"The Current Global Environment and its Impact in Africa" An address by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi followed by a question and answer session with the audience.
"From Conflict to Peace and Sustainable Development: Timor-Leste experience" An address by President José Manuel Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste followed by a question and answer session with the audience.
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
Serious crime poses major obstacles in peace operations. International actors intervening in war-torn countries face the challenge of putting pressure on suspected war criminals, members of organized criminal groups, those who instigate interethnic violence, and corrupt officials. While it is widely acknowledged by now that serious crime and public security gaps cause lasting damage to international stabilization efforts, international and domestic policing structures remain weak. This article examines the law enforcement role of international military forces. It shows that in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, military support for crime-fighting efforts has been unsystematic, although it has improved over time. Practical, political, and normative reasons stand in the way of employing the military for law enforcement tasks. However, under conditions of weak policing, preparing the military for law enforcement is necessary in order to better protect citizens against serious crime.
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
While Michael Schmunk's observations presented at the twentieth workshop of the PfP Consortium Study Group on Regional Stability in South East Europe are largely accurate, in this essay I will bring more precise emphasis on a few key issues. I will use the case of the Kosovo intervention as an example for my views on the region, and I shall try to generalize some of my experiences in the light of other, more recent interventions elsewhere. A partially subjective approach is chosen to demonstrate the problems that confront social scientists who attempt to bear in mind both the political and the scientific, while recognizing that they belong to two different systems.
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
Corruption is a curse of modern societies, and the defense sector is just as susceptible to corruption as any other. As this essay will argue, a number of defense-specific factors, such as secrecy, urgency, and populist causes, facilitate corruption. Unchecked corruption impacts the operational effectiveness of the armed forces, the military's standing in society, the level of respect that international partners have for a given nation's military, the security of the citizens and, in its extreme manifestation, may threaten the democratic governance mechanisms and even the foundations of modern states. NATO has launched a "building integrity" initiative to address the problem of corruption in defense and in military operations that envisions systematic efforts to build integrity, increase transparency, and improve accountability of defense establishments. NATO currently pursues several practical activities that will be discussed in this essay, along with more detail on the compendium of best practices in building integrity and reducing corruption in defense.
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
Kosovo in its third year of independence faces three sets of challenges: internal, regional, and international. The consolidation of the state is affected by developments in these three areas, and the degree of success in these realms will directly affect the future and the substance of the new state. The international community, once focused on building peace and stability in Kosovo (from 1999–2008) has recently shifted its focus toward the functionality of the new state's institutions and the rule of law. Kosovar society, on the other hand, is focused on an internal debate about what kind of a state it wants.
Frederic Labarre, Ernst M. Felberbauer, and Predrag Jureković
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
Advocates and advisers share a passion for the region they work in, but they are separated by the quality of their functions. Advocates are practitioners of reform and reconstruction working in the region, while advisers propose (but, ideally, do not proselytize) decision options. Dictionaries define advice as the "an opinion given to someone about what they should do in a particular situation," whereas advocacy is defined as "the act or action of supporting an idea, way of life, person, etc." Rarely is the English language so clear in its distinctions between two neighboring concepts. Both advocates and advisers, however, are often criticized for appearing to be too ready to offer opinions, and not being receptive enough to the realities on the ground and the grievances or actual needs of the local population.
This paper presents an analysis of the everyday practices of individuality among the migrant workers with whom I worked at “Lamb Buddha”, a hotpot restaurant in Anshan City, Liaoning Province, during the summer of 2007. The majority of the data comes from four young men, meaning that the analysis complements extant studies of Chinese female migrant workers by allowing male-gendered inflections of discourse prominence. The paper examines the internal structure of “symbolic boundaries” drawn and managed in judgements, positioning statements, and so forth, attempting to regress the modalities by which these migrants assert themselves, thus showing how individuality arises from a discursive environment structured by relation to similar peers and distinctly different others.
Chinese foreign policy has been transformed in recent years. This article seeks to provide a systematic analysis of the most salient features of the new Chinese foreign policy. It identifies five such features. Based on these features, the article suggests that China is poised to become a true global power. This view differs significantly from Gerald Segal's famous claim in 1999 that China was no more than a middle power. The article utilizes many current Chinese sources to help readers understand China's new motives and goals in international and regional affairs.
The global financial crisis has had a large negative impact on China's economy, particularly on employment, but the government responses appear to have been effective. This article focuses on the social policy responses after the crisis, and how these are situated in the austere social policies that have come about since the economic reforms started in 1978, and the recent aims to create a “harmonious society” and the challenges and contradictions these contain.