2012 has been hailed as a potential landmark year in the push for greater regulation of the global trade in conventional arms. After more than a decade of advocacy to this end, negotiations took place throughout July towards the world’s first Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which is intended to establish the highest possible common international standards for the transfer of conventional weapons.  However, although significant progress was made during the month of intense negotiations, the ATT is not yet open for signature. The future of possible work towards a treaty now lies with the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, as discussions continue about the possibility of a second round of negotiations. As the Committee’s session nears an end, this article explores what role a potential treaty – if reopened for further negotiation – could play in a move towards sustainable security.

The scale of the arms trade is significant; it’s impact, devastating in many parts of the world. From 2006-10, the top five arms exporting countries – the United States, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom and France – delivered nearly 92 million major conventional weapons* . The recipients of arms transfers include countries such as Sudan, Yemen, Egypt and Libya, where the use of government stockpiles against civilians over the past two years has been particularly abhorrent. However, even as the volume of international transfers continues to increase – by 24 per cent from 2002-2006 to 2007-2011 – there is still no overarching global regulation of the trade. Instead, there exists only a patchwork of national laws and regional agreements that fail to impose any consistent international standard of trade.

This lack of comprehensive global standards to regulate transfers of conventional arms – which range from battle tanks, combat aircraft and missile launchers to small arms and light weapons – has allowed a flow of weapons to actors who use them in contravention of international humanitarian and human rights law, including terrorist groups and human rights abusers. This in turn prolongs conflict, undermining stabilisation and development efforts. Indeed, as 30 high-profile Oxfam and Amnesty International supporters stated in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in at the start of the July’s negotiation conference:

Every year an average of two bullets for every person on this planet is produced. With so few global rules governing the arms trade, no one really knows where all those bullets will end up – or whose lives they will tear apart. Under the current system, there are less global controls on the sales of ammunition and guns than on bananas and bottled water. It’s a ridiculous situation. The deadly and poorly regulated trade in arms leads to serious human rights abuses, armed violence, conflict, poverty and organized crime around the world. The lack of clear binding principles governing decisions on international arms transfers combined with patchy, diverse and poorly implemented national regulations are inadequate to deal with the increasingly globalised nature of the arms trade. As a result, irresponsible users are allowed to violate international humanitarian and human rights law.

If negotiated, the ATT would establish much needed internationally agreed norms of responsible state behaviour with regards to arms transfers; with criteria that aims to prevent the transfer of weapons to the aforementioned irresponsible actors.

What would this mean in practice? An ATT would act to ensure that arms-exporting states have an obligation to conduct comprehensive risk assessments in line with international humanitarian and human rights law before approving international transfers of arms. In so doing, an ATT would provide a crucial delineation of the circumstances under which transfers should not be allowed.

This has important implications. For example, following a government review of arms exports to the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, the United Kingdom revoked 158 licenses because the exports were found to violate two main criteria for the UK’s Consolidated Criteria for arms exports: respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and risk that the exported weapons might be used for internal repression. The impact of certain earlier UK export decisions had become clear in Bahrain in February 2011, when a British-supplied arsenal of crowd control weapons – including stun guns, shotguns, crowd control ammunition and canisters of teargas – was reportedly used by security forces in a brutal crackdown against popular protests**. Although some licenses were revoked, the UK has a further 600 extant licenses to countries such as Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, where rights abuses are notoriously continuing. The aim of the ATT is to ensure that exporting countries consider the dangers to civilians and human rights while deciding whether or not to transfer arms and to prevent transfers where abuse is likely. An ATT is therefore hoped to help stem the flow of arms to actors – state and non-state – who use violent action to undermine rule of law and the international humanitarian laws that seek to protect civilians and sustain security.

The consequences of irresponsible arms transfers reverberate further than governmental misuse. For example, the 2008 Final Report of the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan stated that arms originating from the stockpiles of Sudan, Chad and Libya had been used in attacks by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) forces in Sudan, a militia group included in the UN Security Council arms embargo on Sudan (Darfur region) from 2005 onwards. In the case of JEM attacks on the city of Omdurman in 2008, chain-of ownership tracing by the Panel identified numerous weapons manufactured in Spain, Belgium and Bulgaria, which had originally been legitimately shipped to Libya . Although many of the weapons were formerly exported to Libya in the early 1980s, the report stood as a clear sign of the danger of legitimately transferred arms leaking into the illicit market from irresponsible end-users. By assessing the responsibility of end-users before transferring arms, the ATT might go some way towards encouraging states to stem the flow of weapons to illicit markets from the back-doors of irresponsible end-users. In turn, it is hoped that it will work against the militarisation of societies that threatens the stability of the majority of civilians.

Treaty negotiations keenly acknowledged the disproportionate impact of small arms and light weapons (SALW) on civilian populations during and after violent conflict and accordingly, SALW are covered in the scope of the treaty. As noted by the UN office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) ‘small arms are cheap, light, and easy to handle, transport and conceal. A build-up of small arms alone may not create the conflicts in which they are used, but their excessive accumulation and wide availability aggravates the tension. The violence becomes more lethal and lasts longer, and a sense of insecurity grows, which in turn lead to a greater demand for weapons…They are the weapons of choice in civil wars and for terrorism, organized crime and gang warfare.’  Including these weapons type in the treaty’s scope – and therefore extending beyond the UN Register of Conventional Arms – will increase the number of disarmament tools available to tackle the prolific spread of these weapons and their devastating impact and threat to sustained security during and following armed conflict.

Each of these aims seeks to counter a pattern of increasing spread of arms and trend towards militarisation which, far from protecting societies, drives insecurity around the world. This is true for states – with the aforementioned trend towards increased spending for conventional arms and annual increases in world military expenditure from 1998-2010 – but also for civilian society. Around the world, millions of people face the direct and indirect consequences of increased militarisation on a daily basis, whether living under the constant threat of weapons held by local gangs or criminals, or direct trauma, injury or fatality as a result of use of weapons in conflict or terrorist action. In the face of these situations, both where the state abuses civil rights or where the state is unable to protect communities from armed non-state groups, communities often choose to seek further weapons as a means of protection, and so cycles of increased militarisation and violence continue to threaten the stability of societies. By stemming a downwards flow of weapons, and making assessments about the likelihood of irresponsible or abusive use of transferred arms, a treaty of this nature may serve to prevent violent conflict and/or help to make conflict less deadly.

The current draft text does much towards these goals, by including provisions related to record keeping, international assistance and implementation, as well as creating a Secretariat to help signatory states implement the treaty, especially those who may lack the bureaucratic capacity to do so right away. More importantly, it clearly outlines the obligations that signatories would have to conduct comprehensive risks assessments in line with IHL and IHRL before approving transfers and effectively underlines the circumstances in which transfers should not be made.

However, there are still a number of issues with the draft treaty, which at present leaves loopholes in regulation that would allow for on-going abuses as a result of arms transfers if it is used as a base for further negotiations. As outlined efficiently in Control Arms’ recent briefing ‘Finishing the Job: delivering a bullet-proof ATT’ , at present the draft treaty text falls short in a number of ways. Necessary improvements to the draft include: addressing the exclusion of ammunition from the scope of the treaty; the lack of a provision that requires state reports on transfers to be publically available; lack of provisions for states to consider risks that transferred arms may be diverted or used for corruption, against development or in gender-based violence; and current ambiguity about controls when dealing with states not party to the treaty. It will also be vital for key exporting nations such as the United States to be on board with the treaty for it to be effective. If negotiations are re-opened, negotiators must once again carefully navigate the need to sharpen the treaty scope and criteria with a need to have the participation from a majority of states.

There is clearly quite some way to go before the treaty could come into force and be implemented effectively. The ATT clearly cannot act as a panacea for conflict-affected countries, nor will it hinder inter-state arms trade or domestic controls. However, if successfully negotiated and implemented, it could be an effective filter to curb the worst of irresponsible and illicit arms trading. The ATT may currently seem abstracted from the real impact of the arms trade, but in the end, as stated by the Control Arms Campaign, ‘the ATT will be judged according to its success in preventing transfers that risk contributing to or facilitating human suffering’. As UK Ambassador Jo Adamson said at the opening of the First Committee session, with the ATT ‘we have a real live example of where we can make a real difference in the real world to real people.’

*(data on conventional weapons exports and military expenditure derived from SIPRI Yearbook 2012: http://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2012/06)
**All information in this paragraph can be found in the UK Parliament Committees on Arms Export Controls report ‘Scrutiny of Arms Exports (2012)’  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmquad/419/41902.htm 

Zoë Pelter is a Research Officer of Oxford Research Group’s (ORG) Sustainable Security Programme. 

Image source: Oxfam

In our two-part discussion ‘Countering Militarised Public Security in Latin America’,  Sarah Kinosian and Matt Budd explore the roots of the increasing trend towards militarisation of  public security across Central and South America and ask what lessons can be learnt from alternative methods. Part 2 is available here.

Across Latin America, governments are sending their militaries into the streets to act as de facto police forces in the face of disproportionally high crime and violence rates. This trend has been going on for several years, but has accelerated in 2013. With the move to deploy over 40,000 troops for citizen security in Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro joined a growing list of leaders throughout the region – in Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and Dominican Republic, to name a few– that have relied on their militaries to carry out police duties. Yet, in the past 20 years, there are no regional examples in which relying on soldiers for the security of citizens for an extended period of time has brought crime rates down.

Aside from being ineffective, there are other problems associated with militarization of law enforcement. This tactic might offer short-term political or security gains, but it does not provide a long-term solution to the causes of crime. While the presence of the armed forces can slow violence initially, it often just displaces crime to another area, which can return once the troops leave. Sending soldiers to the streets also raises human rights concerns, as the armed forces are trained to track and kill an enemy with as much force as necessary.

Police, on the other hand, are theoretically trained to use minimal force, investigate crimes, and respect the rights of citizens. When governments deploy troops, the differences between the functions of the police and the military get lost and the line between citizen and enemy becomes blurred. Yet each of the countries mentioned above has weak, corrupt, public institutions, particularly penal and justice systems, which have yielded high rates of impunity and crime. Shifting tides in the drug trade, the expansion of organized crime and rampant inequality, has exacerbated these problems. While police reform efforts are underway, they are flagging, largely due to a lack of funding and/or political will.

So why, instead of heavily investing in police reform, have governments in Latin America increasingly turned to the military to solve public security problems? With the highest murder rate in South America, and a corrupt government with a strong military tradition, Venezuela provides an ample case study.

The Shadow of Chávez

When Hugo Chávez died in March, he left behind an economy in shambles, a dysfunctional judicial system, a broken prison system, security forces rife with corruption, and a politicized government bureaucracy incapable of tackling the resulting spike in organized crime, violence and drug trafficking. In the two decades since Chávez took power, murder rates doubled  – or tripled according to some sources  – and in 2012, Venezuela had the second-highest homicide rate in the world[1]. Caracas, the country’s capital, on its own registers one of the highest murder rates globally, as gang warfare and high levels of street crime plague most urban centers. The country also has become a major hub for drugs transiting from Colombia to the United States and Europe.

In a post- Chávez Venezuela, the dire security situation appears to be getting worse. In May, just two months after taking office, Chávez’s handpicked successor, President Nicolás Maduro, sent 3,000 members of the military and police to man roadblocks, carry out raids and patrol the streets of Caracas. The deployment was part of an initiative known as “Plan Patria Segura,” (or “Safe Homeland Plan”) which has been expanded to include over 40,000 members of the security forces. Soon, about 80,000 security forces will have been deployed and the military will have an active role in every state. Although the initiative was set to end this October, it looks like troops will be on the streets well past 2013.

Police Corruption

One reason Maduro has turned to the troops is that Venezuela’s police are among the most corrupt in Latin America. As in Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras, police in Venezuela have been dismissed by the public as ineffective, corrupt, abusive and complicit with organized crime. In 2012, a Transparency International survey found Venezuelans considered the police to be the most corrupt entity in the country.

This is not a recent problem – even before Chávez’s reign, the country’s police forces were accused of excessive use of force, unlawful killings of civilians, extortion, torture, forced disappearances and involvement in organized crime. By 2009, even the government admitted police were responsible for up to 20 percent of all crimes. In one poll, 70 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: “Police and criminals are practically the same.”

As with many forces throughout Latin America, police are underfunded, poorly trained and many times outgunned by criminals. This, compounded by high levels of impunity for officers and officials and a lack of central government control over the country’s 134 police units, has allowed organized crime to penetrate state institutions at every governing level.

Reform measures put into motion by Chávez in 2009 aimed to centralize law enforcement and create a professionalized national police force. The new body, the National Bolivarian Police (PNB), would be less militarized and given human rights training from a civilian-run policing university. Officers would be vetted and their salaries would be doubled while a council that included human rights activists would oversee the reform’s implementation.

According to Venezuela experts David Smilde and Rebecca Hanson, while “Venezuelans do not seem to think police corruption or inefficiency are major causes of crime, they do seem to believe that a professional police force and improved judicial and penal system could reduce crime.”

However, challenges still exist. With just under 14,500 officers, the reformed force lacks manpower, as well as the funding and political will necessary to tackle the spiraling violence. Also, several of the reforms, such as the increased wages, have yet to be implemented.

Despite Venezuelans support for the idea of citizen security reform, public support for the PNB appears to be one of its obstacles. For many citizens, the PNB’s tactics appear ineffective and “soft,” according to Smilde. While many residents prefer the humanist theory behind the force, many people in poor, crime-heavy areas see a more hard-line approach as the only option to target the sky-high levels of insecurity.

A History of Military culture 

Part of this public acceptance lies in the country’s entrenched military culture. The military dominated politics in Venezuela throughout the 19^th century until the fall of a military dictatorship in 1958. The institution’s role then subsided, until Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998. Under Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” strong civil-military ties were forged, with troops being deployed to oversee social projects like food distribution and housing construction. Military members also gained personal voting rights and were placed in top positions in the government.

Although Chávez initiated police reform, he focused even more attention and resources on the armed forces. Around the same time that he created the PNB, he set up two more militarized initiatives: the Bolivarian National Militia, a military-trained group of civilians that would act as liaisons between the army and the people, and the Bicentennial Security Dispositive, a military unit intended to target high-crime areas.

Maduro has continued the military’s social and political role by surrounding himself with former and current military members, increasing the armed forces’ salary budget, creating new “Bolivarian militias” headed by former military members and pledging $4 billion (USD) to “increase the defensive capacity of the country.” He has also announced the creation of a new bank, television channel and cargo company, all for the armed forces.

Given this context, as Smilde has noted, it is no wonder that for the average Venezuelan citizen, the military “represents order and efficiency against a background of chaos and dysfunction, and giving it an important social role appears logical.”

Political motivations

Maduro also has political motivations for sending in the military. Stuck in Chávez’s image, Maduro has been parroting his predecessor’s strategies and playing up the tight links between the military and the “Bolivarian Revolution.” In part, the troop deployment is a way to continue Chávez’s legacy and rally support for the government. Because of lingering popular support for Chávismo, the public has not turned on him and despite high inflation, shortages of basic goods, power blackouts, soaring murder rates, and corruption scandals, most polls indicate Maduro maintains a 45-50 percent approval rating.

By deploying the military, Maduro has shown the public he is responding to the security problem. In general, amid calls for security improvement, it becomes politically difficult to wait for the gradual progress of police reform. “It is a political response to a political problem” according to Venezuelan expert and NYU professor Alejandro Velasco.

What impact?

Although the Maduro administration claims murders have dropped by over 30 percent, the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence projects the country will record 25,000 homicides in 2013 – 4,000 more than in 2012. Even in the areas where military presence has mitigated crime, what happens when the military leaves?

Another concern is the lack of accountability for the military in Venezuela. Unlike the PNB, the armed forces are given no civilian human rights training and there is no mechanism for civilians to report incidents of abuse. There have been at least ten incidents of violations since July, including the shooting of a mother and her daughter by the National Guard. And while Maduro’s approval ratings have barely dipped, those for Plan Patria Segura show a downward trend.

What now?

In Venezuela and elsewhere, there are not a lot of hopeful choices to curb the immediate high crime levels. However, police reform is a key part of improving the security situation. As one U.S. State Department official recently said of Honduras, where a military police unit was just created, “the creation of a military police force distracts attention from civilian police reform efforts and strains limited resources.” This same logic applies to Venezuela – Maduro must politically and financially invest in police reform to strengthen and expand the role of the PNB. Police must also receive sufficient training, resources and supervision to ensure transparency. The public can begin to trust the police when they are the ones enforcing the rule of law.

A line must be drawn between civilian and military leadership, and the role of the armed forces clearly defined and distinct from that of the police. To curb corruption, improved mechanisms for investigating police and military criminality must be established while civilian-led vetting and oversight systems put in place for police and military members. Finally, strong justice and penal systems are fundamental, otherwise those committing crimes will have little reason to stop doing so and prisons will continue to be violent bastions of criminal education. Police reform must not be pushed aside due to short-sighted politics; without a concerted effort to get troops off the streets, Venezuela is vulnerable to descending into an unchecked cycle of criminality, both in society and within its security forces.

Author’s Note: This article is expanded from a piece originally published on Defence Report on August 3rd.

Russia’s recent bombing of a Syrian base used by UK and US Special Forces exposes the flaws in the UK’s blanket “no comment” approach. The differences in the US and UK responses to the incident reveal that this policy is neither desirable nor standard practice amongst the UK’s allies.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has recently revealed that, in June, a Russian aircraft targeted a garrison in Southeastern Syria which was used by American and British Special Forces in their fight against ISIS. The attack missed 20 British Special Forces by just 24 hours and killed four US-backed rebels.

US and UK reactions to the strike

Much of the subsequent discussion has been on the specifics of the attack and its implications for future intelligence sharing with Russia; however, few have considered massive difference in the US and UK response. Given that the two allies shared use of the base, one may expect both countries to have shared a sense of outrage at the attack. However, their responses have been hugely different.

The US has very publicly criticised the actions of Russia. After a similar attack in July, “US military and intelligence officials” gave a number of details about the two strikes and argued that it was part of a continued attempt by Russia to pressure the Obama administration into agreeing closer cooperation over the skies of Syria. Many officials, albeit anonymously, also shared their concerns over implications of the strike for the pending intelligence sharing agreements between the two countries. After the attack, Secretary of State John Kerry went to Moscow in a “hastily organized and very secretive” meeting to try to avoid similar incidents from happening again.

In stark contrast, the UK has remained silent. In response, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) simply stated: “We do not comment on Special Forces”. In fact, even as this WSJ article marks the second article in two months documenting the presence of UK Special Forces in Syria the UK Government remains silent and refuses to acknowledge they are operating in the country.

The UK’s “no comment” policy

The MOD’s “long-held policy” of not commenting on Special Forces is well established. This most recent revelation adds to a long list of other incidents where, against mounting evidence, the UK has continued to avoid acknowledging their presence. For example, in March this year, when a story emerged that a British Special Forces Operative had fired on and destroyed an ISIS suicide truck, the response was: “The Ministry of Defence does not comment on Special Forces.” Similarly, in June 2016, when it was reported that British Special Forces are on the front line in Syria in the fight against ISIS, the MOD responded that: “It is our longstanding policy that we don’t comment on Special Forces operation”.

Given the changing nature of these conflicts this approach may no longer be feasible. Special Forces are increasingly sent on long-term deployments to coordinate local forces and take part in combat in conflict zones, rather than the traditional “sharply in, sharply out” approach. For example, reports from Iraq, Libya and Syria indicate that Special Forces are now being used to train, advise and fight alongside local forces. Not only does this mean the presence of Special Forces is more likely to be exposed but it means that the justification of a blanket “no comment” approach – to avoid compromising the mission – are no longer as applicable.

The approaches of the UK’s allies

Moreover, as the US’s public criticisms of Russia reveal, this blanket “no comment” approach is also not standard practice. A recent report by Dr Jon Moran found that a number of the UK’s allies are far more accountable for their use of Special Forces. In the US, for instance, the deployment of Special Forces from the CIA now requires the notice of “the eight leaders of the relevant intelligence committees in Congress” and “JSOC is accountable via the JSOC commander to the Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of State for Defense or the President”. There is also greater accountability in Australia which, rather than investing the authority to commit forces to military action in one man, shares responsibility among the Cabinet and the National Security committee through a need for “consensus decision-making”. Similarly, in Canada, the decision is taken at the highest political and military levels but Special Forces are accountable to the head of the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, who in turn is accountable to the Minister of Defence and Prime Minister. Unfortunately, the UK’s no comment policy led Moran to argue that, amongst these allies, “[t]he British government is the most tightlipped of all”.

Remote Control’s recent work also documents a number of instances that the US, Canada and Australia have discussed the deployment of Special Forces. For example in 2015 a US spokesperson announced the deployment of US Special Forces in Syria. He reported the number (50) and their purpose (to strengthen anti-ISIS forces) and defended the decision against accusations of mission creep. Similarly, in November 2015, the then-Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced the deployment of 200 Australian Special Forces “to advise and assist local security forces” in Iraq. The same month, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the deployment of 69 Canadian Special Forces to undertake a training mission, again, in Iraq. While none of the countries gave a lot of detail, they acknowledged the presence – and number – of Special Forces, defined their mission and allowed some room for discussion and debate around their deployment.

The need for change

The UK’s current policy is not only embarrassing when stories such as this surface but could have negative implications for the quality of UK intervention abroad. First, better accountability and transparency around Special Forces would mean they are used because they are the best solution rather than the easiest solution to a problem. In 2013, a leaked UK Ministry of Defence document argued that one way to continue conducting military operations despite the risk-averse nature of the British public was “investing in greater numbers of [special forces]” – indicating that the danger of the UK prioritising easy above best is real. Second, it is crucial for the success of any security strategy that its effectiveness can be assessed and adjustments made on the basis of that assessment.

The reaction of US scholars, policy makers and journalists in the wake of the recent Russian strike is a case in point. The US’s decision to announce the deployment and the purpose of Special Forces in Syria from the outset, and decision to announce this most recent strike, give these groups a chance to debate its implications for relations with Russia, the US’s operations in Syria more generally and assess whether the US’s stated goals are being met. In contrast, the UK lacks such a debate because most scholars, journalists and policymakers do not know the extent of UK involvement in the country and have not been informed of the mission’s stated purpose. Without the level of discussion possible in countries such as the US, the UK lacks the same sounding board and its policies may suffer as a result.

Russia’s recent strike points to the flaws in the UK’s continued “no comment” policy. When Special Forces rarely stay secret in a country, and fewer of the UK’s allies take the same blanket “no comment” approach, we should be asking why the UK continues to.

Abigail Watson is Research Officer at Remote Control Project. Abigail holds an MA (with Distinction) in Contemporary European Studies, with a trans-Atlantic track, from the University of Bath and a BA in Politics from the University of York. Abigail writes on issues such as the new challenges to international humanitarian law and Britain’s foreign, security and defence policy.

There are a number of pressing global problems that we need to address in order to attain sustainable security, such as climate change, increasingly scarce resources, and the surge of violence by globally interconnected non-state actors. If not dealt with, these issues will lead to increased regional instability and perpetual political violence. Although these issues are recognized as pressing concerns, we have not been able to find effective solutions. Underlying this failure is the exclusion of the majority of the global community from policy-making processes. This marginalization can lead to ineffective policies as they fail to consider the interests and values of a large part of the world’s population. Furthermore, given the results of social science research examining the role of values in decision making and in motivated action, policies that are ignorant of core values of the stakeholders will not only fail to garner popular support, they may, in fact, spark resistance and ignite violence.

Background

Most current approaches to negotiation and policy making assume that people make rational decisions – they weigh the benefits and costs of decisions and act in a way that maximizes their payoff. The values people try to maximize can be different for each party but they are assumed to be fungible: people may give up one value for achieving the other. Following these assumptions, policies and interventions often use incentives (e.g., tax breaks) or disincentives (e.g., sanctions) in order to influence the decision making of the stakeholders.

This business-like approach to policy making and interventions has led to the successful resolution of many problems, even very difficult ones. For instance, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979. In general, as long as the values of the stakeholders can be identified, incentives and disincentives can be designed effectively, leading to successful policies.

However, despite numerous attempts and the best efforts by the parties involved, this approach has been attempted in vain in an increasing number of contexts, and it has failed so frequently that some issues are now assumed to be intractable. A prime example is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the majority of the people involved seem to have lost all hope: according to a 2015 poll by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 51% of Israelis and 38% of Palestinians believe that the conflicting parties will not even return to the negotiation table. In other contexts, like the Northern Ireland or Kosovo conflicts, solutions devised with current approaches may prove to be unsustainable as they have neglected to address underlying concerns.

Sacred Values

The lack of success of current approaches is due to the underlying assumption that all values are in principal fungible: that they are mutually interchangeable. Social science research over the last 20 years suggests that this is not the case. Instead, people consider some values as so important or absolute that they refuse to even measure them on the same metric as material values. Consider, for instance, how parents may react were one to offer them money for selling their child. Most parents will decline the offer no matter how much money in involved. They will regard even considering the value of their child in monetary terms as immoral. Moreover, they will likely feel insulted and disgusted by the offer. One would get thrown out of the house if not directly reported to the authorities. This result is due to the fact that the offer fails to consider the duty most parents feel towards their child; business-like negotiation will not only be futile but will most likely backfire leading to moral anger and a breakdown of relationships. Such core values that seem to be resistant to tradeoffs with material values (e.g., monetary gains or job security), have been termed “sacred values”.

As the name suggests, sacred values can be religious (e.g., holy land or sanctity of life) but they need not to be (e.g., equality or racial purity). However, religious ritual can transform material values into sacred ones. For example, when land is transformed from an agricultural and residential resource into “holy land.” This seems to be particularly the case in existential conflict between groups when people feel that their very existence is threatened, as is the case in the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Studies conducted before the Iran nuclear deal also found that under high pressure from other countries, a politically meaningful minority of Iranians (14%) have come to consider the nuclear program as a sacred right suggesting that material values can become sacralized in a relatively short time. The process of sacralization, however, is not well understood yet.

When it comes to reasoning over sacred values, neuroscience studies show that decisions relating to sacred values are processed differently in the brain from material cost-benefit calculations. When people reason over sacred values as compared to material values, they are more concerned with the rectitude of their actions than with prospects. In other words, they are more concerned with morality and duties than with expected outcomes. If policy proposals that affect sacred values fail to consider this different mode of reasoning, the expected outcome is not only failure to achieve the intended aims but also resistance by the affected people, which can result in violence.

Seemingly Intractable Issues

Research shows that the core issues in a number of seemingly intractable conflicts are indeed considered sacred values by sizable parts of the populations involved, who show counterintuitive reactions to proposed solutions leading to a failure to resolve the issue. For instance, one research study on the support of peace deals in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict presented a peace proposal that required giving up core demands (e.g., the right of return for Palestinians). It found that “sweetening” deals with material incentives can actually backfire and exacerbate the situation. When presented with the peace deals, only a minority of Palestinians showed increased support when deals were sweetened with material incentives such as compensation payments in the form of development aid for a Palestinian state resulting from the agreement. However, the vast majority of Palestinians (more than 4 in 5) considered their core demands as sacred values and reacted with moral outrage when the deal included material compensation. They also predicted increased violent resistance if such a deal was to be agreed to by their leaders. This “backfire effect” of material incentives has since been demonstrated by Israeli Settlers when asked about giving up settling in Gaza and the West Bank (land they believe was promised to them by God) and in other seemingly intractable conflicts such as the Iranian nuclear ambitions (right to development of nuclear energy), the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India (Kashmir), and militant Jihad in Indonesia (Sharia law).

In addition, across a number of different contexts, sacred values have been shown to incite strong emotions and spur extreme actions in their defense. People are willing to fight for their sacred values well beyond the prospect of success, seemingly disregarding self-interest. The concern for sacred values seems also to be a driving factor for the droves of young people who have been joining Islamists in Syria and Iraq, exchanging the relative comfort of their home countries for a war zone risking life and limb. For instance, a study among potential Jihadis in Morocco – one of the countries with the highest levels of foreign fighters leaving for Syria and Iraq – showed that people who considered Sharia law as sacred, expressed heightened support for militant Jihad and willingness to fight and die for the implementation of Sharia in Morocco.

Achieving Sustainable Security

The reality that sacred values are not fungible with material values and that otherwise reasonable policies and interventions can badly backfire does not mean we need to completely refrain from dealing with sacred values altogether. Conflicts over sacred values are not unsolvable. In fact, the very study that first demonstrated the backfire effect of business-like approaches in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also found a reason for hope: people who considered the core demands in the conflict as sacred did show willingness to compromise if the other side made some painful concession relating to their deeply held sacred values. In particular, Israelis and Palestinians showed more flexibility regarding their sacred values when the deal included mutual recognition; that is, Palestinians would recognize Israel as a Jewish state and Israelis would recognize the role of Israel in the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe,” a term that relates to the expulsion and flight of Palestinians from what now is Israel). However, identifying these kinds of resolutions requires knowledge of the sacred values of all involved parties and thoughtful consideration of them in devising solutions. Unfortunately, our knowledge of sacred values held by communities worldwide is scarce.

Just like the global clusters of values shown by the recurring World Value Survey, we can expect sacred values to differ considerably across communities and cultures and to change over time. At the minimum, we need to systematically assess sacred values across the world (similar to the World Value Survey), so decision-makers can have access to this knowledge. But for security to be sustainable in the long run, we will also need to bring communities with different sacred values to the table when we seek solutions to the most pressing issues we face today. The world cannot afford a policy-making process with global impact that is dominated by a small exclusive group of countries (e.g., the permanent member states of the UN security council) without regard for the multitude of cultures and values in the world. Because of this ignorance about the core concerns of large parts of the global community, our policies and interventions may not only fail to successfully address the issues at hand, but may actually badly backfire – by accidentally violating sacred values of the people they impact – and lead to more unrest and instability.

Hammad Sheikh is an ARTIS research fellow at the New School for Social Research and a visiting scholar at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflicts (Harris Manchester College, Oxford University). He received a Psycholgie Diplom from the Free University of Berlin and a PhD in social psychology from the New School for Social Research. Prior to his studies at the New School, he conducted research at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development in Berlin, the University College Dublin, and the Free University of Berlin. His research focuses on the psychology of intergroup conflict, and uniquely brings together field research (e.g., interviews with combatants in war zones) with traditional psychological methods like questionnaires and cognitive experiments. He is currently examining how commitments to groups and values can lead people to become willing to make extremely costly sacrifices for a cause, including fighting and dying for it.