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51. Food Security: Vulnerability Despite Abundance

Author:
Marc Cohen
Publication Date:
07-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. It has three facets: food availability, access to food, and food utilization. The last aspect refers to proper use of food, including adequate nutrition knowledge and practices. The reference to food preferences acknowledges that in extreme circumstances, people may eat otherwise unacceptable foods; however, such circumstances do not represent food security.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Economics, and Health

52. The UN Security Council's Counterterrorism Program: What Lies Ahead?

Author:
Alistair Millar, Eric Rosand, and Jason Ipe
Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Since September 2001, the Security Council and its various counterterrorism-related subsidiary bodies have made significant contributions to the global counterterrorism campaign, primarily through norm setting and institution building and by keeping terrorism on the political agenda while engaging in dialogue with—and stimulating the activities of—states and multilateral bodies. Yet, rather than together constituting a comprehensive strategy to address the global terrorist threat, each Council initiative has had an improvisational, ad hoc quality. Following each major terrorist attack—often against one of its own members—the Council's response has extended well beyond the specific incident at hand with little regard to its relation to the already existing Council program.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Peace Studies, Terrorism, United Nations, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and International Security

53. Asia: Towards Security Cooperation

Author:
Michael Vatikiotis
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Asia has enjoyed a remarkable climate of peace and security in the post-Cold War era. However, there is much that could have gone wrong. Tensions on the Korean peninsula, in the Taiwan Straits, between China and India, India and Pakistan – the hot spots and fault lines of tension are well known and warily watched. Rarely has serious conflict erupted, though. The last major 'conventional' conflict in Asia was the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, though smaller wars have been fought between states in Kashmir and along the Chinese border with Vietnam. The region is also wracked by protracted internal disputes that generate sustained fears for internal security and destabilized inter-state relations. All the same, for a region that lacks the kind of sophisticated collective security arrangements that have kept the northern hemisphere at peace for the past sixty years, Asia's security environment is remarkably benign.
Topic:
Security, Development, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, India, Taiwan, Asia, Soviet Union, Vietnam, Kashmir, Korea, and Korean Peninsula

54. Central Asia and the Caucasus: A Vulnerable Crescent

Author:
Anna Matveeva and Thomas de Waal
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The Caucasus and Central Asia – eight countries of the former Soviet Union stretching to the south of Russia and to the west of China – form a chain of weak states, vulnerable to conflict, extremism, and spillover from potential instability in the Middle East, Iran and Afghanistan. Once on the path of the Silk Road, these countries are still transit routes in the world economy rather than major economic players. The overarching problem for the Caucasus countries situated on the eastern fringe of Europe – Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as the Russian North Caucasus – is unresolved conflicts that hamper development and poison politics. The Caucasus has become a field for latter-day Great Power battles of influence, in which competing policy agendas, sometimes even from within the same state, make for a fragmented international response that hampers regional integration and development. The autocratic states of Central Asia by contrast risk isolating themselves from the wider world, becoming a source of danger because of their deliberate remoteness. Here the globalized threats of drug trafficking and militant Islam are the biggest potential source of instability. Multilateral organizations such as the UN are still struggling to articulate a coherent response to the two regions as a whole, tending to make more narrow interventions that have limited impact.
Topic:
Security and Development
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, China, Europe, Iran, Central Asia, Asia, Soviet Union, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia

55. Latin America and the Caribbean: Domestic and Transnational Insecurity

Author:
Arlene B. Tickner
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the end of the Cold War coincided with transitions to democracy in Brazil and the Southern Cone, and the peaceful resolution of armed conflict in Central America. These developments, along with the intensification of globalization processes worldwide, inaugurated a hopeful era of “democratic peace” or “no war” suggesting a decreasing importance for traditional security matters. Although a series of bilateral border disputes continue to simmer in the region, the most intransient ones have been resolved. Indeed, since the 1995 war between Peru and Ecuador, interstate conflict has been all but erased, and military competition has been reduced dramatically. With the exception of Colombia's entrenched civil war and Haiti's faltering state, internal conflicts characterized by significant episodes of political violence have also become a distant memory.
Topic:
Security and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Brazil, Colombia, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, Haiti, Peru, and Ecuador

56. Development and Security in the Pacific Island Region

Author:
M. Anne Brown
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Pacific Island states face serious challenges and dilemmas, as a series of crises in the region indicate. Across the region, countries struggle with significant problems of state capacity, including poor leadership, poor governance and weak links between state institutions and community life and values.
Topic:
Security, Development, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific

57. Fuelling the Niger Delta Crisi

Author:
James Cockayne (ed.)
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Commercial security is increasingly present in humanitarian and post-conflict settings. The UN has even considered using commercial security to solve peacekeeping shortfalls. Yet using commercial security in these settings raises difficult ethical, operational and strategic questions. This exploratory study begins to describe the decentralized, ad hoc use of commercial security in these settings, in an attempt to provoke the further research and discussion needed before these questions can be adequately answered.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Humanitarian Aid, and Peace Studies

58. Securing the Rule of Law: Assessing International Strategies for Post-Conflict Criminal Justice

Author:
Reyko Huang
Publication Date:
11-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The past dozen years have seen a proliferation of international efforts to strengthen national criminal justice systems in post-conflict countries. Part of the burgeoning of discourses, policies and programs on the primacy of the rule of law in peacebuilding, these efforts are based on the principle that the restoration of law and order in the immediate aftermath of conflict is critical for building a durable peace. The UN Secretary-General encapsulated this growing importance of the rule of law in a 2004 report, in which he also stressed the need to develop strong national criminal justice systems for the administration of justice in accordance with international standards.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, and International Law

59. Taking the International Rule of Law Seriously

Author:
Laurence Boisson de Chazournes
Publication Date:
10-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The scope of the collective security system established under the United Nations (UN) Charter has expanded significantly since the end of the cold war. Aside from the increasingly broad understanding of the concept of "threat to international peace," there has also been a related widening of the range of measures that may be adopted by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter.
Topic:
Security, Human Rights, International Law, and United Nations

60. In Good Company? The Role of Business in Security Sector Reform

Author:
Francesco Mancini
Publication Date:
10-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Security sector reform (SSR) focuses on security institutions of a state, namely the military, police, intelligence and criminal justice institutions, in order to make them capable of delivering security to citizens consistent with democratic norms. Despite the promotion of comprehensive SSR frameworks and guidelines, projects overwhelmingly focus on the reform of traditional security institutions (ie military and police training). Strengthening civil oversight and governance of the overall security sector are still marginal activities.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Development, and Government