WHAT MAKES A TERRORIST: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism

The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism David Kennedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004)

The Dark Sides of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism

We consider the contributions that the study of discourse and security can make to international efforts to improve conditions of human security through the study of discourses of security in local socio-cultural contexts. We begin by discussing an applied program of work conducted at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) between 2007 and 2014. This program of work began by developing a cooperative approach to community Security Needs Assessments, and subsequently created a process of Evidence-Based Design to support UN staff in the explicit integration of local knowledge as a key resource in the design of security-related policies and programs. We describe how this work drew from the ethnography of communication, the practical challenges its developers encountered in rendering such knowledge program-relevant, and how this led them to conceptualize a focus on local strategies for the task of UN program design. We reflect on the potential of local strategies research (LSR) ...

The emergence of a local strategies approach to human security

The legacies of mass violence can, if left unaddressed, fuel future conflicts. Transitional justice seeks to address the legacies of large-scale past abuses. Despite the sensitive nature of transitional justice and recognition that initiatives can adversely influence conflict-affected contexts, there has been limited attempt to extend the application of conflict sensitivity to transitional justice. Conflict sensitivity is an approach and tool to help aid actors to understand the unintended consequences of aid and to act to minimise harm and achieve positive outcomes. Transitional justice initiatives can exacerbate tensions by replicating existing tensions; introducing resources that become a struggle for control; or challenging power and vested interests. This article argues that conflict sensitivity should be applied to transitional justice; and identifies tools and factors that could contribute to conflict sensitive transitional justice. They include promoting: broad-based participation; resonan...

Breaking the cycle of violence: applying conflict sensitivity to transitional justice

Over the past decade there has been an explosive growth in the research on civil conflict which has lead to a general understanding of the underlying factors that contribute to conflict incidence. Much of the current research results are based on the use of aggregate data, measures, and analyses. This has the disadvantage that it ignores some of the details on conflict dynamics as not all information is retained. This thesis provides four essays that look at civil conflict in Africa, trying to disentangle the complex relation between conflict and factors such as economic performance, food prices, foreign aid, and climate. The findings challenge some of the results in the literature. Focussing on the link between rainfall and conflict, looking at the effect of rainfall shocks in different economic sectors rather than aggregate output, the results show that although rainfall has an effect on agricultural and industrial output, this doesn’t influence the outbreak of conflict. Investigating the relation between food prices and the occurrence of civil unrest, using within-year variation, shows that there is a weak link where higher food prices lead to more unrest due to dependence on primary commodity imports. However, these results do not generalise to out-of-sample data. Examining the effect of foreign aid on conflict intensity, the empirical analysis shows no strong proof for an effect in either positive or negative direction contrasting with the literature. Finally, focussing on the forecasts generated by a popular model linking temperature with conflict shows that the predictive power of temperature is low. In summary, the work presented in this thesis provides some new insights into the link between conflict and a variety of economic factors commonly associated with conflict. It also illustrates the use of various disaggregated approaches to study conflict dynamics.

Essays on civil conflict in Africa

Throughout most of its history, donors have perceived official development assistance (ODA) as a potentially helpful and mostly harmless form of intervention. Despite some destructive consequences, it was not until the late 1990s when the donor community realised that badly designed and insensitively implemented ODA can be just as disastrous to the recipient society as poorly executed military interventions or indiscriminate economic sanctions. Increasing interest in the impact of economic assistance on conflict made all major donor agencies adopt guidelines to avoid harming recipient societies and to maximise the positive impact of their aid on peace. This paper summarises the key literature on the role of ODA in ongoing conflicts as well as in times of peace, focusing on the influence of aid on violent tensions in the recipient societies. It traces the evolution of ideas which led to the recognition that aid can do harm. It argues that many of these connections, seemingly obvious, are unclear and likely...

Jaroslav Petřík

Papers

Does foreign aid alleviate violent tensions