• DEVELOPMENT: Poverty and Civil War: What Policymakers Need to Know • CONFLICT PREVENTION: Vulnerability and Human Security in the 21st Century • ARMED CONFLICT: Conflict Barometer 2006 • RESOURCES: Are All Resources Cursed? Coffee, Oil and Conflict in Colombia • CRIMINAL VIOLENCE: Violence, Crime and Illegal Arms Trafficking in Colombia • INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS: The UN Response to the Lebanon Crisis • GENDER: Gender and Reparations for Human Rights Violations • INTERNATIONAL LAW: Transnational Armed Groups and Int'l Humanitarian Law • CHILDREN: Child Soldiers, Disarmament and Reintegration in West Africa • ARMED GROUPS: Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Appeasing the Militants • POST-CONFLICT: Creating Safer Communities: Lessons from South Eastern Europe • PEACE OPERATIONS: Primer for Justice Components in Peace Operations DEVELOPMENT Poverty and Civil War: What Policymakers Need to Know Brookings Institution From Sierra Leone to Tajikistan and Indonesia’s Aceh Province, civil war has erupted in countries suffering from persistent poverty or sharp economic decline. These conflicts sap already depleted national resources and further cripple the fragile economies of some of the world’s poorest countries, while claiming millions of innocent lives. They may also suck in neighboring countries, exacerbate regional instability, and require costly military intervention by outside powers. Civil wars often have significant security implications for more distant peoples as they are ideal incubators of transnational security threats such as terrorism, weapons proliferation, criminal activity and infectious disease. These and other cases of civil conflict may each in isolation offer policymakers some useful insights. Yet, viewed together, they beg an overarching question: is there a significant and demonstrable link between income poverty and the risk that a country will slide into civil war? Could U.S. foreign policy benefit from greater emphasis on promoting economic growth and alleviating poverty? The answers to these questions bear directly on several current challenges to U.S. national security from the Middle East to South Asia and Africa. Continue Reading More on Development and Security CONFLICT PREVENTION Global Trends 2007: Vulnerability and Human Security in the 21st Century Development and Peace Foundation // Institute for Development and Peace Global Trends 2007 explores some of the key challenges arising in the first decade of the 21st century, drawing on the latest research findings and a wealth of statistical data. The report focuses primarily on global vulnerabilities and human security. The chapter on 'Fragile States and Peacebuilding' is of particular interest. Failing statehood and armed conflicts pose major challenges at the start of the 21st century. While the number of wars has fallen markedly since the mid 1990s, some 40-60 states worldwide are experiencing an erosion of the state’s monopoly of force and the growing failure of public institutions to guarantee the rule of law or deliver core functions to the majority of their populations. This situation poses a direct threat to “human security” and is a major setback to progress towards the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. Resolute development, foreign and security policy commitment and the wholehearted engagement of the international financial institutions are essential in order to counter the destabilization of crisis-torn states and set post-conflict countries on a successful development path. Continue reading More on Conflict Prevention ARMED CONFLICT Conflict Barometer 2006 Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research In 2006, there were 278 political conflicts. Six of these were wars, and 29 severe crises, amounting to a total of 35 conflicts carried out with a massive amount of violence. 83 conflicts were classified as crises, meaning violence was used only occasionally. Altogether, 118 conflicts were carried out violently. In contrast, there were 160 non-violent conflicts, which can be differentiated in 100 manifest and 60 latent conflicts. After last year’s decline in the number of observed coups and attempted coups from a peak of ten attempted coups in 2004 to three successful coups in 2005, there were only two successful overthrows of governments in 2006. In at least 31 of the 278 current conflicts, talks, negotiations, and conferences were held at least once in 2006. A total of 23 treaties or agreements were signed on the regulation of conflicts in 2006; three of these in highly violent conflicts. Continue reading More on Armed Conflict RESOURCES Are All Resources Cursed? Coffee, Oil and Armed Conflict in Colombia Conflict Analysis Resource Centre The 'resource curse' posits a positive association between the value of natural commodities and civil conflict. In this paper, the authors suggest that the value-to-violence relationship differs across commodities, and that the factor intensity of production determines whether a rise in the price of a legally traded good will exacerbate conflict. The authors exploit exogenous price shocks for coffee and oil to test this hypothesis, using data on politically-motivated violence in Colombia over 1988 to 2004. They find that a drop in coffee prices during the 1990s led to a disproportionate rise in conflict in the coffee areas. Poverty dynamics follow a similar pattern, while substitution into drug crops do not, which suggests that it is the fall in income rather than the drug trade that fuelled this effect. In contrast, they find that oil prices are positively related to clashes with government forces, and that state revenue is used to strengthen military presence in oil areas. These results suggest that the income channel is critical in determining how price shocks to labor-intensive commodities affect insurgency. However, for capital-intensive goods, the revenue effect predominates in mediating how the value of the commodity affects violence. Continue reading More on Natural Resources and Armed Conflict CRIMINAL VIOLENCE Violence, Crime and Illegal Arms Trafficking in Colombia United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime The latest report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) looks into the relationship between violence, crime and arms trafficking in Colombia. According to the report, in 2005 there were more than 17,000 homicides in Colombia; 70% committed with firearms. The report claims that the flow of ammunition into the country is limited, but the existing firearms are recycled and used efficiently; as it is controlled by several actors, including organized gangs, rebel groups and the government. The major challenge for the latter is to disarm such groups. Continue reading More on Criminal Violence INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS The UN Response to the Lebanon Crisis: An OCHA Lesson Learning Paper United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs This report presents overall findings from a review of the OCHA and UN system wide response in Lebanon between July-October 2006. The aim of the lesson learning review was twofold: to review the appropriateness and timeliness of the response and understand what worked well and why; provide a platform to discuss key issues relevant for OCHA, for action and follow up. Both primary and secondary information have been used and more than 25 key informant interviews were carried out with stakeholders external to OCHA. Though limited in scope the paper covers key areas that OCHA staff felt most relevant to them, including: a) humanitarian response, b) security, c) deployment d) information management, and e) clusters and protection. Continue reading More on International and Regional Organizations GENDER What Happened to the Women? Gender and Reparations for Human Rights Violations Social Science Research Council What happens to women whose lives are transformed by human rights violations? What happens to the voices of victimized women once they have their day in court or in front of a truth commission? Women face a double marginalization under authoritarian regimes and during and after violent conflicts. Nonetheless, reparations programs are rarely designed to address the needs of women victims. This book argues for the introduction of a gender dimension into reparations programs. The volume explores gender and reparations policies in Guatemala, Peru, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Timor-Leste. Continue reading More on Gender and Security INTERNATIONAL LAW Transnational Armed Groups and International Humanitarian Law Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research This paper discusses when IHL applies to transnational armed groups. This involves primarily the question of whether and to what extent the ‘war’ against Al Qaeda can be classified as an armed conflict, and the related identification of criteria to determine whether Al Qaeda can be considered as an armed group for the purpose of making IHL applicable. To the extent that IHL does apply, this then necessitates a clarification of whether the rules of international or non-international armed conflict are relevant, and, subsequently, a summary of the rules of IHL that would cover such a conflict. Finally and most importantly, the paper explores whether and how the existing rules of IHL should or could be adapted to (more) adequately cover transnational armed groups. Continue reading More on International Law, Justice and Accountability CHILDREN Child Soldiers and Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration in West Africa Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers West Africa is one of the regions in the world most seriously affected by the practice of child soldier recruitment. According to the Coalition’s estimates, over 8,000 children were still fighting in 2005 in the region, and over 20,000 were involved in demobilization and reintegration programs or waiting to be demobilized. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers commissioned a survey of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) projects carried out by child protection agencies in four countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. This report describes current child soldier and DDR programs, as well as gaps, funding needs and overlaps identified by those organizations. It further outlines proposals for information sharing and more effective advocacy work on child soldier issues in the sub-region. Ideas for new research are also proposed. This report is not an evaluation or compilation of best practices, but an attempt to share knowledge about the organizations working on DDR in the region, giving an overview of programs being undertaken by child protection agencies in West Africa. Continue reading More on Children and Armed Conflict ARMED GROUPS Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Appeasing the Militants Crisis Group Taliban and other foreign militants, including al-Qaeda sympathisers, have sheltered since 2001 in Pakistan’s Pashtun-majority Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), seven administrative districts bordering on south eastern Afghanistan. Using the region to regroup, reorganise and rearm, they are launching increasingly severe cross-border attacks on Afghan and international military personnel, with the support and active involvement of Pakistani militants. The Musharraf government’s ambivalent approach and failure to take effective action is destabilising Afghanistan; Kabul’s allies, particularly the U.S. and NATO, which is now responsible for security in the bordering areas, should apply greater pressure on it to clamp down on the pro-Taliban militants. But the international community, too, bears responsibility by failing to support democratic governance in Pakistan, including within its troubled tribal belt. Continue reading More on Armies, Paramilitaries, Non-State Armed Groups POST-CONFLICT Creating Safer Communities: Lessons from South Eastern Europe Balkan Youth Union // Centre for Security Studies // CIVIL // Forum for Civic Initiatives // Saferworld This publication outlines an approach to Community Safety work developed by Saferworld together with four non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in four locations in South Eastern Europe during 2005–6: Bosnia-Herzegovina,Kosovo,Macedonia and Serbia. As well as outlining the approach used, its methods and guiding principles, it provides a detailed account of the application of that process in the project’s four different pilot sites in the region. The findings and specific lessons from this experience are highlighted at the end of each of the four case studies in section 2, while a number of broad recommendations are offered in this section for those working in this field at the regional, national and community levels. Continue reading More on Peace Operations and Post-Conflict Reconstruction PEACE OPERATIONS Primer for Justice Components in Multidimensional Peace Operations: Strengthening the Rule of Law Department of Peacekeeping Operations Strengthening domestic judicial and legal systems in host countries of peace operations is a core aspect of the United Nations’ (UN) efforts to maintain international peace and security. Peace operations in places as diverse as Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Haiti, Kosovo, Liberia and Timor-Leste have demonstrated that strengthening judicial and legal systems is a necessary ingredient of implementing peace agreements and of maintaining the peace. Providing citizens with legal means to address their disputes and with fair and effective judicial systems in which to try those accused of criminal offenses is core to the maintenance of a secure and stable environment in the immediate aftermath of conflict. Despite the importance of this aspect of peacekeeping, justice components of UN peace operations have long operated without significant operational guidance. This Primer is the first step to help address this gap, and provide justice section staff members of all levels with concrete advice on how to go about their work. Continue reading More on Peace Operations and Post-Conflict Reconstruction 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. 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