consultation is necessary between actors from the continent and external supporters. Such communication is necessary to prevent needless duplication of effort and to ensure that (limited) resources are applied to areas of real (and overwhelming) need. Continue reading More on Peace Operations and Post-Conflict Reconstruction HEALTH Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A Nationwide Survey International Rescue Committee Commencing in 1998, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been a humanitarian disaster, but has drawn little response from the international community. To document rates and trends in mortality and provide recommendations for political and humanitarian interventions, we did a nationwide mortality survey during April–July, 2004. 19 500 households were visited. The national crude mortality rate of 2.1 deaths per 1000 per month (95% CI 1.6–2.6) was 40% higher than the sub-Saharan regional level (1.5), corresponding to 600 000 more deaths than would be expected during the recall period and 38 000 excess deaths per month. Total death toll from the conflict (1998–2004) was estimated to be 3.9 million. Mortality rate was higher in unstable eastern provinces, showing the effect of insecurity. Most deaths were from easily preventable and treatable illnesses rather than violence. Regression analysis suggested that if the effects of violence were removed, all-cause mortality could fall to almost normal rates. Continue reading More on Health and Security PEACEMAKING How Not to Make Peace: "Conflict Syndrome" and the Demise of the Oslo Accords United States Institute of Peace The failure of the Oslo Accords has been attributed to a variety of factors, including deficiencies in the accords themselves, failures of implementation, and the play of domestic politics. These are all critical factors that describe what happened, but they do not explain why each side behaved as it did—that is, why each side made choices that would only increase the likelihood of the accords’ failure. To understand why each side behaved as it did, we must first understand the “conflict syndrome” that affected the negotiating and decision-making process—a syndrome that is, to varying degrees, present in many protracted conflicts. While the conflict syndrome is never the sole cause of failure in any given peace process and does not affect every conflict in the same way, the significant role it often plays in perpetuating conflict is frequently ignored or undervalued. Continue reading More on Conflict Resolution and Peacemaking DEVELOPMENT Economic Impact of Peacekeeping - Final Report United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations The Economic Impact of Peacekeeping (EIP) project, commissioned by PBPS and executed by the Peace Dividend Trust, is the first comprehensive evaluation of the economic footprint of DPKO field operations. The project began in January 2005, and undertook fieldwork in one former and nine current missions. The objective is to develop new policies and practical reform measures that will minimize negative economic effects while using mission spending to help jump-start economic growth. Through 400 interviews in the field and at headquarters, surveys of mission staff, and analysis of operational spending, staffing and macroeconomic data, the project has produced the first quantitative analysis of the economic impact of UN peace operations. The 37 recommendations made in the report were built upon the ideas of UN staff who have grappled with this issue and in some cases developed innovative mechanisms to enhance the economic legacy of a UN peace operation. Continue reading More on Development and Security HUMANITARIAN AID Resetting the Rules of Engagement: Trends and Issues in Military-Humanitarian Relations Humanitarian Policy Group The relationship between humanitarian and military actors has changed considerably in the past decade. Military functions have expanded beyond traditional war-fighting to encompass a range of tasks related to humanitarian goals, including support for humanitarian and rehabilitation efforts and the protection of civilians. As a result, interaction between the military and humanitarian aid providers has grown, raising difficult questions about the relationship between the two. International responses to complex emergencies have increasingly called on peacekeeping and military-led missions, alongside the more regularised military responses to natural disasters. Increased interventionism on the part of the UN, regional organisations and the major Western powers in response to internal conflicts has led to new challenges to military and humanitarian interaction. These challenges are shaping relations between humanitarians and state and private military forces in new ways. Changes in the relationship between military forces and humanitarian organisations pose important questions for both communities. Constructive common ground and agreement on core issues of responsibility and competence is needed. Continue reading More on Development and Security INTERNATIONAL LAW Guatemala in the 1980s: A Genocide Turned into Ethnocide? German Institute for Global and Area Studies While the Guatemalan Truth Commission came to the conclusion that agents of the state had committed acts of genocide in the early 1980s, fundamental questions remain. Should we indeed speak of the massacres committed between 1981 and 1983 in Guatemala as “genocide”, or would “ethnocide” be the more appropriate term? In addressing these questions, this paper focuses on the intentions of the perpetrators. Why did the Guatemalan military chose mass murder as the means to “solve the problem of subversion”? In Guatemala, the discourses of communist threat, racism and Pentecostal millenarism merged into the intent to destroy the Mayan population. This paper demonstrates that the initial policy of physical annihilation (genocidal option) was transformed into a policy of restructuring the sociocultural patterns of the Guatemalan highlands (ethnocidal option). Continue reading More on International Law, Justice and Accountability GENDER Beyond Firewood: Fuel Alternatives and Protection Strategies for Displaced Women and Girls Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children The environment that surrounds refugee or internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, particularly in situations of ongoing conflict, is notoriously dangerous. Yet every day, in hundreds of camps around the world, millions of women and girls venture out into this danger, risking rape, assault, abduction, theft, exploitation or even murder, in order to collect enough firewood to cook with or to sell in order to survive. Rarely is cooking fuel provided by the humanitarian community, and even more rarely do men collect the wood. The risks associated with firewood collection have been well known for years, yet few effective strategies are in place to combat the problem. In the report, the Women’s Commission outlines alternative fuel options, firewood collection techniques and other protection strategies that should be used in displaced and refugee situations worldwide. To be effective, however, all strategies aimed at reducing the threat to women and girls should be accompanied by the development of income-generation activities. Women and girls must be able to earn a living in ways other than collecting or selling firewood. Continue reading More on Gender and Security RESOURCES The State vs. the People - Governance, Mining and the Transitional Regime in the Democratic Republic of Congo Fatal Transactions Since colonial times, the history of the DRC has been dominated by plundering and lawlessness. In the last century, the colonial government, dictatorial power supported by Cold War forces, national and international corporations, criminal networks and rebel troops have, one after the other, plundered the Congo’s natural wealth. Three years after the end of the war, various parties continue the looting of the rich Congolese soil, all the while preventing meaningful reconstruction of the country from ever happening. The province of Katanga, once one of the most prosperous regions in Africa, is now on the verge of collapse. Every day, tens of thousands of men, women and children try, in the dreadful conditions of the abandoned mines, to scrabble together enough copper and cobalt to buy food for a day. The poverty reinforces ethnic and political tensions. With elections on the horizon, the international Fatal Transaction campaign wants to shed light on the power structures in the Congolese resource industry. The investigation illustrates how poor policy, political incompetence and corruption have led to the collapse of the formal mining industry. The report gives recommendations for promoting fair and democratic management of the natural resources of the DRC. Continue reading More on Natural Resources and Armed Conflict FOREIGN POLICY Human Security on Foreign Policy Agendas: Changes, Concepts and Cases Institute for Development and Peace The long awaited Human Security Report and the UN-Secretary-General's Report “In Larger Freedom: Toward Development, Security and Human Rights for All” exemplify that human security is of great interest for foreign, security and development policy. It all began, more or less, with the 1994 Human Development Report. Over a decade ago, this UNDP Report encouraged international initiatives like the Human Security Network and the Commission on Human Security or the campaign leading to the 1997 Convention on Anti-Personnel Landmines. Human security is now a term frequently used in speeches and common to find on web pages of various foreign policy departments (e.g. Canada, Japan, Norway, Switzerland) and research institutes. However, even though ‘human security’ has entered the lexicon of international politics, the concept nonetheless remains highly controversial. This report summarizes spirited debates on human security with regard to its impact on foreign policy agendas and its practical implications for activities in the policy fields of human development, human rights, and humanitarian intervention. The papers explore the strength and weakness of human security as a political leitmotif when becoming an organizing principle for foreign policy departments. Continue reading More on Development and Security Compiled by Robert Hartfiel and Arezou Farivar 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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