	Issue 38	February 2008

	*Human Security Research* is a monthly mailing list service that highlights significant new human security-related research published by university research institutes, think-tanks, IGOs and NGOs.

	What's New in Human Security Research :

• HEALTH: Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: An Ongoing Crisis
• CONFLICT PREVENTION: Conflict Escalation and the Origins of Civil War
• GENDER: Forgotten Casualties of War
• GOVERNANCE: Timor Leste: Security Sector Reform
• DISPLACEMENT: Displaced in Darfur: A Generation of Anger
• HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: Africa's Responsibility to Protect
• HUMAN RIGHTS: HRW World Report 2008: Democracy Charade Undermines Rights
• DEVELOPMENT: Urbanization and Insecurity in West Africa
• CHILDREN: Children and Armed Conflict: Report of the Secretary General
• DEVELOPMENT: Macro Adjustment Policies and Horizontal Inequalities
• ENVIRONMENT: Environmental Influences on Pastoral Conflict in the Horn of Africa
• PEACE OPERATIONS: Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan

HEALTH
Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: An Ongoing Crisis
International Rescue Committee
Since 2000, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has documented the humanitarian impact of war and conflict in DR Congo through a series of five mortality surveys. The first four studies, conducted between 2000 and 2004, estimated that 3.9 million people had died since 1998, arguably making DR Congo the world's deadliest crisis since World War II. Less than 10 percent of all deaths were due to violence, with most attributed to easily preventable and treatable conditions such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. This fifth and latest survey, covering the period from January 2006 to April 2007, aims to evaluate the current humanitarian situation in DR Congo by providing an update on mortality. Investigators used a three-stage cluster sampling technique to survey 14,000 households in 35 health zones across all 11 provinces, resulting in wider geographic coverage than any of the previous IRC surveys.
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CONFLICT PREVENTION
Conflict Escalation and the Origins of Civil War
University of Maryland
Recent analyses of civil war have suggested that these events grow out of lower level conflict dynamics involving state repression and political dissent. Unfortunately, this work has been unable to distinguish between rival explanations because it relies upon relatively indirect proxy measures to operationalize explanatory variables. Examining 149 countries from 1976 to 1999, we develop new measurements for lower-level conflict and explore the validity of existing research. Our results disclose that: 1) while proxy variables are reasonable predictors of lower-level conflict, actual measures of conflict are superior, and 2) civil war emerges when urban dissident strategies become inflamed by repressive behavior, conditioned by per capita income - representing a modified version of the "Grievance" argument. The research has significant implications for how we understand and examine the origins of large-scale political violence.
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GENDER
Forgotten Casualties of War
International Save the Children Alliance
Latest estimates suggest that of the approximately 300,000 children involved in conflicts around the world today, up to 40 per cent (120,000) are girls. These girls are rarely acknowledged and are often hidden by the armed groups. Sometimes the girls are also reluctant to identify themselves. They face discrimination on a daily basis - from their fellow soldiers, commanders, fellow citizens, governments and - perhaps most shocking of all - from the international community. This report shows how girls are being overlooked in current efforts to release children from armed groups and support their return home. It challenges existing systems and argues that the international community must fund programmes designed to meet girls' needs. This means focusing on strengthening communities.
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GOVERNANCE
Timor Leste: Security Sector Reform
International Crisis Group
Four years after Timor-Leste gained independence, its police and army were fighting each other in the streets of Dili. The April-June 2006 crisis left both institutions in ruins and security again in the hands of international forces. The crisis was precipitated by the dismissal of almost half the army and caused the virtual collapse of the police force. UN police and Australian-led peacekeepers maintain security in a situation that, while not at a point of violent conflict, remains unsettled. If the new government is to reform the security sector successfully, it must ensure that the process is inclusive by consulting widely and resisting the tempation to take autocratic decisions. A systematic, comprehensive approach, as recommended by the UN Security Council, should be based on a realistic analysis of actual security and law-enforcement needs. Unless there is a non-partisan commitment to the reform process, structural problems are likely to remain unresolved and the security forces politicised and volatile.
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DISPLACEMENT
Displaced in Darfur: A Generation of Anger
Amnesty International
More than 90,000 people are believed to have been killed as a result of the conflict in Darfur since 2003. About 200,000 are thought to have died from conflict-related causes and over 2.3 million are internally displaced. The people forced from their homes, whether internally displaced or refugees, have suffered most during the Darfur crisis, and have generally been ignored while the armed groups and government bicker. No peace can be durable without ensuring that the human rights of the displaced are respected and protected. These rights include: the right to return home voluntarily, in safety and dignity, voluntary resettlement or local integration; the right to life and personal integrity; the right to an effective remedy including compensation, restitution and reparations; the right to freedom of expression; and an end to impunity of perpetrators. It is also essential that the economic, social and cultural rights of the people of Darfur, such as rights to adequate food, water and sanitation, housing and education are upheld. This report focuses on the situation of displaced people in Darfur. It makes recommendations to the Sudanese government, the armed opposition groups, the international community, and to the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), which took over from AMIS at the end of 2007.
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HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION
Africa's Responsibility to Protect
Centre for Conflict Resolution // University of Cape Town South Africa
To what extent is international society responsible for the protection of civilians during humanitarian crises? This paper reports on a policy advisory group convened to discuss Africa's responsibility to protect. The aim was to interrogate issues around humanitarian intervention in Africa and the responsibility of regional governments and the international community in the face of humanitarian crises. Skeptics voice concern that military interventions may be used to promote the parochial goals of global or regional powers in situations where there is no real humanitarian crisis, and critics see such a campaign as diverging from wider human security issues. However the authors argue that the 'responsibility to protect' should be seen as a mobilization tool for timely action in worst-case scenarios. They point out that the concept of intervention is closely aligned to the vision of the African Union's Constitutive Act of 2000 which embraces three levels of action: prevention, intervention and post-conflict reconstruction.
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HUMAN RIGHTS
Human Rights Watch World Report 2008: Democracy Charade Undermines Rights
Human Rights Watch
The established democracies are accepting flawed and unfair elections for political expediency. By allowing autocrats to pose as democrats, without demanding they uphold the civil and political rights that make democracy meaningful, the United States, the European Union and other influential democracies risk undermining human rights worldwide. States claiming the mantle of democracy, including Kenya and Pakistan, should guarantee the human rights that are central to it, including the rights to free expression, assembly and association, as well as free and fair elections. But in 2007 too many governments, including Bahrain, Jordan, Nigeria, Russia and Thailand, acted as if simply holding a vote is enough to prove a nation "democratic," and Washington, Brussels and European capitals played along. The Bush administration has spoken of its commitment to democracy abroad but often kept silent about the need for all governments to respect human rights.
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DEVELOPMENT
Urbanization and Insecurity in West Africa: Population Movements, Mega Cities and Regional Stability
United Nations Office for West Africa
West Africa's cities are growing rapidly in a context of population movements, natural human increases, environmental degradation, and scarcity of natural resources as well as declining levels of sustenance. With rapid and unplanned urbanization come many ordeals: transport chaos and human congestion, unregulated building and construction projects, health hazards such as environmental pollution, spread of communicable diseases, rising unemployment and social tensions. Furthermore, in the absence of appropriate action to confront the problems of unplanned or unmanaged rapid urbanization, the results will be general human insecurity and instability both nationally and sub-regionally. For a sub-region affected by low human development and beset sadly in the past two decades by a woeful record of civil conflict and political governance, rapid, unplanned urbanization should be a major concern for national governments, their policy planners and international development partners.
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CHILDREN
Children and Armed Conflict: Report of the Secretary General
United Nations
The present report is submitted pursuant to Security Council presidential statement (S/PRST/2006/48), by which the Council requested me to submit a report on the further progress in the implementation of resolutions 1612 (2005), 1379 (2001), 1460 (2003) and 1539 (2004). In accordance with the Council's request, the report includes information on compliance in ending the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict in violation of applicable international law and other grave violations being committed against children affected by armed conflict. The report also includes information on progress made in the implementation of the monitoring and reporting mechanism; information on progress made in the development and implementation of action plans (called for in para. 7 of resolution 1612 (2005)); and information on the mainstreaming of child protection in United Nations peacekeeping operations.
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DEVELOPMENT
Macro Adjustment Policies and Horizontal Inequalities
Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity
While there has been a considerable amount of analysis on the impact of structural adjustment policies on poverty and inequality among individuals (or what we define here as vertical inequality - VI), there has been almost none into the impact of structural adjustment on inequality between culturally defined groups, or horizontal inequality (HI). Although relatively neglected in economic analysis, socioeconomic HIs are important from a number of perspectives - they can have adverse effects on the wellbeing of members of the deprived groups, they can impede efficiency, they may make it very difficult to eradicate poverty, they lead to unfair and exclusionary societies, and they raise the risk of violent conflict. Hence it is important to analyse the impact of structural adjustment policies on HIs - which is the aim of this paper.
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ENVIRONMENT
Environmental Influences on Pastoral Conflict in the Horn of Africa
Centre for the Study of Civil War
This paper seeks to discern the influence of environmental variability on pastoral conflict in the Horn of Africa. While the literature on environmental factors in civil wars is rich in empirical research and explanatory power, the dearth of data is an obstacle to the study of other important forms of violence such as pastoral conflict. If environmental factors are associated with pastoral conflict then what are they, and can they be used as early warning indicators to prevent its escalation or mitigate its effects? The authors compare conflict data with three environmental indicators: precipitation, vegetation and forage. Preliminary statistical analyses of the data suggest that aggravating behavior, along with a reduction in peace initiatives and reciprocal exchanges, is associated with an escalation in pastoral conflict, particularly when coupled with an increase in vegetation that may provide cover for organized raids. We therefore recommend that conflict early warning systems integrate both response options and salient environmental indicators into their analyses to better deal with the complexity of the relationships between pastoral conflict and the environment in an era of climate change.
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PEACE OPERATIONS
Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan
European Center for Security Studies
Since 2003, the so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) have attempted to combine relatively small civilian and military components on the ground in Afghanistan, to achieve comprehensive results by focusing on provincial and district centres and to support the political leadership as well as the Afghan society extensively, without, however, releasing them from their responsibilities, or dominating them. Up to now, experience with the PRTs (the number of which increased from seven to twenty-five between 2003 and 2007) point towards their considerable potential as an instrument in comprehensive conflict management and nation building. This report gives general information on the PRT model, and, compares the US, British and German realization of the model. It is to be seen as an intermediary step in the scientific analysis of a topic which, without doubt, will also become increasingly important not only for contributing nations, but also for Security Organizations like NATO.
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