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The Causes, Character and Conduct of Internal Armed Conflict and the Effects on Civilian Populations, 1990–2010
Abstract
The impact of violence and conflict on refugee status determination and international protection is a key developing field. Given the contemporary dynamics of armed conflict, how to interpret and apply the refugee definitions at global and regional levels is increasingly relevant to governmental policy-makers, decision-makers, legal practitioners, academics and students. This book will provide a comprehensive analysis of the global and regional refugee instruments as they apply to claimants in flight from situations of armed violence and conflict, exploring their interrelationship and how they are interpreted and applied (or should be applied). As part of a broader United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees project to develop guidelines on the interpretation and application of international refugee law instruments to claimants fleeing armed conflict and other situations of violence, it includes contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in this field as well as emerging authors with specific expertise.
Based on a systematic and empirical comparative study of six European Union countries, Christel Querton explores judicial decision-making in the context of persons fleeing armed conflicts in the EU. Addressing and redressing misconceptions about the relevance of the Refugee Convention, this book demonstrates how appellate authorities across the EU approach situations of armed conflict predominantly through outdated understandings of warfare and territoriality. Thus, they apply a higher standard of proof than is warranted by international refugee law. Adopting a gender perspective, Querton also shows how appellate authorities fail to acknowledge the gender-differentiated impact of armed conflicts. Drawing from gender and security studies, this book proposes an original conceptual framework which, supported by existing international legal standards, reframes the definition of 'refugee' and better reflects the reality of violence in modern-day conflicts. In doing so, it re-asserts the Refugee Convention as the cornerstone of international protection.
The impact of violence and conflict on refugee status determination and international protection is a key developing field. Given the contemporary dynamics of armed conflict, how to interpret and apply the refugee definitions at global and regional levels is increasingly relevant to governmental policy-makers, decision-makers, legal practitioners, academics and students. This book will provide a comprehensive analysis of the global and regional refugee instruments as they apply to claimants in flight from situations of armed violence and conflict, exploring their interrelationship and how they are interpreted and applied (or should be applied). As part of a broader United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees project to develop guidelines on the interpretation and application of international refugee law instruments to claimants fleeing armed conflict and other situations of violence, it includes contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in this field as well as emerging authors with specific expertise.
Violence against women (VAW) is a human rights violation under international law, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is regarded as a global public health concern necessitating a human rights response. In the Kingdom of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), violence and HIV infection are higher among women. In this chapter, the link between VAW and HIV as it affects HIV-positive women in Eswatini is investigated. Many countries have enacted legislation that invokes criminal and civil law to address intimate partner violence (IPV)—including Eswatini through the recent enactment of the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Act of 2018. Although there is much literature on the use of the criminal law to punish people who infect others, there is a minimal discussion on the use of the criminal justice system to address violence against HIV-positive women, in particular, violence that interrupts their access to medical treatment. There is also very little discussion in Eswatini on violence against HIV-positive women by healthcare workers. This chapter answers the questions: What obstacles do HIV-positive women face in getting a protection order against a partner who throws away her antiretroviral treatment in Eswatini and what are the remedies for an HIV-positive woman who has been sterilised without informed consent. The study found that HIV-positive women seldom use legal remedies or turn to the criminal justice system. They are largely distrusting of these systems and see them as ineffective. The study is necessitated by the fact that the abuse of women living with HIV inhibits their rights to health, life, and bodily integrity, and the scant attention given to violence that interrupts treatment. This chapter adopts a qualitative methodology comprising of empirical and desktop research methods.
In this chapter, the question asked is whether African countries can ensure criminal accountability for violence against women with disabilities. For this analysis, the definition of criminal accountability for violence against women with disabilities in Africa rests on the question: Is violence against women with disabilities recognised as a criminal offence in Africa? This question is essential for two reasons. One, without the criminalisation or criminal liability for violence against women with disabilities, criminal prosecution would be difficult if not impossible to achieve. Two, without the criminalisation of violence against women with disabilities, redress and reparations for women with disabilities who are victims of violence in Africa would be almost impossible to achieve. Consequently, this chapter aims to investigate the specific criminal justice responses to violence against women with disabilities undertaken domestically in African countries. It includes the domestic as well as global and regional responses to violence against women with disabilities in Africa. This analysis aims to achieve a two-fold purpose. First, this analysis exposes the limits of criminal justice responses that refuse to acknowledge that interactions and intersections exist between gender and disability. Second, this analysis reveals the importance of developing an intersectional lens to achieve significant criminal accountability, particularly for women with disabilities in Africa. The conclusion that emerges from this analysis demonstrates the need for the development of an intersectional lens in criminal justice systems to ensure greater criminal accountability for violence that women with disabilities face daily in African countries.
Although violence against women is a worldwide concern, it has attained crisis proportions in Uganda. More women than men report sexual violence encounters at least once in their lifetime. Reports reveal that at least one in every three women has suffered sexual violence. Though international and national laws increasingly recognise sexual violence as a crime and provide safeguards relating to women’s access to justice, it is observed that sexual violence statistics continue to soar. Yet, prosecutions and convictions remain low. These statistics are partly attributed to the numerous challenges faced by victims during the process of bringing their perpetrators to book. This chapter critically analyses international and domestic legal provisions and their adequacy in ensuring access to justice by female victims of sexual violence. The chapter examines procedural and institutional challenges faced by victims of sexual violence in the process of accessing justice in Uganda. It finds that there are limitations in managing females’ first entry point into the justice system, gaps in handling forensics, unattended psychological needs for victims, absence of witness protection legislation, technological gaps in criminal law, discriminatory provisions relating to voire dires for girls during trial, defence counsel theatrics that intimidate victims, limited knowledge of the law by victims and general gaps in institutions mandated to dispense justice in Uganda. The chapter recommends following to address the concerns: legislative amendments; recognition of female victims’ rights; breaking gender stereotypes; application of the human rights based approach in sexual cases; specialised competences and units to handle sexual violence related crimes; utilisation of traditional and customary processes for sexual offences alongside formal mechanisms; reparations, compensation and restitution for victims; and psychosocial support for female victims. The chapter employs the doctrinal method of research.
Sexual violence is a human rights violation, and breaches humanitarian law in the context of armed conflict. Violence against refugee women and girls cuts across every stratum of society, especially during armed conflicts. Brutalisation of refugee women and girls is a persistent trend during armed conflict. In such a situation, women are repeatedly raped, forced into marriage and sold into slavery. Notably, while escaping from conflict zone, they risk being brutalised by human traffickers or border security forces. Importantly staying in refugee camp within the country or seeking protection elsewhere brings severe threat to women’s right to education, safety, freedom, livelihood and political participation. These, in addition to tightened immigration policy, and border controls resulting in overcrowded reception centres, delayed processing for asylum applications and restricted family reunifications, further increase their vulnerability. We argue that given level of vulnerability, there is need for refugee women and girls to be adequately protected against violence as resolved by the international community. In fact, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees’ Executive Committee, aiming at increasing awareness of the particular circumstances of refugee women, adopted series of conclusions targeted at affording more meaningful protection to women fleeing from prosecution in their home countries. These conclusions address the need to protect women in refugee camps and equal participation in relief programmes. Despite all the declarations, conventions and resolutions, the scourge persists. Thus, we consider issues faced by refugee women in their host countries and examine how international human rights norms can be protective and ensure the rights of refugee women. We recommend that states should consolidate their actions and take essential steps needed to guarantee protection of refugee women against violence, on a non-discriminatory basis, ranging from civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights which are their entitlements under international law.
The United Nations (UN) has a zero-tolerance policy against all forms of sexual violence, which was reaffirmed by the Security Council in the Resolution on sexual exploitation and abuse by United Nations peacekeepers, and the Resolution Women and Peace and Security: Sexual violence in conflict. Despite the zero-tolerance policy, the UN has continuously had to deal with allegations of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation (SEA) against members of its peacekeeping missions. This chapter provides a detailed overview of the scale of SEA against women and children by peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic and asserts that the statistics point towards a culture of impunity. It is argued that this culture of impunity ought to be understood against the backdrop of the immunity enjoyed by the UN which extends to its civilian personnel; and the bilateral agreements entered into between the UN and troop contributing countries (TCCs) in terms of which TCCs retain exclusive prosecutorial jurisdiction over military peacekeepers. The chapter assesses the measures implemented by the UN in response to the problem of SEA and concludes that although it is commendable that the UN has taken steps to acknowledge the pain and suffering of the victims, in order to eradicate the culture of impunity amongst UN peacekeepers, the UN ought to review its accountability framework for peacekeeping forces, to align it with its stated commitment to the zero-tolerance policy on SEA.
De veiligheidsomgeving van Nederland is verslechterd. De WRR adviseert om de toekomst van de krijgsmacht vorm te geven vanuit een geïntegreerde veiligheidsstrategie die de interne en externe veiligheid omvat. Dit vraagt naast een strategisch defensiebeleid ook versterking van buitenlandbeleid en van ontwikkelingssamenwerking. Deze verdienen versterking om Nederland strategisch te equiperen voor de (toekomstige) geopolitieke situatie.
Binnenlandse en buitenlandse (veiligheids)politiek moeten meer met elkaar samenhangen en elkaar versterken om Nederland strategisch te laten bijdragen in Noord-Atlantische en Europese samenwerkingsverbanden. Voor het defensiebeleid blijven NAVO en EU de voornaamste kaders. Een doeltreffend Nederlands veiligheidsbeleid moet beantwoorden aan de internationale vervlechting van onze samenleving.
Voor Nederland is het van groot belang te blijven investeren in het versterken van de internationale rechtsorde en in voorwaarden en omstandigheden waaronder landen zich sociaaleconomisch, rechtsstatelijk en politiek kunnen ontwikkelen. De laatste jaren is er een groeiend aantal voornemens om extra investeringen in de krijgsmacht te doen. De noodzaak van extra budgettaire ruimte wordt veelvuldig onderstreept, maar problematisch is dat de toezeggingen vooralsnog vooral inspanningen betreffen.
Drie begrippen moeten centraal staan in het veiligheidsbeleid om de hernieuwde focus voor defensiebeleid en de krijgsmacht in het bijzonder aan te brengen. In de eerste plaats national security, dat wil zeggen de veiligheid van het land als geheel. In de tweede plaats de flow security. Voedsel, grondstoffen en andere goederen maar ook diensten moeten via verbindingsroutes ongestoord kunnen aankomen, of worden geëxporteerd; hetzelfde geldt voor essentieel dataverkeer, dat zowel fysiek als elektronisch kan worden verstoord. In de derde plaats human security. Deze omvat niet alleen iemands persoonlijke situatie, maar ook de mate waarin mensen vertrouwen kunnen stellen in voor hen vitale overheidsdiensten en maatschappelijke omstandigheden.
This open access book follows the idea that security policy must be based on strategic analysis. More than ever, internal and external security, and developments both in the Netherlands and abroad are interconnected. The world order is shifting, the cooperation within NATO and the EU is under pressure and the Dutch armed forces are gasping for breath. What is the task of Dutch security and defence policy? There have been growing calls in the last few years to end the devastating cuts in the defence budget and to invest more in security. The acute threats and conflicts in which the Netherlands are involved have served as a wake-up call. The shooting down of Flight MH17 over Ukraine, the streams of refugees from Syria and other countries, the conflict with Da’esh in Syria and Iraq, and terrorist threats reveal how events in many of the world’s flash-points have a direct or indirect impact on the Netherlands. Conflicts in other countries have a spill-over effect in The Netherlands. This is illustrated by tensions between population groups and the clashes over the Gülen schools after the failed putsch in Turkey on 15 July 2016 and over the constitutional referendum in that country. How do we ensure that any additional funds are not divided amongst the branches of the armed forces without any sense of strategic direction? What should a future-proof security policy that plots the course of defence policy entail? What strategic analyses should lie behind the political choices that are made? This book answers these questions and offers a comprehensive framework addressing among other things human security, national security and flow security.
This article discusses the protection of diplomats and state responsibility of physical suffering of diplomats in conflict countries, especially in Afghanistan using juridical normative methodology. This concern has to be discussed because there are a lot of attacks and physical harms suffered by the diplomats, especially in armed-conflict countries. This article analyzes the practices of protection of diplomats in some conflict countries and explain the conventions that include protection of diplomats as a part of the conventions. Thus, conflict countries are more tendentious than non-conflict countries in terms of numbers of attacks and physical harms suf-fered by diplomats. Therefore, this article analyzes the conflict country and categorizes the terms and conditions in the conflict countries. After looking into the pattern of protection of dip-lomats in some countries, this article analyzes the response shown by the receiving and sending state. There is also a discussion of the attacked diplomat cases in Afghanistan and the responses issued by the related parties. Then, protection of the diplomats and state responsibility are ana-lyzed based on the related doctrine and conventions. Changes in protection of diplomats in Af-ghanistan should be done and Afghanistan should be more concerned about this matter and based on the diplomatic convention, sending state could file a dispute settlement to an arbitrary organ and International Court of Justice to claim state responsibility. Based on the conventions and doctrine related, Afghanistan could be charged as the full responsible party
This article aims to examine the level of the compliance of the Yemeni civil war with the obligation of protection of fundamental human rights under Shariah and the international laws. A combined methods of descriptive legal approach and in-depth interview techniques are adopted for the study. For the interview, six respondents were selected to answer questions on the adverse effects of the war on the economy, social affairs, health care system and most vulnerable group, as well as the level of compliance of the war with international laws. Even then, it was uncovered that the armed conflict in Yemen infringed on all the moral and legal principles of war under the Shariah and international laws. For example, the justification for the Yemeni war is not 'self-defence' Journal of Shariah Law Research (JSLR) 38 as contrary to the presumption of the laws. The interview further revealed that there is a complete infringement of fundamental human rights which constitutes a devastating consequence on the spirits of the citizens and the economic resources, in the war. It is therefore concluded that there is a necessity for a concerted effort for the charting of a modality for a gradual mitigation of the negative effects of the war and to its final ending.
It is widely believed that the human impact of civil conflict in the present era is especially destructive. Proponents of the ‘new wars’ thesis hold that today’s conflicts are fuelled by exclusive identities, motivated by greed in the absence of strong states, and unchecked by the disinterested great powers, resulting in increased battle severity, civilian death and displacement. The ratio of civilian to military casualties is claimed to have tilted, so that the overwhelming majority of those killed today are civilians. Using systematic data that are comparable across cases and over time we find that, contrary to the ‘new wars’ thesis, the human impact of civil conflict is considerably lower in the post-Cold War period. We argue that this pattern reflects the decline of ideological conflict, the restraining influence of globalization on governments, and the increasing rarity of superpower campaigns of destabilization and counter-insurgency through proxy warfare.
In recent years, a number of analysts have argued that qualitative changes have occurred in the nature of violent conflict and that it is now possible to think in terms of ‘new wars’ that are distinct in significant ways from earlier forms of conflict. This article summarizes the different arguments of the ‘new wars’ thesis and argues that the distinction between ‘contemporary’ forms of conflict and wars of earlier times is exaggerated and in some instances does not stand up to scrutiny, especially when drawing upon historical material. In particular, the article questions the extent to which contemporary forms of organized violence reflect new patterns in terms of actors, objectives, spatial context, human impact, and the political economy and social structure of conflict. Moreover, the article argues that the tendency in the new wars scholarship to identify common patterns in ‘contemporary’ civil conflicts ignores important differences among them. In conclusion, the article considers the importance of recent scholarship on conflict for the security discourse and state sovereignty.
This article focuses on a key aspect of the EC Qualification Directive, namely, the grounds of eligibility for subsidiary protection. These grounds rest on a test for the risk of ‘serious harm’ were the applicant to be returned to his or her country of origin. If a genuine risk of harm is found, then the applicant would qualify for protection. Article 15 of the Directive defines ‘serious harm’ in terms of (a) the death penalty, (b) torture or degrading treatment, and (c) ‘serious and individual threat’ to a person arising from a situation of armed conflict. This article examines how English and French judicial authorities have applied the third paragraph (that is, Article 15(c) of the Qualification Directive) in recent asylum cases. In such cases, English and French judicial authorities have had to assess (1) the severity of the armed conflict and (2) the individual risk to asylum seekers. Such assessments must be informed by an understanding of the changing character of armed conflict, which has increased the threat to civilians, and by the human security paradigm, which offers a new way of conceptualising the threats to individuals in and from conflict.
Studies from the Eastern Region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have provided anecdotal reports of sexual violence. This study offers a population-based assessment of the prevalence of sexual violence and human rights abuses in specific territories within Eastern DRC.
To assess the prevalence of and correlations with sexual violence and human rights violations on residents of specific territories of Eastern DRC including information on basic needs, health care access, and physical and mental health.
A cross-sectional, population-based, cluster survey of 998 adults aged 18 years or older using structured interviews and questionnaires, conducted over a 4-week period in March 2010.
Sexual violence prevalence and characteristics, symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), human rights abuses, and physical and mental health needs among Congolese adults in specific territories of Eastern DRC.
Of the 1005 households surveyed 998 households participated, yielding a response rate of 98.9%. Rates of reported sexual violence were 39.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 32.2%-47.2%; n = 224/586) among women and 23.6% (95% CI, 17.3%-29.9%; n = 107/399) among men. Women reported to have perpetrated conflict-related sexual violence in 41.1% (95% CI, 25.6%-56.6%; n = 54/148) of female cases and 10.0% (95% CI, 1.5%-18.4%; n = 8/66) of male cases. Sixty-seven percent (95% CI, 59.0%-74.5%; n = 615/998) of households reported incidents of conflict-related human rights abuses. Forty-one percent (95% CI, 35.3%-45.8%; n = 374/991) of the represented adult population met symptom criteria for MDD and 50.1% (95% CI, 43.8%-56.3%; n = 470/989) for PTSD.
Self-reported sexual violence and other human rights violations were prevalent in specific territories of Eastern DRC and were associated with physical and mental health outcomes.
In 2014, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) recorded 40 armed conflicts with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths, up by six from 2013. This is the highest number of conflicts reported since 1999, and 11 of these conflicts were defined as wars, that is, conflicts generating 1,000 or more battle-related deaths in one calendar year. Further, an escalation of several conflicts, coupled with the extreme violence in Syria, resulted in the highest number of battle-related deaths in the post-1989 period. Yet, compared to the large-scale interstate wars of the 20th century, the number of fatalities caused by armed conflicts in 2014 was relatively low. Additionally, seven conflicts identified in 2013 were no longer active in 2014. However, four new conflicts erupted in 2014, all of them in Ukraine, and three previously registered conflicts were restarted by new actors. Furthermore, six conflicts reoccurred with previously registered actors. A positive development, however, is the increase to ten of the number of peace agreements concluded and signed in 2014, which represents a further four compared with 2013. And although this increase is part of a positive trend since 2011, it is worth noting that several peace processes remained fragile by the end of the year.
This article questions the prevalent argument that civil wars have fundamentally changed since the end of the cold war. According to this argument, "new" civil wars are different from "old" civil wars along at least three related dimensions--they are caused and motivated by private predation rather than collective grievances and ideological concerns; the parties to these conflicts lack popular support and must rely on coercion; and gratuitous, barbaric violence is dispensed against civilian populations. Recent civil wars, therefore, are distinguished as criminal rather than political phenomena. This article traces the origins of this distinction and argues that it is based on an uncritical adoption of categories and labels, combined with deficient information on "new" civil wars and neglect of recent historical research on "old" civil wars. Perceived differences between postcold war conflicts and previous civil wars may be attributable more to the demise of readily available conceptual categories caused by the end of the cold war than to the end of the cold war per se.
The Trouble with the Congo suggests a new explanation for international peacebuilding failures in civil wars. Drawing from more than 330 interviews and a year and a half of field research, it develops a case study of the international intervention during the Democratic Republic of the Congo's unsuccessful transition from war to peace and democracy (2003–6). Grassroots rivalries over land, resources, and political power motivated widespread violence. However, a dominant peacebuilding culture shaped the intervention strategy in a way that precluded action on local conflicts, ultimately dooming the international efforts to end the deadliest conflict since World War II. Most international actors interpreted continued fighting as the consequence of national and regional tensions alone. UN staff and diplomats viewed intervention at the macro levels as their only legitimate responsibility. The dominant culture constructed local peacebuilding as such an unimportant, unfamiliar, and unmanageable task that neither shocking events nor resistance from select individuals could convince international actors to reevaluate their understanding of violence and intervention.
Myron Weiner is Ford International Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was director of the Center of International Studies at MIT from 1987 to 1992.
For helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper I am grateful to Rogers Brubaker, Karen Jacobsen, Robert Jervis, Stephen Krasner, Robert Lucas, Rosemarie Rogers, and Sharon Russell.
1. Timothy Garton Ash, "The German Revolution," The New York Review of Books, December 21, 1989, pp. 14-17, provides an informed eye-witness account of how the exodus of East Germans in the summer and fall of 1989 led to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the absorption of the East German state into West Germany.
2. On secessionist movements, see Allen Buchanan, Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991). This otherwise excellent analysis by a political philosopher does not deal with the problem of minorities that remain in successor states.
3. Democratization and political liberalization of authoritarian regimes have enabled people to leave who previously were denied the right of exit. An entire region of the world, ranging from Central Europe to the Chinese border, had imprisoned those who sought to emigrate. Similar restrictions continue to operate for several of the remaining communist countries. If and when the regimes of North Korea and China liberalize, another large region of the world will allow its citizens to leave. See Alan Dowty, Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on Freedom of Movement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), which provides a useful account of how authoritarian states engaged both in restricting exodus and in forced expulsions. For an analysis of the right to leave and return, see H. Hannum, The Right to Leave and Return in International Law and Practice (London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987). As has happened twice before in this century, the breakup of an empire is producing large-scale ethnic conflict and emigration. With the withdrawal of Soviet power from Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet state itself, conflicts have erupted between Turks and Bulgarians in Turkey; Romanians and Hungarians in Transylvania; Armenians and Azeris in the Caucasus; Albanians, Croatians, Slovenians, Bosnians, and Serbs in former Yugoslavia; Slovaks and Czechs in Czechoslovakia; and among a variety of ethnic groups in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, and in the new states of Central Asia. There is a high potential for continued emigration of minorities among each of these states. See F. Stephen Larrabee, "Down and Out in Warsaw and Budapest: Eastern Europe and East-West Migration," International Security, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Spring 1992), pp. 5-33.
4. A long-term decline in the birth rate in advanced industrial countries combined with continued economic growth may lead employers to seek low-wage laborers from abroad. Transnational investment in manufacturing industries may reduce some manpower needs, but the demand for more workers in the service sector seems likely to grow, barring technological breakthroughs that would replace waiters, bus conductors, nurses, and household help. Employers in Japan, Singapore, and portions of the United States and Western Europe are prepared to hire illegal migrants, notwithstanding the objections of their governments and much of the citizenry. So long as employer demand remains high, borders are porous, and government enforcement of employer sanctions is limited, illegal migration seems likely to continue and in some countries to increase.
5. There have already been mass migrations within and between countries as a result of desertification, floods, toxic wastes (chemical contamination, nuclear reactor accidents, hazardous waste), and threats of inundation as a result of rising sea levels. According to one estimate, two million Africans were displaced in the mid-1980s as a result of drought. See Jodi L. Jacobson, Environmental Refugees: A Yardstick of Habitability, Worldwatch Paper No. 86 (Washington, D.C.: WorldWatch Institute, 1988).
6. Information concerning employment opportunities and changes in immigration and refugee laws is quickly transmitted to friends and relatives. Not only do many people in the Third World view the United States and Europe as potential places for migration, but differences and opportunities within the Third World are also becoming better known. Indonesians, for example, are...
In Sri Lanka’s armed conflict, gender, sexuality, and sex work are intermeshed with militarized nationalism. Militarization entrenches gender performances and heteronormative schemes while enabling women to transgress these—whether as combatants or as sex workers. Familiarly, in this nationalist encounter, women are expected to safeguard culture, notably through proper dress and sexual conduct. Sexualactivity that challenges containment arouses anxiety because loyalty to military groupor communal boundary can be compromised. Drawing on three examples—adress codecall by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam women’s wing, consequences for a woman alleged to be a sex worker, and the public stripping of an alleged suicide bomber at a military checkpoint—this article explores how gendered behaviors and sexualities marked as culture are constructed and controlled in the interests of militarized, nationalist projects; how women can be both agents and objects of these controls; and the implications for women who refuse to comply.
Zones of state failure are assumed to be anarchic. In reality, communities facing the absence of an effective state authority forge systems of governance to provide modest levels of security and rule of law. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in Somalia, where an array of local and regional governance arrangements have emerged since the 1991 collapse of the state. The Somalia case can be used both to document the rise of governance without government in a zone of state collapse and to assess the changing interests of local actors seeking to survive and prosper in a context of state failure. The interests of key actors can and do shift over time as they accrue resources and investments; the shift from warlord to landlord gives some actors greater interests in governance and security, but not necessarily in state revival; risk aversion infuses decisionmaking in areas of state failure; and state-building initiatives generally fail to account for the existence of local governance arrangements. The possibilities and problems of the mediated state model, in which weak states negotiate political access through existing local authorities, are considerable.
Reports of sexual violence by men against men emerge from numerous conflicts, ranging in time from Ancient Persia and the Crusades to the conflicts in Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite these accounts, relatively little material exists on the subject and the issue tends to be relegated to a footnote. This article ascertains the extent to which male sexual violence is committed in armed conflict. It considers factors that explain under-reporting by victims and lack of detection on the part of others. The particular forms of male sexual violence are also examined: namely rape, enforced sterilization and other forms of sexual violence, including enforced nudity, enforced masturbation and genital violence. The dynamics present in these offences are explored, with issues of power and dominance, expressed through emasculation, considered. Thus, attention is paid to ideas of feminization, homosexualization and the prevention of procreation. The symbolic construction of male and female bodies in armed conflict is also explored.
A situation of high-intensity crime does not mean that a war is not occurring in Mexico. But it is a war of a different kind. In fact, there are several conflicts occurring at once that blend into each other. There is the conflict of cartels among each other, the conflict within cartels, cartels against the Mexican state, cartels and gangs against the Mexican people and gangs versus gangs. When combined, they form a mosaic cartel war that creates an atmosphere somewhere between Al Capone's Chicago and an outright war?. It is not an irregular or regular war; neither is it a small war nor a general war, nor a limited war, nor a total war, nor any of the familiar appellations given to armed conflicts fought by conventional militaries. And, finally it is not ?a war about nothing.?2 It is a multidimensional, multiparty and multi-location armed conflict fought among criminal groups over what are essentially criminal goals; the groups are resisted by the state while their goals are rejected by it, making the state a party to the conflict. Because it is a war of a different kind, the targets of the cartels have been wide ranging? from police to journalists, from clinics to discos, military bases to children?s birthday parties. ?Criminal cleansing? has occurred in Mexican towns where cartels have ordered residents to leave or face possible death. A mosaic cartel war is complex in its manifestation and confounding to traditional military and law enforcement solutions. As a result, there is great difficulty for governments on either side of the border to fight this type of war and to bring the violence under control. As RT Naylor argues, the violence of the state is often a response to the violence of the criminal; the reverse is also true. And once the interactive cycle of violence is set in motion, it may be impossible to separate action from reaction, or to say for sure if the reduction in the use of violence on one side will lead to the same on the other.
State failure is characterized by government predation and the militarization of civic society. Drawing on data from the study of civil war, state failure, and violence, this article explores the roles of per capita income, ethnicity, and democratization. It argues that public revenues are more relevant to state failure than are private incomes; that several configurations of ethnic groups can lead to violence; and that state failure is far more likely in intermediate democracies than in full democracies or aristocracies.
Success in war depends on alignment between operations and strategy. Commonly, such alignment takes time as civilian and military leaders assess the effectiveness of operations and adjust them to ensure that strategic objectives are achieved. This article assesses prospects for the US-led campaign in Afghanistan. Drawing on extensive field research, the authors find that significant progress has been made at the operational level in four key areas: the approach to counterinsurgency operations, development of Afghan security forces, growth of Afghan sub-national governance and military momentum on the ground. However, the situation is bleak at the strategic level. The article identifies three strategic obstacles to campaign success: corruption in Afghan national government, war-weariness in NATO countries and insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. These strategic problems require political developments that are beyond the capabilities of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). In other words, further progress at the operational level will not bring ‘victory’. It concludes, therefore, that there is an operational-strategic disconnect at the heart of the ISAF campaign.
The human suffering caused by civil war extends well beyond the direct casualties and beyond the span of the war. We examine these longer-term effects in a cross-national (1999) analysis of World Health Organization new fine-grained data on death and disability broken down by age, gender, and type of disease or condition. We test concrete hypotheses about the impact of civil wars, and find substantial long-term effects, even after controlling for several other factors. We estimate that the additional burden of death and disability incurred in 1999, from the indirect and lingering effects of civil wars in the years 1991-97, was approximately equal to that incurred directly and immediately from all wars in 1999. This impact works its way through specific diseases and conditions, and disproportionately affects women and children. We thank the Weatherhead Initiative on Military Conflict as a Public Health Problem, the Ford Foundation, and the World Health Organization, NIA (P01 17625-01) for financial support.
A recent article using the new Correlates of War (COW) data on the distribution of interstate, intrastate, and extrastate wars from 1816 to 1997 claims there was a relatively constant risk of death in battle during that time. We show that the authors' information is skewed by irregularities in the COW deaths data, and contest their pessimistic interpretation. Using revised information on battle deaths from 1900 to 2002 we demonstrate that the risk of death in battle by no means followed a flat line, but rather declined significantly after World War II and again after the end of the Cold War. Future users should note that the deaths data collected for the three conflict types by COW are not comparable, and using them as such tends to underestimate the share of fatalities due to major interstate conflicts.
Since the end of the cold war internal conflicts have received unprecedented attention. Of special interest has been the effort of neorealists to employ an approach traditionally used to explain interstate conflict to make internal war understandable. While neorealism has been useful in explaining the behavior of groups in anarchic conditions, it is inadequate in explaining internal wars occurring in states that retain a strong government and that stem from motives other than power and security. Neorealism also does little to explain how anarchy is created in the first place and what can be done to restore central control. Another approach offers “bad leaders” as a proximate cause of internal war. There is much to this explanation, but more work needs to be done in understanding just what makes leaders “bad” and whether leaders have the latitude to be “good.” Finally, the diverse nature of internal wars has frustrated efforts to develop an overall means of settling them. At a point in which armed conflict has become almost exclusively an internal affair, useful generalizations for causes and cures remain elusive.
Several mortality estimates for the Darfur conflict have been reported since 2004, but few accounted for conflict dynamics such as changing displacement and causes of deaths. We analyse changes over time for crude and cause-specific mortality rates, and assess the effect of displacement on mortality rates.
Retrospective mortality surveys were gathered from an online database. Quasi-Poisson models were used to assess mortality rates with place and period in which the survey was done, and the proportions of displaced people in the samples were the explanatory variables. Predicted mortality rates for five periods were computed and applied to population data taken from the UN's series about Darfur to obtain the number of deaths.
63 of 107 mortality surveys met all criteria for analysis. Our results show significant reductions in mortality rates from early 2004 to the end of 2008, although rates were higher during deployment of fewer humanitarian aid workers. In general, the reduction in rate was more important for violence-related than for diarrhoea-related mortality. Displacement correlated with increased rates of deaths associated with diarrhoea, but also with reduction in violent deaths. We estimated the excess number of deaths to be 298 271 (95% CI 178 258-461 520).
Although violence was the main cause of death during 2004, diseases have been the cause of most deaths since 2005, with displaced populations being the most susceptible. Any reduction in humanitarian assistance could lead to worsening mortality rates, as was the case between mid 2006 and mid 2007.
In March, 2003, military forces, mainly from the USA and the UK, invaded Iraq. We did a survey to compare mortality during the period of 14.6 months before the invasion with the 17.8 months after it.
A cluster sample survey was undertaken throughout Iraq during September, 2004. 33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002. In those households reporting deaths, the date, cause, and circumstances of violent deaths were recorded. We assessed the relative risk of death associated with the 2003 invasion and occupation by comparing mortality in the 17.8 months after the invasion with the 14.6-month period preceding it.
The risk of death was estimated to be 2.5-fold (95% CI 1.6-4.2) higher after the invasion when compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1.5-fold (1.1-2.3) higher after the invasion. We estimate that 98000 more deaths than expected (8000-194000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included. The major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion violence was the primary cause of death. Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children. The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher (95% CI 8.1-419) than in the period before the war.
Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes.
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