scholarly journals The relevance of a contextualisation of the state-individual relationship for child victims of armed Conflict

Author(s):  
JA Robinson
2021 ◽  
pp. 232102302110430
Author(s):  
Wahid Ahmad Dar

The article focuses on the subaltern system of micro appropriations or Jugaads used by young Kashmiris to survive within precarious situations inflicted due to armed conflict. More particularly, it argues that such Jugaads are invoked by the subaltern consciousness of Tehreeq-e-Azadi, which offers space for not just the negotiation with the state but also the creative improvisation of daily political actions. It is illustrated that young people’s political participation is entangled with the attempts to overcome the uncertainty around their lives, thereby offering them pragmatic solutions in advancing their interests. It is further elaborated that the existing polarization between separatism and mainstream is obscure at the experiential level, living within precarious situations has taught young people to silently craft possibilities of a good life without looking confrontational to either side. The article argues that localized forms of engagement are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of how modern states operate.


Author(s):  
Paul David Mora

SummaryIn its recent decision in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v Italy: Greece Intervening), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held that Italy had failed to respect immunities enjoyed by Germany under international law when the Italian courts allowed civil actions to be brought against Germany for alleged violations of international human rights law (IHRL) and the law of armed conflict (LOAC) committed during the Second World War. This article evaluates the three arguments raised by Italy to justify its denial of immunity: first, that peremptory norms of international law prevail over international rules on jurisdictional immunities; second, that customary international law recognizes an exception to immunity for serious violations of IHRL or the LOAC; and third, that customary international law recognizes an exception to immunity for torts committed by foreign armed forces on the territory of the forum state in the course of an armed conflict. The author concludes that the ICJ was correct to find that none of these arguments deprived Germany of its right under international law to immunity from the civil jurisdiction of the Italian courts.


Author(s):  
Melissa Crouch

This article explores the ways Islam is recognized by the state in Southeast Asia, along with the scholarly debates that have arisen in response to these Islam-state configurations. It begins with an overview of the work of Professor M. B. Hooker, a pioneer of the field of comparative law in Southeast Asia, especially his study of Islamic law. It then considers how scholars have addressed the regulation and institutionalization of Islam in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and Singapore as well as the tensions and armed conflict between Muslim minorities and the state in Thailand and the Philippines, while largely overlooking Muslim minorities of Myanmar. Finally, it discusses the ongoing challenge of advocating for the importance of the study and contribution of Islamic law in Southeast Asia to the broader field of Islamic legal studies.


Author(s):  
Ryan Kiggins

This chapter investigates the increasing use of social media during a 2012 flare up in armed conflict between Hamas and the state of Israel. Through tweet and counter tweet, Israel, Hamas, and digital recruits engage in a duel as lethal to identity as kinetic projectiles. Internet connected devices such as smartphones have become hostile agents through the republishing of social media content. Such devices and social media content have material affects beyond the geographic battlespace. The advent of Internet connected devices and social media content concomitant with their use during armed conflict by hostiles beyond the geographic battlespace suggest that patterns of conflict are rapidly changing calling into question the notion of hostile, hostile acts, and battlespace. In a social media and smartphone saturated era, who and what counts as hostile (people, smartphones, and tweets) is increasingly ambiguous.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katariina Mustasilta

The continued influence of traditional governance in sub-Saharan Africa has sparked increasing attention among scholars exploring the role of non-state and quasi-state forms of governance in the modern state. However, little attention has been given to cross-country and over-time variation in the interaction between state and traditional governance structures, particularly in regard to its implications for intrastate peace. This study examines the conditions under which traditional governance contributes to state capacity to maintain peace. The article argues that the type of institutional interaction between the state and traditional authority structures influences a country’s overall governance dynamics and its capacity to maintain peace. By combining new data on state–traditional authorities’ interaction in sub-Saharan Africa from 1989 to 2012 with intrastate armed conflict data, I conduct a systematic comparative analysis of whether concordant state–traditional authorities’ interaction strengthens peace. The empirical results support the argument that integrating traditional authorities into the public administration lowers the risk of armed conflict in comparison to when they remain unrecognized by the state. Moreover, the analysis suggests that the added value of this type of interaction is conditional on the colonial history of a country.


2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1199-1225
Author(s):  
Lars-Erik Cederman ◽  
Simon Hug ◽  
Livia I. Schubiger ◽  
Francisco Villamil

While many studies provide insights into the causes of wartime civilian victimization, we know little about how the targeting of particular segments of the civilian population affects the onset and escalation of armed conflict. Previous research on conflict onset has been largely limited to structural variables, both theoretically and empirically. Moving beyond these static approaches, this article assesses how the state-led targeting of specific ethnic groups affects the likelihood of ethnic conflict onset and the evolution of conflicts once they break out. Relying on a new data set with global coverage that captures the ethnic identity of civilian victims of targeted violence, we find evidence that the state-led civilian victimization of particular ethnic groups increases the likelihood that the latter become involved in ethnic civil war. We also find tentative, yet more nuanced, evidence that ethnic targeting by state forces affects the escalation of ongoing conflicts.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Colwill

A definition of war limited to fields of battle orchestrated by monarchs or nation-states elides a primary form of state-sponsored violence at the heart of European wars of empire—slavery. It involved the forcible conversion of persons to chattel through the legal and military arms of the state—a conversion secured through the subjection of sexual, productive, and reproductive labor and the erasure of genealogies and family ties. In this sense, slavery could be seen as a protracted state of war. Armed conflict fueled the slave trade, slave revolts blended into “official” wars, and enslaved people sometimes spoke of slavery as a state of war. Soldiers and the state march front and center in the archives, their presence camouflaging the gendered implications of warfare for women, families, and statecraft. Yet armed conflict in the Age of Revolutions spilled beyond the battlefield, constructed distinct pathways to emancipation for men and women, and enshrined new, gendered forms of citizenship. These interrelated themes are the focus of this chapter.


Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-70
Author(s):  
Allen S. Weiner

A central element of the dominant view of just war theory is the moral equality of soldiers: combatants have equal rights to wage war against one another and are entitled to certain protections if captured, without regard to which side's cause of war is just. But whether and how this principle should apply in asymmetric armed conflicts between states and nonstate groups is profoundly unsettled. I argue that we should confer war rights on fighters for nonstate groups when they are engaged in violence that has risen to the level of armed conflict, and when the state against which the war is being waged is not entitled to assert its monopoly on the legitimate exercise of force, either because 1) the nonstate group has established sufficient control over territory to assert its own governing authority; or 2) because the group is located abroad. Conferring war rights on nonstate fighters does not, however, permit them to engage in acts that violate the laws of war. Fighters who commit such violations are individually subject to prosecution without regard to their group's entitlement to war rights.


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