Throughout the Muslim world, Islamic Feminism is taking shape. It presents alternative discourses on gender and Islam and aims to advance women’s rights within larger issues of social justice and minority rights.

Throughout the Muslim world a counter discourse to western, mostly secular, feminism and Islamic fundamentalism is taking shape in the form of Islamic Feminism. While this is not a new phenomenon, having started primarily in Egypt in the 1950s, Islamic Feminism is increasingly gaining ground. The North African kingdom of Morocco and Malaysia form the bookends of this discourse that proposes to embed the advancement of women’s rights within larger issues of social justice and minority rights. It explores new readings of sacred scriptures that challenge historic patriarchy within Muslim tradition. At the forefront of this approach is Musawah (Equality in Arabic), an international network of scholars, activists, and lawyers. Musawah grew out of the groups Sisters in Islam and Karama (Dignity), both of which promote understandings of Islam that foster justice, equality, freedom, and dignity, especially for women. Founded in 2009 in Malaysia, Musawah’s headquarters moved to Morocco in 2015.

The Moroccan King and Women’s Rights

Islam is one of the pillars of Moroccan identity, and King Mohamed VI is a strong advocate of an “open, moderate Islam” based on the Maliki School of Islamic jurisprudence and Sunni Sufism. Since 2013, the Moroccan government has actively sought to train imam students from Tunisia and Libya as well as several West African countries, thus exporting Morocco’s Islam as a counterpoint to more radical or fundamentalist versions. In his dual capacity as Head of State and Commander of the Faithful (amir al mu’minin), the king is in the unique position of shaping religious discourse concerning women without resorting to authoritarian state-imposed feminism, as was the case in pre-revolution Tunisia. There, the government under dictator Zine El Abindine Ben Ali repressed religious discourse on women’s rights, a course that was reversed when, in the first free and democratic post-uprising elections in 2011, the religiously based Ennahda party was elected to government, allowing for a religiously inspired discourse on gender equality.

Meanwhile in Morocco, under the auspices of the Moroccan King, a Center of Feminine Studies in Islam within the Rabita mohammadia des Oulémas (Royal Council of Religious Scholars) was established. Asma Lambrabet, a medical doctor and vocal proponent of Islamic Feminism, was the appointed director of this Center.

Islam as a dynamic religion

Image by Iokha via Flickr.

Islamic feminism is based on the idea that Islam is a dynamic religion, the eternal message of which needs to be adapted to changing historical circumstances. This interpretive process, called ijtihad (independent reasoning of the sources of Islamic law) involves the sacred texts of the Qur’an, sunnah (sayings and doings of the Prophet) and hadith (saying attributed to the Prophet). Islamic feminist ideas challenge predominant androcentric, absolutist theological concepts of authority. In so doing, women are appropriating religious authority, historically a domain controlled by men.

The Moroccan Asma Lamrabet’s and U.S. scholar Amina Wadud’s writings enjoy wide popularity, especially among young Muslims who want to find answers to the question what it means to be a Muslim in the modern world. Faced with increasingly conservative and radical interpretations of sacred texts, these two scholars offer a religious perspective on modern identity formation that is not primarily western or secular. They exemplify how Muslim women can appropriate sacred texts, a fundamental strategy of their empowerment and personal development.

Who holds religious authority?

Lamrabet and Wadud address head-on an age-old question: Who has the authority to interpret the sacred texts? Each scholar in her own way is appropriating authority over textual analysis and, in doing so, is creating a new voice, a new way of approaching gender and women’s rights within an Islamic context. Together, their work exists within the larger context of challenges to conventional religious authorities in contemporary Muslim societies. Just as the role of the traditional ulama (Islamic scholars) has been challenged by the rise of alternative sources of religious authority – such as Internet fatwas and satellite TV imams – that claim equal legitimacy, Islamic feminists demand this right for themselves. If men with limited scholarly theological training can exert influence—uncontested by conservative scholars—why would alternative interpretations by women not fit into this colorful landscape of religious authorities?

One of the earliest and most important pioneers of Muslim feminist scholarship is Morocco’s Fatema Mernissi (1945-2015). She was among the first to turn to the Qur’an to advance a reformist interpretation of the sacred texts with a view to supporting gender equality. In addition, Mernissi placed women’s rights within a larger context of social and economic justice. Today, Mernissi is Morocco’s most widely translated and internationally read author. Ironically, it was only after her death a year ago that she became widely known in her home country and finally gained publicly acknowledgement for her contributions.

Islamic feminist hermeneutics considers the Qur’an as a historical text, revealed at a particular time and place. Over time, then, certain interpretations need to be reconsidered or refuted in accordance with the principles and egalitarian spirit of the texts. As Mernissi has repeatedly argued, sacred texts have been used as a political weapon to uphold laws that treat women as legal minors. This action is possible because traditional Islamic theological scholarship lacks fundamental historic contextualization, fails to acknowledge that knowledge production always occurs within a given historical context, and downplays the possibility of human fallibility in any hermeneutics. Recognizing such limitations is an important element of Islamic Feminist thought. Inasmuch as Mernissi critiqued the gender inegalitarian reality, she also was critical of promoting women’s rights without simultaneously advocating for social and economic justice.

Pioneers of Islamic Feminism

Thus, Mernissi, Lamrabet, and Wadud represent important alternative voices in scholarly discourses on gender and Islam. There certainly are other, important proponents of Islamic feminism. Margot Badran has written about Islamic Feminism for more than a decade, mostly focusing on Egypt. One of the founders of Musawah, the Malaysan Zainah Anwar, Iranian born scholar Ziba Mir-Hosseini and South African Farid Esack have also emerged as important advocates and scholars in re-interpreting concepts that traditionally have undergirded male superiority such as quiwamah (male authority), wialya (guardianship), mixed marriages and one of the cornerstones of inequality: inheritance laws.

Thus, Islamic Feminism aims to liberate Muslim women from archaic and limited roles with negative social and economic consequences. Islamic Feminism argues for pluralistic interpretations of sacred scriptures, as a means by which global feminists can establish a dialogue based on the deconstruction of traditional knowledge that is masculine and patriarchal. It allows the reconciliation of Islam and modernity and goes beyond the false dichotomies of Muslim and secular, modernist and traditionalist, East and West.

Dr Doris H. Gray directs the Hillary Clinton Center for Women’s Empowerment at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco where she is also Assoc. Professor of Gender Studies. She is the author of “Beyond Feminism and Islamism – Gender and Equality in North Africa” (I.B. Tauris 2102, second revised edition 2014) and “Muslim Women on the Move – Women of Moroccan and French Origin speak out (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008) and editor of “Gender, Law and Social Change in North Africa” (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

 (This piece was originally published by Channel 4 News on  January 22, 2013 and is the first of two parts by Anna Alissa Hitzemann and Ben Zala)

Britain is on standby and the US is already transporting French troops into Mali. But a new paper says the west is “betting on the wrong horse” by intervening in the region.

Environmental changes in the Arctic are making the region more accessible which many believe will lead to competition and conflict over its resources. But is this really the case?

The Great Game moves North

A battle to ‘carve up’ the Arctic

‘Ice Wars’ heating up the Arctic

Melting ice caps open up Arctic for ‘white gold rush’

Warming Arctic opens way to competition for resources

Conflict ahead in Arctic waters

The above are just some of the many headlines and titles that have described the state of the Arctic over the last decade. Ever since a Russian flag was planted on the seabed at the North Pole in 2007, media outlets, academics and policy-makers have been pondering the conflict potential of a warming Arctic.

Their concerns surely have a dramatic background. The Arctic, the region commonly defined as all land and water areas above the Arctic Circle at 66 degrees north, has over the past 50 years warmed twice as fast as the global average. Consequently, the Arctic ice sheet has retreated significantly. In September 2012, the ice extend dropped to around half of what it was in the late 1970s, and is lingering on low extent numbers ever since. The diminishing sea ice has made the resources of the Arctic, such as oil and gas, increasingly accessible for exploration and exploitation.

This increasing accessibility of the region combined with, thus far, inaccessible and high-in-demand resources and still existing boundary disputes between the Arctic coastal states, made (and still makes) many believe that we are heading towards a region of conflict.

But is this really so? Should we expect the region in the north to erupt into hot conflicts about access to oil and gas, shipping lanes and fishing grounds that the retreating ice lays open? Does a warming Arctic inevitably mean increasing conflict potential with little hope for cooperation to emerge?

Cooperation and conflict: a misleading dichotomy

Image credit: Fulbright Arctic Initiative/Flickr.

Most of the debates aiming to answer these questions circle around the issue of whether the Arctic is a region of “conflict” or “cooperation”. The cardinal error of this debate is that “cooperation” and “conflict” are taken as two sides of the same coin. Taking cooperation and conflict as the two ends of a continuum inadequately twists the empirical perceptions and expectations as to future developments in the Arctic.

As a matter of fact, cooperation and conflict are part of two different coins. Conflict is first of all a situation in which the interests of two or more actors overlap in the sense that they pursue different goals or that they prefer different means to achieve a specific goal. The opposite of conflict is then harmony, a situation in which actors’ interests do not touch each other. This is one coin.

If there is a case of conflict, actors can react to this situation in different ways. Roughly speaking, they can either react with “cooperation” or “confrontation”. They can decide to solve the conflict through negotiation and looking for compromises, or they can revert to using force of some kind, such as sanctions or military actions. These possible options for actions in a situation of conflict are the second coin.

Once one has understood the difference between these two coins, it is possible to analyze how actors have reacted to Arctic conflict cases in the past (like open boundary disputes, of which many have been solved since the 1970s), and which options for resolution exist in response to possible future Arctic conflict cases (like still open boundary disputes, competing interests for access to resources or shipping lanes etc.).

Unfortunately, in the past and current Arctic conflict debate the existence of a conflict is usually treated the same as a confrontation– a situation in which breakdown of relations and even violent actions are imminent. But if we equalize conflict and confrontation, we face a very alarming situation in the Arctic since there are cases where the interests of Arctic actors (including those from south of the Arctic Circle) overlap. The open maritime delimitations around the area of the North Pole and the question how much of the Arctic is to be legally treated as a common heritage of mankind are just two examples of Arctic conflicts.

But if we were to conduct a sound analysis with the two-coin understanding as outlined above, we would understand that conflict is the very prerequisite to make cooperation and confrontation happen in the first place. In other words, there is no cooperation or confrontation if there is no conflict (since actors do not interact in a situation of harmony). Then we can look at the Arctic world out there and check which options for action Arctic actors choose to react to conflict situations.

The Arctic Council – A prime example of Arctic cooperation

We find a multitude of examples for actors choosing cooperative options for actions, especially among the members of the Arctic Council, which are the eight Arctic states Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. Since the flag-planting in 2007, and also since Russia’s more recent assertive actions elsewhere in the world, cooperation in the preeminent political forum of the region, the Arctic Council, has been strengthened. The Council has evolved from a forum for debate to a policy-shaping body through the adoption of several intergovernmental agreements under its auspices. These range from provisions for preparedness and response for oil spills in Arctic waters, a search and rescue cooperation agreement, and will soon be added by an agreement on Arctic scientific cooperation.

On the international level, an “International Code of Safety for Ships Operating in Polar Waters” or short “Polar Code” has been negotiated under the International Maritime Organization to regulate the increasing shipping activity in the Arctic. Arctic countries are working on their submissions to the UN to verify their extensions of their continental shelves, and have in unison pledged to settle any overlapping claims peacefully and in close consultation with each other.

All these cooperative actions have included the Arctic states as well as many state and non-state actors beyond the region, for example in the form of observers to the Arctic Council. The short result of this analysis is: Yes, the Arctic is full of conflict but also full of cooperation since across the board actors are reacting cooperatively to cases of conflict.

The crux is that these instances of cooperation can be observed. In contrast, most foreboding of a confrontation in the Arctic only refers to what could happen now that the Arctic is accessible and its resources up for grasp. In other words, these contributions can only be speculative.

A lingering problem of the Arctic conflict debate is that a conflict over Arctic issues is usually very easily and quickly proclaimed and seldom reflected upon or questioned again. So once a conflict is said to exist, it is hard to get rid of again, even if observations show that there is no real ground for the conflict or if actors react cooperatively to it. A prominent example is the rising Chinese interest in Arctic issues, which peaked 2013 when China was admitted as an observer to the Arctic Council. Since then, many have depicted Chinese Arctic interests as a “conflict” since China as a powerful player would undermine other Arctic voices and generally would bring turmoil to Arctic affairs. In contrast, when talking to the members and Permanent Participants (the representatives of Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations) of the Council, one hears that after some initial concerns everyone is pretty happy about the presence of important players like China. Not least, China has to be part of the solution to the global climate change problem, which heavily affects the Arctic. And having China present at Arctic Council meetings is a rare opportunity for small, Indigenous organizations to get into a direct conversation with countries like China.

Conclusion

In sum, if we consider how often the “next Cold War” in the Arctic has been proclaimed now that we have entered the tenth (!) year after the Russian flag-planting, one keeps wondering why this war has failed to materialize. This may be sign that the assessment of the Arctic as a region of confrontational conflict is not for nothing predominantly based on speculation. In fact, the predication of a next Cold War in the Arctic may be exactly that: a wild guess.

Dr. Kathrin Keil is Scientific Project Leader at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany, where she is leading the Arctic research work on Sustainable Arctic Futures: A Regional and Global Challenge. She is also Senior Fellow at The Arctic Institute – Center for Circumpolar Security Studies where she regularly writes about and comments on current Arctic developments. Further, Kathrin is part of the official German observer delegation to the Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) of the Arctic Council.

A recurring feature of Western counter-radicalisation discourse is the ‘Muslim paranoia narrative’, a belief that resentment towards Western societies is motivated by a paranoid and conspiracy-riven worldview. This association between radicalisation and paranoia appears repeatedly through official statements and policy documents.

Radicalisation is at the forefront of policy debates as ISIS continues to draw recruits from Western democracies. Recent summits in Washington and Sydney on countering violent extremism have highlighted the importance of undermining extremist narratives, mobilising moderate Muslims who oppose ISIS, and working to address underlying drivers of radicalisation. Yet representatives of Muslim communities have met this approach with considerable scepticism, both in Western states and across the Muslim world. A common complaint is that Muslims are singled out and caricatured as a unique danger, which only increases the level of vilification experienced by Muslims.

The Muslim paranoia narrative

Image by Saleh M. Sbenaty via Wikimedia.

In recent research published in Critical Studies on Terrorism, I explore the underlying ideological conditions that work against engagement with Muslim communities thought vulnerable to radicalisation. I examine what I call the “Muslim paranoia narrative”, a recurring feature of Western counter-radicalisation discourse that helpfully captures these underlying ideological dynamics. In the Muslim paranoia narrative, resentment towards Western societies is said to be motivated to some degree by a paranoid and conspiracy-riven worldview, which is thought to thrive in alienated and disempowered communities. Terrorist recruiters exploit distorted outlooks to fuel a sense of injustice about the plight of Muslims abroad. This association between radicalisation and paranoia appears repeatedly through official statements and policy documents, including those associated with ongoing counter-radicalisation strategies like the US State Department’s Digital Outreach Team.

The Muslim paranoia narrative is worth examining because it is a clear tension point in contemporary radicalisation strategies that are increasingly focused on engagement and collaboration. The negative connotations associated with paranoia connect palpably with the sense of vilification often highlighted by Muslim critics of these programs. And the paranoia narrative can be connected to a broader ideological imaginary. Tracing the Muslim paranoia narrative from its ideological roots provides a window into the assumptions and priorities informing radicalisation discourse and contextualises the reticence of Muslim communities towards it.

The Muslim paranoia narrative is especially intense in the United States where my research is focused. Richard Hofstadter is widely understood to have established the now commonplace account of political paranoia in his famous essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, which identified a recurring strain in American politics characterised by a “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy”. Hofstadter positioned political paranoia on the periphery of pluralistic American democracy as the irrational pathology of angry extremists, and contrasted it with a rational political centre where sensible politics occurred. Although Hofstadter wrote this seminal piece in 1964, it is difficult to overestimate its traction and influence. This is in large part due to the fact that Hofstadter deployed many of the most common conceptual features of post-War liberalism, which abhorred populism and focused on the mediation of competing interests through bargain and compromise. America was situated as a moderate democracy, pragmatic, centrist and non-ideological, in contrast to the radical politics sweeping the post-War Europe. Although liberalism has evolved significantly over the intervening years, the basic conceptual features set out by Hofstadter have remained pervasive in contemporary perspectives on political paranoia.

One reason for this is that political extremism is still largely understood through the same centre/periphery framework. This dynamic is at the heart of radicalisation discourse in the US, where the political and religious beliefs of Muslim communities have emerged as a subject of concern. In this context, the Muslim paranoia narrative locates paranoia not just on the fringe of liberal democracies, but also on the periphery of international power and legitimacy from the point of view of political leaders and security experts. Here the pervasive perspective on political paranoia folds together with a long-running orientalist narrative about the supposedly dysfunctional characteristics of Muslim cultures, particularly in the Middle East, which has often framed America’s regional encounters.

A problematic narrative

The Muslim paranoia narrative is involved in a powerful process of ideological reproduction that works against engagement and collaboration with Muslim communities. Underlying liberal and orientalist frameworks situate Muslim cultures as dysfunctional and anti-modern, while associating Muslim resentment about Western foreign policies with problematic and potentially pathological modes of thought. Like post-War liberal orthodoxy secured by contrast with paranoid populism, contemporary liberal modernity is secured by contrast with the paranoia of alienated Muslims.

At the same time, contemporary radicalisation discourse disciplines the wider public against consideration of Muslim grievances and associated criticisms of US policy. For instance, the identification of political paranoia as a subject of concern has the double effect of producing a strong general deterrent against the interrogation of elite power and political controversy, when the personal and professional costs of such engagements are potentially catastrophic. The taint of irrationality can be devastating, even by association – undermining credibility and calling motivations into question.

In this sense, the Muslim paranoia narrative can be understood in terms of powerful ideological scripts in American political culture, rather than as an objective description of an ideational precursor to radicalisation in Muslim communities. The broader point is that potent narratives around extremism and oriental otherness have undermined the approach of successive US administrations to counter-radicalisation. These scripts have worked against a persuasive encounter with Muslims critical of American foreign policy, when such criticisms are framed as the product of a problematic thoughts and dysfunctional culture.

This problem is clear enough in the practical setting of counter-radicalisation programs like the US State Department’s Digital Outreach Team (DOT), a group of bloggers tasked with confronting views critical of American policy on foreign language websites, and, more recently, discrediting ISIS affiliated users on social media. For our purposes it is interesting to note that according to the State Department “the Digital Outreach Team contrasts objective facts with the often emotive, conspiracy-laden arguments of US critics in the hope that online users will take a fresh at their opinions of the US”.  And this frame manifested in the online activities of the DOT where time was spent “ridiculing myths and conspiracy theories and calling users with extreme views radicals, but claiming to enjoy engaging with users who post objective views.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, a close analysis of DOT work following President Obama’s 2009 Cairo Address found that a large majority of people who expressed a view about the DOT were negative in their comments, with half openly “ridiculing and condescending”. Although there were no doubt many reasons for the widespread hostility to the DOT, it should be obvious that labelling people paranoid and irrational is highly antagonistic, particularly when considered in the context of the wider set of intimations that have historically been associated with such language.

Indeed, it is critical to acknowledge that although the identities and relations highlighted in my analysis of the Muslim paranoia narrative exist within a specific policy discourse, they bear no necessary relationship to the lived experience of differentiated Muslim people, who often refuse classification in these terms. Moreover, it is critical to acknowledge that there is still no conclusive evidence for a particular terrorist profile; for a common pathway or pattern to radicalisation; or for predicting which holders of radical views will become violent. Without critical awareness of the ideological conditions identified here and a sustained attempt to move beyond them, the crucial work of engagement, partnership and community building will be likely ineffectual.

Tim Aistrope is Lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland.

In June,  a judicial review into the legality of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia was announced. This will be the first time that UK arms export policy has been put under the spotlight and scrutinised in this way. Campaign Against Arms Trade discuss this historic decision.

On 30^th June there was a heavy silence in the moments before High Court Judge Justice Gilbart announced that he was granting a judicial review into the legality of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia. A quiet relief fell over those of us in the public gallery. Decorum ensured that the response was muted, but the decision was historic. This will be the first time that UK arms export policy has been put under the spotlight and scrutinised in this way. It is an unprecedented step that is likely to focus on not just the extent of UK arms sales to Saudi, but also the scale of collusion and government support that goes with it.

Our claim calls on the government to suspend all extant licences and stop issuing further arms export licences to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen while the court holds a full review into whether the weapons sales are compatible with UK and EU legislation. The UK’s arms export policy will thus now undergo a full three-day investigation in front of two judges, which must take place before February 1st 2017.

Fuelling the flames in Yemen

London, UK. 11th July, 2016. Human rights campaigners protest against arms sales to Saudi Arabia outside the Defence and Security Organisation building. Image by CAAT via Flickr.

UK arms exports have been central to the ongoing Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen. As we write this, UK-licensed Eurofighter jets may well be over Yemeni airspace, guided by UK-trained military personnel and dropping UK-made bombs from the skies. It would be hard to overstate the humanitarian crisis that has been unleashed, with the UN having ranked the humanitarian situation in the war-torn country as a “Level 3” emergency – the highest possible emergency ranking. The bombing campaign has lasted over 15 months following a Saudi Arabian-led intervention into Yemen’s civil war. Saudi forces are acting alongside Yemen’s government against forces led by the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the Houthis, a northern Shia militia. There is no question that atrocities have been committed on all sides, although the UN has accused Saudi forces of killing twice as many civilians as all other forces.

More than 2.5 million people have been displaced, and vital infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and cultural heritages sites have been destroyed. Of those who remain in Yemen, millions have been left without access to clean water or electricity, and 80% of the population has been left in need of aid. Even the Home Office has acknowledged the scale of the destruction, concluding that to allow people to return to Yemen could be a breach of their human rights.

The need for legal accountability

The destruction hasn’t only been immoral, it has also been illegal. A UN panel of experts, the European Parliament and many of the most respected humanitarian NGOs in the world, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have accused Saudi forces of serious breaches of international humanitarian law (IHL).

The UN report “documented 119 sorties relating to violations of international humanitarian law” and reported “starvation being used as a war tactic.” More recently, Human Rights Watch has linked UK arms to specific attacks on businesses and civilian targets. The reports have been thorough and in-depth and their evidence has been compelling, but they have fallen on deaf ears in Whitehall.

Arms exports control regulations are very clear: a licence should not be granted in the circumstances where there is a “clear risk” that it “might” be used to violate IHL. In spite of this, the UK has licensed over £3.3 billion worth of arms sales to Saudi Arabia since the bombing began, including fighter jets, bombs and missiles.

There can be little, if any, control over how and when these arms will be used. A recent report from Amnesty International found that cluster bombs sold decades ago by the UK are being used in Yemen, a terrible reminder that the shelf life of arms is very often longer than the two year licence under which they are sold.

Moreover, even if such control was possible, there is no reason to believe it would be applied. This is because if arms were found to be used in a way that violated the terms of their sale agreement this would result in licences being cancelled—which could affect the profitability of exports.

Burying the truth

In the last hours of the last day of the most recent session of parliament, the government performed a major U-turn by publishing written corrections that reveal, contrary to earlier claims, that there has been no oversight of how arms are being used. At best it represented staggering incompetence on the part of government ministers— at worst it was a cynically timed admission of how they had previously distorted the truth.

Either way, it underpins the point that the Saudi government hasn’t just bought arms and military support, it has also bought silence, compliance and a seal of political approval. That’s why, only nine months ago, we saw the despicable, but ultimately unsurprising, revelations that UK diplomats had lobbied and campaigned behind the scenes for Saudi Arabia to Chair the UN Human Rights Council.

So who benefits from the current situation? Certainly not the Yemeni people living under bombs, or the Saudi people being persecuted and oppressed. One obvious beneficiary is the arms companies. BAE Systems, for example, enjoys the full support of the UK government in its arms sales to Saudi. Earlier this year, BAE Chairman Roger Carr told Channel 4 News that he sees Saudi Arabia as “a very important customer with which we have a very strong relationship.” This point is alluded to in the last BAE annual report. The ‘principal risks’ section of the report identifies the commercial risk that state buyers may consider cutting their military budgets, before suggesting this will be mitigated in part because “in Saudi Arabia regional tensions continue to dictate that defence remains a high priority.”

BAE and the UK’s special relationship

For decades now, UK governments of all political colours have worked hand in glove with the arms companies and Saudi authorities, continuing to sell arms and provide political support while turning a blind eye to the grotesque human rights abuses that are being carried out every single day.

Regardless of who has been in charge, the Saudi Royal Family’s influence and interests have been core to Whitehall’s approach to arms sales and the Middle East. Over recent years we have seen Tony Blair intervening to stop a corruption investigation into arms exports to Saudi, David Cameron flying out to Riyadh to meet with Royalty, and the outlandish and humiliating spectacle of Prince Charles sword dancing to secure sales for BAE Systems.

The government’s inability to uphold its responsibility in regards to human rights and domestic law is evidence of just how far it is willing to go to maintain this toxic relationship. Despite the legal action, there has been no change to the government’s policy. Only two weeks after the judicial review was ordered, Saudi military representatives were in the UK for the Farnborough Airshow where they were shopping for weapons.

Stop arming Saudi Arabia

At a time when the UK should be using its close relationship with Saudi to apply pressure and push for meaningful peace negotiations and vital reform, it is instead carrying on with business as usual. The government’s refusal to act responsibly underlines the enormous power of the arms trade lobby and the pernicious nature of the UK-Saudi relationship, a relationship that fuels instability and repression and corrupts our political system.

Whatever the outcome of the review, the campaign will go on. As long as terrible crimes are being committed with UK weapons and with our government’s support, we will continue. The UK’s shameful relationship with Saudi Arabia and the terrible examples above show just how far (and how low) the machinery of government will go to protect the Saudi Royal Family’s interests.

The UK-Saudi alliance has boosted the Saudi regime while lining the pockets of arms company executives, but it has had devastating consequences for the people of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. For the sake of those people, the UK government must finally stop arming and empowering the brutal Saudi monarchy.

Andrew Smith and Vyara Gylsen are writing on behalf of Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). Andrew Smith is Head of Media for Campaign Against Arms Trade. Vyara Gylsen is an anti arms-trade campaigner that volunteers and works with Campaign Against Arms Trade. You can follow CAAT on Twitter at @CAATuk.

Much has been written about the prevalence of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and in particular about the use of rape as a “weapon of war”. The horrific stories of rape and sexual violence published worldwide have led to the DRC being labeled the “worst place in the world for women” and the “rape capital of the world”. Feminists have long decried the silence which has historically surrounded rape and sexual violence during conflict, and so the fact that political leaders and world media are now talking about sexual violence in the DRC and pushing for solutions to this problem should be applauded. However, much of the discourse and reporting reduces this to a simple narrative of “bestial” or uncontrolled soldiers or militias raping the women and girls in villages which they attack. This narrative, in addition to employing colonialist and racist stereotypes about the behaviour of Congolese men and women, fails to grasp the complexities of gender relations in the DRC, the multiple and varied nature of sexual and gender-based violence, and of the social structures and norms which underlie this violence.

One of the common perceptions about gender-based violence in the DRC, is that rape is the prevalent form of this violence and that sexual violence committed as a direct consequence and/or a strategy of war. It is undeniable that Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (the official army of the DRC) soldiers as well as numerous other rebel fighting groups have committed acts of sexual violence during the multiple and ongoing conflicts in the country, and continue to do so, as demonstrated by an attack in 2015 on the town of Kikamba in South Kivu during which over 100 women were raped. But to think of gender-based violence only as war rape is to miss the multiple other forms of violence, and the fact that these persist not only in areas of the country most directly affected by the conflict (notably the Eastern Regions) but across the whole country.  Common barriers to reporting GBV, such as stigma and fear of reprisals of the survivors, as well as poor infrastructure within the DRC mean that there is a lack of accurate statistics on GBV. But studies that do exist have shown that most of the incidences of GBV recorded in recent years are committed by civilians and not by soldiers, and that the most prevalent forms of GBV are domestic or intimate partner violence. A recent study by UNFPA listed multiple forms of GBV which are common in DRC including domestic  violence, rape and sexual violence, forced and early marriage, mistreatment of widows, psychological violence, economic violence and deprivation of resources.

Meeting of victims of Sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Image by USAID via Wikimedia.

So although armed conflict has exacerbated gender-based forms of violence in the DRC, it cannot be the only explanation for the existence or persistence of this violence. Instead, we should look to the country’s underlying gender norms, discriminatory laws and policies, and socio-economic structures. Although the new  2006 constitution of the DRC has made some progress towards recognizing gender equality, such as in article 14 which states that the public authorities should ensure the promotion and protection of women’s rights,  discriminatory laws still remain, which reinforce persistent norms and beliefs about the roles of men and women in society. The Family Code of the DRC still maintains that a man is the head of the household who has authority over all other members of the household including his wife who must obey him. Women must obtain their husband’s permission before performing any legal act such as selling or leasing property, opening a bank account or applying for a visa or passport. The idea that men are heads of the household is strongly engrained and supported by many Congolese who see it as a part of the national “family values”. This persistence of a family code which legitimates men’s control over women and the symbolic and normative values which it perpetuates are key barriers to the achievement of gender equality. Further, research has shown that prevalent gender norms seem to accept a certain level of violence within couples as normal and even desirable.

A new law on sexual violence passed in 2006, showed progress in criminalizing forms of violence not previously recognized such as sexual harassment, sexual slavery or forced pregnancy, but it still fails to recognize marital rape. This reflects that fact that many men and women think it is part of a woman’s duty to have sex with her husband whenever he wishes. And, for many, a certain level of violence within couples is “normal”, so that a man giving a “light tap” to his wife or girlfriend to keep her in line is perfectly acceptable.  Some even share the belief that if a man does not hit his partner, then he does not really love her. This normalization of a certain level of violence in intra-personal relationships is just part of a wider continuum of gender-based violence which is normalized and accepted. There are also various forms of violence which are condoned or encouraged by customary law which remains strong in some areas of the country, such as the rules of sororate and levirate under which women may be forced to marry the brother of their dead husband or the widow of their dead sister.  The continuum of these different forms of violence, which are accepted and normalized within Congolese society, can be seen to provide the context within which the rape and sexual violence, that has occurred during the armed conflicts, should be understood.

The normalization of GBV also contributes to the continuing impunity of perpetrators, as do the weak police and judicial systems in the country. As noted above, many incidences of GBV are not even recognized as such, and even when it is acknowledged that an act of gender-based violence has been committed, it is unlikely that he perpetrator will be prosecuted or punished. And in the absence of a robust judicial system, many cases are still settled through “amicable” arrangements between perpetrator and victim.

Gender inequalities are also obvious in many areas of public life, such as the lack of women in decision making positions in the government. Women make up only 8.9% of representatives in the National Assembly, 5.5% of Senators and 14.8% of government ministers (despite a strong recommendation from the national consultation held in Kinshasa in 2013 to appoint at least 30% of women to the government). Although a law on gender parity in political representation was passed by the National Assembly in April 2014, so far it has not had any noticeable impacts. There is still widespread opposition to women’s participation in public and political life because this is equated with a threat to the “traditional” family life and culture of the DRC. Women have also been under-represented in all of the various peace negotiations which have taken place to try and end the conflicts in the DRC, and remain a very small minority in the armed forces, the police and the judiciary.

Much more can be written about the various forms of gender inequality which persist in the DRC and which provide foundations for the various forms of GBV which exist in the country. The necessary links between broader social gender inequalities and GBV are vital to understand if there is to be any effective response to the problem of GBV, and effective policies for prevention. The Women, Peace and Security agenda, has a focus on not only prevention of violence, but also of increased participation of women in public life and decision making. Increasing participation means considering women not only as “vulnerable victims” of sexual violence, but as actors should be given an equal role in political life.  All of the many complexities and layers of gender inequality need to be taken into account if real solutions to the problem of GBV are to be found, and in doing so Congolese women need to be actively engaged in making decisions and finding the solutions.

Jane Freedman is Professor at the Université Paris 8, and member of the Centre de recherches sociologiques et politiques de Paris (CRESPPA). She has researched and published widely on issues relating to gender, violence, conflict and forced migration.

Over 10 years ago, the Cathedral Peak Hotel, which nestles among the peaks of South Africa’s majestic Drakensburg Mountains, played host to what was, at the time, a unique gathering. Scholars from around the globe (the United States, Britain, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, South Africa, and Israel) met with representatives of international NGOs (the International committee of the Red Cross and the Geneva Center for the Democratic Study of Armed Forces, among others) and members of the private military and security industry to discuss and debate the growing role of private contractors in contemporary conflict zones. I was the convener of that conference and co-editor of the subsequent volume of the same title, Private Military and Security Companies: Ethics, Policies and Civil-Military Relations (Routledge 2008).

Though the modern private military company can be traced back to companies such as David Stirling’s WatchGuard International in the 1960’s, and though there was some related early scholarly research, it was the massive use of contractors by the United States in Iraq in the civil war that emerged after the 2003 invasion which ultimately sparked serious public and scholarly interest in the sector. Just a year before the conference, the killing and gruesome mutilation of four Blackwater contractors by insurgents had been a major cause of the bloody and ultimately fruitless first battle of Fallujah. Given the context, it’s particularly interesting that Doug Brooks – then the President of the largest industry body for PMSCs, the International Peace Operations Association (now the International Stability Operations Association) – chose to focus his contribution to the conference, and his co-authored contribution to the book, on peacekeeping operations.

Brooks argued then that, with the growth of what he called ‘Westernless peacekeeping’ (i.e. UN and African Union peacekeeping operations carried out without major support from NATO and ‘NATO-class’ military forces) PMSCs should have an increasing role in peacekeeping operations, contributing capabilities not possessed by the military forces of developing world countries like Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nepal, Indonesia and Rwanda, who contribute the bulk of peacekeepers for UN operations.  Contractors, Brooks contended, offer ‘faster, better and cheaper’ solutions to capability challenges in peacekeeping operations, operate with a smaller and less culturally sensitive footprint than equivalent military forces, and act as a force-multiplier through the provision of specialist and niche capabilities.

Private military contractors in Baghdad, Iraq. Image by Babeltravel via Flickr.

A decade on and Iraq is still in the news, but Western boots on the ground are largely absent, and the previously booming market for contractors there and in Afghanistan has shrunk dramatically. As Molly Dunigan and Ulrich Petersohn and their collaborators show in a recent edited collection, the once-championed ‘global market for force’ has proven itself to be, in fact, a conglomeration of quite different markets for force, and it is a mistake to conflate the legitimate with the illegitimate. The United States, Britain and other nations continue to employ the services of private military contractors for lower priority tasks where doing so is (or at least appears to be) cost and manpower effective.

The US State Department’s five-year $10.2 billion Worldwide Protective Services contract, the next phase of which was announced in mid February, is distributed largely among companies like SOC, Triple Canopy and Aegis Services which made their names during the Iraq post-invasion boom. And the old stomping ground is showing signs of a revival – according to a report by Bloomberg Business week, “Operation Inherent Resolve, the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State initiative, employed 7,773 contractors in the second quarter of 2016, up from 5,000 in the first quarter of 2015.” Many of those contracts are for logistical, training and advisory roles in conflict and post-conflict environments in Africa and the developed world. And, quietly, the United Nations has also become a significant employer of PMSCs, as a careful reading of the UN Department of Procurement’s list of registered vendors reveals. As long ago as 2011 the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) released a report showing that, despite the sensitivities involved, “the UN has increasingly paid private military and security companies (PMSCs) for a range of services in the areas of humanitarian affairs, peacebuilding and development.” The companies themselves have become increasingly corporatized and professional in their structures and practices, an evolutionary necessity for those companies which survived the ‘gold rush’ days of post-invasion Iraq.

The more dramatic pronouncements by both proponents and opponents of the PMSC industry have failed to come to pass. Contractors have neither rendered state-based peacekeeping and stability operations obsolete, nor have they radically undermined the monopoly on force of the states that employ them or created greater instability in the international sphere.

Looking to the future, what might we expect regarding the involvement of PMSCs in peacekeeping and stabilization operations? Despite their popularity as ‘bad guys’ in television dramas and Hollywood films, and an uncomfortable legacy of past serious human rights abuses committed by contractors, the evidence suggests that in the real world the use of PMSCs is increasingly becoming normalized, and that in policy circles there is a growing understanding of the potential value contractors can provide if properly employed. While there are still contractors operating in the global periphery who better fit the old ‘mercenary’ moniker, we can expect this process of normalization to lead to an increase in the employment, and more open employment, of PMSC’s in peacekeeping operations (though the term ‘PMSC’ will likely decline in usage).

The improved clarity about the status and responsibilities of contractors in zones of armed conflict that resulted from the publication of the ICRC sponsored Montreaux Document of 2008 has played an important role in this process of normalization. Though this was unquestionably not the intended purpose of the creation of the document (which carries no legal weight but summarizes the status of contractors under international law and gives recommendations to both PMSCs and the states that contract them), the Montreaux process cleared up numerous misconceptions and provided a firm framework to which companies could attach their claims to legitimacy.

Over the past decade there has been much debate and discussion over what functions ought to be considered by states to be ‘inherently governmental’ and which therefore ought not to be contracted out. A similar discussion will likely occur as the outsourcing of peacekeeping functions becomes more publicly acknowledge. However, it will likely be pragmatic factors which establish the limits of outsourcing.  Whatever those limits turn out to be in practice, it is certain that there will be limits. Even in today’s complex and spoiler afflicted environment, effective peacekeeping relies heavily on the perception of legitimacy, and that means blue UN helmets or the green berets of the African Union, not beards and Oakley sunglasses.

Dr Deane-Peter Baker is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra, located at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is also a Researcher in the Australian Center for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society. His research interests include military ethics, private military and security companies, special operations, military strategy and the ethics of public policy. He is the author of Just Warriors Inc.: The Ethics of Privatized Force and Citizen Killings: Liberalism, State Policy and Moral Risk.

Over the past two decades, the United Nations Security Council has responded more strongly to some humanitarian crises than to others. This variation in Security Council action raises the important question of what factors motivate United Nations intervention.

The United Nations (UN) selective response to humanitarian crises—as evidenced most recently by the organisation’s uneven reaction to the conflicts in Libya and Syria—is arguably among the most contentious issues in international politics. Some scholars and observers heavily criticize this practice, arguing that the selectiveness of humanitarian interventions undermines their legitimacy and ultimately their success; that the uneven response to humanitarian emergencies suggests that these intervention are motivated not by humanitarian concerns but by the military and economic interests of powerful states; and that the selective enforcement of human rights norms undermines the emerging rule of law in international politics (for examples see Archibugi 2004, Chomsky 1999)

Others disagree and claim that selectivity is not only unavoidable for the UN but also desirable. The selectivity of humanitarian intervention, so the argument goes, reduces the risk of over commitment; it helps to maintain cooperation among the great powers; and it prevents the UN from becoming involved in ill-conceived operations (see Roberts and Zaum 2008)

But what explains why UN humanitarian interventions remain selective in the first place? Why is it that the UN has taken strong action to respond to some crises, like those in Northern Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Sierra Leone or—more recently Libya—but not to other like those in Colombia, Myanmar, Sudan, or—currently—Syria?

The scholarship on humanitarian intervention often argues that each humanitarian crisis (and the responses to them) is historically unique and therefore requires a case-by-case explanation. While I agree that attention should be paid to the specificities of each crisis, my research shows that the UN’s response to them is not random but follows remarkably consistent patterns (see Binder 2015, 2017). More specifically, I argue that a combination of four factors explains whether the United Nations does or does not take strong action (sanctions, ‘robust’ peacekeeping operations, military action) in response to a humanitarian crisis. This explanation has been developed and tested through a systematic comparative analysis of the UN’s response to more than 30 humanitarian crises after the end of the Cold War combined with several in-depth case studies of intervention decisions in the UN Security Council.

• The first explanatory factor is the extent of human suffering in a crisis. In a humanitarian crisis people suffer and die while human rights norms are massively violated. This generates a morally motivated pressure to come to the rescue of threatened populations and to defend international norms.

• Secondly, whether the UN intervenes depends on the extent to which a crisis spills over to neighbouring countries and regions. Humanitarian crises often affect neighbouring countries or regions in negative ways. Spill over effects include regional conflict diffusion, refugee flows, terrorism or economic downturn. Spill over effects create a material interest to intervene.

• The third explanatory factor for UN intervention is the ability of a target state to resist outside intervention. Militarily strong target states, or target states that have powerful allies, can raise the costs and risks of UN intervention and affect its chances of success.

• Fourth and finally, UN intervention is explained by the level of material and reputational resources the UN has committed to the resolution of a crisis in the past (sunk costs). To the extent that the UN have invested time, money, and diplomatic prestige in the resolution of the crisis, this creates the wish to protect these investments through continued or escalated involvement.

None of these explanatory factors is sufficient in itself to explain selective intervention. In combination, however, they provide a powerful explanation for the UN’s uneven response to humanitarian crises.

When does the UN take strong action?

Image credit: Bernd Untiedt/Wikimedia.

The UN can be expected to take strong action—coercive measures including economic sanctions, ‘robust’ peacekeeping operation or (the authorization of) military action—if the extent of a humanitarian crisis (in terms of victims and internally displaced persons) is large, and if the organisation has committed substantial resources to its resolution. This, however, leads to intervention only when the crisis also generates substantial negative spill over effects (e.g., refugee flows) or when the target state of an intervention is weak and therefore unable to resist to outside intervention.

Explaining limited UN action (or inaction)

A limited response of the UN to a humanitarian crisis, such as UN observer missions, humanitarian assistance, or even complete inaction of the UN, is best explained by the ability of a potential target state to resist outside intervention (e.g., through military capabilities). However, other factors must be present as well. Military capabilities must be either complemented by a low level of previous UN involvement; or by a relatively low level of human suffering and spill over effect to neighbouring countries.

A few brief examples may help to illustrate how these four factors interact to lead to strong or limited UN action.

Bosnia

UN intervention in Bosnian crisis was clearly driven by a combination of motivational factors. For one, UN members were strongly concerned by the large-scale plight of the Bosnian civilian population and the grave human rights violations committed by the parties to the conflict (ethnic cleansing, the installation of concentration camps, the siege of Sarajevo, and the massacres at Srebrenica). Second, the intervention was motivated by the wish to prevent the crisis from spilling over to Western European countries, most notably in form of refugee flows, and to stop a more generalized destabilization of the Balkan region. A third important driver of UN intervention in Bosnia was the wish of UN member states to protect the tremendous investments both material (through humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping) and reputational (diplomatic efforts) the UN had made over the course of the conflict. However, when the Bosnian Serbs took hundreds of UNPROFOR blue helmets hostage, this brought the UN to the brink of failure and put the UN’s efforts in the Bosnian crisis in jeopardy. In this situation, rather than withdraw, the organisation escalated its response. Finally, outside intervention was facilitated by the inability of the Bosnian Serbs and the Serbian government to generate sufficient resistance against outside intervention by the UN (and later by NATO).

Cote d’Ivoire

Very similar motivational patterns can be observed with respect to the UN’s decision to authorize military intervention in the context of post-election violence in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010. The dramatic levels of internal displacement and the fears of genocide, given the xenophobic politics of ‘Ivoirité’ that characterized the conflict, raised strong humanitarian concern in the UN. At the same time, UN members wished to prevent the conflict from spilling over to other Western African countries, most notably to Liberia which was slowly recovering from a long and brutal civil war. Moreover, the substantial and longstanding involvement of the UN in the country generated an additional institutional dynamic pushing towards intervention. The UN had invested heavily in the resolution of the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire—most notably through peacekeeping and peacebuilding. UN members wished to protect these investments they saw at stake, should country relapse into civil war. Finally, former President Laurent Gbagbo and his supporters were too weak to effectively resist outside intervention in in the country. By the time the UN decided to authorize military action, large parts of the country were controlled by forces loyal to Gbagbo’s opponent Alassane Ouattara.

Libya

As in the crises in Bosnia and in Côte d’Ivoire, humanitarian intervention in Libya was driven by more than one factor. Muammar al Gaddafi’s public announcement to commit a massacre in the town of Benghazi generated particular pressure on the part of UN members to act. Concerns to prevent spill over effects also played an important role. In addition to destabilizing effects for neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia—both of which are undergoing important political change in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’—Western UN members feared that hundreds of thousands of Libyan refugees would cross the Mediterranean towards Europe. At the same time, the Gaddafi regime was not in a strong position to resist outside intervention. Not only was there a capable opposition movement in the country, but also Tripoli had managed to alienate nearly all of its former Arab and African allies. Libya also lacked partners in the Security Council who might have opposed or blocked UN intervention. However, the Libyan case fails to provide strong support for the previous institutional involvement explanation in that the UN did not invest substantial material and immaterial resources to the resolution of the crisis prior to the intervention.

Syria

The ongoing crisis in Syria illustrates how a combination of factors prevents strong UN action. The available evidence suggests that massive human rights violations, the spiralling violence in the country as well as the severe spill over effect of the Syrian conflict for neighbouring countries, most notably Lebanon, raised strong concerns on the part of UN members. A majority of UN members have pushed for sanctions against the Assad regime in the UN Security Council. That the UN has nevertheless not taken strong action in Syria can be explained by two factors. First, unlike the cases discussed before, Syria is more able to resist outside intervention—most notably because the Assad regime enjoys the continued support of its Russian and Chinese allies, who block any coercive measures against Syria in the UN. Second, the UN has not been substantially involved in Syria in the past and has not committed substantial resources to the resolution of the crisis. As such, a complementary dynamic of escalating commitment could not unfold in the UN to push towards coercive measures.

Summary

Whether the UN intervenes or does not intervene in a humanitarian crisis cannot be explained by a single factor. Rather, a combination of conditions – the extent of human suffering, the level of spill over effects, the military strength of a target state and the extent to which the UN has been involved in a crisis before – accounts for this variation in UN action to a large extent. While the explanation I suggest here does not account for all UN responses to humanitarian crises, it covers more than 80% of the UN humanitarian interventions after the Cold War.

Martin Binder is Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Reading. His research focuses on humanitarian intervention, the authority and legitimacy of international institutions, and rising powers. His work has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Quarterly and International Theory, among others. His recent book The United Nations and the Politics of Selective Humanitarian Intervention has been published in 2017 with Palgrave Macmillan.

Summary

Despite considerable disarray continuing into its third month, the new US administration is showing more consistent, if not coherent, signs of how it will try to implement Donald Trump’s campaign proposals. In large part, these may be assessed as antithetical to a more sustainable security agenda, given that they promote military confrontation, undermine attempts to address climate change, and are, at best, incoherent in their response to economic inequality. Little of this translation to reality is likely to endear Trump to voters or his party. Greater policy turbulence, at home and abroad, should be expected ahead of mid-term elections next year.

Introduction

The Trump administration has been in power for 75 days; following the election campaign and the post-election transition it is now possible to get a reasonably clear picture of how its policies relating to security are taking shape. There has been much speculation that the United States will take a very different path to that of the Obama era, not least in relation to security and climate change, and since the United States is the world’s most powerful state it is appropriate to make an initial assessment of the changes as they may affect the sustainable security thinking with which ORG has been concerned for the last decade. Is the Trump era likely to make a major difference to the global security outlook or is it more likely that realities of international relations will limit the capacity for the change Trump seeks?

Sustainable Security

The ORG approach to security may be summarised:

Security challenges such as terrorism, crime and weapons proliferation cannot be successfully contained or controlled without understanding and addressing their root causes. ORG’s Sustainable Security concept takes a comprehensive, long-term approach that encompasses climate change, resource scarcity, militarisation, poverty, inequality and marginalisation.

As the thinking has developed it has tended to group the challenges into three main areas, economic relations, climate change, and militarisation, and these are convenient headings with which to make an initial assessment of the Trump era.

The issue of economic relations is seen as having as its greatest challenge the failure of the neoliberal approach to deliver economic justice, equity and emancipation, and the consequent growing divide between a relatively small minority of rather more than a billion people and the majority of the world’s population, with a clear rise in frustration and resentment among that majority at relative marginalisation and lack of life prospects.

In the environmental context, while a number of resource limitations and regional environmental impacts are important, the emphasis in the ORG analysis has to be on the most significant trend – climate change and especially its impact on human well-being especially as a result of severe effects on food production.

Finally, militarisation is seen partly in terms of a particularly entrenched and powerfully influential economic sector but most significantly as a culture in which the early use of military force is essential in maintaining the status quo, however unequal, unjust or unstable that order is.

In all cases, the ORG view is that these approaches are thoroughly inappropriate if we wish to avoid an unstable and violent world, and much more emphasis must be placed on the underlying causes of the problems and how they may be addressed. The failure of the current 15-year war on terror is the most grievous example, having led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of displaced people, at least three failed or failing states and a continuing perception of the threat of political violence in western countries. The question, simply, is how does the new Trump era affect the possibility of taking the wider view?

Economic Issues

Image credit: PressSec/Wikimedia.

The early indications are that the Trump administration is a potentially unstable mix of those best described as economic nationalists and others, especially in the wider Republican Party, who are convinced neoliberals. The latter may be dubious about any trend towards protectionism and believe that in a free market which already favours the wealthy such protectionism may turn out to be counter-productive. In this view, transnational corporate organisation is a fact of life and no country, not even the United States, can go its own way for long.

The economic nationalists, who are dominant within Trump’s inner policy circle, are very strongly convinced that the United States has sufficient power to dominate the markets that matter most. Furthermore, the whole Trump election platform was predicated on strong opposition to the perceived elite, an establishment that “ran” Washington. His appeal to those left behind, especially in the post-industrial American Mid-West, was probably the most important element in his successful election and it is an approach that will not readily be abandoned. At the same time, he was committed to policies that would reduce taxes while scaling down the Obamacare reforms – initially both popular with his supporters.

In the short-term Trump’s policies may be popular but it may be as little as a year before those left behind find that their predicament simply does not ease. Indeed, it is already becoming clear that health provision reforms will lead to many millions of Americans facing higher costs, including many of those who voted for Trump. More generally, economic nationalism may turn out to provide little gain for the country as the power of China and other major economies becomes more apparent. “America first” is simply not sustainable in a globalised world.

Even so, what has to be faced is that the Trump era will not see any fundamental challenge to the neoliberal system, precisely in a period when that system is proving unfit for purpose. What may perhaps be more relevant is how long the Trump approach in its present form persists. The degree of disorganisation currently apparent in so many areas within the White House is hardly encouraging in terms of stability, and it may well be that as the 2018 mid-sessional elections to the House and Senate draw nearer, Trump’s singularly soft Republican majority support in both Houses of Congress will lead to sudden changes of policy. These may not directly address core issues of inequality but could take much of the remaining lustre off the Trump approach.

Climate Change

This month has seen the very clear enactment of a number of policies that confirm that the Trump approach on climate change is one of denial coupled with the strong promotion of domestically-sourced fossil fuel resources. This is a highly negative approach for two reasons – there will be an increase in carbon emissions from the United States and a lack of leadership within the international community for addressing the considerable dangers stemming from climate change. This would seem disastrous for any hope of effectively preventing climate change but there are other very interesting factors at work.

Firstly, the reality of the dangers of uncontrollable climate change is far more recognised across the world than a decade ago. Many more states are accelerating their moves towards renewable energy sources, with the biggest emitter, China, making remarkable strides. Indeed, China may well see its way to playing a global leadership role. Secondly, the rapid developments in renewable energy technologies are making renewable sources far more economic, with many further developments coming closer to fruition. The effect of this is that renewable energy utilisation is now competing much more closely with fossil carbon sources and, as a consequence, there is a rapid increase in investment in renewables. More than half of all investment in electricity generation is now in renewables and in the United States and elsewhere there is far greater potential for employment in renewables than in fossil carbon sources.

Major problems remain including historic underinvestment in energy storage technologies and the need to cut carbon emissions by even more than most states currently accept, but the point here is that this is one area where there is every sign that Trump’s policies are obsolete and likely to ensure that the United States is left high and dry. Even in the face of that, though, the ideological certitude of the climate change deniers close to Trump means that the administration is unlikely to change. In short, the advent of the Trump era may limit the prospects for countering climate disruption but at least this will be another area where the Trump approach may be singularly counterproductive to any aim to make the United States the world leader.

Security

As with climate change, the first two-and-a-half months of the Trump administration have shown the translation of rhetoric into policy: control of migration, increased military spending and the more frequent use of force. Here, though, it is necessary to recall that the eight years of the Obama administration may have seen the withdrawal of US troops from substantial parts of the Middle East and Afghanistan but also saw the quiet transition to remote warfare with much greater use of air power, armed drones and Special Forces, not least in Libya and Iraq. The early signs are that Trump is expanding such operations rather than radically changing the posture and this includes even greater use of air power in the war against Islamic State (IS), as well as the deployment of even more Special Forces in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

These kinds of changes are being reflected in the manner in which the Pentagon is being given a much freer hand to conduct operations, but there are already consequences. A major raid in Yemen in late January failed to achieve its objective while also killing many civilians, and the much-expanded use of air strikes in Mosul in the past month has led to such an increase in civilian casualties that they are even being reported in the mainstream western media. Even so, such consequences are unlikely to carry any weight with Trump unless there are serious disasters involving US military personnel.

The risk of this has been limited until now but one factor that has received little attention is that Trump’s Pentagon is advocating, and indeed already initiating, a substantial increase in the number of “boots on the ground”. In Iraq this is no longer just Special Forces but regular troop deployments which include, for example, units from the 82^nd Airborne Division. Trump has also just agreed to give US forces in East Africa much more open powers to operate assaults on suspected al-Qaida-linked groups in southern Somalia, and there are also repeated calls for the Pentagon to expand its deployments in Afghanistan.

As with economic issues, such actions may be popular with Trump supporters in the short term, examples of forceful action in the task of “Making America Great Again”, but based on the failures of the last fifteen years, the longer-term impact may be very different. What it does mean, though, is that as the United States seriously expands in overseas military operations then its close allies such as Britain will have to face up to whether they are willing to maintain their commitments.

Conclusion

These are, indeed, different times and with all three aspects of the sustainable security challenge the election of Trump is likely to exacerbate ingrained problems. At the same time, his policies may become increasingly irrelevant concerning climate change and his economic popularity with his supporters may also erode quickly. This may well increase the temptation to use foreign military action to distract voters from domestic discontents. However, even in the military dimension there are unlikely to be any quick wins and Trump’s direction of travel means that his allies could quickly come under domestic political pressure if they were to stay closely aligned with the United States. In any case, the need to rethink our attitudes to security remains critical and it is best to see the advent of the Trump era as a period when even more opportunity for creative, critical and independent rethinking of security will be essential.

Paul Rogers is Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group and Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. His ‘Monthly Global Security Briefings’ are available from our website. His new book Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threats from the Margins will be published by I B Tauris in June 2016. These briefings are circulated free of charge for non-profit use, but please consider making a donation to ORG, if you are able to do so.

The inclusion and participation of young people in societies is a necessary condition for sustainable peace. The neglect of young people’s current needs and future livelihoods is a recipe for renewed conflict.

Despite all the sermonizing on the important role of young people for a society’s future and the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 (December 2015) on the importance to include youth in peacebuilding, the active and independent participation of youth is rarely welcomed. Across the globe youths are criticized either for their political apathy or their open political protest that travelled around the world in 2011 and 2012. In the debate on peace and conflict especially there is a significant divide: children are mostly seen as victims and the United Nations have an important advocacy role. At the same time, many governments perceive youths (age 15 to 25) as perpetrators of violence and potential troublemakers. While there have been calls to include youths in peacebuilding by giving them voice and agency, the inclusion of youth in current peacebuilding programs rarely includes elements other than education or training.

Colombia’s comprehensive peace accord is an example. Youths appear 13 times in the 310 pages but only as part of other marginalized or excluded groups such as women, elderly, or the indigenous people. Under a broader perspective of peace being defined as more than the mere absence of war and armed conflict, this lack of youth’s political citizenship is counterproductive for sustainable peace. Neglected and/or criminalized young people either leave their countries and seek a better life elsewhere or they use violence to survive or to get attention from adults. They do not develop trust in the government and its institutions.

The mismatch between formal possibilities and realities

Image credit: wjgomes/Pixabay.

A research project of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies on youth participation in postwar societies funded by the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development  has provided interesting evidence for there being a significant mismatch between increasing formal possibilities of political participation of youths and their neglect and criminalization by adult society. In a first step, we collected data on the risks and opportunities for youth social, economic, and political participation – such as education, elections, employment– in 21 post-war societies (10 in Sub-Saharan Africa, six in Asia, four in Latin America, one in the Middle East). Many post-war societies liberalize their political regimes after the end of war.

Political and civil rights are expanded, elections are introduced as a means of formal participation at the national as well as the local level. Consequently, young people in these countries – often the first generation that grew up and was socialized after the end of war –  should have bright perspectives. While youths participate in society, they do so overwhelmingly in civil society organizations (sports clubs, religious organizations and cultural activities) but to a much lesser extent in the political system. In a second step we conducted field research in three countries – El Salvador, Nicaragua, and South Africa – all perceived as rather successful cases of liberal peacebuilding at least in the first decade after war’s end. But even there young people feel marginalized.

Youths in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and South Africa face a set of common challenges: The most pressing problem is finding decent work. While the first post-war generations have a significantly better formal education than their parents, youth unemployment is higher than adult unemployment. Even if young people can find work, available jobs offer low pay, long working hours, short contracts and few social benefits. Many youths are not able to make the important transition to adulthood and are unable to form a family. Political activism and citizenship should provide perspectives for change in demographically young societies. But a set of structural conditions influences youth political participation negatively: Poverty and inequality limit youth political activism, most of all in the rural areas and especially for young women.

Overall, young people confront a generational bottleneck due to the war generation remaining in power, dominating economy, society, and politics, shaping the rules of post-war order and the possibilities for youth political participation. Although young people are interested in political participation they do not trust politicians and existing institutions. They do not “see benefits in participating” as change does not happen; they feel existing political parties only approach them during campaigns for their votes; and that they have neither real voice nor impact. Hence, they do not trust in elections as a mechanism of change. If and where young people organize as autonomous and independent actors, adults and elders view their political activism as problematic and as a challenge to their own status. They aim at integrating young people in a subordinate position for example in youth wings of political parties or other forms of controlled and supervised participation.

Blocked transitions

How do young people cope with these problems? Based on A.O. Hirschman’s classic book we can distinguish various strategies of exit, voice, and loyalty. Confronted with little future options and opportunities many youths exit through inner migration as well as out of country. El Salvador is an extreme example as a fifth of the population lives outside of its borders. While this may be an option for individual survival and upward social mobility, its potential for promoting change is limited. Other forms of exit are related to individual withdrawal from society via apathy, drug abuse or by joining a gang.

Nicaraguan and South African youths have fewer options to leave. In these cases, the majority of young people are mostly muddling through taking the few chances they have to survive. South African participants in our project’s focus group discussions stated that change was only possible through the ruling African National Congress. Becoming a member is not necessarily a sign of confidence in the party but could rather signal high levels of realism regarding existing power relations. In this sense, the strategy of displaying loyalty might not be the best but a viable way of getting along regarding access to the labor market and other important public goods.

Last but not least, there is the possibility of youth acquiring a voice. While political citizenship through the existing formal channels does rarely allow for significant changes, young people opt for non-violent as well as violent protest.  Salvadorian and Nicaraguan youths are at the forefront of ecological protests about problems such as water scarcity and the canal project linking the Pacific and the Atlantic.

In South Africa, youths protest against corruption. While most young people prefer non-violent protest, they also acknowledge that violence can be used to get attention by the governmental institutions. As a girl living in a high crime area stated: “If you want to get the attention of the government you have to ‘toi toi’ – make a lot of noise”. But protesting also bears the risk that young people and their claims are criminalized and repressed.

Youth needs to be included for sustainable peacebuilding

The active and participatory inclusion of young people is a necessary condition for sustainable peace. Post-war societies produce high risks for sustainable peace if the society fails to integrate young people into the political system and to allow them to participate in political decisions and actions. Where the war-time generation has an exclusive control of social and political resources generational conflict will arise. This might lead to renewed armed conflict and war or shift violence from the political arena to society and crime.

El Salvador provides evidence of the escalation of violence due to a lack of social and economic integration of young people. Despite a formally democratic political system the country remains one of the most violent worldwide. These changing patterns of violence provide important lessons for other processes of peacebuilding. Where protest is criminalized and violence is answered with state repression, armed groups tend to institutionalize. Giving young people a chance to voice their concerns as well as express their hopes – and acting on them in concert with them – is much cheaper and provides an important pattern of conflict prevention and sustainable peace. Implementation of UN  Resolution 2250 at different levels thus needs to open space for youth active participation and shared decision making for a peaceful future.

Sabine Kurtenbach is a Senior Research Fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies.

The centenary of the First World War also marks the anniversary of the practice of recording and naming casualties of war. But a century on, new forms of ‘shadow warfare’ limit the ability to record casualties of conflict and thus threaten to allow states a free hand to employ dangerous new tactics without threat of individual or international accountability. Without verifiable casualty figures – including information on who is being killed and how – we cannot evaluate the acceptability, effectiveness or impact of ‘remote control’ tactics as they are rolled out among civilian populations.

A Humanizing Legacy

Image of the name of Sgt. Robert O’Connor of The Leinster Regiment on the Menin Gate wall, killed on 31 July 1917 during the WWI. WWI saw the start of practice of recognizing by name each and every soldier killed during battle. Source: Wikipedia

As the world marks the centenary of the commencement of the First World War,  we remember not the war that ended all wars, but instead the war that changed them forever. Introducing new forms of mechanized warfare – including the machine gun, u-boat, tank and airplane – WWI increased exponentially the lethal force of the individual soldier, bringing about an era of death and destruction on an industrial scale.  Yet, even as it ushered in the means of mass and impersonal killing, the ‘Great War’ also initiated the humanizing practice of recognizing by name each and every soldier who lost their lives, burying them in marked graves alongside those of their officers. Not only does such identification and public acknowledgement of victims dignify their memory, in today’s conflicts it can also provide vital information for humanitarian response and for monitoring compliance with – or tracking violations of – international law.

Today we are again witnessing the introduction of new forms of warfare – including armed drones, lethal autonomous weapons, special operations forces and use of private military and security companies.  Like their WWI counterparts, these new tactics will reshape the face of conflict, yet as they do so they also threaten to destroy the humanizing legacy of casualty recording. Pushing global warfare deep into the shadows, these new ‘remote-control’ tactics are replacing public military campaigns with covert and contracted force. This shift to a ‘light-footprint’ approach, primarily by the United States, but also by France, Russia and the United Kingdom, reflects not only the changing nature of security threats, which have become mercurial at best, but also the lessening appetite for long military campaigns with high military casualties. A recent report from the Every Casualty Programme at Oxford Research Group and the Remote Control Project finds that the prioritisation of ‘remote control’ tactics presents serious obstacles to the recording of casualties, and subsequently, accountability for the civilians impacted by their use.

Issues of capacity, political will, and access challenge efforts to record the casualties of any type of conflict. Yet, in conventional warfare, where identifiable or recognised conflict parties conduct attacks, such recording is not impossible: militaries generally record their own fatalities in these instances, while civilian deaths are often recorded by small civil society organizations around the world.  One need only look to the names of the hundreds of civilians killed in recent conflict in Gaza published by major news outlets to see the result of such efforts. In covert conflicts, however, or in conflicts where ‘remote control’ tactics are used, the ability to record casualties – including information on who is killed and how – is greatly diminished.

The merging of intelligence operations with the use of force – seen currently in countries such as Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan with the use of armed drones and special operations forces by the United States – is a particularly problematic trend for casualty recorders. By greatly increasing the opacity – or outright deniability – of state force, covert operations erect a seemingly impenetrable wall of ‘classified information’, impeding recorders’ ability to conduct field investigations and verify their data. In 2010, the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which has conducted systematic casualty recording since 2007, reported that due to “tactical reasons and deliberate lack of information about such operations” they found it “very difficult to monitor and adequately document the activities of Special Forces” operating in the country. Gathering data on civilian and combatant casualties of drone strikes has also proved problematic – with ORG’s report finding that recorders are challenged by a lack of official disclosure of information about strikes, blocking of access to strike sites, and a near monopoly of information by anonymous officials on information coming from affected areas.

The consequent lack of reliable casualty data impedes the impartial evaluation of the tactics’ impacts on civilian populations. It also limits the ability to scrutinise the tactics acceptability and effectiveness using evidence-based analysis. The United States – the primary user of armed drones – has repeatedly claimed that drones allow for precision targeting, capable of surgically eliminating targets with minimal civilian casualties. Yet, as a recent report from the Bureau of Investigate Journalism on drone use in Afghanistan has shown, “the armed forces that operate drones publish no data on casualties to corroborate these claims.” Although the United States claims to record data on casualties itself, its failure to make such records transparent not only prevents an analysis of the acceptability of drone strikes, but also denies the victims and their families the opportunity for accountability or redress.

Bringing Remote-Control warfare out of the shadows

People of Narang district mourning for the students killed in a night raid in the village Ghazi Khan on December 27, 2009. Although the operation was authorised by NATO, it is still not publicly known who carried out the attack. Source: Wikipedia

Data documenting the casualties of particular weapons – from chemical gas in WW1 to landmines and cluster munitions more recently – has been instrumental in evaluating these weapons’ impact and acceptability, and ultimately ensuring their regulation through international treaty. Yet, as new tactics are employed under the cloak of ‘covert action’, the ability of the international community to measure and regulate their impact is increasingly limited. Without verifiable casualty figures, states may be given a free hand to employ dangerous new tactics without threat of individual or international accountability. Indeed a recent report from Amnesty International has found that as a result of an almost complete lack of transparency from the US government regarding civilian casualties in Afghanistan – specifically around those killed in night raids by SOFs or by missiles from drones strikes – victims are already facing a major accountability vacuum.

States must take greater responsibility for recording and acknowledging the casualties – both civilian and combatant – of these new tactics. They must not seek to block public investigation and accountability, even though these tactics may be adopted for the lower profile they afford armed force. Furthermore the United Nations, alongside civil society groups or other entities, must enhance their recording efforts so as to provide independently verifiable data on casualties. Such data is essential for developing an accurate, complete and impartial record, and for facilitating scrutiny in circumstances where casualties are highly politicized. Civil society-led casualty recording and analysis, despite its limitations, has already highlighted policies within the use of remote control tactics that need greater examination: for example, the practice of ‘double-tap’ or rescuer drone strikes in Pakistan on those coming to the assistance of individuals at the site of a previous strike. Only by ensuring that casualty recording is conducted systematically and to a high standard can we bring the impact of remote control warfare out of the shadows and into the public eye.

If we are to take a lesson from the commemoration ceremonies resounding across Europe it is simply that to learn from the past, and to honor it, we must first know that past. Details regarding the identites of those killed in conflict, both on the battlefield and in their homes, are essential to understanding the impact of violence, and to telling the full story of a conflict, to both current and future generations. The risks, then, of wars waged in secret, their battles and casualties concealed, are profound. Not only will there be no monuments at which to mourn their dead, there will be no lessons to be gleaned from their history: the wisdom of hindsight – both for policymakers deploying force and the public – may be lost completely.

Kate Hofstra is Research and Communications Consultant of the Every Casualty Programme at Oxford Research Group and co-author of Losing Sight of the Human Cost: Casualty Recording and Remote Control Warfare. Kate previously worked for TLG,a London-based communications consultancy, where she was the editor of a digital magazine on business and development. She has also worked with the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo and hasa background in transitional justice. Kate has an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics.

Featured Image: Deputy chief minister of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province and tribesmen offer funeral prayers in front of dead bodies who were killed in army operation in Khar, the main town in Bajaur tribal agency, 30 October 2006. Source: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Naming the Dead Project

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 1 is available here.

Armed forces being transported in Mexico, where they are being used to fight the ‘war on drugs’.
Source: The Daily Gumboot

Over the past decade there has been a sharp and sustained increase in crime and violence across Central America. Fuelled by a rise in organised crime, the growth and expansion of domestic gangs, poor socioeconomic conditions and State institutions lacking in terms of their capacity and territorial coverage, crime and violence have rocketed. Homicide rates, taken as the main measure of insecurity in public debates in the region, have soared. In the Northern Triangle, where socioeconomic conditions and institutional capabilities are generally worse, a figure of 85.5 per 100,000 inhabitants makes Honduras the most dangerous country in the world, whilst figures of 34.3 and 41.5 for Guatemala and El Salvador place them within the upper echelons.

In response to public and media pressure, there has been a notable tendency to resort to militarised responses focused on reactionary and repressive policies that seek immediate short-term results. This is particularly true of the Northern Triangle countries, which have an established history of involving the military in public security tasks. In El Salvador, following the ‘New Dawn’ campaign (Campaña Nuevo Amanecer), initiated in 2009 to reinforce security in response to the high incidence of crime, 39% of the Armed Forces are currently involved in public security tasks. This involves, for example, their collaboration in patrols to increase security in border areas and unofficial border crossings, the provision of perimeter security in penitentiary centres, and task forces that carry out patrols, apprehensions and joint operations with the national police. In Guatemala, the assistance, collaboration and coordination of the Armed Forces in public security has been further institutionalised through the Protocol for Inter-institutional Action, which regulates these activities. This approach is perhaps best epitomised, however, by the case of Honduras. Characterising a lack of political will to fully engage in the long and difficult task of reforming and developing existing police institutions, Honduras has placed its military at the centre of public security, and, with the recent creation of the Military Police of Public Order, located within the Ministry of Defence, a permanent policing role has effectively been handed to the institution. As such, prevention and reconciliation often take a back seat behind reactive and militarised approaches.

A better way?

Nicaragua National Police
Source: Insight crime

While Nicaragua does not depart from this pattern of engaging the Armed Forces in public security tasks[1], the government has simultaneously invested in the long term development of a policing model that stands out due to its grass roots focus on prevention, and for the results it has achieved as a consequence (in 2010, in Panama, it was pronounced as the best in the region by a panel of public security experts). Closely linked to the Sandinista Revolution out of which it grew, Nicaragua’s community policing model has developed through a process of continual reform in the light of the identification of good police practice. As such, what began as a routine focus on community relations has since developed into a model characterised by broad and deep relations between the community and the police. These permeate not only the actions of individual police officers, but also guide the structure, organisation, deployment and entire philosophy of the institution. This is combined with a proactive focus on attention, which involves the continual identification of social factors driving crime and insecurity combined with the constant evaluation of police competencies to respond to them. By monitoring the relationship between security phenomena and police competences in an anticipated rather than reactive fashion, it allows for a concerted analysis, and response to, the conditions and circumstances that are driving crime and insecurity.

The decentralised approach of the Nicaraguan National Police (PNN) is one of the keys to its success. It places emphasis on the local drivers and manifestations of both local and national security challenges. It does this by establishing broad and permanent channels of communication with the community, both through participation in community assemblies and maintaining direct links with local residents. One such example is the use of heads of sectors specialised in public security. They are police that are located in a particular territorial area, and their functions include cultivating close community ties through activities such as frequent door-to-door visits to speak to local residents.

Similarly, the Social Prevention of Crime Committees, which are made up of 40,000 members, and the Cabinets of Citizen Power, which number 143 across the country, also provide a direct link with the community. Amongst their functions, they organise assemblies, work with local public and private institutions to find solutions to security problems, and collaborate on working plans to prevent crime.  These fluid links with the community allow the police to cultivate a close and trusting relationship with them, gain an understanding of the security perceptions of local residents and actors, and extract useful information regarding crimes, particularly regarding drugs, robberies and violence between groups of youths. Community policing therefore provides police with a specialised knowledge of the local situation and the drivers of insecurity.

Tackling social drivers of crime

On patrol in the community
Source: Policía Nacional de Nicaragua

The prevention of crime requires targeting the social conditions that cause it and instead, cultivating conditions which reduce it. In order to achieve this, the PNN has created specialist bodies that focus on two major causes of insecurity: youth violence and intra-family or sexual violence (20% of crimes).

Specialised Police Stations for Women and Children were created as specialist units for prevention and attention to victims of intra-family, psychological or sexual violence. To combat these problems, attention is focused on the particular drivers of these forms of violence: the economic and social vulnerability of women and children, the attitudes of males in the community, and the lack of comprehensive victim support, which contributes to an unwillingness to denounce such crimes. Work is therefore carried out in a 3 stage response:

1)      Transformation of the local environment, using education and training in detection and response to increase awareness of the problems and how to report them;

2)      comprehensive victim support, through a leading role in coordinating with NGOs, health centres, shelters for victims, state institutions etc,  in the provision of health, psychological and legal support, in addition to the investigation and prosecution of crimes;

3)      and empowerment of women and children through vocational training and education.

By combining an understanding of local conditions driving insecurity with an integral response to them, the Police are better placed not only to respond to manifestations of intra-family violence, but to also reduce occurrences through preventive measures.

The Directorate of Youth Affairs uses the same logic in its attention to at-risk youth, those with established links to gangs, or those who have previously been incarcerated. Through a highly personal and humanistic approach, it seeks to change the attitudes and values of these young people, increase their bonds with the local community, and create opportunities for them to reintegrate into society. Recipients begin by making a commitment to change and handing over any weapons they possess, with social and psychological support applied within the family environment to deal with personal issues, such as low self-esteem or personal identity. Training and education programmes are provided through private and public scholarships, as well as through the National Police’s Centre of Youth Training and Development, through which they gain skills to assist them in finding employment, and that contribute to the development of their community. Recipients also engage in community leisure and social activities and are assisted in finding work as part of their social reintegration. As a result, the number of gangs recorded in Managua has decreased from over 200 to approximately 20, according to the PNN, with a total of 42 gangs registered across the country in February 2012, and reductions in gang-related crime have been registered in neighbourhoods such as Bello Amanecer. By engaging in prevention programmes that focus on those conditions that drive youth into gangs and violence, and by coordinating these programmes within the family and community environment, the PNN has developed a model that seeks to reduce crime and insecurity in a sustainable and long term manner.

Lessons to guide police reform in Latin America

Whilst the contextual origins of the model and the particularities unique to each country would make attempts to duplicate the model in the region futile, the Nicaraguan model provides a number of clear lessons that can be extracted. At the foundation of each of these lessons is the community-police relationship, which has come to permeate throughout the institution and its programmes. It acts as a tool to both gain an understanding of the underlying drivers of insecurity and to provide a comprehensive response to them, through a combination of preventive strategies and comprehensive victim attention programmes. While the efficacy of involving special military units to target particular security challenges should not be negated, the benefits of a police force with strong community roots and a community policing philosophy are clear. For lasting gains to be made, these lessons, together with those to be extracted from other successful experiences in the region, should underpin reform processes.

Matt Budd is a security analyst at RESDAL (Red de Seguridad y Defensa de America Latina – Latin American Security and Defense Network) in Buenos Aires, where he focuses on public security issues in Central America. Matt holds an honours degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics. Matt has most recently been working on RESDAL’s  Public Security Index, which provides information on public security challenges and institutional responses to them in Central America.