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1432. Connecting Women and Peace and Security (WPS) and Youth and Peace and Security (YPS) to Beijing+25 and the Generation Equality Forum
- Author:
- Mallika Iyer and Mavic Cabrera-Balleza
- Publication Date:
- 03-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP)
- Abstract:
- Women and youth peacebuilders formed a coalition to discuss urgent, intersecting issues related to the full and effective implementation of the Women and Peace and Security (WPS) and Youth and Peace and Security (YPS) agendas.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Violent Extremism, Women, and Equality
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
1433. Research Report: Gender-Sensitive Provisions In Peace Agreements And Women’s Political And Economic Inclusion Post-Conflict
- Author:
- Mavic Cabrera-Balleza
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP)
- Abstract:
- During the first practicum in the Fall of 2019, five students from the Master’s in Global Affairs program at CGA worked in teams to address research questions that emerged from GNWP’s work and research on current and past peace processes, and women’s roles in peacebuilding and sustaining peace. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis, the students examined the effect of women’s participation in peace negotiations and gender-sensitive provisions in peace agreements on women’s political representation and economic empowerment post-conflict.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Women, Peace, and Inclusion
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
1434. COVID-19 Incidence and the Timing of Quarantine Measures and Travel Restrictions: A Cross-country Analysis
- Author:
- Marjorie Pajaron
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- COVID-19 presents humanity with not just a health crisis but also a governance crisis as leaders around the globe confront the challenges of stemming the spread of the virus. Various governments have responded in various ways to slow the transmission of the virus. Ideally, the leaders of a country should approach the crisis with a two-pronged attack. The first is to flatten the epidemic curve (epi curve), which is simply a graphical representation of the number of cases and date of onset of the illness, and the second is to raise or strengthen the capacity of the health system. Flattening the epi curve includes mass testing for COVID-19, which has been done in South Korea, for example. Decreasing the incidence also includes quarantine, isolation, and other social distancing strategies, which have been done by various countries in varying degrees. For example, in China, total lockdown (cordon sanitaire) was implemented in Wuhan, of the Hubei province, while in the Philippines, the entire Luzon, which consists of eight administrative regions, including the national capital region (NCR), was in total lockdown (enhanced community quarantine, or ECQ) since March 16 (World Health Organization [WHO] 2020a). Other parts of the Philippines were under different degrees of quarantine at different periods since the appearance of local transmission. Raising the health care system capacity of a country may include, but is not limited to, training of health care workers, increasing facilities or hospitals that receive COVID patients, and providing adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). This paper offers a brief epidemiological review of COVID-19 since its first case in China and how the hotspots for this disease evolved and changed over a relatively short period. This paper also aims to provide a short descriptive review of the existing data on COVID-19 in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region and the government response of its ten member countries, so that we can somehow draw lessons and learn from these myriad experiences as we continue to combat the spread of this dangerous pathogen. The findings in this paper are preliminary, and more rigorous analysis is expected to be performed as the data becomes more extensive and available.
- Topic:
- Public Health, Pandemic, COVID-19, Travel, and Quarantine
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
1435. Intended and Unintended Consequences of a New Limit on Working Hours in South Korea: Implications for Precarious Employment
- Author:
- Sungchul Park and Hansoo Ko
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- Effective as of July 1, 2018, South Korea set a new cap on employees’ weekly working hours, decreasing the maximum number from 68 to 52. In this study, we comprehensively analyze the effectiveness of the law’s implementation by observing changes in work time, health status, health care utilization, health behavior, monthly expenses, and satisfaction between pre- and post-implementation periods (2014–2017 vs. 2019). We find evidence of both intended and unintended consequences—and, in this last category, some are beneficial and some not. As intended, employees eligible for the 52-hour work week saw their average working hours decrease, while their monthly spending on leisure increased substantially. A beneficial unintended consequence was that work time also decreased in firms with less than 300 employees that had not yet implemented the 52-hour work schedule (they have done so since, in January 2020). Among adverse unintended consequences, the most notable were heterogeneous effects across employment types (full-time vs. precarious employment) and, in particular, negative impacts on precarious employees (that is, those facing relatively high levels of job insecurity). Despite almost no change in their work time, precarious employees saw substantial increases in outpatient visits and monthly expenses for health care, indicating suggestive evidence of adverse health consequences. Another adverse unintended consequence was that overall job satisfaction decreased among several groups of employees. This may reflect a heavy workload among employees still expected to work overtime, especially experienced employees or those working in large firms. While employment rates increased after the new schedule’s implementation, the majority were in precarious jobs. This has negative implications because of the adverse health impacts of being in precarious employment; also, the workload of experienced employees in this field might have intensified amid all the new hiring. Our findings suggest key policy recommendations for how to leverage the benefits of the 52-hour cap on weekly working hours while addressing its negative unintended consequences.
- Topic:
- Health, Labor Issues, Employment, and Labor Policies
- Political Geography:
- Asia and South Korea
1436. Exploring India's Strategic Futures
- Author:
- Arzan Tarapore
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- he method of major/minor trends developed in this report suggests that the roots of apparently surprising future behavior can be found in a close reading of a target state’s history. Using this method, the report outlines three unlikely but plausible alternative futures of India as a strategic actor. The first scenario envisions India as a Hindu-nationalist revisionist power hostile to Pakistan but accommodating of China; in the second, it is a militarily risk-acceptant state that provokes dangerous crises with China; and in the third scenario, India is a staunch competitor to China that achieves some success through partnerships with other U.S. rivals like Russia and Iran. These scenarios are designed not to predict the future but to sensitize U.S. policymakers to possible strategic disruptions. They also serve to highlight risks and tensions in current policy.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, Conflict, and Strategic Interests
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, China, Europe, India, Asia, and North America
1437. Black Lives Matter Might Just Rescue American Democracy
- Author:
- Oona A. Hathaway and Daniel Markovits
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Legal Challenges, Yale Law School
- Abstract:
- The past weeks in the United States have produced two horrifying varieties of violence. First, and all too familiar, the police killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, George Floyd in Minneapolis, and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta follow a long and awful tradition of brutal state violence directed against Black Americans, beginning with chattel slavery and extending through the fugitive slave laws, lynchings, and right up to the present. The Black Lives Matter movement, which rose to prominence after earlier police killings of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, rightly emphasizes this terrible lineage and contends that achieving racial justice today requires coming to terms with the past. Second, and less familiar, we see an American president openly embracing tools of authoritarian rule. President Donald Trump has incited violence against peaceful protesters, threatening to use “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” against them and demanding that the authorities “dominate” citizens gathered to express their values. At the same time, the police have responded with documented instances of violence against members of the press seeking to cover the protests, while military units and military equipment have been deployed against peaceful protesters in Washington D.C. and threatened against protesters throughout the country. These two injustices — racism and authoritarianism — may seem merely to coincide, perhaps because of the person who happens now to occupy the White House. But they are, at least at this moment in American history, deeply intertwined. The writer Akilah Green observes (in a Tweet) that “Police are now brutalizing everyone just to maintain their ability to brutalize black people.” This is more than a Twitter slogan: it captures a deep and powerful social logic.
- Topic:
- Law Enforcement, Social Movement, Democracy, Protests, and Black Lives Matter (BLM)
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America
1438. Heat and Hate: Climate Security and Farmer-Herder Conflicts in Africa
- Author:
- Ulrich J. Eberle, Dominic Rohner, and Mathias Thoenig
- Publication Date:
- 12-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
- Abstract:
- This paper investigates the impact of climate shocks on violence between herders and farmers by using geolocalized data on conflict events for all African countries over the 1997-2014 period. We find that a +1℃ increase in temperature leads to a +54% increase in conflict probability in mixed areas populated by both farmers and herders, compared to +17% increase in non-mixed areas. This result is robust to controlling for the interaction between temperature and ethnic polarization, alternative estimation techniques, disaggregation levels, and coding options of the climatic/conflict/ethnic variables. When quantifying at the continental level the impact on conflict of projected climate change in 2040, we find that, in absence of mixed population areas, global warming is predicted to increase total annual conflicts by about a quarter in whole Africa; when factoring in the magnifying effect of mixed settlements, total annual conflicts are predicted to rise by as much as a third. We also provide two pieces of evidence that resource competition is a major driver of farmer-herder violence. Firstly, conflicts are much more prevalent at the fringe between rangeland and farmland - a geographic buffer of mixed usage that is suitable for both cattle herding and farming but is particularly vulnerable to climate shocks. Secondly, information on groups' mobility reveals that temperature spikes in the ethnic homeland of a nomadic group tend to diffuse its fighting operations outside its homeland, with a magnified spatial spread in the case of conflicts over resources. Finally, we show that violence is substantially reduced in the presence of policies that empower local communities, foster participatory democracy, enforce property rights and regulate land dispute resolution.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Climate Change, Conflict, Violence, and Farming
- Political Geography:
- Africa
1439. Enforcement of Drug Laws: Refocusing on Organized Crime Elite
- Author:
- Global Commission On Drug Policy
- Publication Date:
- 05-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Global Commission On Drug Policy
- Abstract:
- In this first report of this decade, the Global Commission on Drug Policy outlines how the current international drug control regime works for the benefit of transnational organized crime. It highlights how years of repressive policies targeted at nonviolent drug offenders have resulted in mass incarceration and produced countless adverse impacts on public health, the rule of law, and social cohesion, whilst at the same time reinforcing criminal elites. The report argues that the top layers of criminal organizations must be disempowered, through policy responses and political will. It provides implementable recommendations for the replacement of the current policy of targeting non-violent drug offenders and resorting to mass incarceration. Law enforcement must focus on the most dangerous and protected actors and primary drivers of the corruption, violence, and chaos around illegal drug markets. The control of psychoactive substances in a rational and efficient way must be centered on people and their needs, and on a repressive approach against criminal elites who benefit from the illegal drug markets’ proceeds, and have access to high-level networks, financial and legal support as needed. Only responsible legal regulation of currently prohibited drugs, with careful implementation, has the potential to disrupt criminal organizations and deprive them of their most lucrative sources of income. The report contains research on the prerequisites for a successful transition towards the reform of the outdated ideology-based international drug control regime, and provides cutting-edge recommendations on how to ensure that international criminal organizations are effectively disempowered by the transition towards a legally regulated drug market under the control of governments.
- Topic:
- Crime, Health, War on Drugs, Drugs, Public Health, and Medicine
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
1440. CHARTING A NEW COURSE: WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY, AND THE MARITIME DOMAIN
- Author:
- Sahana Dharmapuri, Pamela Tansey, and Lexie Van Buskirk
- Publication Date:
- 08-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Our Secure Future
- Abstract:
- The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is a transformative policy mandate with a global constituency. It provides policymakers with the tools to end cycles of violent conflict, create more equitable peace processes, and promote gender equality on a global, national, and local scale. Passed in October 2000, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (UNSCR 1325) underscores women’s agency, voice, and capacities as intrinsic to creating more effective international peace and security policies. Since 2000, more than 80 countries have adopted Women, Peace and Security National Action Plans and other policies to robustly implement the WPS agenda. In 2017, the US Congress adopted the Women, Peace, and Security Act to incorporate the principle of gender equality into US foreign policy. The two main objectives of the WPS agenda are to 1) increase the representation of women in decision-making positions, and 2) to apply a gender perspective to matters of international peace and security.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, Gender Issues, Women, and Peace
- Political Geography:
- United States and Global Focus