SAUDI ARABIA: Human Rights and Saudi Arabia's Counterterrorism Response: Religious Counseling, Indefinite Detention, and Flawed Trials
Saudi Arabia has responded to threats and acts of terrorism since 2003 by indefinitely detaining thousands of suspects, all the while providing many of them with an opportunity to participate in a program of religious counseling aimed at "rehabilitating" them. At least 1,500 detainees who participated in this program have been released. Foreign governments have praised the Saudi government for the ostensible success of the rehabilitation program in thwarting terrorist activity, largely overlooking the fact that the participants were not convicted criminals but rather men held in long-term detention without charge. This report assesses, first, the religious counseling program that Saudi authorities offer to suspected militants in prison; second, the systematic, indefinite detention of suspected militants by the domestic intelligence service, the General Directorate for Investigations (mabahith), in violation of the international prohibition of arbitrary detention and the requirement in Saudi law that authorities refer a detainee to court within six months of his arrest; and, third, the trials that began in 2009 for some of the suspects. Human Rights Watch (10 August)

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KENYA: A Choice for Peace? The Story of Forty-One Days of Mediation in Kenya
The postelection violence that erupted in Kenya in December 2007 resulted in the deaths of over one thousand people and left three hundred thousand people displaced. While catastrophic, the scale of the social and economic destruction, not to mention the loss of life, could have been much greater were it not for the peace mediation mandated by the African Union in January 2008. The Panel of Eminent African Personalities, chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, led the forty-one-day peace process, culminating in the Agreement on the Principles of Partnership of the Coalition Government, which was signed by President Mwai Kibaki and the Honorable Raila Odinga on February 28th, putting an end to the crisis which engulfed the nation and took the world by surprise. This paper gives a detailed account of the events which led up to this agreement. International Peace Institute (21 August)

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AFGHANISTAN: Patronage, Posturing, Duty, Demographics: Why Afghans Voted in 2009
Despite a recent rise in insurgent attacks in Kabul, on 20 August 2009 voters from urban and rural areas around the Afghan capital went to the polls to participate in presidential and provincial council elections. In the days leading up to the polls, the international media predicted that turnout would be low, with threats from the Taliban and a general disillusionment with the democratic process expected to keep voters at home. Despite these concerns and six attacks on polling stations in the capital by midday, these expectations in certain areas proved exaggerated, with voters in some parts of the province waiting in long lines and enthusiastically displaying their newly dyed fingers after exiting the polling stations. International media then interpreted these scenes as voters 'defying the Taliban,' but AREU research suggests that there were other, more complex reasons for public participation in Kabul, which will have consequences over the coming year. Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (25 August)

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GAZA STRIP: Locked In: The Humanitarian Impact of Two Years of Blockade on the Gaza Strip
Following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Israel has imposed an unprecedented blockade on all border crossings in and out of the Gaza Strip. The blockade has "locked in" 1.5 million people in what is one of the most densely populated areas on earth, triggering a protracted human dignity crisis with negative humanitarian consequences. At the heart of this crisis is the degradation in the living conditions of the population, caused by the erosion of livelihoods and the gradual decline in the state of infrastructure, and the quality of vital services in the areas of health, water and sanitation, and education. The blockade, now in its third year, has taken place alongside recurrent cycles of violence and human rights violations, stemming from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Hamas's rule over Gaza. The denial of Palestinians' right to leave Gaza, or to move freely to the West Bank, particularly when their lives, physical integrity, or basic freedoms are under threat, is another key component of the current human dignity crisis. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (25 August)

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UGANDA: Resolving Conflicts Using Traditional Mechanisms in the Karamoja and Teso Regions of Uganda
This study is the result of intensive research and consultations with community representatives and local and national government officials in Karamoja and Teso regions of northeast Uganda. A few conclusions of the research are summarised as follows: The formal state mechanisms for justice and conflict resolution are not adequately implanted in the two regions. They struggle to cope with the present level of conflicts. In some cases the state apparatus is mistrusted by local communities due to associations with past abuses. Traditional, community-based mechanisms for regulating conflicts and providing justice have been used in these communities for centuries, if not millennia. These mechanisms have struggled to keep up with the increasing intensity and violence of conflicts, environmental degradation, and displacement of communities, and have suffered in particular with the marginalisation of elders as a result of small arms influxes and conflicts between the roles of community elders and the formal representatives of the state. There are also accusations that traditional mechanisms in some cases entrench elitism and paternalism. Minority Rights Group International (25 August)

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PEACEBUILDING: Security Promotion in Fragile States: Can Local Meet National? Exploring the Connections between Community Security and Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration
The connection between community security and Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) is a largely omitted topic in most current policy approaches and is relatively unexplored in both academic and policy literature. The few available reports indicate that community security and community-based DDR initiatives have something to offer and can not only complement state-centred approaches, but may even substitute them when the state is unable, unwilling or unavailable to carry out its tasks. For instance, in many conflict and post-conflict settings, local-level security initiatives provide local forms of protection or security zones, or involve communities in disarmament and reintegration or the monitoring thereof. They may further act as interlocutors between vulnerable populations and formal and non-state security actors. This report reviews the existing literature on the link between community security and DDR processes. Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael (31 August)

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GOVERNANCE: Weak States and Political Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa
Political violence has emerged as one of Africa's most pressing security issues and recent events in Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire and Nigeria point to the salience of the phenomenon. Existing studies argue that the weak and incapacitated nature of African states is a significant factor contributing to high levels of political violence. Yet this insight does not help us to understand which aspect of a weak state affects political violence. Using Afrobarometer survey data, this study identifies and measures citizens� perceptions of the dimensions of state weakness and explores how these popular attitudes shape perceptions of the use violence for political purposes. In order to test the robustness of our findings we use participation in demonstrations and protests as a second dependent variable. We find that widespread crime and insecurity, lack of state legitimacy, inadequate protection of private property and group grievances are strongly associated with both popular acceptability of political violence and higher levels of participation in demonstrations. However, we do not find any significant effect of weak presence of the state and poor provision of public goods on an individual�s proclivity to engage in political violence. University of Kentucky // Michigan State University // Afrobarometer (1 August)

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REFUGEES: Human Security and the Rights of Refugees: Transcending Territorial and Disciplinary Borders
One of the main concerns of the human security framework is that it may undermine hard-won human rights guarantees or otherwise displace law-based systems of protection. This concern has raised many questions about the discourse on human security. Is it intended to or likely to replace or undermine human rights? Does it threaten these hard-won legal gains? These questions are addressed in this essay. A second level of inquiry in this essay interrogates what the 'human security/human rights' dialogue means for the protection of refugees, who have typically been outside the remit of states' national interests, except insofar as they are seen as threats to a state's security or some geopolitical pawns in the realist security paradigms of the Cold War and its bipolar politics. As non-citizens who are on the perimeters of the citizen-state protection system, refugees have been reliant largely on specific legal regimes, supported by humanitarian goodwill, for their protection. However, these legal regimes have been increasingly eroded by state noncompliance and exploitation of legal loopholes. This Essay asks whether the framework of human security may offer a complementary source of protection in the face of eroding refugee rights. Michigan Journal of International Law // University of Michigan (26 August)

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ARMED CONFLICT: Corporations and Counterinsurgency
The insurgencies, civil wars, and humanitarian interventions of the 1990s introduced U.S. military planners, strategists, and analysts to the important roles played in internal conflicts by unofficial entities, such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and private military companies (PMCs). Today, in countries as diverse as Colombia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, multinational corporations (MNCs) are shaping zones of conflict in significant ways. However, although academic specialists have noted the growing governance and security roles of MNCs, U.S. strategy and policy have been slow to acknowledge the significance of these corporate actors.The role of MNCs in conflict environments is not an entirely novel subject, but many earlier studies have approached this issue from the perspective of corporate social responsibility, human rights, and environmental policy. In contrast, this paper will focus explicitly on MNCs as actors in conflict systems and will consider these firms� efforts to mitigate violence and promote stability through social development and security measures�what might be termed conflict mitigation; conflict transformation; or, more bluntly, 'corporate counterinsurgency.' This goal of this paper is relatively modest: to introduce policymakers, and analysts to the roles MNCs play in the conflict zones. RAND Corporation (24 August)

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PEACEBUILDING: Security Sector Reform: Post-Conflict Integration
This paper provides a synthesis of key issues and lessons from academic and policy papers focused on issues relating to the integration of non-state and government military forces, as part of a wider peace settlement following civil war. As well as drawing upon existing studies the paper synthesises themes by examining the data from eight primary and fifteen secondary case studies, drawn from various sources. An overarching and consistent theme throughout all case studies examined is the requirement, with integration endeavours, to view the process as the outcome. The integration of non-state military forces into the state security apparatus is an element of wider post-conflict peacebuilding and statebuilding processes and as such the outcome is rarely predictable. The paper has highlighted the complex and diverse nature of efforts to integrate ex-combatants into state security forces. There exist as many approaches and solutions as there are contexts in which they have been attempted. An examination of the available case study material has, however, provided some consistent themes that have been highlighted throughout the paper as lessons identified. Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform // University of Birmingham (10 August)

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TERRORISM: Identity and Islamic Radicalization in Western Europe
This paper argues that both socio-economic disadvantage and political factors, such as the West�s foreign policy with regard to the Muslim world, along with historical grievances, play a part in the development of Islamic radicalized collective action in Western Europe. We emphasise the role of group identity based individual behaviour in organising collective action within radicalized Muslim groups. Inasmuch as culture plays any role at all in radicalization, it is because individuals feel an imperative to act on the basis of their Muslim identity, something to which different individuals will attach varying degrees of salience, depending on how they place their Muslim identity based actions in the scheme of their multiple identities. We also emphasize the role of the opportunistic politician, from the majority European community, in fomenting hatred for Muslims, which also produces a backlash from radicalized political Islam. We present comparative evidence on socio-economic, political and cultural disadvantage faced by Muslim minorities in five West European countries: Germany, the UK, France, Spain and the Netherlands. MicroCon (31 August)

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NATURAL RESOURCES: Understanding of the Natural Resource Conflict Dynamics: The Case of Tuareg in North Africa and the Sahel
Tuareg are pastoral desert nomads who live in the north part of Africa. Political environment at independence, migration and environmental changes have interacted to influence, in a crucial way, their current situation. This paper explores the impact of changing access to livelihood resources on current conflict between Tuareg and the governments of Mali, Niger and Algeria. It will be argued that the processes that influenced the conflict are deeply entrenched in history, and in the composite relations between Tuareg and the environment as well as the policies and institutional context. These are expressed in a range of ways, including natural resource management, land tenure security, climate change and humanitarian intervention. Further, polarisation of Libya and policies of levelling of social hierarchies and sedentrisation initiated by Algeria, as well as the international processes of exclusion, have all contributed to the vulnerability of Tuareg and the intensification of the conflict. Boiled-over dissatisfaction of Tuareg has provoked violent response by popular uprising and government violent response. Institute for Security Studies, South Africa (1 August)

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