Category: 4

Writing for SustainableSsecurity.org, Elizabeth Wilke argues that a new conceptualization of insecurity and instability is needed in a world with greater and freer movement of goods, services and people – both legal and illicit – greater demands on weakening governments and the internationalization of local conflicts. The new insecurity is fundamentally derived from the responses of people and groups to greater uncertainty in an increasingly volatile world. Governments, and increasingly other actors need to recognize this in order to promote sustained stability in the long-term, locally and internationally.

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“The climate agenda goes well beyond climate,” said Dan Smith, secretary general of International Alert at a recent Wilson Center event. “In the last 60 years, at least 40 percent of all interstate conflicts have had a link to natural resources” and those that do are also twice as likely to relapse in the five years following a peace agreement, said Neil Levine, director of the Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation at USAID.

Article source: The New Security Beat

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Poor people want to feel safe just like anyone else. Security and access to justice for poor people are development goals in their own right whether in the midst of endemic violence, such as in parts of Somalia or Afghanistan, or in more stable countries where the police and judicial services may still be inadequate, unfair or abusive. Basic security and the rule of law are also necessary for other areas of development to take root and flourish.

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A gap continues to exist between the international community’s rhetoric about conflict prevention and its responsibility to protect people from severe human rights violations. The record of human misery caused by violent conflict is testimony to the chronic  lack of political will to respond collectively to newand emerging threats to peace. The ineffectiveness of many global efforts at preventive diplomacy is evidence that traditional diplomatic approaches,  including the use of force, simply may not work.

Article source: East West Institute

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The International Peace & Security Institute (IPSI), in collaboration with The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Conflict Management Program, hosted a high-level panel discussion and networking reception on Wednesday, August 17.  The event, “Why Here, Not There? Investigating emerging nonviolent movements,” examined the dynamics that enable nonviolent movements to occur in some regions and not others at specific moments in time.  The event was broadcast live nationwide and on the internet by C-SPAN.

Watch the video here: IPSI

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Writing for the New Security Beat, Schuyler Null discusses a recent event on creating a new national security narrative for the US held at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The event was based on a white paper by two active military officers writing under the pseudonym “Mr. Y” (echoing George Kennan’s famous “X” article). In “A National Strategic Narrative,” Captain Wayne Porter (USN) and Colonel Mark Mykleby (USMC) argue that the United States needs to move away from an outmoded 20th century model of containment, deterrence, and control towards a “strategy of sustainability.”

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To browse a list of all of the articles EXCLUSIVELY written for sustainablesecurity.org – follow this link

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The global distribution of intrastate conflicts is not what it used to be. During the latter half of the 20th century, the states with the most youthful populations – a median age of 25.0 years or less – were consistently the most at risk of being engaged in a civil war or in an internal conflict, where either ethnic or religious factors, or both, came into play (an ethnoreligious conflict). However, the tight relationship between demography and intrastate conflict has loosened over the past decade. Ethnoreligious conflicts have gradually, though noticeably, increased among a group of states with a median age greater than 25.0 years, including Thailand, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Russia.  The salient feature of these intrastate conflicts has been an armed struggle featuring a minority group that is age-structurally more youthful than the majority populace. The difference in age-structural maturity reflects a gap in fertility between the minority and majority, either in the present or in the recent past. 

Article Source: The Stimson Center

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The Middle East and North Africa is a region of great diversity. It encompasses Arab and many other ethnic populations, theocratic and secular states, democracies and authoritarian regimes. A region of immense wealth and crippling poverty; it is blessed (some might say cursed) with vast resources, not least oil, but has not always proved able to manage them for the benefit of ordinary people. Read more »