Securitising humanitarian assistance and post-conflict reconstruction in Africa: A critical review of South Africa's new defence policy

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-20
Author(s):  
Savo Heleta
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Defence Policy

scholarly journals Limits and Possibilities of the United States Military in Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Stabilization

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alcir Santos Neto
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
The United States ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Inspector General ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Military Engagement

This study probes the limits and possibilities of US military efforts to facilitate the transition from warfighting to nation-building. Most comparative studies conceive the complexity of this transition along a spectrum from conflict to humanitarian assistance to post-conflict stabilization. While the last two stages have often been interpreted as a coordinated act of civil-military ‘nation-building’; the spectrum, in fact, represents an ideal type simplification. At one level, outcomes depend on the players involved, including: sovereign nations, national militaries, international and regional institutions, UN peacekeepers, private security contractors, and non-governmental humanitarian providers, among others. On the other hand, because the number, types, and causes of case outcomes are highly diverse and contingent upon many possible factors (among them for example: political, economic, military, organizational, humanitarian, cultural, and religious), institutions like the US military face serious difficulties both planning and coordinating post-conflict scenarios. Assuming this complex backdrop, the present study offers a qualitative analysis of two recent US government reports by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) on US military engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, the US government sought to ‘nation-build’ by facilitating post-war stabilization and humanitarian assistance, detailing its genuine efforts to record both processes. While results indicate some limited successes in both cases, they also indicate a familiar pattern of uneven performance failures consistent with other cases internationally. The analysis concludes with recommendations for further research that may better control the contingencies of post-conflict management.

scholarly journals THE EU’S COMMON SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY IN THE CASE OF THE EULEX MISSION IN KOSOVO

2021 ◽  
pp. 199-218
Author(s):  
Bilbil Kastrati ◽  
Samo Uhan
Keyword(s):  
Crisis Management ◽  
Management Mechanism ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Expectations Gap ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
Defence Policy ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Common Security

Abstract. The article considers whether the EU’s CSDP missions are a suitable crisis management mechanism for post-conflict situations, along with the EU’s relevance in crisis management at all. For this purpose, the EU’s biggest CSDP civilian mission EULEX was chosen as a research case study. The research results reveal that EULEX has not implemented its mandate, not met the expectations of security consumers, not made any difference on the ground, and cannot be seen as an example the EU should rely on in its future missions. Further, EULEX shows that CSDP missions suffer from many shortfalls and the EU CFSP from a capability–expectations gap. The article concludes that the EULEX mission does not show the EU’s relevance in the crisis management of post-conflict situations.

Refugees

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Monsutti
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Cultural Adjustment ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Refugee Studies ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Social ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
The United Nations

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Please check back later for the full article. Refugees are understood as forcefully displaced people who flee conflict in their country of origin in search of safety in another country. Their international legal status is defined by the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention complemented by the 1967 Protocol. To be recognized as a refugee, an individual must fulfill three conditions: fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion; having crossed an international border and being outside his or her country of nationality; and having lost the protection of the country of origin. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has a mandate to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to some 20 million refugees, according to 2016 figures, and to promote the three solutions to their problem: voluntary repatriation in the country of origin; integration into the first country of asylum; resettlement in a third country. The more than 5 million Palestinian refugees fall under another set of texts and are supported by a separate agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). This body of international legal texts and practices has triggered the emergence of a whole set of studies in the social sciences. This new and distinctive field of research was further institutionalized when the Refugee Studies Centre was established in 1982 at the University of Oxford and when the Journal of Refugee Studies was launched a few years later. Anthropologists have played a significant role in these developments. Many have worked closely with humanitarian organizations assisting refugees on the ground, while many others have critically addressed the conceptual background of the notion, with its supposed state-centric and sedentarist bias, according to which solutions are found when movements stop. Refugees represent a practical and theoretical challenge for anthropology. Indeed, the figure of the refugee has been analyzed as a categorical anomaly that disrupts the functionalist idea that societies form coherent sets anchored in discrete territories. Is the refugee a distinct social type with specific protection needs, or does it result from a bureaucratic label that comes with potentially alienating consequences? Some authors insist that refugee studies have imported uncritically the legal and humanitarian terminology of governments as well as international and nongovernmental organizations. Some others consider that theory and practice should inform each other. This debate may call into question any sharp distinction between applied and fundamental research. Refugees are a field of study for anthropologists, but they also represent an opportunity for jobs. If there is little doubt that anthropology might inform the way refugees are assisted, a fundamental question is also how engagement with humanitarian action and post-conflict reconstruction will affect anthropological practice as well as theory. While 85 percent of the world’s forcefully displaced people are in developing countries, the so-called European refugee crisis of 2015 has attracted much attention. Among the many topics addressed in the first decades of the 21st century, let us mention the social meaning of the legal notions of asylum and refuge; refugees living in camps and so called self-settled refugees in urban centers; return; strategies developed by the people labeled as refugees and their capacity to respond to the situation they face; the long-term process of cultural adjustment; and memory of the country of origin and feeling of belonging.

scholarly journals The Influence of Post Conflict Interventions Measures on the Reconstruction of Public Primary Teacher Training Colleges in South Sudan

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Peter Ador Riak Nyiel ◽  
Daniel Komo Gakunga ◽  
Rosemary Khitieyi Imonje
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Training ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Descriptive Statistics ◽  
Primary Teacher ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
P Values ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Teacher Training Colleges

This study assessed the influence of humanitarian assistance post conflict interventions measures on reconstruction of public teacher training colleges in South Sudan. The study adopted a descriptive cross-sectional survey design and a total of 1953 respondents including the principals, tutors and teacher students from 3 registered and operational teacher training colleges in South Sudan. Stratefied random sampling technique was used to select 321 respondents as the sample size. Pilot study was conducted to asses validity and reliability of the instruments of the study. The study collected primary data using questionnaires and interview guides. The analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics like frequencies and percentages. Besides descriptive statistics, the study used inferential statistics including correlation and regression analysis. The results were presented using Tables and Figures. The study established that humanitarian assistance post conflict interventions measures (p<0.05) were all significant. Therefore, the study rejected the formulated hypothesis in favour of the alternative hypotheses since their p-values were all less than 0.05 as 5 per cent was considered as the level of significance in the study. Based on regression beta coeffecients and the p-values of the individual variables, the study concluded that humanitarian assistance post conflict interventions measures had positive and significant influence on reconstruction of public teacher training colleges. The study recommended that efforts or reconstructing teachers training college cannot bear fruits unless stakeholders including the humanitarian organizations have been actively involved.

scholarly journals الاجراءات الأمنية والانسانية لبناء السلام في مرحلة ما بعد النزاع

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
vaheel jabbar chalabee
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Security Sector Reform ◽  
Security Sector ◽  
Sector Reform ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Lasting Peace ◽  
Peace And Reconciliation ◽  
Conflict Period

الملخص بناء السلام بعد انتهاء النزاع عملية طويلة الامد، وتستوجب تظافر كل الجهود وعلى جميع المستويات وصولا الى حل الأسباب التي أدت الى نشوب النزاع ووصول أطرافه او حصولهم على حقوقهم، كي نكون أمام حالة سلام ايجابي دائم، وهذا يستلزم القيام بالعديد من الاجراءات وفي مقدمتها الاجراءات الأمنية والانسانية وهذا ما ركز عليه بحثنا، حيث قمنا بدراسة مفهوم السلام ومستوياته في المبحث الاول، وفي المبحث الثاني قمنا بتوضيح الاجراءات الأمنية والاصلاحية كنزع السلاح واصلاح القطاع الأمني كالشرطة، ونزع مخلفات الحرب كالألغام، نظراً لخطورة الوضع بعد انتهاء النزاع مباشرة والذي يستوجب معالجة سريعة لهذه الامور، كذلك بحثنا في الاجراءات الانسانية والاعمارية المتمثلة بتقديم المساعدات الانسانية واعادة النازحين والمهجرين والبدء في بناء البنية الاساسية والاقتصادية، والتي تعد ركائز لديمومة السلام وتحقيق المصالحة بين الفئات المتناحرة، وتوصلنا في ختام البحث الى جملة من الاستنتاجات والتوصيات.الكلمات الدالة: بناء السلام، النزاع، الاجراءات الامنية، اعادة الاعمار، مستويات السلام، نزع السلاح، ازالة الالغام.AbstractSecurity And Humanitarian Procedures To Build Peace In Post Conflict Period Building peace in post-conflict is a long-term process. It requires concerted efforts at all levels to resolve the causes of the conflict and giving the parties their rights to be in a state of lasting positive peace. This requires a number of measures or procedures, We discussed the concept of peace and its levels in the first topic. In the second, we explained the security and reform measures such as disarmament, security sector reform such as the police, and the removal of remnants of war such as mines, for the big risk of the situation in post conflict period, it demands immediate handle. And we also discussed in our research the humanitarian and reconstruction measures of providing humanitarian assistance, the return of the displaced, and the start of building the infrastructure and economy, which are the pillars of lasting peace and reconciliation between the conflicted groups. At the end of the study we reached a number of conclusions and recommendations. Key words: peacebuilding, Conflict, Security procedures, Reconstruction, levels of peace, Disarmament, Demining.

scholarly journals Strategic consulting and capacity building in US humanitarian policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-312
Author(s):  
Anna A. Velikaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Capacity Building ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Swot Analysis ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Infrastructure Development ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Economic Stabilization

Strategic advising and capacity building are closely interconnected, as they involve the deployment to foreign countries of American advisers who will act by strengthening democratization, attracting military and police contingents, civil administrators, providing humanitarian assistance, economic stabilization and infrastructure development. All of these instruments are aimed at strengthening American influence everywhere and are used by Washington through the activities of American advisers dealing working in developing and post-conflict countries. The practice of the U.S. strategic advising and capacity building exists since the 1940s, during the Cold war it was aimed at confrontation with the socialist system. The role of advisers in advancing interests is enormous and ubiquitous: from Ukraine to Syria, from Somalia to Haiti. It is closely related to other instruments of American humanitarian policy: public diplomacy, educational exchanges, development assistance. The transplant of US civil society concepts to foreign countries is doubtful, but meets American goals. The author evaluates US system of strategic advising and capacity building analysing activities of federal ministries and agencies. The hypothesis of the article that Washington would use these instrumwnts more broadly, and theyvwould be oriented more explicitly towards national defence interests. The article includes SWOT analysis of the US system of strategic advising and capacity building.

Humanitarianism in Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bronwen Everill
Keyword(s):  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Emergency Assistance ◽  
History Of ◽  
African Context ◽  
Development Goals

The history of humanitarianism in Africa has been shaped largely by the history of unequal power relations and the struggle between preservative and progressive approaches to the unintended consequences of intervention. As foreign powers and individuals became involved in identifying and aiding African “victims,” both action and inaction were fraught with political consequences that required further intervention. These interventions ranged from direct emergency assistance to longer-term development goals; from military aid to post-conflict state-building and capacity-building; from small-scale interventions by individuals through service missions to annual, multi-billion-dollar governmental aid packages. Although the scale and approach to humanitarian assistance varied dramatically over the continent and across two and a half centuries, humanitarian impulses were consistently based on the desire to help and were also consistently critiqued both in Africa and elsewhere. Imperialism and humanitarianism have been overlapping and interlocking ideologies in the African context, but independent African states, individuals, and marginalized groups have also made use of humanitarian language and ideology to further their own goals and promote their own causes across the modern period.

International Aid, Relief, and Humanitarian Assistance

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Monico ◽  
Karen Smith Rotabi ◽  
Taghreed Abu Sarhan
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Capacity Building ◽  
International Development ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
International Social Work ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
International Social

International development, humanitarian aid, and relief are at the heart of international social work practice. They have evolved historically and globally; shaped by world markets, social and environmental forces, including natural disasters. Considering this context, the authors cluster relevant social-work theories and practices as (a) human rights perspectives, and (b) ecological, feminist, and cultural theories. They discuss both micro and macro practice, with an emphasis on the latter. Case studies are presented with the overlay of relevant international conventions, guidance, and international private law. A continuum of humanitarian assistance is presented considering different countries. Guatemala is a prominent example in addition to Haiti’s massive earthquake of 2010 with recent revelations of sexual abuse and exploitation by humanitarian aid workers, post-conflict community-based practices in Afghanistan, and the largest cross-border forced migration in modern history of Iraqi, and Syrian refugees with this second group being of particular concern given their mass displacement. Capacity building as related to social work training is emphasized. This entry concludes that much remains to be accomplished with regard to capacity building among humanitarian assistance organizations so that the principles and practice strategies of international social work are institutionalized.

Disrupting Development, Reclaiming Solidarity: The Anti-Politics of Humanitarianism

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 16-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Tabar
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
Gaza Strip ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Development Discourse ◽  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Second Intifada ◽  
International Development Aid

Originally developed for the Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University in 2011, this paper examines the humanitarian assistance that flooded the occupied Palestinian territories after the beginning of the second intifada (2000–2005). It provides a critical analysis of the international development aid that was directed at Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where the Oslo process was territorialized, to the exclusion of the vast majority of the Palestinian people. Today, Palestinians are challenging the dominant development discourse and neoliberal economic model set in place by the Oslo Accords, wherein development recast Israeli settler colonialism as an externality, which the putative Palestinian state-building project would transcend. Returning to Yusif Sayigh's view that development cannot occur under settler colonialism, Palestinians are articulating alternatives to the Oslo post-conflict paradigm that emphasize self-reliance and resistance. The discussion that follows situates itself as a contribution to this process by interrogating the anti-political bias of humanitarianism and charting how indigenous Palestinians are building alternatives to food aid.

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