Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
267
result(s) for
"Muggah, Robert"
Sort by:
Transforming Our World: Implementing the 2030 Agenda Through Sustainable Development Goal Indicators
The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognizes violence as a threat to sustainability. To serve as a context, we provide an overview of the Sustainable Development Goals as they relate to violence prevention by including a summary of key documents informing violence prevention efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA) partners. After consultation with the United Nations (UN) Inter-Agency Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDG), we select specific targets and indicators, featuring them in a summary table. Using the diverse expertise of the authors, we assign attributes that characterize the focus and nature of these indicators. We hope that this will serve as a preliminary framework for understanding these accountability metrics. We include a brief analysis of the target indicators and how they relate to promising practices in violence prevention.
Journal Article
Reflections on the Evolution of Conflict Early Warning
Conflict early warning is supposed to identify and trigger actions to reduce the onset, duration, intensity, and effects of multiple forms of political violence. While the commitment of nations to broader conflict prevention was not universally shared in the twentieth century, the concept of conflict prevention - and by extension, conflict early warning - has acquired salience in international relations over the last 30 years. This growing engagement, coupled with advances in computing, has triggered increased investment in enhanced early warning mechanisms with increasingly sophisticated temporal and spatial dimensions. Yet, the practical operationalization of conflict prevention and conflict early warning lags behind its theoretical development for several reasons. These include, inter alia, limitations in early warning assessments; the limited availability, coverage, quality and verifiability of real-time data; complex modelling challenges emerging from endogeneity inherent in conflict processes; and, not least, an inherent lack of political will among relevant actors to act upon robust and compelling evidence of heightened risks of organized violence. The latter is the core of the so-called 'warning-response' gap. Despite these challenges, investments in advanced data collection and analysis techniques including machine learning, natural language processing and artificial intelligence are influencing the practice of early warning and response. This article offers a descriptive review of the form and function of conflict early warning systems over the past four decades. In the process, it provides insight into why many of these systems have yet to live up to expectations.
Journal Article
Next Generation Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration
The process of disarming, demobilizing and reintegrating ex-soldiers at conflict's end is as old as war itself. The results of these efforts are far from even. Even so, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) has assumed a central place in the imagination of the peace, security and development communities. It is frequently advanced as a key pillar of multilateral and bilateral stabilization and reconstruction efforts at war's end. Yet, the contexts in which DDR is conducted are also changing. As the United Nations and others grapple with the new geographies of organized violence, it is hardly surprising that they are also adapting their approaches. Organizations operating in war zones (and also outside of them) are struggling to identify ways of 'disengaging' Al Shabaab in Somalia or northern Kenya, Jihadi fighters in Syria and Iraq, Taliban remnants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Boko Haram militia in Nigeria. There are increasingly complex legal and operational challenges for those involved in DDR about when, how and with whom to engage. In order to effectively engage with these dilemmas, this article considers the evolving form and character of DDR programs. In the process, it considers a host of opportunities and obstacles confronting scholars and practitioners in the twenty first century, offering insights on future trajectories.
Journal Article
Measuring the True Costs of War: Consensus and Controversy
There was mounting concern not just for soldiers wounded and dying in battle, but also for the devastating implications of large-scale industrial warfare on civilians. [...]at least the 1950s and 1960s, the aerial bombardment and often indiscriminate targeting of citizens was treated by leaders as a regrettable, but in some cases unavoidable, form of collateral damage. Today there are considerable awareness and consensus about the causes and consequences of armed conflict in the roughly two dozen countries presently affected. Since the 1990s a veritable industry has developed, dedicated to measuring and monitoring the casualties brought about by civil war.
Journal Article
What Explains Criminal Violence in Mexico City? A Test of Two Theories of Crime
There are competing theories of what drives crime in cities and neighbourhoods. Two widely cited theoretical approaches focused on social disorganization and institutional anomie propose different explanations for the causes and dynamics of criminality. Yet these theories are seldom empirically tested, much less acknowledged, outside of North America and Western Europe. This article considers their applicability in Mexico’s capital, a sprawling metropolis of more than 20 million people. The authors administer spatial and general statistical tests to explain the geographical patterns of crime rates across multiple forms of criminality. The assessment demonstrates that both theories accurately predict the spatial distribution of crime. The article concludes with a host of policy conclusions, emphasizing social crime prevention over more traditional law and order measures. and consolidating families, parents and childcare.
Journal Article
Stabilization Operations, Security and Development
This edited volume provides a critical overview of the new stabilization agenda in international relations.
The primary focus of so-called stability operations since 9/11 has been Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Covering the wider picture, this volume provides a comprehensive assessment of the new agenda, including the expansion of efforts in Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia. By harnessing the findings of studies undertaken in Brazil, Colombia, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan and Sri Lanka, the volume demonstrates the impacts - intended and otherwise - of stabilization in practice.
The book clarifies the debate on stabilization, focusing primarily on the policy, practice and outcomes of such operations. Rather than relying exclusively on existing military doctrine or academic writings, the volume focuses on stabilization as it is actually occurring. Drawing on the reflections of scholars and practitioners, the volume identifies the origins and historical antecedents of contemporary operations, and also examines how the practice is linked to other policy spheres - ranging from peacebuilding to statebuilding. Finally, the volume reviews eight practical cases of stabilization in disparate regions around the globe.
This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, statebuilding, development studies and international relations in general.
eBook
Multilateral agencies and “citizen security” approach in Latin America
Multilateral development agencies have played a highly important role in the prevention and reduction of the violence in Latin America, particularly in the shift from a “public security” approach focussed on maintaining public order to a “citizen security” one of prevention and strengthening institutions. While the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has the broadest portfolio of projects and has been the pioneer since the end of the 1990s, the World Bank has financed interventions as part of its general development agenda, and the United Nations has participated in different areas through its various agencies. The interventions include comprehensive plans related to the modernisation of the State, as well as specific strategies aimed at reducing homicides. Although the participation of multilateral agencies is significant, diverse challenges to implementation remain, including monitoring and evaluation.
Journal Article
Negotiating Disarmament and Demobilisation: A Descriptive Review of the Evidence
Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) are considered a mainstay of peace and stability operations. Yet, there is surprisingly limited critical examination of how they are negotiated in peace processes or grafted into peace agreements. Given the growing criticism over the design and effectiveness of DDR, it is important to take account of the ways in which it is negotiated to begin with, how it is sequenced, what is included and excluded, and the types of alternative arrangements that are intended to promote confidence among parties. Drawing on existing datasets, this article finds that provisions of DDR are present in over half of all documented comprehensive peace agreements and less than ten per cent of all peace accords, protocols and related resolutions. Moreover, conflict mediators and parties to peace talks seldom regard disarmament and demobilisation as preconditions for negotiations, wary of derailing negotiations. They are nevertheless key considerations in relation to wider security sector transformation and transitional justice in the aftermath of war.
Journal Article