This Paper was prepared by the Department of Globalisation and Governance Research at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) for the Danish International Development Assistance (Danida) entity of the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and forms part of the Migration-Development Nexus Follow-up Study. It was discussed at a workshop in Copenhagen March 9, 2004, and subsequently revised for publication.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Development, and Education
On the background of the recently increased political interest in protecting and assisting refugees in their 'regions of origin' this working paper lays out a conceptual framework for analyzing the strategies, conditions and options for support to refugees areas in neighboring countries to countries in conflict. In particular relations between security–or the 'securitization of refugees'–and development and local integration are discussed. The working paper identifies the confinement and lack of freedom of movement of refugees as the major obstacle to local, or rather regional, integration of refugees. Finally, the working paper makes recommendations for action and research in relation to the strategy of protecting and assisting refugees close to the countries they have left.
Topic:
Development, Human Welfare, Migration, and Third World
This paper investigates the debate leading up to the joint Danish-Greenlandic decision to allow the US to upgrade its radar at Thule Air Base, ensuring its integration in the American missile defense. By analyzing how this debate is structured in the Danish Realm, the paper argues that the contentious history of the Air Base strengthens the moral position of the Greenlanders and provides them with valuable argumentative assets in the debate. This debate, the paper concludes, presents the Greenlanders with a window of opportunity facilitating negotiations with the Danish Government, the effect of which is further Greenlandic independence and increasing Greenlandic influence on security policy.
The Northwestern Federal District of the Russian Federation has been particularly active in asserting itself as a macro-regional political subject, transcending the administrative borders of the subjects of the Russian Federation. This affirmation of the Northwest as a macro-region is also characterised by the explicit location of the Federal District within the international regional context and the linkage of the newly elaborated strategic development plans with EU policies in the region, particularly the Northern Dimension. This strategic policy discourse is grounded in the problematisation of the existing format of EU-Russian cooperation on the regional level as marked by the passivity of Russian regions vis-à-vis EU policies. The district-level strategies proceed, on the contrary, from the need to assume a more active and assertive position towards the EU that would allow to integrate the policies of the Northern Dimension with the domestic reform vision in Russia. The paper seeks to analyse the international dimensions of the strategic discourse of the Northwestern 'macro-region', elucidate the conflict episodes and conflict issues that are articulated in this discourse and address the wider implications of the emergence of the Northwestern Federal District for the EU-Russian regional cooperation in the border regions.
The key challenge in the Afghan post-war situation has been how to re-establish a sovereign and effective state structure in a country affected by more than two decades of conflict and war. Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has been facing one of the most comprehensive state-building exercises in recent years. Many of the state institutions were formally in place for the Karzai government, but the capacity was limited and they were competing with various parallel command structures. The re-establishment of a state can be analysed along many different dimensions, but three overall categories have been chosen to structure this paper: (i) the authority and control over the use of force throughout the entire territory of the state; (ii) the establishment of a legitimate government with executive powers at central and local level, and an independent judicial system; and (iii) the authority to regulate the economic resources of the country.
Over the last decade, water scarcity has increasingly been coupled with international security. Due to the nature of water – a fluid life-necessity and a key ingredient in economic development, driven by gravity across boundaries – it has been anticipated that water may trigger international conflicts – the so-called water wars – in the future.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Economics, and Environment
The current institutional framework for agricultural services in East and Southern Africa was designed for a state-sponsored supply-driven approach. These institutions demand large field staff levels and are associated with high costs often financed by World Bank loans. These institutions are moreover ill-suited to respond to the demands from clients that are now emerging through development interventions and policies. Farmers are marginally involved with planning the content and means of service provision. Top-down approaches also fail to target agricultural services to women and vulnerable groups. Demand-driven advisory services have evolved over recent years and involve changing the role of extension agents from advisors to facilitators; increasing control by farmers through cost sharing; increasing the use of contracted services; and emphasizing knowledge provision rather then narrow technical advice.
This paper argues that the EU's strategy towards the Southern Mediterranean states has been marked by a simultaneous presence of two conflicting and mutually incompatible security discourses. Each of these discourses entail different conceptualisations of how security is to be achieved, who is the referent object of security, and which type of relationship exists between Self/the EU and Other/the Southern Mediterranean. This, the paper suggests, has resulted in an uneasy and contradictory EU policy toward the region, while at the same time causing suspicion and mistrust on part of the Mediterranean states.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Peace Studies
The present anthology offers a comprehensive and balanced analysis of the challenges facing the European Union and the EU member states in their efforts to strengthen the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The following chapters have been selected to provide the reader with a broader understanding of the central issues affecting the further development of the ESDP. Taken as a whole, the anthology offers an overview of the emerging ESDP and the central challenges facing it. Considered as a reader, the anthology comprises nine chapters offering updated and detailed analytical treatment of subjects ranging from security strategy, via military capabilities and intelligence cooperation, to the challenge of thinking about 'homeland security' in a European context.
This paper looks at the potential for poverty alleviation in one part of Uganda, based on a poverty analysis of the local, and on analyses of the local civil society and of development discourses that are often dominated by the central over the local. In response to calls for micro-studies of actually existing civil society it points to the usefulness of including community wide processes and hegemonic discourses in analyses of the local civil society's development role.