	Issue 44	August 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 :

• CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Peace in the Kivu's? An Analysis of the Nairobi and Goma Agreements
• NATURAL RESOURCES: Conflict Diamonds and the Peace Process in Cote d'Ivoire
• TERRORISM: A Look at Terrorist Behavior: How They Prepare, Where They Strike
• ARMED CONFLICT: Perspectives on Armed Violence in Eastern Equatoria and Turkana North
• NATURAL RESOURCES: Commodity Price Shocks and Civil Conflict: Evidence from Colombia
• CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Power-sharing Arrangements in African Peace Agreements
• SMALL ARMS: Small Arms Survey 2008: Risk and Resilience
• PEACE OPERATIONS: Europe's Role in Nation-Building: From the Balkans to the Congo
• CRIMINAL VIOLENCE: Trouble on the Borders: Latin American's New Conflict Zones
• GOVERNANCE: Votes and Violence: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Nigeria
• HEALTH: Widespread Rape Does Not Directly Appear to Increase Overall HIV Prevalence in Conflict-Affected Countries
• TERRORISM: Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout: Al-Qa'ida's Road In and Out of Iraq

CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Peace in the Kivu's? An Analysis of the Nairobi and Goma Agreements
Institute for Security Studies
Since the end of the political transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), conflict in the Kivu provinces has hardly diminished. This situation continues to undermine regional stability as well as the legitimacy of the Congolese state. Attempts to deal with the crisis also demonstrate the key weaknesses and fragility of the Congolese political constellation, including the slow Demobilisation, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) and Security Sector Reform (SSR) processes. At the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, two critical agreements, the 9 November 2007 'Nairobi Agreement' and the 23 January 2008 'Goma Acte d'engagement', framework of the Amani process, were signed. They deal with key issues that were not adequately dealt with in the previous agreements, such as the all-inclusive agreement, which concluded the inter-Congolese dialogue. The continued presence of Rwandan Hutu rebels, the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), as well as the existence of Congolese armed groups, such as the Nkunda group, Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP) and Mai Mai militia continue to be a threat to stability. These issues are interlinked and are related to the lack of a comprehensive political process for the Eastern DRC. Both agreements provide a framework for an integrated process, a possibility to end the status quo. Although the neighbours of the DRC have their share of the responsibility, the implementation will depend largely on the political will and operational capacities of the Congolese government, in partnership with the international community – mainly The United Nations Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC).
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NATURAL RESOURCES
Conflict Diamonds and the Peace Process in Cote d'Ivoire
Bonn International Center for Conversion
Côte d’Ivoire is the only country, which is currently under embargo by the United Nations for the export of conflict diamonds since December 2005. The confl ict and years of 'no war, no peace' have been profitable for both the military and the Forces Nouvelles (FN) rebels, thereby paralyzing the peace process. Along with other natural resources (e.g. cocoa, timber, cotton, oil, gold), diamonds contributed to the financing of the military as well as the FN rebels in the North. However, since the Ouagadougou Political Accord (OPA) signed in March 2007 between the rebel leader Guillaume Soro and the Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, modest progress can be noticed in the main areas of the agreement: the identifi cation of the population, the preparation of the fi rst round of presidential elections (now announced for 30 November 2008), the restoration of state authority and unity of the country, and the reform of the army, including the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DD&R) process. The development and imposition of sanctions on valuable natural resources as well as international 'import-export control systems' such as the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) are valuable conflict prevention tools. Nonetheless, the actual situation of conflict diamonds being smuggled out of Côte d’Ivoire is a serious challenge to the enforcement of the sanctions against diamonds. This failure of control systems needs urgent attention in order to guarantee that the KPCS stays a credible system for setting an example as a confl ict prevention mechanism that truly contributes to breaking the link between natural resources and conflict.
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More on Natural Resources and Armed Conflict

TERRORISM
A Look at Terrorist Behavior: How They Prepare, Where They Strike
National Institute of Justice Journal // National Criminal Justice Reference Service
Timothy McVeigh, the Sept. 11 hijackers and Eric Rudolph all had something in common — they selected targets hundreds of miles from where they lived. McVeigh wandered the Midwest living as a transient before making his bomb in Herington, Kan., and driving 250 miles south to blast the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The Sept. 11 hijackers traveled hundreds of miles to their targets. And Rudolph drove nearly 300 miles from Murphy, N.C., to bomb an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala. For local police departments searching for ways to stop terrorist acts before they occur, this does not bring much comfort. When looking at these attacks, officers might get the impression that there is not much they can do about terrorism other than improving physical security at high-risk targets. But were these infamous terrorists typical? Although we know a great deal about the behavior of traditional criminals, little information has been available about terrorists. Are they much different from conventional criminals, who tend to commit their crimes close to home? Research has shown that traditional criminals are spontaneous, but terrorists seem to go to great lengths preparing for their attacks — and may commit other crimes while doing so. How long does this planning take? And do different types of terrorist groups vary in preparation time? To help answer these questions, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) launched a series of projects to explore patterns of terrorist behavior.
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ARMED CONFLICT
Gauging Fear and Insecurity: Perspectives on Armed Violence in Eastern Equatoria and Turkana North
Small Arms Surve
Eastern Equatoria State in South Sudan and Turkana North District in neighbouring Kenya lie in one of the most conflict-prone regions in the East and Horn of Africa, where the use of firearms is endemic. The Small Arms Survey conducted a household survey in this region in mid-2007 to gather data on levels of firearm-related victimization, and to explore actual and perceived security threats as well as attitudes towards disarmament. It found that insecurity, mostly related to cattle rustling, was rife and that dependency on firearms was widespread. Significantly, it found that both actual and perceived levels of insecurity were significantly worse on the Kenyan side of the border than they were in South Sudan, which is recovering from a 21-year civil war. The paper presents the survey findings and provides a broad contextual analysis of the local dynamics that give rise to insecurity, including competition for land and natural resources, inter-ethnic rivalry, poor governance, and armed group activity. In addition, it discusses government-led violence-reduction initiatives in the region, namely the disarmament of pastoralist communities, highlighting the security risks attached to ad hoc, short-term disarmament campaigns.
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NATURAL RESOURCES
Commodity Price Shocks and Civil Conflict: Evidence from Colombia
United States Institute of Peace
The role of economic shocks in perpetuating armed conflict has received considerable attention from academics and policymakers. Civil wars have affected more than one-third of the world's developing nations and claimed over 10.1 million lives between 1946 and 2005 (Lacina and Gleditsch, 2005). Recent evidence suggests that income plays a prominent role in promoting political stability: countries experiencing positive growth shocks appear to face a lower risk of civil war (Collier and Hoeer 1998 and 2004; Fearon and Laitin, 2003; and Miguel, Satyanath and Sergenti, 2004). However, there is little empirical evidence on the mechanisms through which these shocks translate into insurrection. For example, a positive income shock may reduce conflict through the labor market, by lowering wages and the opportunity cost of participating in predatory activities (Becker, 1968). On the other hand, higher income may promote conflict by raising potential gains from the pursuit of rapacious activities. The relative importance of these two channels is likely to depend on the nature of the income shock, which suggests that different types of economic shocks may affect conflict in different directions, and through different channels. Our paper tests this idea by assessing the effect of exogenous commodity price shocks on the civil war in Colombia. Using a unique dataset on local conflict, we show that price shocks to labor intensive agricultural commodities and capital intensive natural resource commodities affect violence in opposite directions, and through distinct channels.
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CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Not Always in the People’s Interest: Power-sharing Arrangements in African Peace Agreements
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Peace agreements form a crucial element of strategies to bring security from outside: they involve third-party mediators during the negotiation stage and often peacekeeping troops to guarantee the agreement at an implementation stage. Peace roundtables usually involve top politicians and military leaders, who negotiate, sign, and/or benefit from the agreement. What is usually and conspicuously absent from peace negotiations is broad-based participation by those who should benefit in the first place: citizens. More specifically, the local level of security provision and insecurity production is rarely taken into account. This paper reviews parts of the academic debate on power sharing and war termination, touching on some key findings by the main researchers working on the topic. The ambivalent African experience with Arend Lijphart’s four main ingredients of consociational democracy (grand coalition, minority veto, proportional representation, group autonomy) is summarized. Recent major African peace agreements (1999-2007) are analyzed, and their power-sharing content detailed. Most agreements contain some—though varying— power-sharing devices. Most striking is the variation regarding the important question of who is sharing power with whom. Obviously, only those present at the negotiation table can really count on being included in major ways. Finally, three country cases are analyzed over a longer time period: Côte d’Ivoire (2002-2007), Liberia (1994-2003), and Central African Republic (1996-2007). The conclusion focuses on the factors of failure of peace agreements that place a heavy emphasis on power sharing.
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SMALL ARMS
Small Arms Survey 2008: Risk and Resilience
Small Arms Survey
The diversion of small arms and light weapons is a major source of firearms for criminals and insurgents around the world, underlines the 2008 edition of the Small Arms Survey. Diverted arms shipments—in which arms are redirected to unauthorized end users—can range from small packages of components for civilian firearms to hundred-ton shipments of military-grade light weapons. The redirection can occur at any moment in the transfer chain and may involve the participation of corrupt government officials. Since 1987, major documented diversions have provided small arms to Afghan non-state groups, Colombian rebels as well as their paramilitary opponents, and unknown—but likely criminal or insurgent—end users in Sri Lanka and Iraq, as well as embargoed regimes such as Somalia and Liberia. The Small Arms Survey 2008: Risks and Resilience reviews the practices of the world’s leading arms-exporting states with a view to determining how well they meet their obligation under the UN Programme of Action ‘to ensure the effective control’ of small arms transfers. While states are not transparent about their compliance practices, it is clear that they neglect post-shipment controls—an important and cost-effective means of preventing diversion. The Survey also reports on the widespread diversion of small arms through leakage from state and civilian stockpiles, finding that this is primarily due to negligence. Many aspects of stockpile security can be improved by relatively low-cost improvements to accounting, monitoring, and the physical security of arms and ammunition.
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PEACE OPERATIONS
Europe's Role in Nation-Building: From the Balkans to the Congo
RAND Corporation
Since 1989, nation-building has become a growth industry. In two prior volumes, RAND has analyzed the United States’ and United Nations’ (UN’s) performance in this sphere, examining instances in which one or the other led such operations. In this monograph, we look at Europe’s performance, taking six instances in which European institutions or national governments have exercised comparable leadership. To complete our survey of modern nation-building, we have also included a chapter describing Australia’s operation in the Solomon Islands. In previous volumes, we defined nation-building as the use of armed force in the aftermath of a conflict to promote a durable peace and representative government. This is not a comprehensive study of all nation-building operations that have involved European countries. European troops, police, civilian advisers, and money have supported nearly every such operation over the past 60 years. Rather, it is a study of the European role in six cases in which the European Union or a European government led all or a key part of such an operation: Albania, Sierra Leone, Macedonia, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Bosnia. There are obvious difficulties in distinguishing among U.S.-, UN-, and European-led nation-building, since many international peace operations involve the participation of all three. Nevertheless, it should make a difference whether military command is being exercised from Washington, New York, Brussels, Paris, or London. This study seeks to determine whether there is an identifiable European way of nation-building, and if so, what we can learn from it.
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CRIMINAL VIOLENCE
Trouble on the Borders: Latin American's New Conflict Zones
Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior
The panorama of conflict and violence in present day Latin America is one of stark contradictions. Whereas armed aggression between states appeared to have become extinct, low-intensity violence has taken root in cities, homicide rates are amongst the world’s highest, and political polarization lends itself to mass street-level protests and muscular shows of strength. But it is in Latin America’s borderlands that this contrast between general inter-state stability and intensifying civil and criminal strife is most prominent. Aside from the aftermath of Colombia’s armed incursion into Ecuador, violence and institutional corrosion have plagued as never before the frontier between Mexico and the United States, while Guatemala’s eastern border region and Colombia’s frontiers with Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil witness these countries’ highest murder rates, as well as territorial capture by armed groups and narco-trafficking networks. Latin America’s most established frontier town, Ciudad del Este has long been a haven for money laundering and a thriving smuggling industry, as well as being linked by intelligence services to Islamist terrorism and the two deadly attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in the 1990s. One of the principal ironies of this border malaise is the almost total absence of official disputes over how national territories should be demarcated, thereby appearing to free these areas of the sort of state-sponsored hostilities witnessed in the contested frontiers of Kashmir, Sudan or Kosovo
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GOVERNANCE
Votes and Violence: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Nigeria
Centre for the Study of African Economies
The slow growth of Africa over the period since independence is now understood as being partly attributable to poor governance. Until the 1990s the predominant African political system was autocracy. As Besley and Kudamatsu (2007) show, while in some contexts autocracy has produced good economic performance, in Africa it has consistently been dysfunctional. During the 1990s many African autocracies were replaced by democracy, most dramatically in the region’s largest society, Nigeria. Given the dismal record of autocracy, there was a reasonable expectation that democracy would achieve both accountability and legitimacy, and thereby both improve economic performance and reduce proneness to political violence. However, the record of elections in Africa and other recent low-income democracies is not encouraging. Kudamatsu (2006) measures government performance by infant mortality and shows that, in Africa, elections produce no improvement except in the rare instances in which the incumbent is defeated. Collier and Rohner (2008) find that, below per capita income of $2,750, democracy significantly increases proneness to civil war and various other manifestations of violence, and Collier and Hoeffler (2008) find that in resource-rich economies such as Nigeria, electoral competition worsens economic performance unless combined with strong checks and balances.
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HEALTH
Widespread Rape Does Not Directly Appear to Increase the Overall HIV Prevalence in Conflict-Affected Countries: So Now What?
Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is severely affected by HIV/AIDS and conflict. Sexual violence as a weapon of war has been associated with concerns about heightened HIV incidence among women. Widespread rape by combatants has been documented in Burundi, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sudan and Uganda. To examine the assertion that widespread rape may not directly increase HIV prevalence at the population level, we built a model to determine the potential impact of varying scenarios of widespread rape on HIV prevalence in the above seven African countries. The conclusions of this article do not significantly change current practices in the field from an operational perspective. Proper care and treatment must be provided to every survivor of rape regardless of the epidemiological effects of HIV transmission at the population level. Sexual violence must be treated as a protection issue and not solely a reproductive health and psychosocial issue. It is worth publishing data and conclusions that could be misconstrued and may not make much of a programmatic difference in the field. Data, if collected, analysed and interpreted carefully, help to improve our understanding of complicated and nuanced situations. Ultimately, our understanding of what the outcomes of such interventions can achieve will be more realistic. It also helps decision-makers prioritise their funding and interventions.
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TERRORISM
Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout: Al-Qa'ida's Road In and Out of Iraq
Combating Terrorism Center
This report analyzes al-Qaida in Iraq's (AQI) operations from spring 2006 to summer 2007 and is being issued with a trove of AQI documents captured by coalition forces near Sinjar, Iraq. The documents include almost 600 AQI personnel records for foreign fighters crossing into Iraq, AQI contracts for suicide bombers, AQI contracts for fighters leaving Iraq, narratives written by al-Qaida's Syrian smugglers, and AQI financial records. The CTC also acquired demographic information on all Third Country Nationals (TCNs) in detention at Camp Bucca, Iraq. Most of this data has not previously been released to the public. The key findings of the report are as follows: Saudi Arabia and Libya supplied the most fighters in the Sinjar Records. Saudi Arabia contributed the highest number of foreign fighters to al-Qaida's fight in Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007, followed by Libya. Of the 576 fighters in the Sinjar Records that listed their nationality, 41 percent (237) were of Saudi Arabian origin, and 19.2 percent (111) were Libyan. Syria, Yemen, and Algeria were the next most common countries of origin with 8 percent (46), 8.1 percent (44), and 7.1 percent (41), respectively. Moroccans accounted for 6.1 percent (36) of the fighters and Jordanians 1.9 percent (11).
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