https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

of distinguished and rather senior economists – makes at the end of the book. Their priorities tend to be quick-fixes of problems that might, at least partly, be caused by some other challenge. More importantly, the panellists tend to disregard some of the evidence assembled by the authors. The reactions to the excellent chapter on armed conflict by Collier & Hoeffler illustrate that Nobel awards are no protection against bias. One member of the panel dismisses the economic sources of war that the Oxford economists analyse and points out that free trade is the main pacifying force, while another famous panellist mentions ethnic or religious hatred as a source of conflict. Gerald Schneider

At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict:

The goal of national security is the defense of the state from external threats. The focus of human security, by contrast, is the protection of individuals. Secure states do not automatically mean secure peoples. Protecting citizens from foreign attack is certainly a necessary condition for the security of individuals, but it is not a sufficient one. Indeed, during the past century, far more people have been killed by their own governments than by armies from abroad. The term human security is now widely used to describe the complex of interrelated threats associated with international war, civil war, genocide, and the displacement of populations. Human security means, at minimum, freedom from violence, and from the fear of violence. Human security and national security should be – and often are – mutually reinforcing. But this is not always the case. Human security can be threatened both by weak states which allow warlords and militias to flourish, and by strong states which themselves commit abuses such as torture and summary execution. Everyone who uses the term human security agrees that its primary goal is the protection of individuals. But which threats individuals should be protected from remains contested. The " broad " concept of human security, first outlined in the 1994 Human Development Report from the United Nations Development Programme, argues that human security rests on two pillars: freedom from want and freedom from fear. The broader view of human security includes food security, adequate shelter, security from poverty, and sometimes from " threats to human dignity. " Its proponents rightly argue that hunger, disease, and natural disasters kill far more people than war, genocide, and terrorism combined. And these threats are often interrelated. The " narrow " concept of human security focuses on freedom from violence. This includes criminal as well as political violence, for the boundary between the two is not always easy to draw. Is there any practical difference between a criminal gang which grows narcotics and guards its crop with guns, and insurgents who grow drugs to finance their rebellion? Just where does the boundary lie between an off-duty soldier who sexually assaults someone, and a deliberate military campaign of rape, which can be a war crime? Th e s e t wo a p p r o a ch e s to human security are both people-centered, and are complementary rather than contradictory. But because the " broad …

About human security

Mark Duffield's second edition of ‘Global Governance and the New Wars’ offers an important and biting critique of how different actors within the security and development discourse have adapted to 

Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security

United Nations Development Programme—UNDP

Countries that sign a peace agreement to emerge from protracted violent conflict often begin reconstructing their societies amidst continued high levels of violence. Responding to this situation, n ...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13533312.2019.1677159

Violent Peace : Local Perceptions of Threat and Insecurity in Post-Conflict Colombia

The general consensus on the security-development nexus is that both are key to achieving sustainable peace in war-torn societies However, this debate has largely taken place among international actors, with little empirical evidence about how security and development relate to each other or are even considered by local actors The current paper applies the security-development nexus to the case of land restitution in Colombia Following decades of internal armed conflict, in 2012 the national government passed sweeping land restitution legislation amid ongoing violence Through in-depth interviews and focus groups with multiple actors involved in this process, ranging from international organisations to national government units, from regional institutions to local communities, the paper analyses the objectives, impact, challenges and opportunities for land restitution related to security and development Undermining peace-building, a lack of coherence in the integration of security and developm

/pdf/applying-the-security-development-nexus-on-the-ground-land-3o3c5598nm.pdf

Applying the security-development nexus on the ground: Land restitution in Colombia

Given the increase of reconciliation processes initiated amid ongoing violence, this study focuses on community reconciliation and its relation to structural transformation, or social reconstruction through reforming unjust institutions and practices that facilitate protracted violent conflict. Drawing lessons from the Caribbean coast of Colombia, mixed-methods analyses include 8 in-depth interviews and 184 surveys. Four key dimensions of reconciliation – truth, justice, mercy and peace – are examined. In the interviews, participants prioritise reconstructing the truth and bringing perpetrators to justice as essential aspects of reconciliation. Notions of mercy and forgiveness are less apparent. For the participants, sustainable peace is dependent on structural transformation to improve livelihoods. These data, however, do not indicate how this understanding of reconciliation may relate to individual participation in reconciliation processes. Complementing the qualitative data, quantitative analys...

/pdf/reconstructing-the-social-fabric-amid-ongoing-violence-10iprgyvwl.pdf

Reconstructing the social fabric amid ongoing violence: attitudes toward reconciliation and structural transformation in Colombia

Building peace in societies where levels of violence continue to be high is one of today’s biggest challenges for countries like Colombia that are emerging from decades of protracted social conflict. The article examines how the Colombian state reasons about the challenges of re-establishing security and development as two core pillars for sustainable peace. It is embedded in the international debates on the security-development nexus within the statebuilding-peacebuilding discourse and based on an in-depth analysis of government policy documents, complemented by field interviews conducted between 2013 and 2017. It evaluates the Colombian government’s perception of the nexus between security and development as a first step towards understanding how state actor perspectives in post-conflict societies with high levels of violence compare to international peacebuilding perspectives. The findings underline that while Colombia’s national consolidation and reconstruction policies definitely display a belief in the existence of a nexus between security and development, that understanding differs significantly from international peacebuilding perspectives. It places heavy emphasis on a security-first approach that aims at statebuilding and subordinates development concerns to that overall goal, which creates an imbalance that translates as well into actor choices for the peacebuilding policies to be applied locally.

/pdf/building-peace-amidst-violence-an-analysis-of-colombia-s-mw8shr2gmr.pdf

Building Peace Amidst Violence: An Analysis of Colombia’s Policies to Address Security and Development Challenges

Civil society actors are assumed to play an important part in post-conflict peacebuilding; therefore, the international community pushes for civil society participation already during peace negotia...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17448689.2018.1484004

Manuela Nilsson

Papers

Violent Peace : Local Perceptions of Threat and Insecurity in Post-Conflict Colombia

Applying the security-development nexus on the ground: Land restitution in Colombia

Reconstructing the social fabric amid ongoing violence: attitudes toward reconciliation and structural transformation in Colombia

Building Peace Amidst Violence: An Analysis of Colombia’s Policies to Address Security and Development Challenges

Civil society actors in peace negotiations in Central America