Luís Filipe Madeira, Stéphane Laurent, and Sílvia Roque
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
Abstract:
This paper analyses the international, West African and national conditions that fuel the spread of the international drugs trade in West Africa, particularly in Guinea-Bissau, and examines the impact of the international cocaine trade at a social, economic and governance level in this small West African country.
Since Mexican President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006, Mexico’s drug war has taken over 30,000 lives, destabilized the U.S.-Mexico border, and become a security crisis for the North American continent. Two years ago, a December 2008 Pentagon report warned about the strategic consequences for the United States of a rapid collapse of two nations: Pakistan and Mexico. “The Mexican possibility might seem less likely,” said the report, “but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault by drug cartels.” Any sudden collapse would require a U.S. response
“based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.”
This scenario has not come to pass, and a full scale collapse of Mexico remains unlikely. That said, Mexico’s security situation has direct consequences in the United States. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, coalitions of sheriffs, agents, activists and concerned citizens have
rallied to increase public awareness. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, Mexican drug cartels maintain distribution networks in 295 U.S. cities through brutal gang activity. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has joined a chorus of policy analysts and terrorism experts by referring to Mexico’s drug war as a “criminal insurgency.” In recent visits to Mexico, both President Barack Obama and the Secretary of State have acknowledged U.S. responsibility to reduce drug demand and invest in “partnership.” As the joint response to the 2009 H1N1 flu virus by U.S. and Mexican health officials illustrated, United States and
Mexico policy responses are inextricably linked.
Topic:
Crime, National Security, War on Drugs, Immigration, Fragile/Failed State, and Governance
Kaysie Brown, Bruce Jones, and Molly Elgin-Cossart
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
Fragile states are beset and defined by recurring cycles of violence, and violence feeds their chronic underdevelopment. Violent and impoverished countries have poverty rates that are, on average, 20 points higher than their impoverished but peaceful counterparts.
Topic:
Political Violence, Civil Society, Crime, Development, Terrorism, and Fragile/Failed State
More than 2.3 million people in america are in jail or prison.sixty percent are african american and Latino.Of all the statistics portraying racial inequity in our country, this is the most alarming: it indicates the failure of so many of our society's institutions; it predicts dire consequences for millions of children and families of color who are already at socioeconomic disadvantage; and it challenges the very definition of our democracy.
Mass atrocities are organized crimes. Those who commit genocide and crimes against humanity depend on third parties for the goods and services—money, matériel, political support, and a host of other resources-that sustain large—scale violence against civilians. Third parties have supplied military aircraft used by the Sudan Armed Forces against civilians, refined gold and other minerals coming out of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and ensured a steady flow of arms into Rwanda. Governments seeking to prevent atrocities cannot afford a narrow and uncoordinated focus on the perpetrators of such violence. Rather, an effective strategy must include identifying and pressuring third-party enablers— individuals, commercial entities, and countries—in order to interrupt the supply chains that fuel mass violence against civilians.
Topic:
Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Crime, and Genocide
Failure to address the systematic crimes committed during Nepal's ten-year civil war is threatening the peace process. There has been not a single prosecution in civilian courts for any abuses. The cultures of impunity that enabled the crimes in the first place have remained intact, further increasing public distrust and incentives to resort to violence. The immediate priorities should be prosecutions of the most serious crimes, investigation of disappearances and action to vet state and Maoist security force members.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Crime, Human Rights, Fragile/Failed State, and Governance
While our discussion today will focus on Middle Eastern terrorist groups' links to criminal activity, it is important to bear in mind that the threat of terror and the origins of terrorist groups spans beyond any single region. Moreover, terrorist groups' links to criminal activity is not a new phenomenon. In the '70s and '80s, for example, groups like the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades and the domestic Symbionese Liberation Army financed violent terrorism with violent crimes like bank robbery.
This paper studies the oil-violence link in the Niger Delta, systematically taking into consideration domestic and international contextual factors. The case study, which focuses on explaining the increase in violence since the second half of the 1990s, confirms the differentiated interplay of resource-specific and non-resource-specific causal factors. With regard to the key contextual conditions responsible for violence, the results underline the basic relevance of cultural cleavages and political-institutional and socioeconomic weakness that existed even before the beginning of the “oil era.” Oil has indirectly boosted the risk of violent conflicts through a further distortion of the national economy. Moreover, the transition to democratic rule in 1999 decisively increased the opportunities for violent struggle, in a twofold manner: firstly, through the easing of political repression and, secondly, through the spread of armed youth groups, which have been fostered by corrupt politicians. These incidents imply that violence in the Niger Delta is increasingly driven by the autonomous dynamics of an economy of violence: the involvement of security forces, politicians and (international) businessmen in illegal oil theft helps to explain the perpetuation of the violent conflicts at a low level of intensity.
International responses to the conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) bordering Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda have been widely criticized as inadequate. The region is poorly understood by the international community. The general international preference for working with states and institutions – in a region where none of these exists in the form familiar to the West – complicates responses significantly.
Since the fall of the Berlin wall, Europe has experienced an increased interest in the Holocaust. After more than half a century, several countries have confronted the more neglected aspects of their Second World War history, publicly admitting their cooperation with the Nazi regime and their participation in the deportation of Jews. How can we explain this change? Is there a relationship between the growing interest in the Holocaust and a growing need for a shared history and some shared European values? Does the Holocaust represent a universal lesson that unites the member states around the imperative: Never Again? In this DIIS Working Paper, Senior Researcher Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke will offer some explanations for how and why interest in the Holocaust developed in Europe after 1989. She will discuss whether there is a relationship between the legacies of the Holocaust and the need for a European identity. And she will point to some general patterns in the way the Holocaust has been dealt with, based on a phase model that I have developed.