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1. Taiwan's Quest for Greater Participation in the International Community

Author:
Bonnie S. Glaser
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Taiwan's ambiguous international status has long complicated its ability to participate in international organizations in which the rest of the world shares information and makes critical global decisions. The island's 23 million people cannot reap the benefits that derive from full membership in most international organizations and are unable to contribute their well- developed knowledge, skills, and resources to issues that directly affect them, such as civil aviation regulations, natural disaster response and recovery, and regional economic cooperation. Being barred from international economic organizations erodes Taiwan's international competitiveness and hinders economic liberalization of the domestic economy as well as its further integration regionally.
Topic:
International Relations, Diplomacy, International Trade and Finance, Non-Governmental Organization, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
East Asia, Asia, and Island

2. Ocean frontier expansion and the Kalayaan Islands Group claim: Philippines\' postwar pragmatism in the South China Sea

Author:
Ulises Granados
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
In 1946, the Philippines raised claims in the South China Sea over an area already known as Spratly Islands. This claim advanced through peculiar stages, starting when Thomas Cloma allegedly discovered islands in 1946, later named as Freedomland, and maturing to some extent in 1978 by the government\'s claim over the so-called Kalayaan Island Group. Considered as an oceanic expansion of its frontiers, this paper reviews the basis of the claim, first over the nature of Cloma\'s activities, and secondly over the measures the Philippine government took as a reaction of Cloma\'s claim of discovery of an area already known in western cartography as the Spratlys. Eventually, what is the nature of the link between the 1978 Kalayaan Islands Group\'s official claim and 1956 Cloma\'s private one?
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
China, Philippines, and Island

3. Islands of Safety in a Sea of Guns: Gun-free Zones in South Africa

Author:
Adèle Kirsten
Publication Date:
01-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
On 27 April 1994, millions of South Africans cast their votes in the country's first fully democratic general elections, signalling an end to more than 350 years of political rule by a white minority over the black majority. South Africa's history is one of colonial conquest, dispossession, segregation, and repression; one in which firearms played an important role in maintaining the border between the oppressed and the oppressor, between the colonized and the colonizer. With the state's implementation of apartheid policies after 1948, which further entrenched white rule, the military expanded its influence into all areas of social life, becoming a pervasive element in South African society. In response to the increased repression by the apartheid state, resistance organizations turned to armed violence as one strand in the strategy for national liberation. Many members of the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC) regarded themselves as soldiers fighting in a people's war. Although many held that South Africa was at war, it was generally accepted that the conflict was a low-level civil war, commonly referred to as 'low intensity conflict' (Cock and Nathan, 1989). As a result of several factors, such as internal mass mobilization against apartheid and increasing international pressure for a political solution to the South African conflict, negotiations for a new political dispensation started in 1990, culminating in a democratic constitution and the 1994 elections.
Topic:
International Relations, Arms Control and Proliferation, and War
Political Geography:
Africa and Island

4. Silencing Guns: Local Perspectives on Small Arms and Armed Violence in Rural Pacific Islands Communities

Author:
Emile LeBrun and Robert Muggah
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
At a time when the funding for weapons reduction and armed conflict prevention work is at an all-time high and still growing, the lack of accessible, standard evaluative tools is becoming more and more conspicuous. Though this partly stems from a debate within the disarmament community as to what the right set of measures should be, it is also a reaction to the practical difficulty—in some cases, outright impossibility—of collecting quantitative data on armed violence, especially in rural areas. Clearly, there is a great need for alternative means of assessing and reporting on the impacts of both small arms availability and misuse, and efforts to reduce those impacts.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific and Island

5. Small Arms in the Pacific

Author:
Philip Alpers and Conor Twyford
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
This study examines a wide range of small arms-related issues in 20 nations of the southern Pacific. It investigates the status of existing firearm legislation, the extent of legal stockpiles and illicit trade, and the socio-economic impacts of armed conflict on Pacific communities. Case histories examine more closely the disarmament process in Bougainville and the Solomon Islands, along with the widespread disruption wrought with small arms in Fiji and Papua New Guinea. Current initiatives to combat small arms trafficking in the region are also examined.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific, Island, and Guinea