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181. Poverty and Conflict: The Inequality Link

Author:
Ravi Kanbur
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The focus of this paper is on conflicts within states. These range from the full scale armed conflict of a civil war (between two “states within states”), through relatively isolated and contained low intensity insurrection against the state, to regular bouts of communal violence in a “well functioning” state. I wish to ask how poverty and inequality causally interact with these phenomena. The causality from conflict to poverty is not much in doubt and stands to reason—conflict destroys or impairs incentives for productive economic investment and innovation at all levels. However, the precise nature of causality in the other direction, from poverty and inequality to conflict, is more ambiguous and subject to greater debate. It is this causal chain that is the focus of this working paper; but in order to do this we in turn need a more nuanced characterization and discussion of inequality and poverty concepts and trends. Certain types of inequality, in particular, will be seen to be particularly fertile ground for conflict; other types may be more benign. And if the attempts to reduce poverty through economic growth lead to initial increases in the “wrong” type of inequality, the conflicts this engenders may dissipate beneficial effects of poverty reduction on conflict. However, each scenario will have essentially specific features related to structural and historical factors that differ from country to country. The general principles will thus have to be applied carefully in designing country specific policies and interventions. The second section of the paper introduces some basic concepts of poverty and inequality and reviews their strengths and limitations in helping us understand the origins of conflict. Section three turns to the theory and evidence of the causal links between poverty, inequality, and conflict. Based on this analysis, section four discusses policies to reduce the likelihood of conflict, while the fifth section offers a conclusion.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Political Violence, and Civil War

182. Population Trends: Humanity in Transition

Author:
Joseph Chamie
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
During the twenty-first century billions of people are expected to join the world's current population of 6.7 billion. Virtually all of these newcomers will be born in the less developed countries of the world, and many in the least-developed.
Topic:
International Relations, Demographics, Economics, Environment, and Health

183. Global Public Health and Biosecurity: Managing Twenty-First Century Risks

Author:
Margaret E. Kruk
Publication Date:
07-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
In this first decade of the twenty-first century, we have reason both to commend and to decry the state of human health and our ability to improve it. We have achieved a maximum life expectancy of eighty-six years and have found a way to manage, though not cure, the most deadly epidemic since the Black Plague, AIDS. We can keep up with mutating viruses to produce a new flu vaccine every year and we can save babies born only twenty-three weeks into a pregnancy. Yet that is only half the picture. We also live in a world where a Nigerian newborn has a nearly one in five chance of dying before reaching age five and her mother a one in sixteen chance of dying in one of her pregnancies. Life expectancy in parts of sub-Saharan Africa has fallen below forty years. We have experienced remarkable scientific advances over the past fifty years, although we have not been able to apply many of these to the bedside or to public health policy. And so we have powerful genetic tools to study the components of viral RNA but cannot predict when or even if the bird flu will spread to humans.
Topic:
International Relations, Globalization, Health, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

184. 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

185. 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

186. Managing Contradictions: The Inherent Dilemmas of Postwar Statebuilding

Author:
Timothy D. Sisk and Roland Paris
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
State building—the construction of legitimate, effective governmental institutions—is a crucial element in any larger effort to create the conditions for a durable peace and human development in countries that are just emerging from war. In recent years, state building has emerged as a central goal of multidimensional United Nations peace operations in war-torn societies, and for good reason. Without functioning and legitimate state institutions, post conflict societies are less likely to escape the dual “traps” of violence and poverty.
Topic:
Political Violence, Development, Peace Studies, Poverty, United Nations, and War

187. Global Political Violence: Explaining the Post-Cold War Decline

Author:
Andrew Mack
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
This paper reviews global trends in political violence since the end of World War II, focusing in particular on the decline in conflict numbers that followed the end of the Cold War. It argues that the single most compelling explanation for this decline is found in the upsurge of peacemaking and peacebuilding activities that started in the early 1990s,was spearheaded by the UN, but also involved many other international agencies, donor governments, and NGOs. The paper also examines trends in war fatalities, which have been declining unevenly since the early 1950s and reviews possible explanations for the change.Trends in civilian deaths from organized political violence—including genocides and terrorism—are also reviewed.
Topic:
International Relations, Cold War, Development, and Politics

188. Peacemaking and Mediation: Dynamics of a Changing Field

Author:
Chester Crocker
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The study of peacemaking and mediation blossomed in the immediate post-Cold War years and into the new millennium.The 2001 terrorist attacks on the US and subsequent attacks in Indonesia, Spain, and the UK, marked a significant watershed in world politics, raising the question of whether war-fighting against this new adversary would eclipse peacemaking and conflict prevention.While the jury remains out on the extent of the paradigm shift signaled by September 11, 2001, there is no question that today's environment features elements of both continuity and change for peacemakers. The threat to international security posed by certain forms of terrorism cannot be ignored. But the totality of challenges facing the international system today cannot be reduced to the terrorist threat, nor can the international community's response be reduced to a “war on terrorism.”1 In this section of the paper, we will identify important areas of consensus about peacemaking that have carried over from the late 1980s and early 1990s to the present, take note of continuing debates in the broader field of conflict management and resolution that affect the way practitioners and scholars think about their activities, and discuss certain “new emphases” in this field that can affect the way peacemakers operate, whether as state-based or unofficial actors.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Development, International Cooperation, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
United States and Spain

189. New Challenges for Peacekeeping: the “War on Terror”

Author:
Richard Gowan and Ian Johnstone
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Efforts to predict the future of peacekeeping almost always prove to be unsuccessful. In 1958, United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld reported to the General Assembly on the lessons of the UN Emergency Force deployed to Egypt during the Suez crisis two years before. He surrounded his observations with qualifications, as some “circumstances are of such a nature that it could not reasonably be expected that they would often be duplicated elsewhere. Nor can it be assumed that they provide a sufficient basis to warrant indiscriminate projection of the UNEF experience in planning for future United Nations operations of this kind.” Sure enough, when the UN began to deploy to the Congo two years later, the 1958 report was to prove “not especially pertinent” to the task at hand.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Peace Studies, Terrorism, and War
Political Geography:
Egypt

190. Ending Wars and Building Peace

Author:
Charles Call and Elizabeth Cousens
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Ending armed conflict has long been a concern of practitioners and scholars of international relations. Recent years have seen new attention to questions of “building peace” beyond the immediate termination of war, primarily driven by the experience of civil wars in the 1990s and the very mixed record of international involvement—from relative successes like Namibia, Mozambique, and El Salvador through partial successes like Cambodia, Bosnia, and East Timor to abysmal failures like Angola and Rwanda.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Peace Studies, Terrorism, and War
Political Geography:
Bosnia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Angola, and Namibia