SUDAN: Beyond "Janjaweed": Understanding the Militias of Darfur
In an effort to control a rebellion in Darfur, Sudan's westernmost region, the Government of Sudan waged a ruthless counterinsurgency in 2003–04 by appealing to tribes to fight in support of the weak and demoralized army. The rebellion was organized mainly by three non-Arab groups -- the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit -- and most of the recruits to the counterinsurgency came from groups claiming an 'Arab' identity. A massive destruction campaign caused the deaths of at least 200,000 people and drove 1.5 million into displaced camps. More than 200,000 others crossed the border and became refugees in eastern Chad. An unprecedented advocacy campaign in the West called the conflict 'the first genocide of the 21st century' and tended to conflate Darfur's Arabs, most of whom remained neutral, with the government-supported 'janjaweed' militias and paramilitaries. This Working Paper examines the mobilization of 2003-04, who supported it and who did not -- and why. It attempts to distinguish this period of the war from the years that followed. While recognizing that terrible things happened, with long-lasting destructive consequences, it argues that the conflict, the militias, and their role all changed over time--a fact lost in a continuing narrative of 'janjaweed' and 'victims'. Small Arms Survey // Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva // Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (18 June)

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SOMALIA: Leaving Mogadishu: The War on Terror and Displacement Dynamics in the Somali Regions
Violent mass conflict disrupts the lives of millions of people around the world each year. Analysis and conflict resolution and prevention programmes are commonly driven by regional, national and international perspectives. But to understand some violent conflict situations, and to design successful policies to prevent or respond, it is important to go beyond the macro-level, to explore the micro-foundations – the individual, household and group interactions leading to and resulting from conflicts. This is perhaps particularly important in the context of protracted crises, where there are often complex and rather localised conflict dynamics. Migration is a common result of violent conflict, with people moving within the affected area or country, and across borders to neighbouring countries or further afield. This paper focuses on the causes and processes of migration in the Somali regions of the Horn of Africa, which have witnessed particularly dramatic patterns of movement. The field research focused on a particular fragment of the wider picture, through research with a small sample of people from south-central Somalia (mainly Mogadishu) seeking refuge in Somaliland (mainly Hargeisa). MicroCon // University of Sussex (29 June)

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IDP: Mass Displacement Caused by Conflicts and One-Sided Violence: National and International Responses
Massive displacement of people within countries and across borders has become a defining feature of the post-cold war world. It is also a major feature of human insecurity in which genocide, terrorism, egregious human rights violations and appalling human degradation wreak havoc on civilians. The need of internally displaced persons (IDPs), people forcibly uprooted in their own countries, for international protection from conflict and one-sided violence was one of the factors that prompted a shift in global policy and security thinking. Over the past two decades, a strictly state-centred system in which sovereignty was absolute has evolved into one in which the behaviour of states towards their own citizens has become a matter of international concern and scrutiny. This evolution largely grew from the efforts of the human rights movement, which had long championed the view that the rights of people transcend frontiers and that the international community must hold governments to account when they fail to meet their obligations. It also arose from the efforts of the humanitarian community to reach people in need. The deployment of large numbers of relief workers and peacekeeping operations in the field to protect civilians reflects this new reality as do preventive and peacebuilding efforts. Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement // Brookings Institution (9 June)

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ARMS TRADE: The Organized Hypocrisy of Ethical Foreign Policy: Human Rights, Democracy and Western Arms Sales
Over the past two decades, Western political leaders have scripted a new approach to foreign policy, wherein far greater weight is given to ethical considerations and protecting the rights and freedoms of extra-territorial citizens. Using the example of arms exports to developing countries, the present paper exposes the organized hypocrisy underlying countries' self-declared ethical turn. We show that the major Western arms supplying states -- France, Germany, the UK and the US -- have generally not exercised export controls so as to discriminate against human rights abusing or autocratic countries during the post-Cold War period. Rather, we uncover ongoing territorial egoism, in that arms have been exported to countries which serve supplying states’ domestic economic and security interests. Eric Neumayer // Richard Perkins // London School of Economics (12 June)

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PEACEBUILDING: Does the UN Peacebuilding Commission Change the Mode of Peacebuilding in Africa?
In December 2005, the United Nations created a high-profile Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) to serve as a dedicated institutional mechanism to fill the gap in the international architecture for post-conflict response. As such the PBC was mandated to link the political, security and economic functions of the United Nations in conflict and post-conflict situations. This paper analyzes the PBC's own integrated strategies for peace-building in Sierra Leone and Burundi, through cumulative performance reports and views of practitioners. In almost all previous and on-going peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations, the UN has been represented by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the United Nations Development Program, the Department of Political Affairs, as well as over thirty other UN agencies, funds and programs including international financial institutions and regional organizations. Outside the UN structures, several international development agencies created dedicated emergency or transitional units to deal with initial post-conflict situations. The involvement of so many players with competing interests in peacebuilding missions means that the coordination and integration of peacebuilding activities remains a serious challenge. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (30 June)

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PEACE OPERATIONS: Improving Criminal Accountability in UN Peace Operations
In the past decade, the number of persons serving in UN peace operations has increased more than ten-fold, from roughly 12,000 to more than 115,000, with a further 12,000 authorized for deployment. In the wake of rapid mission growth and deployment into desperately poor and chaotic situations came growing reports of serious misconduct by military and civilian personnel alike. The misconduct story hit the UN hard in 2004, starting with its mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo but with similar stories soon emerging from other operations as well. Although misconduct in complex peacekeeping has a long history, it was previously dealt with quietly through diplomatic channels. Quiet impunity, or impunity in any form, will no longer do. This report therefore focuses its recommendations on UN officials ('staff,' including more than 20,000 civilian personnel, over 1,000 of whom are armed close protection security officers) and 'experts on mission' (including up to 17,000 UN police, nearly half of whom are armed), all of whom enjoy substantial functional immunity from local legal jurisdiction. Stimson Center (29 June)

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ARMED CONFLICT: Revolt of the Paupers or the Aspiring?: Geographic Wealth Dispersion and Conflict
Although income can vary considerably within countries and conflicts zones are rarely typical or representative for states at large, most existing research on development and conflict has neglected spatial differences in the distribution of wealth and only examined national averages. We argue that areas with low absolute income are likely to be more prone to conflict, even if a country’s GDP per capita may not be low, and that areas with large income deviations from national averages are more likely to see violence. We test these hypotheses empirically using spatially disaggregated data on income and conflict locations. Our results show that absolute poverty increases the risk that specific areas will see conflict and that relative wealth increases the risk of conflict in poor states. We also scale within-country variation in income up to country profiles, and show that local information on income can improve on conventional country average measures in accounting for conflict. International Peace Research Institute, Oslo ()

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CLIMATE CHANGE: Rising Temperatures, Rising Tensions: Climate Change and the Risk of Violent Conflict in the Middle East
The Levant -- made up of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) -- has experienced more than 60 years of bloody conflict. Despite some brief interludes of optimism in the early 1990s, the history of conflict and mistrust between and within the countries, the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory and the Golan Heights, and periodic hostilities mean that a durable peace in the region remains a distant prospect. Against this backdrop, the mounting scientific evidence confirming the speed and scope of climate change seems, at most, a secondary concern to be addressed once other problems have been resolved. However, climate change -- by redrawing the maps of water availability, food security, disease prevalence, population distribution and coastal boundaries -- may hold serious implications for regional security. This report, prepared by an independent Canadian environment and development research institute, seeks to present a neutral analysis of the security threat of climate change in the region over the next 40 years (to 2050), drawn from consultations and extensive interviews with experts from across the region's political and ethnic divides. International Institute for Sustainable Development (2 June)

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CHILDREN: Machel Study 10-Year Strategic Review: Children and Conflict in a Changing World
The organization of this report aims to heighten our understanding of the myriad ways in which armed conflict affects children – and how children regard their participation not only in war but in programmes aimed at preventing violence against them and in promoting their recovery and reintegration. The report thus frames its findings within three categories: political and diplomatic actions and responsibilities; systemwide international policies, standards and architectures; and prevention and response. The challenges before us are steep. As pointed out in chapter 2, inter-state conflicts have declined in number worldwide, but they are being supplanted by smaller-scale, low-intensity intra-state wars. These pose a new category of threats to children because they involve ill-trained combatants armed with readily available small weapons. Terrorism and counterterrorism continue to pose new challenges for the protection of children. All the while, the trend that Mrs. Machel identified in 1996 – the deliberate targeting of civilians, especially children, as a tactic of war – continues to intensify. United Nations Children's Fund (16 June)

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INTL LAW: From the Taylor Trial to a Lasting Legacy: Putting the Special Court Model to the Test
The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL or Special Court) was established in 2002 when the two United Nations (UN) ad hoc international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda had already existed for several years and when the first lessons could be drawn from their experiences. Many observers praised the Special Court model as an innovation because it contained several important features that distinguish it from the purely international tribunals: its location in the country where the crimes occurred, a fundamental quality that was to affect its work more broadly; its 'mixed' or hybrid composition, including a minority of judges appointed by the government of Sierra Leone, which essentially meant that both nationals and internationals would be responsible for implementing the court's mandate; its potential, based on its hybrid nature, to reflect knowledge of the events, reach informed judgments, and build a full judicial record of the events in Sierra Leone through fair trials; its more strictly defined mandate to focus only on 'those who bear the greatest responsibility,' with the expectation that this would lead to judicial efficiency and a short timeframe for the court's work; its anticipated cost-effectiveness, based on a more flexible oversight mechanism through a management committee composed of the main donors and interested countries, and the expectation of reducing the running costs and avoiding UN bureaucracy; its independence from the national judiciary, while retaining the potential to have a positive impact on national institutions and legal reform, and to be closer and more relevant to the population; and finally, its ad hoc nature, meaning that it would only exist for a certain time before winding down. International Center for Transitional Justice (16 June)

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ARMED CONFLICT: Conflict, Community, and Criminality in Southeast Asia & Australia
The essays on Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Cambodia, Burma, and Australia have a thread in common: terrorism, like politics, is local. Yes, there is a superficial frame, which is shared by local terrorists, but the vicissitudes of violence vary according to local events. Except for training provided a decade earlier to some aspiring terrorists, al Qaeda is notably absent from the various accounts in the present collection. Indeed, the weak links to al Qaeda central, trumpeted in the West more than in Southeast Asia, obscure the local dynamics, showing an upsurge in the threat earlier in this decade and a general decline as time goes on. While the ideology is similar, local social conditions change, and law enforcement agencies learn to deal with their foes. As the essays show, the situation is improving in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia. The situation is deteriorating in Thailand because violent Islamists wrapped themselves with separatist grievances, while the situation in the Philippines is so embedded in local politics that it is difficult to even analyze it in terms of 'terrorism.' Indeed, there, the complexity of local factors well known to local inhabitants is obscured by the fears of Western politicians, who insist on putting strange labels on the belligerents. Center for Strategic and International Studies (30 June)

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CONFLICT PREVENTION: Preventing Violence, War and State Collapse: The Future of Conflict Early Warning and Response
From the start, conflict early warming was envisaged as distinct from intelligence-based analysis that focused on protection of state interests. It sought multi-stakeholder solutions, was gender-sensitive, used open source information and aimed at protecting human lives and creating sustainable peace based on locally owned solutions. However, this approach has been overshadowed by the new Northern perception of international threats that emerged after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and consequent counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation measures taken by the United States and its allies. Those attacks also acted as a spur to growing interest in and analysis of weak, fragile and failed states. In spite of the increased resources going into early warning, key shortcomings of governmental and multilateral interventions in violent conflict remain. These include fault analysis, late, uncoordinated and contradictory engagement, and poor decision making. Conflict early warning as a field of conflict prevention is today undergoing significant scrutiny. There have been inaccurate predictions, failure to foresee important events, and inadequate linking of operation responses to warnings. From a donor perspective, the visible impacts of early warning are often seen as meager. Indeed, at times early warning analyses can provide donor officials with political headaches, by being alarmist or offensive to other governments, or by advocating responses that are not feasible. However, proponents of conflict early warning insist that it contributes to the evidence base of conflict prevention decision making. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (12 June)

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