The Future of Human Security

The Future of Human Security

Human Security is often defined by two of FDR’s “four freedoms”: (1) Freedom from fear and (2) Freedom from want. Threats to those freedoms and the nature of their effects are as fluid and dynamic as everything else in our global security environment.

Dr. Charli Carpenter, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at UMass-Amherst (and “Duck of Minerva” maven), and her research team have been working to understand why some of these threats make their way onto the advocacy agenda, while others do not. Their work on transnational agenda setting is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

In the Summer of 2008, they asked the following question to about 6,000 Human Security advocates:

Name three or more specific issues that come to your mind when you think of human security today. An issue means something that human security specialists are actively concerned about.

Using the cloud-like visual display so popular these days, the results looked something like this, where the size of the word corresponds to the frequency with which the issue was mentioned:

Carpenter and her colleagues have recently completed a follow-up study using six focus groups with people around the world who are active in the Human Security network. With an eye to the future, they asked the focus group participants:

Which important global social problems in these thematic clusters had received too little attention by human security professionals to date?

The top 12 answers were as follows:

1. Opthalmic Care in Developing Countries.
2. Gangs. Going beyond the traditional concern about terrorist and insurgent groups, there is a growing threat from local-level, nonstate armed groups that compete with one another, and challenge state sovereignty and governance.
3. Indigenous Land Rights. Many participants suggested this issue will become even more prominent with the advent of forthcoming initiatives to mitigate effects of climate change.
4. Space Security. Concerns both about orbital debris and the possibility of new spaces extra-global spaces for human occupation. Can you say “lunar colony”?
5. Role of Diasporas in Conflict Prevention. In particular, the impact of outsiders, particularly diasporas, in intractable conflicts worldwide.
6. Workers' Right to Organize.
7. Waste Governance. We all know that “S*** rolls downhill” and apparently in developing areas it comes to rest nearer to the population than one would like, creating a myriad of health and environmental problems. As Dr. Carpenter says: “It's not sexy like climate change but it’s a significant environmental issue for billions of people worldwide.”
8. Sexual Orientation Persecution.
9. Water. Sometimes referred to as “Blue Gold,” the important of usable water has been on the Human Security radar from quite some time, but is viewed as an increasingly pressing concern for development, health, and perhaps for armed conflict.
10. Familization of Governance. Not only “Ol’ Boy” networks but “Ol’ Family” networks tend to dominate politics in many areas of the world, which hampers efforts at political reform and impedes initiatives to reduce corruption.
11. International Voting Rights. Participant advocates spoke for a need beyond promoting state-level democratic processes and institutions, to highlight more specifically need for international or global representation
12. Impunity for Death by Neglect. The notion here is that states ought be held more accountable for deaths resulting from governmental neglect (such as the 11 million children under five who die from preventable diseases each year), not just for those resulting from intentional acts of state violence.

Toward a Criminology of Genocide

In the most recent issue of the journal Theoretical Criminology (November 2009, Volume 13, No. 4 -Sage Publications), a special section is devoted to Criminology's potential contributions to the study and prevention of genocide.

Nicole Rafter of Northeastern University sets the stage for the series of articles that follow. She uses as a platform for the discussion the 2009 book: Darfur and the Crime of Genocide by John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond {Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xxii plus 269 pp. ISBN 978-0-521-51567-2 (hbk), 978-0-521-73135-5 (pbk)}, inviting four scholars of genocide and security issues to review the text and comment on its implications. All four reviewers offer generally positive appraisals, and seem to agree that the book has a strong theoretical and empirical grounding and makes a number of important contributions to the study of genocide. Rafter's lead-in offers the following introduction:

Slowly and belatedly, criminology is incorporating genocide as one of the crimes it can and must try to account for. Many criminologists are, in fact, anxious to include genocide in their theorizing and teaching, but they have lacked an example, a road map to guide them through this difficult terrain. Darfur and the Crime of Genocide offers that guide. To bring it to the attention of other criminologists, I invited four scholars to review the book and assess its potential for the evolving criminology of genocide. The reviews are followed by a response in which John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond react not only to the reviewers, but also to a challenge to the propriety of their attempt to intervene in African politics. In a number of ways, the following contributions mark a milestone in the development of criminological thought. (p. 475)

The first of the four reviews is provided by Joachim J. Savelsberg (Genocide, criminology, and Darfur, Theoretical Criminology 2009 13: 477-480.) who praises the fact that the authors apply "a sociologically based criminology to genocide scholarship... and impressively link empirical social science with the jurisprudence of genocide." He highlights several key contributions, but particularly notes the merit of their "theory of offending" in genocide, which he summarizes in the following way:

A nutshell version highlights the knowledge-related factors: precipitating conditions, especially (1) land competition and supremacist ideology produce Arab versus Black identities (or socially constructed racial groups) and thereby provide a vocabulary of motives and neutralization; they motivate (2) individualized racial intent (‘race’ as a vocabulary o motive) further promoted by field commanders with high levels of ‘social efficacy’ (as Ross Matsueda puts it) and ties to (and support from) the Sudanese government; and lead, via (3) frenzied collective action in which the yelling of racial epithets produces collectivized racial intent at the meso-level, back to (4) the macro-level with its patterns of a genocidal state as an endogenous system (that is, not explained by long-standing hatred or a defensive reaction to insurgency). (p 478)

The next review comes from Bruce Hoffman, the well-known scholar on extremism and international security (Mobilizing criminology: The boundaries of criminological science and the politics of genocide, Theoretical Criminology 2009 13: 481-485.). Hoffman describes how the book's authors use and discuss the 2004 Atrocities Documentation Survey (ADS) as an empirical basis for their arguments. The ADS was a study of 1136 Darfur refugees in UN Displacement Camps, commissioned by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to document the nature and scope of the Darfur atrocities and whether these atrocities should be characterized as a genocide. Hoffman comments specifically on their use of ADS data to derive mortality estimates, and its comparison to estimates from public health surveys :

The authors argue that the survey reflects a ‘criminological’ approach, not a ‘public health’ approach, to violence: unlike public health surveys that primarily emphasize mortality within displacement camps due to disease and living conditions, criminological surveys incorporate full measures of the violence that caused individuals to become refugees. The two methodological approaches reflect contrasting political stances toward humanitarian intervention. Public health approaches refer to displacement as ‘complex humanitarian emergencies’, a term that conceals and neutralizes responsibility for mass violence but facilitates humanitarian access to refugees. Criminological approaches, in contrast, seek to advance a human rights perspective by investigating violence as crime, potentially resulting in decreased access for aid organizations. (p. 483)

The next review by Hadar Aviram, titled: Mass atrocity and criminology (Theoretical Criminology 2009 13: 487-493.) offers an over-arching critique, but also highlights a potentially intriguing facet of the book; how it explicates the role of dehumanization in genocidal crimes:

Hagan and Rymond-Richmond also emphasize, through shocking and heartbreaking interview quotes, another dimension of the Darfur horror: the vicious, dehumanizing animus behind the attacks (Ch. 1 and p. 119). This raises the important question of the uniqueness of genocide. Dehumanization of the victim has been acknowledged as a feature that accompanies much ‘regular’ crime, not even just violent crime; it is not a phenomenon unique to genocidal settings, but in this latter context it manifests itself in a particularly chilling way. (p.490)

Next up, Ross L. Matsueda (Toward a new criminology of genocide: theory, method, and politics, Theoretical Criminology 2009 13: 495-502.) offers support for the discipline of Criminology to turn its attention to the crimes of genocide, but thinks its should perhaps focus more on legal remedies and responses. He also offers some additional theories or viewpoints that might guide the author's sociologically-driven analysis.

Hagan and Rymond-Richmond have convincingly argued for a new criminology of genocide and have provided an exemplary empirical study for the new enterprise. They have shown that, for genocide, it is not enough to examine social disorganization (weak organization against crime), but rather, attention must be paid to organization in favor of crime, as it dynamically unfolds through collective action. Such action is intertwined with conventional organization in complex, historically specific ways. But the criminology of genocide must go further and critically evaluate the limitations of legal responses to genocide, examine the politics behind definitions of genocide, and demystify the political dynamics in which economically dominant nation-states at times seek to manipulate international legal institutions and principles so that their parochial interests are portrayed as the interests of all. (p. 500)

Finally, the book's authors, John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond respond to and comment on the four reviews (Criminology confronts genocide: whose side are you on?
Theoretical Criminology 2009 13: 503-511.). They begin with the general assertion that "it's about time" criminology invested in the study of genocide.

It took criminology a long time to address some of its most important topics, for example, white-collar crime. It took criminology even longer to confront its more deadly neglected topics, namely genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Yet as we begin to study genocide it rapidly becomes apparent that our discipline brings a rich array of theories and methods to this crucial task. (p. 503)

They go one to address the critical objections and suggestions raised by each of the reviewers, including some concerns about how and the extent to which they focus on "race" in their analyses.

Race is a complex social construction and there is good reason to ask whether its role in our analysis is essential, or alternatively whether we might assign race too much importance when a discussion of ethnicity instead might better suffice. Matsueda and Hoffman point to the complexity of racial conflicts and Aviram suggests the nuance and legal advantage of a focus on ethnicity, while Savelsberg reminds us that the way we apply a concept such as race in the social and legal analysis of genocide can have profound implications for the collective memory of groups involved in the conflict. (p.506)

They also acknowledge how focusing on race and focusing on ethnicity can have different implications for analyzing genocide:

We also think it is important to consider the contrasting implications of applying the concepts of ethnicity and race in Darfur. The concept of ethnicity tends to be more pluralistic than the binary construction of race, while ethnicity also incorporates more self-imposed as contrasted with other-imposed designations than race. The concept of ethnicity therefore can be more complex and subjective in its understanding, while conceptions of race can be more rigidly and narrowly socially constructed. However, we argue that it is precisely the simplification, rigidity, and narrowness involved in deadly applications of social constructions of race during mass atrocity that can be especially important in explaining the resulting genocide, and we argue this can be especially well demonstrated using the Chad survey of Darfur’s refugees – a historic survey of genocide as it happened in ‘real time’ in Africa. (p.506-507)

They conclude with the following:

Criminology should not wait to confront genocide in the full depth and breadth of all its scholarly, legal, and moral dimensions. (p.510)

Genocide, of course, is only one of the potential areas of security-related scholarship that might benefit from criminology's attention. Another article in the same issue of the Journal deals with the issue of torture and coercive interrogation (Michael Welch, American ‘pain-ology’ in the war on terror: a critique of ‘scientific’ torture , Theoretical Criminology 2009 13: 451-474). Though the principal aim of that article is to debunk and critique the use of social and behavioral science research to justify these coercive techniques, the most comprehensive analysis of that research literature to date (Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art -Foundations for the Future) is not even cited and only cursorily mentioned once as an aside.

Criminology does, indeed, have much to offer to understanding and addressing National/International Security issues. It is encouraging to see some of them beginning to be addressed in the pages of its peer-reviewed journals.

Rafter, N. (2009). Darfur and the Crime of Genocide by John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond: a symposium: Introduction Theoretical Criminology, 13 (4), 475-475 DOI: 10.1177/1362480609345440

Monitoring Sudan

Security is Sudan is vital, but remains elusive. The U.S. has become increasingly mindful of the need to monitor social and political situations around the Horn of Africa and to encourage greater stability. Key security interests for U.S. and the global community include buffering the expansion of terrorist safehavens - recall that Sudan graciously hosted Usama bin Laden when he was rejected by the Saudi government - and quelling a legacy of ethnic violence and human rights abuses.

Sudan is a major player in the East African region, but they are not a unified front. The North and South continue to be engaged in a protracted struggle, and to function largely as separate and adversarial political entities. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) provided a stopgap measure, and set the stage for elections to occur in February 2010. But Southern Sudan is still plagued by very deep challenges that do not provide an environment conducive to legitimate and peaceful elections. There is civil unrest between Southern communities, violent opposition and threat from militia groups, and charges that the North is obstructing the CPA.

With scheduled elections just four months away, Sudan deserves the attention of the global security community. A wonderful source of information is The Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment (HSBA) Project, a component project of the well-known "Small Arms Survey." I have provided a their project description below and would encourage you to visit the site and perhaps subscribe to their free email alerts.

The Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment (HSBA) is a multi-year research project administered by the Small Arms Survey, an independent research project of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. It has been developed in cooperation with the Canadian government, UNMIS, UNDP, and NGO partners. Through the active generation and dissemination of timely empirical research, the project supports violence reduction initiatives, including disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes, incentive schemes for civilian arms collections and security sector reform and arms control interventions across Sudan. The HSBA also offers policy-relevant guidance on redressing insecurity. The objectives of the project are the following:

* to investigate international, regional, and domestic transfers of arms;
* to assess domestic small arms stockpiles and inventories;
* to map and assess origins, motivations, and distribution of armed groups;
* to measure the scale and distribution of mortality, morbidity, and victimization; and
* to examine local security arrangements and demand for weapons.

The project publishes its findings regularly in two separate formats, Issue Briefs and Working Papers, as well as in occasional op-eds and practitioner articles. Publications are available in English, Arabic and French (in the case of research on the Central African Republic and Chad), and they maintain an excellent listing of Sudan-related web links.

Sudan At-A-Glance

Background
(Source CIA World Factbook):

• Gained independence from the UK in 1956

• Two long civil wars over the ensuing 40 years. The second one left 2 million dead and 4 million displaced.

• Ruled mainly by military regimes favoring Islamic-oriented governments

• Conflicts arise because ruling power – principally Muslim Arabs - is concentrated in the north, but the southern populace is largely non-Muslim, non-Arab.

• The North/South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in January 2005, granted the southern rebels autonomy for six years.

• A separate conflict in the western region of Darfur in 2003, has left 200,000-400,000 dead and 2 million displaced.

• The UN took command of the Darfur peacekeeping operation from the African Union on 31 December 2007.

• As of early 2009, peacekeeping troops were struggling to stabilize the situation, which has become increasingly regional in scope, and has brought instability to eastern Chad, and Sudanese incursions into the Central African Republic.

• Sudan also has faced large refugee influxes from neighboring countries, primarily Ethiopia and Chad.

• Humanitarian assistance in severely hindered by armed conflict, poor transport infrastructure, and lack of government.

Capital: Khartoum

Total Area: 2,505,813 sq km – Largest country in Africa. (slightly more than one-quarter the size of the US)

Population: 41,087,825 - -40.7% under the age of 15.

Major infectious disease risk: VERY HIGH

Ethnic groups: Black 52%, Arab 39%, Beja 6%, foreigners 2%, other 1%

Religions: Sunni Muslim 70% (in north), Christian 5% (mostly in south and Khartoum), indigenous beliefs 25%

Languages: Arabic (official), English (official), Nubian, Ta Bedawie, diverse dialects of Nilotic, Nilo-Hamitic, Sudanic languages

Literacy: 61.1% of people age 15 and over can read and write.

Government type: Government of National Unity (GNU) - the National Congress Party (NCP) and Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) formed a power-sharing government under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

Legal system: Based on English common law and Islamic law; Islamic law applies to all residents of the northern states regardless of their religion; however, the CPA establishes some protections for non-Muslims in Khartoum

Judicial branch: Constitutional Court of nine justices; National Supreme Court; National Courts of Appeal; other national courts

Economy: Crude oil export since 1999. Oil production quadrupled between 1999 and 2003. Unlike most oil producing states, Western oil companies have minimal presence. Agricultural production remains important, because it employs 80% of the work force and contributes a third of GDP. Estimated GDP- $87.27 billion (2008). 40% of population below the poverty line (2004).

Communications: Internet users-1.5 million (2007); Cell phones- 7.464 million; 3 TV stations

Military: Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF): Land Forces, Navy, Sudanese Air Force (Sikakh al-Jawwiya as-Sudaniya), Popular Defense Forces; Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA): Land Forces (2009)

Refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs): 5.3 - 6.2 million (civil war 1983-2005; ongoing conflict in Darfur region) (2007)

Human Trafficking: Sudan is a source country for men, women, and children trafficked internally for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation; Sudan is also a transit and destination country for Ethiopian women trafficked abroad for domestic servitude. Sudanese women and girls are trafficked within the country, as well as possibly to Middle Eastern countries for domestic servitude. They are also trafficked to rebel organizations and militias in Sudan, Uganda, and Democratic Republic of Congo.

International Challenges

• Sudan’s decades of civil conflict have penetrated its neighboring states

• As of 2006, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda provided shelter for over half a million Sudanese refugees, which includes 240,000 Darfur residents driven from their homes by Janjawid armed militia and the Sudanese military forces.

• Sudan accuses Eritrea of supporting Sudanese rebel groups.

• Ongoing border disputes with Ethiopia, exacerbated by civil and ethnic fighting in eastern Sudan

• Border/sovereignty disputes between Sudan and Kenya about the "Ilemi Triangle."

• Periodic violent skirmishes with pastoral Sudanese residents along the border with the Central African Republic over water and grazing rights.

Domestic Challenges

Sudan faces major challenges on all fronts:

• Darfur crisis continues to plague the West

• Civil and ethnic fighting, intermixed with border disputes, affect the East

• Deep, enduring disputes continue between factions in the North and South

These are complex and diverse problems, not a monolithic challenge. Wrapped around the political, ethnic, and religious differences is increasing competition for the nation’s vital, but scarce resources such as oil and water.

The Darfur crisis has garnered the most public attention and become the public face of the turbulent nation, but the problems facing other regions are certainly non-trivial. South Sudan, for example, remains one of the most underdeveloped regions in the world. The lack of strong governance and health infrastructure and the proliferation of weapons have created a pervasive climate of disorder and insecurity. Not quite as bad as in neighboring Somalia, perhaps, but certainly troubling. The Small Arms Survey project (an independent research project of the Graduate Institute of International Studies) recently conducted their Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment (HSBA) in Sudan southern “Lake States” region.

The HSBA – focusing on the impact of “small arms” - characterizes the situation in the Lake States (which, of course, may not generalize to the entire South of Sudan) as follows:

• Lakes State residents are heavily armed. More than one-third (35 per cent) of respondents admitted that they or someone in their compound possessed a firearm. Among respondents reporting weapons ownership, the most commonly held arms included AK-47 automatic assault rifles (31 per cent),

• Almost two-thirds of respondents believe that communities are over-armed. Sixty-three per cent believe that there are too many guns in the community, with the primary group considered over-armed being civilians (31 per cent), followed by youth (19 per cent), criminals (16 per cent), and ex-combatants (13 per cent).

• Contrary to expectations, fewer than half of respondents feel that their personal security has improved since the signing of the CPA. Well under half of respondents claimed to feel safe walking alone at night or to another village Even more dramatically, one-third reported feeling unsafe walking alone during the day.

• Violent insecurity is pervasive—with robbery and fights most commonly reported. More than half of all households reported having been robbed and involved in a physical fight with someone from outside their compound since the signing of the CPA. Robberies, armed attacks, and intentional fatal injuries were most commonly attributed to conflicts over livestock. Violent deaths were also frequently linked to ‘fights with enemies’, usually over cattle, grazing land, and water sources. Within compounds, such fights were most commonly associated with ‘disobedience’ or, more likely, domestic and intimate partner violence.

• Only about one-quarter of those who died from violent attacks received medical treatment. Because of the great distances that must be travelled to reach medical facilities—often five to six hours—most (74 per cent) people who died from injuries were not able to seek medical treatment after being wounded.

Looking to the Future

The 2005 North/South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), provided a 6 year interim solution. We are already four years into that term. The country is now having to think about how they will proceed – how will elections be handled (which as we see in Afghanistan, can be quite complex) and how will their outcomes be received (which as we see from Iran, can be a less-than-straightforward process).

The U.S. Institute of Peace has been trying to think about Sudan’s future. They held three workshops in April-May of this year with at least 20 Sudan experts focused on understanding the obstacles and opportunities for preventing political violence in Sudan through 2011.

They outline the following summary of those deliberations:

• Absent a change in current trends, further political violence in Sudan will be hard to avoid.
• Lack of governance capacity in the South and failure to resolve key issues between the North and South are important factors that can lead to political violence surrounding the referendum, slated for 2011, on whether the South secedes or remains part of a united Sudan.
• The parties need a shared sense of confidence about post-2011 futures.
• The North should be encouraged to cooperate in the referendum process and accept the outcome.
• The Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) should devote more energy and resources to governance and service delivery rather than building military capability.
• The international community needs an assistance strategy focused on enhancing the GOSS’s capacity to deliver services through local governments.
• The United States and the international community should pressure and assist the parties to promptly pass referendum legislation and address fundamental issues (e.g., oil and boundaries) before the referendum.

Genocide: Criminological and CJ Perspectives

The June, 2009 issue of International Criminal Justice Review is a special issue devoted to genocide (defined here as the mass murder of people based on a specific agenda). It is guest edited by Professor John Winterdyk, who also serves as the outgoing chair (2009) of the International Section for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS). In his Introduction to the special issue, Professor Winterdyk notes that: "this is the first time a mainstream criminology/criminal justice journal has dedicated an entire issue to the subject of genocide."

He begins by tracing the history of interest (or absence of interest) in genocide among criminal justice scholars, sharing the regret expressed by Day and Vandiver (2000) “that criminology, by largely ignoring the crime of genocide, has missed opportunities to both contribute to the field of genocide studies and to improve the specification of its own ideas” (p. 43). George Yacoubian examined papers presented at meeting of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) and ACJS as well as major criminology journals between 1990 and 1998, finding the topic of genocide to be all but absent from the agenda. A re-examination of ASC and ACJS conferences since 2000 shows a similar trend.

A key objective among the authors in organizing this special issue is "to promote and encourage the study of genocide by criminologists and other scholars by publishing theoretical and empirical studies of genocide."

His introduction briefly reviews the scope of genocide's global importance and challenge, citing data to show that throughout history - including in the 20th Century, the number of deaths from genocide have dramatically outpaced deaths resulting from war. He reviews some of the major international definitions and describes how the field of genocide studies has gown in other disciplines and academic sectors.

He concludes with a synopsis of each of the six articles comprising the special issue, offering his hope that they show "there is considerable work that can be done by academics within criminology and criminal justice to help address and ameliorate genocide from happening in the future."

Winterdyk, J. (2009). Genocide: International Issues and Perspectives Worthy of Criminal Justice Attention International Criminal Justice Review, 19 (2), 101-114 DOI: 10.1177/1057567709334217