{"title":"Re-branding remittance fee reduction policy goals: from combating terrorist financing to poverty alleviation","authors":"Samuel MacIsaac","doi":"10.1080/14678802.2021.1920235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2021.1920235","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT After the 2001 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, attention to informal migrant remittance flows were increasingly seen as a tool for terrorism financing due to their lack of oversight. After increased regulation was deemed to have the adverse impact of reducing the appeal of formal alternatives, security scholars and practitioners resorted to formalisation policies through transfer fee reductions that make formal options more accessible. In international development circles, similar policies gained traction. International commitments, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 10c) and objective 20 of the 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, aim to lower transfer fees to promote remittance growth and alleviate poverty. This article scrutinises the shift in remittance policy framing, primarily driven by security concerns, to promote development. Findings suggest the 9/11 terrorist attacks provided the punctuation that gave institutions the policy tractability to act upon pre-existing privatisation motives within Bretton-Woods institutions. The findings contribute to the understanding of policy creation and the cross-pollination of policies in the security-development space.","PeriodicalId":46301,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Security & Development","volume":"2017 1","pages":"129 - 151"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74037737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dissolving the Internal-External Divide: Sierra Leone’s Path In and Out of Peacekeeping","authors":"P. Albrecht, Cathy Haenlein","doi":"10.1080/14678802.2021.1906572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2021.1906572","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores Sierra Leone’s trajectory from host of the world’s largest peace-support operation to post-conflict provider of peacekeepers elsewhere. Building on the authors’ previous research, it aims to nuance contemporary theoretical discussions of why states contribute peacekeepers, arguing that existing frameworks are unable to fully explain such developments in the Sierra Leonean case. A key reason is that these frameworks principally focus on national-level decision-making, overlooking the influence of foreign governments and external political pressures. Sierra Leone’s contribution of peacekeepers became integral to the post-conflict reconstruction of its armed forces, enabled and pushed forward by external partners, most prominently the UK. As such, internal and external factors intertwined to advance this trajectory, from national identity to income generation, international support and domestic crises. Sierra Leone’s trajectory grew from unique circumstances – with international partners playing an exceptionally central role in driving the process forward. These factors make Sierra Leone an important case to interrogate, against the backdrop of existing theoretical frameworks that seek to explain why states contribute troops.","PeriodicalId":46301,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Security & Development","volume":"29 1","pages":"107 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89164681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Precarious spaces and violent site effects: experiences from Hargeisa’s urban margins","authors":"Kirsti Stuvøy, Jutta Bakonyi, Peter Chonka","doi":"10.1080/14678802.2021.1920230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2021.1920230","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper addresses precarity from a spatial perspective. It draws attention to how power becomes inscribed in urban space and shapes particular spatial arrangements connected with socio-economic vulnerabilities. This is empirically illustrated with a case study of Hargeisa, a city historically marked by the violence of the Somali civil war. Our analysis draws on interviews and participant photography, to foreground the ‘everyday’ experiences of residents living in the city’s marginal settlements. We point to the operations of power that produce political, economic and social deprivation but also agentic options for these residents who experience, cope with, struggle with and work against their marginalisation. Interconnecting precarity with geographies of violence, we elaborate the concept of ‘violent site-effects’ as a means to explain how power inscribed in spatial arrangements can cause harm to people. We emphasise violence as built into structures and as part of social orders that produce precarity. This, we argue, provides a basis on which to reflect on the dynamic ways in which inequality, insecurity and thus, vulnerabilities, are produced and reproduced in the processes of urban reconstruction.","PeriodicalId":46301,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Security & Development","volume":"167 1","pages":"153 - 176"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80494239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shifting ideas of sustainable peace towards conversation in state-building","authors":"’. Olonisakin, Alagaw Ababu Kifle, Alfred Muteru","doi":"10.1080/14678802.2020.1862495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2020.1862495","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article offers reflections on the meaning of peace and peace-building in Africa and proposes a reframing of the state-building problematic. It argues for a shift in analytical lens by providing alternative ways of looking at state-building in order to explore a different approach to peace-building. Thus, the paper re-centres the notion of conversation in the processes of building peace and state. This concept of conversation requires a shifting of the debate from a focus on which institutions, liberal or otherwise, and which policies are most effective for peace, to how inter-elite and society-elite conversation gives rise to, or fails to bring about particular ensembles of institutions and policy outcomes. We analyse the role of political settlement in shaping the nature and outcome of these conversations. We suggest that the pursuit of peace must account for the depth of conversation about the presence, absence or desire for peace as well as accompanying perspectives of state-building across the target society.","PeriodicalId":46301,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Security & Development","volume":"4 1","pages":"409 - 430"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75168034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The contested meanings of cybersecurity: evidence from post-conflict Colombia","authors":"Jean-Marie Chenou","doi":"10.1080/14678802.2021.1888512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2021.1888512","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Cybersecurity is a contested concept. While some definitions focus on technical aspects, other insist on the strategic and geopolitical dimensions. Recently, the definition has included development-related aspects in an increasingly digitalised economy. Instead of cybersecurity, international organisations such as the OECD and private companies now focus on the management of digital risk. While this shift represents an opportunity to include new actors and issues on the political agenda, it does not lead to the de-securitisation of cyberspace, nor to the promotion of cyber peace. This article explores the debates around the definition of cybersecurity with a particular focus on how Colombia became one of the first states to follow the 2015 OECD guidelines on the management of digital risk as part of an effort to join the organisation. It describes how the resulting perspective on cybersecurity evidences a market-centred approach focusing on the development of a digital economy. However, it also discusses why the evolution of cybersecurity policies in Colombia represents a missed opportunity to design a cyber peacebuilding policy in a post-conflict context.","PeriodicalId":46301,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Security & Development","volume":"43 1","pages":"1 - 19"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81255321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘To romanticise or not to romanticise the local’: local agency and peacebuilding in the Balkans","authors":"Nemanja Džuverović","doi":"10.1080/14678802.2021.1888517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2021.1888517","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Over the last decade there has been increasing attention within peace and conflict studies on the so-called ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding where the role of local actors, their agency and their relationship to international actors is strongly emphasised. Still, even with widespread academic optimism about the emancipatory potential of the local, strong caveats of ‘not romanticising the local’ are constantly repeated. By looking at the Balkan countries and their traditional practices of peacebuilding, this article asks whether the local has the potential to be the empowering agent or if such expectations are much too ambitious, both at the academic and policy level. Drawing on the research findings which show the persistence of coercive and noncoercive local peacebuilding practices, the article poses the Paris question once again: should liberal peacebuilding be saved, and if so, where are the locals in this rescue attempt?","PeriodicalId":46301,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Security & Development","volume":"1 1","pages":"21 - 41"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79863402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking business reforms in post-conflict settings: the case of Sierra Leone","authors":"Kazushige Kobayashi, Herbert M’cleod","doi":"10.1080/14678802.2021.1888501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2021.1888501","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The literature on ‘conflict-sensitive’ business practices has burgeoned in recent years. Yet there remains a critical knowledge gap on the value of incorporating ‘conflict-sensitivity’ systematically to business environment reforms (BER) advanced by the public sector and its international partners. Wars and protracted conflicts reshape market environments in deeply distortive ways. The resulting transformation often enlarges the informal sector at the expense of formal state institutions, while it also reinforces high dependence on foreign aid and investments. Simultaneously, policy communication channels also become disrupted and unreliable. The existing BER literature remains generally insensitive to these peculiarities. Drawing on a case study of Sierra Leone, this article explores the implications of these omissions and shows that BER may even bring about adverse effects when the peculiarities of these conflict-generated market distortions are neglected. In order to avoid negative repercussions, conflict-sensitive BER needs to take into account the multiplicity of business environments and the heterogeneity of business actors operating within conflict-affected nations.","PeriodicalId":46301,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Security & Development","volume":"16 1","pages":"43 - 61"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87780440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sandra Pogodda, Roger Mac Ginty, Oliver P. Richmond
{"title":"The EU and critical crisis transformation: the evolution of a policy concept","authors":"Sandra Pogodda, Roger Mac Ginty, Oliver P. Richmond","doi":"10.1080/14678802.2020.1854442","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2020.1854442","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT While often caused by conflict, crises are treated by the EU as a phenomenon of their own. Contemporary EU crisis management represents a watering down of normative EU approaches to peacebuilding, reduced to a technical exercise with the limited ambition to contain spillover effects of crises. In theoretical terms this is a reversal, which tilts intervention towards EU security interests and avoids engagement with the root causes of the crises. This paper develops a novel crisis response typology derived from conflict theory, which ranges from crisis management to crisis resolution and (critical) crisis transformation. By drawing on EU interventions in Libya, Mali and Ukraine, the paper demonstrates that basic crisis management approaches are pre-eminent in practice. More promising innovations remain largely confined to the realms of discourse and policy documentation.","PeriodicalId":46301,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Security & Development","volume":"14 1","pages":"85 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81542835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Ethio-Eritrea border war: struggle for territorial integrity or politico-economic supremacy?","authors":"Bahlbi Y. Malk","doi":"10.1080/14678802.2021.1901393","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2021.1901393","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Ethio-Eritrea border war, which took place from 1998–2000, was not formally resolved until the signing of a peace declaration on 9 July 2018. Known as a ‘fight between two bald men over a comb’, this conflict has long puzzled social scientists and political analysts. While the two countries provided different explanations for the conflict to rally public support and justify the price of war, the author argues that the conflict exceeded the logics of territorial integrity. Rather, he contends that given the colonial legacy of intentionally instituting borders to divide communities and ethnic groups, it is not possible to fully understand the border dispute without accounting for the transnational nature of the ruling ethnic groups. This is because the border and ethnic conflicts that have characterised post-colonial Africa have usually been linked to the creation of inter-ethnic groups, intra-ethnic competition and artificial boundaries between neighbouring nation-states. The Ethio-Eritrea border dispute is best understood through the lens of an ethno-linguistic struggle for supremacy disguised as a patriotic campaign against invaders. The paper concludes by reflecting on the durability of the 2018 peace declaration.","PeriodicalId":46301,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Security & Development","volume":"59 1","pages":"63 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75409841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
E. Gordon, Sebastian Restrepo Henao, Alejandra Zuluaga Duque, Elliot Dolan-Evans
{"title":"Power, poverty and peacebuilding: the violence that sustains inequalities and undermines peace in Colombia","authors":"E. Gordon, Sebastian Restrepo Henao, Alejandra Zuluaga Duque, Elliot Dolan-Evans","doi":"10.1080/14678802.2020.1848119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2020.1848119","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Despite the promise of the 2016 Colombian peace agreement, this paper argues that the intersection of poverty, insecurity and exclusion threatens sustainable peace in Colombia. In asserting this argument, the paper advances two case studies: the false positives scandal, which demonstrates the vulnerability of the poor to various security threats, and the coca eradication programme, which has fuelled further violence and economic insecurity on impoverished rural people. This paper uses these cases to highlight how poverty is used to legitimise, and is intertwined with, structural and physical violence in Colombia. These cases further shed light on the political economy of violence in Colombia, which legitimises the unequal distribution of wealth, exposes the poor to violence, and disguises crimes of the powerful through the narrative of the deviant or underserving poor and the rhetoric of maintaining security or advancing development. Fundamentally, this article posits that although the post-conflict moment presents a profound opportunity for transformational change, continued socio-economic inequalities and violence against the poor in Colombia will affect the ability to create a sustainable and meaningful peace.","PeriodicalId":46301,"journal":{"name":"Conflict Security & Development","volume":"94 1","pages":"697 - 721"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85420421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}