Climate change and human migration are often presented as threats to national and international security. But what is the actual link between these phenomena and conflict? Author’s Note: This commentary […]
Climate change and human migration are often presented as threats to national and international security. But what is the actual link between these phenomena and conflict? Author’s Note: This commentary […]
Not unlike the United States in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the French government has begun the intervention with talk of short timelines and minimal troops on the ground before quickly changing its tune, write Anna Alissa Hitzemann and Ben Zala for Channel 4 News .
Hurricane Katrina and the sinking of coastal Louisiana stand as a reminder that we must address climate change, competition over resources and marginalisation as the root causes of conflict before it is too late.
Analysing a recent report by International Crisis Group, Anna Alissa Hitzemann argues that in order for the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy to be stable, and for peace and security to be sustainable, the government of Myanmar will have to face and resolve major challenges such as idespread militarization and the political and social marginalization (past and present) of ethnic and religious groups.
Current debates warn of growing food insecurity as global warming and climate change have devastating effects on crops, livestock and even fisheries. Anna Alissa Hitzemann discusses one way to address food insecurity: to help those most affected by price volatility of food become less dependent on the free market
There will be no sustainable security if we do not equally value the needs, experiences and input of men and women. A new report published by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), funded by ActionAid and Womankind Worldwide, examines the role women play in local community peacebuilding in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. The report states “despite the increased international attention to women’s participation in peacebuilding, the achievements and challenges facing women building peace at the local level have been largely overlooked”.
due to a complex range of interconnected issues from climate change to misguided economic policies, political failure and social marginalisation, over 2 billion people across the world live in constant food insecurity. Anna Alissa hitzemann takes a sustainable security approach to look at the importance of “physical and economic access to basic food” by exploring the links between food insecurity and violence.
The Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) recently published a Policy brief by Tani Marilena Adams, proposing and outlining the concept of “chronic violence” to “characterise the crisis of escalating social violence that currently affects about one-quarter of the world’s population”. The report approaches “chronic violence” from a sustainable security standpoint, arguing that violence itself should not be seen as the disease to be controlled, but rather as a symptom of many complex underlying issues that need to be addressed.
Biodiversity conservation is becoming increasingly militarised. Conservationists are learning from the strategies of contemporary warfare, and this is highly problematic for both wildlife and global security.
Biodiversity conservation and security are becoming increasingly integrated. The recent rises in poaching, especially of high profile charismatic species such as elephants, rhinos and tigers has led to the development of more militarised approaches towards conservation. Rather than producing the claimed win-win-win outcome for wildlife, security and people, it is producing a triple fail. While we are more accustomed to debates around climate change and water wars as the main security risks related to the environment, biodiversity conservation is also increasingly being identified as a critical contributor to national and global security, and biodiversity losses constitute a critical security threat. This is especially the case in current debates about poaching and wildlife trafficking. Conservationists, it seems, are learning from the strategies of contemporary warfare. This is highly problematic for wildlife and global security.
Does wildlife trafficking produce threat finance or not?
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of UNEP, recently stated ‘the scale and role of wildlife and forest crime in threat finance calls for much wider policy attention’. The argument that wildlife trafficking constitutes a significant source of ‘threat finance’ takes two forms: first, as a lucrative business for organised crime networks in Europe and Asia, and second as a source of finance for militias and terrorist networks, particularly Al Shabaab, Lord’s Resistance Army and Janjaweed. Yet, a recent report from UNEP and INTERPOL on environmental crime questions the accuracy of the links between ivory and Al Shabaab. The report points out that ivory may be a source of income for some militia groups including Janjaweed and Lord’s Resistance Army; however it also notes that claims Al Shabaab was trafficking 30.6 tonnes of ivory per annum (representing 3600 elephants per year) through southern Somalia are ‘highly unreliable’ and that the main sources of income for Al Shabaab remain charcoal trading and ex-pat finance. In spite of this, the argument persists that there is a link between the illegal wildlife trade and global security.
Although the value of the global illegal trade in wildlife is difficult to determine due to its clandestine nature, it has been estimated at around US$7.8–$10 billion. It ranks as the third biggest global illicit activity (after trafficking drugs and weapons). Transnational environmental crimes are often not taken seriously within the broader policy and enforcement community, and so they are perceived as a low-risk and high-reward activity for organised crime networks. However, this is changing, and environmental crimes are rapidly gaining greater attention, and the increasing sophistication of wildlife trafficking networks is a reflection of their link with other serious offences, including theft, fraud, corruption, drugs and human trafficking, counterfeiting, firearms smuggling, and money laundering.
Major donors are also taking this issue seriously, and funding has been made available for anti-poaching and anti-trafficking initiatives. In 2013 the Clinton Global Initiative announced a commitment to raise US$80 million to combat trafficking and poaching as a security threat in Africa. Private philanthropic foundations have also become involved, as indicated by the US$25 million donation to South Africa from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to support rhino protection efforts in Kruger National Park. The rise in poaching has also intersected with US security concerns, prompting President Obama to issue Executive Order 13648 on Combating Wildlife Trafficking in July 2013, and in 2014 USAID allocated more than US$55 million for activities to combat wildlife trafficking, up from US$13 million in 2012. These concerns have emerged as a major policy initiative of the UK government, beginning in May 2013 when Prince Charles convened a high level meeting to ‘kick start’ a government response to the rise in elephant and rhino poaching – followed in 2014 by the London Declaration on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, and the development of a DfID/DEFRA £13 million ‘Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund’.
Why is conservation being militarised?
Elephant ivory seized from poachers in Garamba. Image by Enough Project via Flickr.
Conservation practice is being increasingly militarised as a result of this new interest in the security implications of poaching and trafficking. Militarisation can be briefly defined as the extension of military approaches, equipment and techniques to wildlife protection, as well as the deployment of armed forces in conservation activity. Countries with elephant, rhino and tiger populations also regularly invoke the argument that wildlife constitutes an emblematic natural resource, which is central to national heritage. For example, on World Ranger Day in 2015 South African Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa paid tribute to park rangers by stating that they were protecting rhinos as a key part of the country’s natural heritage. Such appeals to natural or national heritage are also frequently overlain with the argument that states have a moral obligation to protect wildlife. The interesting question is: why is there an increased interest in countering wildlife poaching and trafficking with more militarised responses?
War on Terror
First, the integration of security and biodiversity conservation has been extended by the development of a global context centred on security concerns, and this is most obvious in the US-led War on Terror. For states (especially parks and wildlife departments), conservation NGOs, and private conservation organisations, the ability to claim that their activities will contribute to national and global security has provided an important opportunity to justify their continued existence, and to leverage additional funding from donors, governments and private sector. The development of a global context in which security is a leading concern has opened new opportunities to leverage significant resources for conservation. During the 1990s, NGOs in the humanitarian relief sector were increasingly engaged in a competitive market to secure funding and contracts with donors. This dynamic was mirrored in the conservation sector, as detailed by Mac Chapin’s high profile piece for WorldWatch on how the ‘big three’ conservation NGOs of WWF, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy, had managed to secure the majority of available funding. Competition between NGOs and the dominance of the big three partly explains why conservation NGOs have been so keen to promote the idea that conservation is critical to security. The assumption is that by rendering conservation a security issue, it will allow them to tap in to the greater resources available for security and anti-terrorism initiatives.
Technological Innovations
Second, recent innovations in military technology, especially for surveillance purposes, have also driven a demand to find new markets to expand its use (and profitability). This includes the use of drone technology to monitor wildlife populations in areas hit by poaching. The drones can also collect important information on human activity in the area – which is especially welcome in regions where there are concerns about the activity of rebel groups and militias that threaten state (or even international) security. The growing intersections between the two are evident in the development of a new range of surveillance networks which draw together government agencies, international intelligence agencies, wildlife conservation NGOs and private sector risk analysis companies. Such surveillance techniques are used to gather data on individuals and networks suspected of engaging in illegal hunting and trafficking of wildlife products; these use the same techniques associated with counter-insurgency operations, including the extraction of mobile communications data, development of informant networks and use of covert surveillance.
The rise of private security
Third, the rise in privatised forms of security in the post-Cold War era is also reflected in biodiversity conservation: private security companies provide training for anti-poaching operations as well as direct enforcement. This can be placed in the context of the growing use of private military companies in international interventions, including Afghanistan and Iraq. This is especially significant because it heralds a new era in conservation, in which national governments permit direct contracts between conservation NGOs and private security companies, with an authorisation to use deadly force under certain circumstances. A good example is the ways WWF has turned to the private sector to deliver security operations in protected areas that they manage on behalf of states. In Dzangha-Sanga National park in Central African Republic, funding from WWF-Netherlands, WWF-US and WWF-International is used to pay for anti-poaching operations and training under the auspices of Maisha Consulting. The company describes itself as a provider of environmental security via special investigations, training and operations in complex security situations. Numerous conservation NGOs have to grapple with complex security situations, especially if they seek to continue their projects and support when conflicts break out, or when militias move into the same area, and PMCs are regarded useful allies.
The triple fail
The rise of these approaches is deeply problematic for two reasons: they produce responses that are not effective for countering terrorism and insecurity, and equally they do not help us tackle poaching effectively. Instead they act as counterproductive distractions. The militarisation of anti-poaching including the growth of surveillance techniques and ‘intelligence-led’ approaches, fails to address the dynamics that drive poaching. These include a powerful mix of demand from wealthy communities around the world, poverty, inequality and the lack of opportunities in poorer source countries, the collusion of officials, organised crime networks and private transport companies. Simply focusing on military-style protection of wildlife from poaching is not effective: it can produce short term protection, but ultimately undermines wildlife conservation because it pits local communities against wildlife, reducing support for wildlife amongst people who live with it: the very people conservation ultimately relies on.
Rosaleen Duffy is professor of the political ecology of development at SOAS, University of London. In September 2016 she joins the Politics Department in the University of Sheffield and will begin a major research project ‘BIOSEC: Biodiversity and Security: understanding environmental crime, illegal wildlife trade and threat finance’, (EURO 1.8 million funded by an ERC Advanced Investigator Award).
Biodiversity conservation is becoming increasingly militarised. Conservationists are learning from the strategies of contemporary warfare, and this is highly problematic for both wildlife and global security.
Biodiversity conservation and security are becoming increasingly integrated. The recent rises in poaching, especially of high profile charismatic species such as elephants, rhinos and tigers has led to the development of more militarised approaches towards conservation. Rather than producing the claimed win-win-win outcome for wildlife, security and people, it is producing a triple fail. While we are more accustomed to debates around climate change and water wars as the main security risks related to the environment, biodiversity conservation is also increasingly being identified as a critical contributor to national and global security, and biodiversity losses constitute a critical security threat. This is especially the case in current debates about poaching and wildlife trafficking. Conservationists, it seems, are learning from the strategies of contemporary warfare. This is highly problematic for wildlife and global security.
Does wildlife trafficking produce threat finance or not?
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of UNEP, recently stated ‘the scale and role of wildlife and forest crime in threat finance calls for much wider policy attention’. The argument that wildlife trafficking constitutes a significant source of ‘threat finance’ takes two forms: first, as a lucrative business for organised crime networks in Europe and Asia, and second as a source of finance for militias and terrorist networks, particularly Al Shabaab, Lord’s Resistance Army and Janjaweed. Yet, a recent report from UNEP and INTERPOL on environmental crime questions the accuracy of the links between ivory and Al Shabaab. The report points out that ivory may be a source of income for some militia groups including Janjaweed and Lord’s Resistance Army; however it also notes that claims Al Shabaab was trafficking 30.6 tonnes of ivory per annum (representing 3600 elephants per year) through southern Somalia are ‘highly unreliable’ and that the main sources of income for Al Shabaab remain charcoal trading and ex-pat finance. In spite of this, the argument persists that there is a link between the illegal wildlife trade and global security.
Although the value of the global illegal trade in wildlife is difficult to determine due to its clandestine nature, it has been estimated at around US$7.8–$10 billion. It ranks as the third biggest global illicit activity (after trafficking drugs and weapons). Transnational environmental crimes are often not taken seriously within the broader policy and enforcement community, and so they are perceived as a low-risk and high-reward activity for organised crime networks. However, this is changing, and environmental crimes are rapidly gaining greater attention, and the increasing sophistication of wildlife trafficking networks is a reflection of their link with other serious offences, including theft, fraud, corruption, drugs and human trafficking, counterfeiting, firearms smuggling, and money laundering.
Major donors are also taking this issue seriously, and funding has been made available for anti-poaching and anti-trafficking initiatives. In 2013 the Clinton Global Initiative announced a commitment to raise US$80 million to combat trafficking and poaching as a security threat in Africa. Private philanthropic foundations have also become involved, as indicated by the US$25 million donation to South Africa from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to support rhino protection efforts in Kruger National Park. The rise in poaching has also intersected with US security concerns, prompting President Obama to issue Executive Order 13648 on Combating Wildlife Trafficking in July 2013, and in 2014 USAID allocated more than US$55 million for activities to combat wildlife trafficking, up from US$13 million in 2012. These concerns have emerged as a major policy initiative of the UK government, beginning in May 2013 when Prince Charles convened a high level meeting to ‘kick start’ a government response to the rise in elephant and rhino poaching – followed in 2014 by the London Declaration on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, and the development of a DfID/DEFRA £13 million ‘Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund’.
Why is conservation being militarised?
Elephant ivory seized from poachers in Garamba. Image by Enough Project via Flickr.
Conservation practice is being increasingly militarised as a result of this new interest in the security implications of poaching and trafficking. Militarisation can be briefly defined as the extension of military approaches, equipment and techniques to wildlife protection, as well as the deployment of armed forces in conservation activity. Countries with elephant, rhino and tiger populations also regularly invoke the argument that wildlife constitutes an emblematic natural resource, which is central to national heritage. For example, on World Ranger Day in 2015 South African Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa paid tribute to park rangers by stating that they were protecting rhinos as a key part of the country’s natural heritage. Such appeals to natural or national heritage are also frequently overlain with the argument that states have a moral obligation to protect wildlife. The interesting question is: why is there an increased interest in countering wildlife poaching and trafficking with more militarised responses?
War on Terror
First, the integration of security and biodiversity conservation has been extended by the development of a global context centred on security concerns, and this is most obvious in the US-led War on Terror. For states (especially parks and wildlife departments), conservation NGOs, and private conservation organisations, the ability to claim that their activities will contribute to national and global security has provided an important opportunity to justify their continued existence, and to leverage additional funding from donors, governments and private sector. The development of a global context in which security is a leading concern has opened new opportunities to leverage significant resources for conservation. During the 1990s, NGOs in the humanitarian relief sector were increasingly engaged in a competitive market to secure funding and contracts with donors. This dynamic was mirrored in the conservation sector, as detailed by Mac Chapin’s high profile piece for WorldWatch on how the ‘big three’ conservation NGOs of WWF, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy, had managed to secure the majority of available funding. Competition between NGOs and the dominance of the big three partly explains why conservation NGOs have been so keen to promote the idea that conservation is critical to security. The assumption is that by rendering conservation a security issue, it will allow them to tap in to the greater resources available for security and anti-terrorism initiatives.
Technological Innovations
Second, recent innovations in military technology, especially for surveillance purposes, have also driven a demand to find new markets to expand its use (and profitability). This includes the use of drone technology to monitor wildlife populations in areas hit by poaching. The drones can also collect important information on human activity in the area – which is especially welcome in regions where there are concerns about the activity of rebel groups and militias that threaten state (or even international) security. The growing intersections between the two are evident in the development of a new range of surveillance networks which draw together government agencies, international intelligence agencies, wildlife conservation NGOs and private sector risk analysis companies. Such surveillance techniques are used to gather data on individuals and networks suspected of engaging in illegal hunting and trafficking of wildlife products; these use the same techniques associated with counter-insurgency operations, including the extraction of mobile communications data, development of informant networks and use of covert surveillance.
The rise of private security
Third, the rise in privatised forms of security in the post-Cold War era is also reflected in biodiversity conservation: private security companies provide training for anti-poaching operations as well as direct enforcement. This can be placed in the context of the growing use of private military companies in international interventions, including Afghanistan and Iraq. This is especially significant because it heralds a new era in conservation, in which national governments permit direct contracts between conservation NGOs and private security companies, with an authorisation to use deadly force under certain circumstances. A good example is the ways WWF has turned to the private sector to deliver security operations in protected areas that they manage on behalf of states. In Dzangha-Sanga National park in Central African Republic, funding from WWF-Netherlands, WWF-US and WWF-International is used to pay for anti-poaching operations and training under the auspices of Maisha Consulting. The company describes itself as a provider of environmental security via special investigations, training and operations in complex security situations. Numerous conservation NGOs have to grapple with complex security situations, especially if they seek to continue their projects and support when conflicts break out, or when militias move into the same area, and PMCs are regarded useful allies.
The triple fail
The rise of these approaches is deeply problematic for two reasons: they produce responses that are not effective for countering terrorism and insecurity, and equally they do not help us tackle poaching effectively. Instead they act as counterproductive distractions. The militarisation of anti-poaching including the growth of surveillance techniques and ‘intelligence-led’ approaches, fails to address the dynamics that drive poaching. These include a powerful mix of demand from wealthy communities around the world, poverty, inequality and the lack of opportunities in poorer source countries, the collusion of officials, organised crime networks and private transport companies. Simply focusing on military-style protection of wildlife from poaching is not effective: it can produce short term protection, but ultimately undermines wildlife conservation because it pits local communities against wildlife, reducing support for wildlife amongst people who live with it: the very people conservation ultimately relies on.
Rosaleen Duffy is professor of the political ecology of development at SOAS, University of London. In September 2016 she joins the Politics Department in the University of Sheffield and will begin a major research project ‘BIOSEC: Biodiversity and Security: understanding environmental crime, illegal wildlife trade and threat finance’, (EURO 1.8 million funded by an ERC Advanced Investigator Award).
This article was originally published on openSecurity’s monthly Sustainable Security column on 29 May, 2014. Every month, a rotating network of experts from Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security programme explores pertinent issues of global and regional insecurity.
First Lady Michelle Obama holding a sign with the hashtag “#bringbackourgirls” in support of the 2014 Chibok kidnapping. Posted to the FLOTUS Twitter account on May 7, 2014. Source: Wikipedia
The abduction of over 200 school girls from Chibok has radically changed not only the popular profile of the Boko Haram insurgency but also the narrative of the war in northeast Nigeria. This was probably not intended by the insurgents or the ham-fisted Nigerian government, neither of which seemed to recognise this apparent gear-shift in the insurgency. After this fumble, it was civil society, through the #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign that picked up and ran with the call for action. Now that the US and its allies have channelled this urge to “do something now” into security assistance, caution is due in monitoring how and why the energy from this new burst of liberal interventionism will be channelled.
Boko Haram has a long and undiscriminating record of terrorist violence. My analysis of data compiled by Nigeria Watch suggests that about 9,000 Nigerians (including combatants) have died in related violence since 2009, most of them since the federal government declared a localised state of emergency a year ago. That rate has been rising fast; 1,043 were recorded killed in March 2014 alone. Nevertheless, the 14 April Chibok mass abduction and Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau’s subsequent threat to forcibly marry pre-teen girls to his supporters or sell them into slavery were extraordinary, crossing multiple red lines around protection of civilians, girls’ right to education and sexual violence.
The #BringBackOurGirls campaign has tapped into a social movement last and best exploited through the Stop Kony 2012 viral video campaign. That campaign influenced the African Union to establish its Regional Cooperation Initiative for the Elimination of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in April 2012 and was a major driver of post-facto public support for the Obama administration’s October 2011 commitment of US special forces to Uganda and central Africa to hunt LRA leader Joseph Kony. Those troops remain in four countries and haverecently been reinforced. Kony has not been caught but the LRA menace to children, women and other civilians has been contained and reduced.
The state-level response to Chibok has been belated but even stronger. Since 7 May, the US, UK, France, China and Israel have all sent teams to Nigeria to help search for and rescue the abducted girls, and France has hosted a summit of Nigeria, its four neighbours and the US, UK and EU. In fact, all these states already played a role in training, equipping or supporting Nigerian forces against Boko Haram. However, they were reluctant about going public with a counter-insurgency campaign previously linked to the increasingly unpopular and divisive ‘war on terror’, the toxic human rights reputation of the Nigerian security forces, and an entirely reasonable confusion over the political nature and linkages of the ostensibly Islamist rebellion.
Whether this foreign assistance is useful in the search for the missing girls is both highly questionable and a moot point. The US certainly has formidable aerial, satellite and signals reconnaissance technology to employ but it is struggling to coordinate with Nigeria, and unwilling to share raw data with the Nigerian security agencies. Other countries’ contributions probably only replicate Nigerian and US capabilities, and risk over-complicating the search.
French President Francois Hollande greets Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan. Source: France Diplomatie (Flickr)
The French summit on 17 May was a classic case of replicating initiatives in order to bolster perceptions of French concern, consultation and action. Nigeria, which desperately wants to revel in its new status as Africa’s economic superpower, was humiliated that Paris – Abuja’s great rival for influence in West Africa – assumed its regional leadership role. The summit outcome commitments to bolster security cooperation in the Lake Chad basin replicated those that Nigeria and its neighbours had already made. Those sanctioning Boko Haram replicated UN-led measures.
The Elysée Summit was more useful in redirecting attention to the gendered aspects of Boko Haram’s campaign of violence, issues of particular importance to the EU and the UK, whose Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflictconvenes on 10 June. Both sides of the conflict have made tactical use of abducting and (separately) raping women and children linked to the other side as a means of exerting pressure or retaliation. Nigerian security forces and their civilian allies increasingly harass local women suspected of working for the militants. Boko Haram is accused of abducting girls and women to marry to its young, poor male combatants. Shekau has put his view on video record that girls above puberty should not be educated. This may be the most convincing explanation for the Chibok kidnapping: women as an economic and sexual resource.
The goal of securing the safe release of the abducted girls – and the security of their peers – must be paramount at this time. But, if the foreign assistance being pledged and provided makes little impact on this task, we must ask whether there are other goals motivating western governments to cooperate with Nigerian forces. Clearly, the political urge to assuage activists by responding with action is one of these, although we should not doubt that the Obama or Cameron families share the revulsion of other families around the world united behind #BringBackOurGirls.
The social media shaming of the Nigerian and foreign governments’ inactivity and inability to resolve the crisis has propelled foreign military forces across the rubicon. US, and perhaps British, French, Canadian, Israeli and other states’, special forces and reconnaissance aircraft and drones may stay on in Nigeria well beyond the current abduction crisis; this should not be surprising.
French forces are currently consolidating their redeployment from coastal Africa to a string of remote bases in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. Their main base in N’djamena is just 40 km from Boko Haram’s stronghold in northeast Nigeria. US special and private military forces operate covertly in most countries of the Sahel-Sahara belt. Until this month, Nigeria appeared to be the exception.
The quiet reinforcement of these several thousand French and US troops across the western Sahel since 2012 – linking up to similar strings of mostly US bases in the eastern Sahel and Horn –is justified through the on-going international campaign against al-Qaida. US African Command openly uses the Operation Enduring Freedom tag for its operations in the Horn and Trans-Sahara. In Mali, Niger and Mauritania, French forces have joined battle against the al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an Algerian-origin group with regional aspirations. Yet Boko Haram is rather different. While it professes a common Salafism, it is not an al-Qaida affiliate and appears uninterested in controlling territory or attacking state assets outside of Nigeria.
This matters in the Nigerian context for two reasons. The first is in the way that the humanitarian impulse of #BringBackOurGirls – which diplomats can recognise as Protection of Civilians, Responsibility to Protect, or Ending Sexual Violence – shades into the realities of the war on terror. I would count four or five distinct narratives used to justify foreign military interventions in the last 15-20 years:
George W. Bush and Tony Blair at the White House, July 2003. Blair’s enthusiasm for foreign military intervention changed in tone after the 9/11 attacks on the US. Source: White House (via Wikipedia)
Clearly, there are overlaps; the Bush administration’s Axis of Evil concept linked state sponsors of terrorism and WMD. ‘Narco-terrorism’ links the wars on drugs and terrorism. Whatever their muddy political and religious ideologies, Kony and Shekau do lead terrorist movements. With the failed war on terror increasingly unpopular among a cynical and war-weary populace, the post-2011 shift back to humanitarian criteria completes the circle back to liberal interventionism.
While applauding the global public’s shift from retribution to humanitarianism, we should be wary of politicians’ and generals’ intent in getting involved in northern Nigeria. The signs are that future ‘humanitarian’ interventions will be fought with the tactics of the war on terror, minus its rhetoric. Perhaps we should call these ‘Protection from Terror’ operations?
If this shift in narrative represents the new Anglo-American take on intervention, the second reason for concern about the international fallout from Chibok is the Nigerian and French imperative to rebrand Boko Haram as part of al-Qaida. Nigeria’s successful addition of Boko Haram to the UN Security Council’s Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee list on 22 May was a step in this direction. For Abuja, this may help to isolate Boko Haram and justify the disastrous escalation of the war since France pushed AQIM and its allies out of Mali in early 2013. For France, it creates a common bond and removes a potentially powerful voice of dissent in the AU and regional organisations about its own military presence in the Sahel.
Yet al-Qaida, for all its strategic interest in Nigeria’s 90 million Muslims, has shown little interest in Boko Haram and its use of indiscriminate violence against mostly Muslim civilians. Boko Haram has, in rhetoric and action, showed limited interest in a wider struggle beyond Islamicising Nigeria. It almost certainly has links to AQIM and splinter groups in Mali and Niger but these are not obviously strong. Al-Qaida and Boko Haram are not natural bedfellows, but post-Chibok dynamics, including US and Israeli military in northern Nigeria, are pushing them together, potentially consolidating a regional insurgency that is as much anti-western as anti-Nigerian.
Richard Reeve is the Director of Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security programme. He has researched African peace and security issues since 2000, including work with ECOWAS and the AU. His most recent security briefing ‘The Internationalisation of Nigeria’s Boko Haram Campaign’ is available here.
Sustainable security and peacebuilding remain elusive in northern Uganda. But gender-relational peacebuilding offers a potential avenue to strengthen post-conflict peacebuilding efforts.
Sustainable peacebuilding in post-conflict northern Uganda is intricately interwoven into the fabric of regional security. Intrastate conflicts in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the multidirectional refugee and rebel army flows across borders contribute to destabilizing regional peacebuilding and security efforts. When taking these regional concerns and ongoing internal problems into consideration, it becomes clear that sustainable security and peacebuilding remain elusive in northern Uganda. One avenue to strengthen current post-conflict peacebuilding efforts is to appropriately gender interventions. Implementing appropriately gendered interventions will need to adequately address ongoing gendered violence that has become central to both regional and internal conflicts.
The Conflict in Uganda
During active conflict between the Government of Uganda (GoU) and Lord’s Resistance Army (1987-2006), approximately 1.8 million northern Ugandans were internally displaced, many of them into poorly maintained internal displacement (IDP) camps. The conflict, displacement, and subsequent return processes have been deeply gendered. During the conflict, young girls and boys were abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA); many were forced to fight, carry LRA cargo long distances, and were subjected to sexual violence. Abductions ended in northern Uganda when the LRA was pushed out of the country, but the LRA continues to be a threat to regional security and peacebuilding. Abductions continue in the Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the LRA’s regional presence is but one more complex component of ongoing conflicts in South Sudan, the CAR, and the DRC.
Beyond LRA abductions, women were often subjected to sexual violence both as abductees and while living in IDP camps. During encampment, women, treated as heads of household, were given aid to distribute among their family members; this essentially cut men out of their traditional roles as the breadwinner. The gendered allocation of resources challenged cultural norms – a phenomenon which many rural residents blame as one reason for increasing domestic violence during and after conflict. Many men and women lost access to education and economic productivity during encampment, creating employment crises post-conflict. Simultaneously, people were displaced from their land holdings, devastating their economic livelihoods; this is compounded by the rampant killing and stealing of cattle, a source of economic and social wealth. Thus, displacement decimated men’s ability to be economically productive and their sources of wealth and authority, necessary social capital for rites such as marriage, were all stripped away. Unemployment continues to be a pervasive problem as people lost access to their land and do not have the educational attainment necessary for wage employment.
Despite the far-reaching gendered dynamics of conflict and the post-conflict return process on economic production, political standing, and kin relations, peacebuilding efforts in the region concentrate on physical forms of violence, such as rape.
Research conducted in 2013 shows that many rural residents cited economic violence, such as access to land and resources, equitable employment, and social services, as a pervasive and unaddressed concern. When combined with ongoing dissatisfaction with the current government, the result is a suite of peacebuilding approaches that may fail to generate sustainable peace in northern Uganda, with wider implications for regional security.
Redefining “Gendered” Approaches to Peacebuilding
Women from ‘The Widows’ Programme’ making crafts at the Twezimbe Development Centre, Mbikko, Uganda. Photo by Lisa Byrne via Flickr.
“Gendered” peacebuilding approaches in past years became synonymous with women and conflict-related sexual violence, such as rape and defilement. Such ostensibly gender-sensitive approaches are inherently problematic; they ignore the experiences of men, the diverse experiences of women, and make women’s narratives valuable only insofar as they narrate conflict-related sexual violence. Resolutions, such as UNSCR 1820 and 1325, have made strides towards recognizing the impact of war on women; however, their operationalized emphasis on physical gendered violence continue to reflect this myopic perspective. Resolutions supporting gendered peacebuilding have historically failed to meaningfully include all genders, stereotype or homogenize the experiences of people in conflict, and may reflect non-local cultural values and understandings.
Sexual violence is a serious concern during and after conflict, especially where it is a wartime tactic, there is little support for survivors of violence, and where local sociocultural norms and communities have broken down. However, homogenizing women as singularly vulnerable, passive, and the subject of violence obscures the diverse experiences of both women and men during and after conflict. These homogenous characterizations are paralleled by only addressing gendered violence among men as conflict is either an assault on or a reflection of masculinity. Both of these perspectives are imbued with often uncritical assumptions that fail to see genders as relational and embedded within complex social, political, and economic contexts.
Thus, scholars developed a gender-relational approach to analyzing conflict and implementing peacebuilding frameworks. Gender-relational approaches stand in contrast to prior perspectives that rely on gender binaries and homogenous categories. Instead, gender-relational scholars examine gender as an intersectional category that is intimately bound up in social, political, and economic contexts before, during, and after conflict. Utilizing a gender-relational perspective allows researchers and peacebuilders to identify the most vulnerable in society, allowing precisely-targeted interventions and more effective implementation. Gendered peacebuilding in this way shifts the focus from women’s sexuality and sexual experiences and men’s masculinity, to identifying and targeting the contextually specific needs of the most vulnerable in post-conflict societies.
Appropriately Gendering Peacebuilding to Promote Sustainable Peace
Gendering peacebuilding in post-conflict northern Uganda must go beyond the censure of physical SGBV, such as rape, to take into account the complex experiences, relationships, and sociopolitical and socioeconomic needs prior to, during, and after conflict. In this local and regional context, gendering peacebuilding appropriately takes into account the various experiences of men and women as they are embedded within ancestral communities pre-conflict, during displacement and in the IDP camps, and post-conflict return process, and as they are affected by age, education, ability, and other intersectional categories.
Engaging a gender-relational framework for peacebuilding in northern Uganda can illuminate a number of discrepancies between local needs and concerns and ongoing peacebuilding efforts. While traditional political systems, which predominately support and were led by men, degraded, the loss of property and cattle – traditionally for economic productivity, social status, and marriage and kinship – have negatively impacted all genders. Although the degradation of sociopolitical systems and loss of agricultural and pastoral productivity have disempowered men, it has simultaneously empowered women. Women have broken traditional gender roles by entering public workspaces and shouldering normatively male responsibilities. However, these shifts along with pervasive poverty have also contributed to domestic violence and local pushback against the implementation of international human rights standards.
For example, although conflict-related sexual violence was, and remains, an entrenched concern in northern Uganda and the region more generally, many rural northern Ugandans are deeply concerned about economic forms of gendered violence. Both men and women cite land wrangling or grabbling – the forceful taking of land – as pervasive concerns that inhibit access to economic livelihoods, spiritual fulfillment, political authority, and kin networks. According to one resident in Nwoya District, “before the war [SGBV] was there. During, it escalated and after has been added on because of land wrangles.” Although land is often wrangled by neighbors or even relatives, many rural residents fear land grabs from South Sudanese and other foreigners who are reportedly buying up large tracts of land for farming. Widows in particular cite the lack of support for them as they make claims with the legal, local political, or religious authorities to have their case heard and get their land back. Widowhood in rural northern Uganda is precarious – normally women rely on their husband for land ownership (not mandated by law) and when he passes away depend on the community to uphold their right to continue living and producing on the land. However, the unique challenges of the post-conflict region, including ongoing security concerns and a lack of arable land more generally, means that there is less support from elders, the legal system, and religious leaders for widows with land wrangling complaints. This example of widows demonstrates the power of gender-relational approaches to post-conflict peacebuilding.
Land wrangling disproportionately affects women, widows, and the elderly, and remains a serious security and peace concern for residents throughout the northern reaches of Uganda. These ongoing conflicts are embedded within a nation-state that has consistent human rights violations and political uncertainty, and a region that is beset by internal and regional conflicts. Utilizing such data-driven approaches, we can better develop, implement, and target peacebuilding efforts towards those groups and the leaders that are in positions to help widows resolve such conflicts. As these conflicts are also intricately bound up in ongoing gendered divisions and reconfigurations, appropriately gendering peacebuilding has the potential to open avenues to contribute to regional conflicts and security concerns. Several organizations in the northern Uganda region have been conducting this difficult work, including the Refugee Law Project, Centre for Reparations and Rehabilitation, and the Women’s Advocacy Network. Each of these organizations were generated and are propelled forward by northern Ugandans and each reflects the myriad needs facing residents in the post-conflict period, such as economic violence and insecurity, education, social inequality, and lack of social services. By addressing these points as part of a gendered peacebuilding program, practitioners can grapple with pervasive concerns, such as land conflict, that affect both women and men; thus, they may also begin to unravel some of the regional security concerns tied to inter- and intrastate conflict.
Amanda J. Reinke specializes in conflict resolution amid displacement. She received her PhD from the University of Tennessee’s Department of Anthropology and Disasters, Displacement, and Human Rights Program. Financial support provided by the W.K. McClure Scholarship and the Minority Health International Research Training Program (MHIRT) at Christian Brothers University (Grant Number T37MD001378; National Institute on Health and Health Disparities). Amanda can be contacted at or @LegalAnthro.
‘Sustainable Security’ is not possible without consideration of the differential impact that violent conflict – and its drivers – has on women and girls. Similarly, constructing the tools we need to build lasting security and end gender-based insecurity will require a re-think of our existing, heavily masculine, security structures. Through practice focused articles, our ‘Inclusive Security’ series seeks to highlight approaches being developed to include and empower women in security discourse, and tackle those security practices which proliferate gender-based insecurity.
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Sustainable security and peacebuilding remain elusive in northern Uganda. But gender-relational peacebuilding offers a potential avenue to strengthen post-conflict peacebuilding efforts. Sustainable peacebuilding in post-conflict northern Uganda is intricately interwoven […]
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In an important year for the Women, Peace and Security agenda, women’s civil society organising is increasingly being impacted by global and national counter-terrorism regimes.
A spate of violence against women in the eastern DRC shows that there is still a long way to go on effective implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, 14 years after its adoption.
Almost 15 years after the first resolution to address women, peace and security, the agenda’s implementation is increasingly subverted by the militarised security paradigm. Implementing UNSCR 1325 has been interpreted as being about fitting women into the current peace and security paradigm and system; rather than about assessing and redefining peace and security through a gender lens. As a result, the opportunity to create a new recipe for peace and security, based on taking women’s perspectives into account, is being lost.
Democratic Republic of Congo’s sexual violence epidemic is not only a weapon of ongoing violent conflict but an expression of entrenched systemic problems. Indeed, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is most commonly perpetrated by the security services in place to protect civilians. In Quartier Panzi in South Kivu province, innovative processes of security sector reform and strengthened police-civilian channels of communication may be providing an opportunity for change, argues World Bank adviser Edward Rackley.
by Rebecca Sharkey and Laura Boillot
International momentum towards a treaty to ban nuclear weapons reached a milestone in the December 2014 Vienna conference. Even assuming that the UK does not initially sign up to such a treaty, it is subject to the pressures of a changing legal and political environment and could find its present position increasingly untenable – not least on the issue of Trident renewal.
The Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, held in December 2014, was the latest conference of the ‘humanitarian initiative’, following previous meetings in Norway and Mexico . Having fully explored the impact of a nuclear weapon detonation as well as the consequences of testing and production, the conference concluded with a pledge from the Austrian government to “fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”. Since then, more than 50 countries have associated themselves with the Austrian Pledge and yet more are expected to join over the coming months, signalling readiness to begin negotiations for a treaty that outlaws nuclear weapons.
A ban treaty could be a straightforward legal instrument with prohibitions on the use, development and production, transfer, stockpiling, deployment of nuclear weapons and on assistance with these prohibited acts. It could require the elimination of nuclear weapons for states that possess them, with the specific processes for elimination being left for these states to agree when they are ready to do so. Treaty negotiations are a logical and compelling next step for states no longer willing to accept the status quo, and no longer prepared to wait for nuclear-armed states to lead on nuclear disarmament. In addition, civil society organisations across the world, under the banner of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) are putting increasing pressure on states to begin treaty negotiations immediately – even if nuclear-armed states may initially not wish to join.
Press conference by the five Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nuclear weapon states at the UN Office, Geneva in 2013. Source: United States Mission Geneva
The UK and other nuclear-armed states have long expressed their desire for a nuclear weapon-free world. Alongside other nuclear-armed states, the UK has a legal obligation under article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue ‘effective measures’ towards nuclear disarmament and ‘a treaty on general and complete disarmament’.
Despite this, there has been very slow progress so far towards nuclear disarmament, and nuclear-armed states continue to say that nuclear weapons are essential to their security doctrines. The UK advocates a ‘step-by-step’ approach towards nuclear disarmament, which has been marked by a lack of substantial progress. Most crucially, the UK government has seen this approach as compatible with getting new nuclear weapons. In 2007 UK Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed that “the Non-Proliferation Treaty… makes it absolutely clear that Britain has the right to possess nuclear weapons”. This bad faith reading of the treaty and continued investment in maintaining its arsenal of nuclear weapons raises concerns over the UK’s commitment towards fulfilling these legal obligations under the NPT. A significant recent development and challenge to this position is a Marshall Islands legal case, currently being taken against the UK and other states for failing to act on multilateral nuclear disarmament obligations.
In the run up to the NPT Review Conference, the UK government has argued vigorously that the proponents of a ban treaty are misguided, and that such a treaty would undermine the NPT. However, the absence of any evidence to substantiate this claim suggests that such an argument will ring hollow against the persistent pursuit of Trident renewal. If the UK government is sincerely committed to pursuing nuclear disarmament then there is no need for it to oppose the development of a treaty with that aim. A ban treaty would actually constitute a long-overdue implementation of the NPT: the momentum towards a ban treaty could be seen as a positive opportunity for the UK to take concrete steps towards nuclear disarmament by creating the right conditions and helping to fulfil its own NPT obligations, even if the UK chose not to sign up immediately.
The international humanitarian initiative has sparked interest and debate inside Westminster, even if the government initially claimed the initiative would ‘divert discussion and focus away from… practical steps’ towards nuclear weapons reduction. At a debate on Trident renewal in the House of Commons on 20 January 2015, eleven MPs raised the spectre of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, with some specifically calling for a ban treaty.
With the final decision over the renewal of Trident due to be taken in 2016, the incoming 2015 government will be faced with taking a decision over the renewal of the UK’s nuclear weapons – at the same time that other states are most likely to be engaged in treaty negotiations that will rule those weapons illegal. This development will significantly increase the political costs of holding onto nuclear weapons and sinking even more money in their maintenance and modernisation. As Dame Joan Ruddock MP has stated, “a global ban on nuclear weapons would present the greatest challenge to UK renewal of Trident”.
Continued possession of nuclear weapons when other militaries are rejecting them could also put strain on the UK’s relationships with some of its military allies. Whilst a ban treaty would not prevent a state that joins the treaty from being in a military alliance with a nuclear-armed state like the UK, it should require states not to assist in acts that are prohibited under the treaty. As such, it would require states parties to renounce any joint policy that envisions the development, stockpiling, or use of nuclear weapons.
There is however, no barrier to NATO member states’ adherence to a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The North Atlantic Treaty, which is a legally-binding instrument, makes no reference to nuclear weapons. And although NATO’s Strategic Concept does refer to nuclear weapons capabilities as part of its strategy, this is not a legally-binding document and would not prevent any NATO state from joining the ban treaty. Besides, the document gets revised and could be updated so as not to rely on nuclear weapons. The International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI) points out, “concerns about the political implications of such a treaty for NATO ignore historical variations in member state military policy and underestimate the value of a ban on nuclear weapons for promoting NATO’s ultimate aim: the security of its member states.”
There has not been a coherent and uniform NATO position towards the humanitarian initiative. All NATO states are members of the NPT and as such are committed to pursue ‘effective measures’ towards disarmament. So far, virtually all NATO states have taken part in one or more of the conferences on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. After all, the humanitarian initiative was spearheaded by a NATO state – Norway. A ban treaty should in fact be seen as a positive step towards NATO’s long-term security goals.
A nuclear weapons ban treaty could also help to increase the stigma and practical difficulties attached to nuclear weapons by prohibiting investment in their development. According to a 2014 report by PAX, 35 financial institutions in the UK invested over US$27bn in 28 nuclear weapons producing companies over the past 3 years. A number of UK companies are involved in the ongoing production and maintenance of the UK’s nuclear arsenal.
Prohibitions on assistance, such as financing the production of nuclear weapons, would mean that companies that produce nuclear weapons would find difficulty in securing financing to produce these weapons. As financial institutions move towards corporate socially responsible investments, many are anyhow adopting policies prohibiting investments in certain weapons, and this too will impact the producing companies and the states buying their products.
Even without an international ban treaty there have been successful efforts to promote disinvestment. A well-known example of a nuclear weapons boycott is the campaign initiated in the 1980s by Infact (now Corporate Accountability International) against General Electric (GE). GE had played a major role in nuclear weapons production since the Manhattan Project. The boycott resulted in significant financial losses for the company and damage to its brand. Ultimately, it was compelled to end its involvement in nuclear weapons work. More recently, Allied Irish Bank, named as an investor in the 2013 Don’t Bank on the Bomb report, had fully divested by the time the 2014 report was published.
A treaty signed by a majority of countries in the world that prohibits investment in the development, production, or testing of nuclear weapons would significantly increase pressure for many UK financial institutions to pull out their investments from companies that develop them. Past experience with the treaty that bans cluster munitions shows that the stigmatizing effect of outlawing weapons significantly reduces available financing for their production.
The conferences held as part of the humanitarian initiative have left no doubt over the severe and long-lasting effects that would result from a nuclear weapon detonation, as well as the devastation of lives and environment caused by testing and production. The resulting momentum created among the non nuclear-armed states to achieve a ban treaty is coupled with a conviction held by civil society and many states that a treaty can – and should – be achieved even if the nuclear-armed states do not join immediately. The UK should see the start of a treaty process as a positive development that is helping to foster the right conditions for its own nuclear disarmament, and that of other states too. But official responses notwithstanding, the climate surrounding the perceived status and security of nuclear weapons is changing – whether the UK government likes it or not.
Rebecca Sharkey is UK Co-ordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Rebecca has worked on campaigns, communications, research and outreach at NGOs such as Freedom From Torture, the National Secular Society and the National Assembly Against Racism.
Laura Boillot is a Project Manager for Article 36. Laura previously worked as Campaign Manager and subsequently as Director of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC). Prior to that she was a Program Officer for the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA).
Featured Image: Trident Nuclear Submarine HMS Victorious near Faslane, Scotland. Source: Flickr | UK Ministry of Defence
In recent years, the Mexican government has been struggling to deal with a dramatic rise in crime and violence, with state responses largely failing to effectively resolve these problems. But […]
In Latin America drones are being used as part of the War on Drugs as both regional governments and the US are using surveillance drones to monitor drug trafficking and find smuggling routes.. However, as drones are increasingly being used by drug cartels themselves to transport drugs between countries, could Latin America find itself at the forefront of emerging drone countermeasures?
US drug policy has become increasingly privatised in recent years as the US government contracts private military and security companies (PMSCs) to provide intelligence, logistical support and training to state security forces in drug-producing and –transit states. As the cases of Colombia and Mexico illustrate, this privatisation strategy is having a damaging impact on these already fragile environments.
As activists around the world participate in a Global Day of Action against criminalisation of drug use, evidence from the multi-billion dollar War on Drugs in Colombia suggests that militarized suppression of production and supply has displaced millions of people as well as the problem, not least to Mexico. The wrong lessons are being exported to Central America and beyond, but a groundswell of expert and popular opinion internationally is calling for alternative approaches to regulating the use and trade in drugs.
Mexico has rapidly become a major site of transmigration from Central America to the United States, as people move in search of employment opportunities or escape from social violence. This rise in migrant flows from Mexico’s southern border overlaps with problems of control of contraband, organised crime, and the trafficking of drugs and arms. However, the government’s militarised approach to the phenomenon means that the use of force and human rights violations go unresolved and military approaches to preserving public order go unchecked. As long as migration remains a security issue, instead of a developmental and human rights matter, it will not be tackled appropriately. Instead, the government must start to view the matter through a citizen, not national, security lens.
A new alliance between the Mexican security forces and citizen ‘self-defence’ groups in Michoacán state has brought some short term success in the fight against the Knights Templar cartel. But what will be the long-term consequences of legitimizing heavily armed vigilante groups in Mexico?