• HEALTH: Securing Health: Lessons from Nation-Building Missions • CHILDREN: Children in Armed Conflict in the DRC • ARMED CONFLICT: Explaining the Severity of Civil Wars • DISPLACEMENT: The State Of The World's Refugees • POST-CONFLICT: Evaluating External-Led State Building After 1989 • SMALL ARMS: Colombia's Hydra: The Many Faces of Gun Violence • INTERNATIONAL LAW: Transnationality, War And The Law • CRIMINAL VIOLENCE: National Policies and the Rise of Transnational Gangs • CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Peace in Papua: Widening a Window of Opportunity • TERRORISM: Country Reports on Terrorism 2005 • GOVERNANCE: Congo’s Elections: Making or Breaking the Peace • DEVELOPMENT: The Palestinian War-Torn Economy HEALTH Securing Health: Lessons from Nation-Building Missions RAND Corporation Rebuilding public health and health care delivery systems has been an important component of nation-building efforts conducted after major conflicts. However, few studies have attempted to examine a comprehensive set of cases, compare the quantitative and qualitative results, and outline best practices. The study assesses seven cases of nation-building operations following major conflicts: Germany and Japan immediately after World War II; Somalia, Haiti, and Kosovo in the 1990s; and Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. It concludes that two factors increase the likelihood of successful health outcomes: planning and coordination, and infrastructure and resources. In addition, the study argues that health can have an independent impact on broader political, economic, and security objectives during nation-building operations. Continue Reading More on Health and Security CHILDREN Struggling to Survive: Children in Armed Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict Children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) endure some of the most miserable treatment found anywhere in the world, despite outward signs of progress in DRC, such as the creation of a power-sharing transitional government, the presence of the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping operation and billions of dollars granted by donors for postconflict reconstruction. In 2006, DRC continues to endure the world’s deadliest humanitarian crisis, with more than 38,000 people dying every month as direct and indirect consequences of the armed conflict, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Approximately 45 percent of these deaths occur among children under age 18. In addition, children are targets of human rights violations committed by armed forces and groups on a daily basis. The overwhelming majority of these crimes are committed in an environment of utter impunity. Continue reading More on Children and Armed Conflict ARMED CONFLICT Explaining the Severity of Civil Wars Journal of Conflict Resolution The burgeoning literature on civil conflicts seldom considers why some civil wars are so much deadlier than others. This article investigates that question using a new data set of the number of combat deaths in internal conflicts from 1946 to 2002. The first section presents descriptive statistics on battle deaths by era, conflict type, and region. The article then tests state strength, regime type, and cultural characteristics as predictors of the number of combat deaths in civil war. The determinants of conflict severity seem to be quite different from those for conflict onset. Democracy, rather than economic development or state military strength, is most strongly correlated with fewer deaths;wars have also been less deadly on average since the end of the cold war. Religious heterogeneity does not explain the military severity of internal violence, and surprisingly, ethnic homogeneity may be related to more deadly conflicts. Continue reading More on Armed Conflict DISPLACEMENT The State Of The World's Refugees: Fifty Years Of Humanitarian Action United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees Much has been written in recent years on the subject of humanitarian action. A wealth of specialist literature also exists on the legal aspects of refugee protection. But few historians have focused specifically on the issue of forced human displacement and on the development of international approaches to the problem. This book attempts to address this issue by looking at the history of forced displacement in the second half of the 20th century. During the last decade of the 20th century, governments, international organizations and the public became increasingly aware of the problems faced by refugees and IDPs. This was largely a result of live TV reports, which provided dramatic images of desperate people fleeing from places such as Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, Kosovo and Rwanda. It also resulted from the increased scope, in the post-Cold War era, for involvement in situations of mass displacement by humanitarian organizations, human rights organizations, multinational military forces, peace negotiators, war crimes investigators, journalists and a range of other external actors. The problem of forced displacement, however, is not new, and neither are international efforts to alleviate the suffering of uprooted people. Continue reading More on Refugees and Internally Displaced People POST-CONFLICT Is More Better? Evaluating External-Led State Building After 1989 Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies External-led state building is at the forefront of international security governance; it has been called "a growth industry"; and it is, against the backdrop of the US-led intervention in Iraq, more controversial than ever. Since the end of the cold war, the UN have launched more than 60 missions in 24 countries. Whilst the primary objective of all of these missions was to monitor, keep, enforce or build peace, a second objective, which is intrinsically linked to the first, was to contribute directly or indirectly to the reestablishment of functioning state-hood. Peace-building mission have become state-building missions. There are two broad reasons for this. First, fragile states are seen as a risk to both their societies and to international security. And second, it is now broadly assumed that one vital condition for sustainable peace is that the state-apparatus has the capacity to exercise core functions of state-hood in an efficient, non-violent and legitimate way. Consequently, peace-building is more and more seen as state-building, and this evolution is reflected in both UN strategy documents, and the development aid strategies of most nation states. Continue reading More on Peace Operations and Post-Conflict Reconstruction SMALL ARMS Colombia's Hydra: The Many Faces of Gun Violence Small Arms Survey // Conflict Analysis Resource Center Colombia has long been characterized as one of the most violent countries in the world. Violence arising from a protracted armed conflict and both organized and common crime has claimed the lives of almost half a million civilians and combatants since 1979—almost 17,600 per year—a human security crisis of extraordinary dimensions. This chapter finds that while there is considerable heterogeneity in the nature of homicides over time and space in Colombia, there is a strong contributing factor: firearms. In fact, more than 80 per cent of all homicides in Colombia since the late 1970s have been perpetrated with guns. What is more, this percentage has steadily increased—from about 60 per cent in the 1980s to more than 85 per cent in 2002. By 2005 more than 15 per cent of all deaths by natural and external causes3 were firearm-related. Continue reading More on Small Arms, Light Weapons and Landmines INTERNATIONAL LAW Transnationality, War And The Law Harvard University // Humanitarian Policy And Conflict Research On October 30, 2005, the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University (HPCR) brought together a select group of international experts for a discussion on the theme of “The Transformation of Warfare, International Law, and the Role of Transnational Armed Groups.” This project grew out of a research interest identified at the High-Level Informal Expert Meeting on International Humanitarian Law at Harvard University in June 2004 which gathered representatives of twenty-eight governments and international organizations, as well as distinguished scholars, to examine the legal and policy challenges faced by international humanitarian law (IHL). The purpose of the meeting in Geneva was to explore the changed landscape of transnational wars and the prominent geopolitical role played by transnational non-state armed groups as well as their impact on interpretations and responses of international law to the new warfare. Built around three pillars of changing war, changing actors, and static law, the discussion in Geneva was organized along sessions on the transformation of war, the regulation of new conflicts, the current gaps and limitations of international humanitarian law, and the challenge of compliance and protection in the new environment. Continue reading More on International Law, Justice and Accountability CRIMINAL VIOLENCE National Policies and the Rise of Transnational Gangs Migration Policy Institute Transnationalism, the term used to describe migrants who are "at home" in more than one country thanks to cheaper forms of communication and travel, is usually discussed in positive terms. In particular, many migrant-sending countries benefit from migrants who regularly remit money and return "home" to visit family and friends, spending their currency earned abroad. Yet transnationalism, coupled with immigration policies, can have negative outcomes. The gang Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, is a transnational criminal organization that started in the United States and is now active in the United States and many Central American countries. Most of its members are people from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala who have lived most of their lives in the United States. Brutal violence, robbery, drug-trafficking, extortion, and human smuggling are among the gang's activities. Continue reading More on Criminal Violence CONFLICT RESOLUTION Peace in Papua: Widening a Window of Opportunity Council on Foreign Relations For four decades Papuans have struggled, sometimes violently, over their integration into Indonesia. Yet recent events in Indonesia have created an opportunity to make progress on resolving the conflict. Following up on the Center for Preventive Action’s 2003 report Peace and Progress in Papua, this Council Special Report, Peace in Papua: Widening a Window of Opportunity, urges the Indonesia Government to follow through with its commitments to achieve a comprehensive solution to the conflict in Papua by engaging with legitimate representatives of Papuan society, fully implementing special autonomy, improving local governance, and reforming security arrangements. The United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia, and ASEAN member states can encourage Jakarta with quiet diplomacy. They also should provide a technical and financial assistance package to provide professional training, natural resource management, public sector reform, and civil society development. Continue reading More on Conflict Resolution and Peacemaking TERRORISM Country Reports on Terrorism 2005 U.S. Department of State U.S. law requires the Secretary of State to provide Congress, by April 30 of each year, a full and complete report on terrorism with regard to those countries and groups meeting criteria set forth in the legislation. This annual report is entitled Country Reports on Terrorism. Beginning with the report for 2004, it replaced the previously published Patterns of Global Terrorism. The report covers developments in countries in which acts of terrorism occurred, countries that are state sponsors of terrorism, and countries determined by the Secretary to be of particular interest in the global war on terror. As provided in the legislation, the report reviews major developments in bilateral and multilateral counterterrorism cooperation as well. The report also provides information on terrorist groups responsible for the death, kidnapping, or injury of Americans, any umbrella groups to which they might belong, groups financed by state sponsors of terrorism, reports on all terrorist organizations on the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list, and other terrorist groups determined by the Secretary to be relevant to the report. Continue reading More on Terrorism GOVERNANCE Congo’s Elections: Making or Breaking the Peace Crisis Group As the Congo approaches its first free elections in 40 years, the stability of the country remains at risk, for three main reasons. First, one of the main former rebel groups, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), is unpopular and stands to lose most of its power at the polls: this has triggered a resurgence of violence in the east, which is likely to intensify before and after elections, as dissident RCD troops attack the newly integrated national army. Secondly, the vote has not been adequately prepared. With few safeguards in place against fraud, rigged polls could rapidly undermine stability after the elections and produce unrest in cities. Thirdly, the country’s long-time political opposition, Etienne Tshisekedi’s Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), will boycott the voting, unhappy with the other main parties’ unwillingness to negotiate with it. This is likely to cause unrest in the two Kasai provinces and Kinshasa, where Tshisekedi enjoys substantial support. Continue reading More on Governance and Security DEVELOPMENT The Palestinian War-Torn Economy: Aid, Development And State Formation United Nations Conference On Trade And Development After almost four decades of occupation, restrictive measures, violent confrontations and war-like conditions continue to dominate economic prospects of the Palestinian territory of the West Bank and Gaza. Setting the Palestinian economy on a path of sustained growth requires understanding the conditions that influenced its long-term development prospects, particularly the structures established after the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the institutional set-up affecting its growth dynamics. Economists and economic historians have long recognized that once structures have been formed, they tend to lock-in a certain evolutionary path. It is therefore important to recognize the adverse “path dependence” of the Palestinian economy formed during the occupation era. Needless to say, conditions of conflict, political instability, an elusive sovereignty and much-promised statehood have taken a growing toll on the ability of the PA to ensure any governance, much less of the corruption-free, best-practice model against which the PA is often measured. Continue reading More on Development 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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