The nature of armed conflict has changed in recent decades. This presents new challenges for the prevention of violence, the promotion of disarmament and the securing of durable peace. The essays in this book address important aspects related to these challenges, with references to the work of prominent German peace researcher Herbert Wulf. Topics covered include demilitarization, small arms control, security sector reform, post-conflict construction, peace-building in failed states and, as guiding theme, the limits and possibilities of security governance.
Comprehensively laying out the concept of crimilegality, this book presents a novel perspective on the relationship between what is conventionally termed organised crime and political order in the contemporary developing world. In hybrid crimilegal orders the moral, normative and social boundaries between legality and illegality-criminality are blurred, and through the violation of the official law, the illegal-criminal sphere of social life becomes legitimate and morally acceptable, while the legal turns illegitimate and immoral. Several examples of crimilegality and crimilegal governance in Colombia and Nigeria, including in relation to armed conflict termination, are used to illustrate these complex processes.
Violent conflicts today are complex and increasingly protracted, involving more nonstate groups and regional and international actors. It is estimated that by 2030—the horizon set by the international community for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals—more than half of the world’s poor will be living in countries affected by high levels of violence. Information and communication technology, population movements, and climate change are also creating shared risks that must be managed at both national and international levels. Pathways for Peace is a joint United Nations†“World Bank Group study that originates from the conviction that the international community’s attention must urgently be refocused on prevention. A scaled-up system for preventive action would save between US$5 billion and US$70 billion per year, which could be reinvested in reducing poverty and improving the well-being of populations. The study aims to improve the way in which domestic development processes interact with security, diplomacy, mediation, and other efforts to prevent conflicts from becoming violent. It stresses the importance of grievances related to exclusion—from access to power, natural resources, security and justice, for example—that are at the root of many violent conflicts today. Based on a review of cases in which prevention has been successful, the study makes recommendations for countries facing emerging risks of violent conflict as well as for the international community. Development policies and programs must be a core part of preventive efforts; when risks are high or building up, inclusive solutions through dialogue, adapted macroeconomic policies, institutional reform, and redistributive policies are required. Inclusion is key, and preventive action needs to adopt a more people-centered approach that includes mainstreaming citizen engagement. Enhancing the participation of women and youth in decision making is fundamental to sustaining peace, as well as long-term policies to address the aspirations of women and young people.
This edited volume takes stock of the state of research and policy on the issue of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW), ten years after the UN first agreed to deal with the problem. The end of the Cold War originated a series of phenomena that would subsequently come to dominate the political agenda. Perhaps most symptomatic of the ensuing environment is the marked escalation in the scale and dynamics of armed violence, driven by the proliferation of SALW. Events in Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia seared into global consciousness the devastating effects of this phenomenon, and of the necessity to engage actively in its limitation and prevention. This edited volume explores and outlines the research and policy on the SALW issue at this critical juncture. In addition to providing a detailed telling of the genesis and evolution of SALW research and advocacy, the volume features a series of essays from leading scholars in the field on both advances in research and action on SALW. It reflects on what has been achieved in terms of cumulative advances in data, methodology and analysis, and looks at the ways in which these developments have helped to inform policy making at national, regional and international levels. Alongside situating and integrating past and present advances in advocacy and international action, Controlling Small Arms also outlines future directions for research and action. This book will be of much interest to students of small arms, peace and conflict studies, peacebuilding, security studies and IR.
The 1990s saw a constant increase in international peace missions, predominantly led by the United Nations, whose mandates were more and more extended to implement societal and political transformations in post-conflict societies. However, in many cases these missions did not meet the high expectations and did not acquire a sufficient legitimacy on the local level. Written by leading experts in the field, this edited volume brings together ‘liberal’ and ‘post-liberal’ approaches to peacebuilding. Besides challenging dominant peacebuilding paradigms, the book scrutinizes how far key concepts of post-liberal peacebuilding offer sound categories and new perspectives to reframe peacebuilding research. It thus moves beyond the ‘liberal’–‘post-liberal’ divide and systematically integrates further perspectives, paving the way for a new era in peacebuilding research which is theory-guided, but also substantiated in the empirical analysis of peacebuilding practices. This book will be essential reading for postgraduate students and scholar-practitioners working in the field of peacebuilding. By embedding the subject area into different research perspectives, the book will also be relevant for scholars who come from related backgrounds, such as democracy promotion, transitional justice, statebuilding, conflict and development research and international relations in general.
"... Explores the connections between fragile statehood and violent conflict, and analyses the limitations of outside intervention from international society."--P. 4 of cover.
The question of how effective political tools actually are is among the most hotly debated in contemporary IR theory. There is no unanimity how to even measure the effectiveness and impact different political measures produce. This book comprehensively introduces social science students and scholars to the various fields of effectiveness and impact research in the study of international relations.
This book examines the role of everyday action in accepting, resisting and reshaping interventions, and the unique forms of peace that emerge from the interactions between local and international actors. Building on critiques of liberal peace-building, it redefines critical peace and conflict studies, based on new research from 16 countries.
