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Abstract: The Examples from the Ground are concrete illustrations of ways in which a gender perspective has been integrated in different security sector institutions around the world. They range from measures to counter human trafficking in Kosovo, to women’s organisations’ involvement with security institutions in Nepal, to female parliamentarians’ contribution to post-conflict reconstruction in Rwanda. These examples can help policymakers, trainers and educators better understand and demonstrate the linkages between gender and SSR.
The examples are organised around the following nine themes, for which a short introduction is provided:
• Police Reform and Gender
• Defence Reform and Gender
• Justice Reform and Gender
• Penal Reform and Gender
• Border Management and Gender
• Parliamentary Oversight of the Security Sector and Gender
• National Security Policy-Making and Gender
• Civil Society Oversight of the Security Sector and Gender
• SSR Assessment, Monitoring and Evaluation and Gender
Individual examples can also be downloaded individually, in English or in French, at: http://gssrtraining.ch/index.php?option=com_content&view;=article&id;=4&Itemid;=131⟨=en
Abstract: At least 71 journalists were killed across the globe in 2009, the Committee to Protect Journalists announced Tuesday, the largest annual toll in the 30 years the group has been keeping track.
Twenty-nine of those deaths came in a single, politically motivated massacre of reporters and others in the Philippines last November, the worst known episode for journalists, the committee said.
But there were other worrisome trends. The two nations with the highest number of journalists incarcerated — China had 24 journalists imprisoned at the end of 2009 and Iran had 23 — were particularly harsh in taking aim at bloggers and others using the Internet. The number jailed in Iran has since jumped to 47, the committee said. Of the 71 confirmed deaths, 51 were murders, the committee said. The report noted that 24 additional deaths of journalists remained under investigation to determine if they were related to the journalists’ work. Previously, the highest number of journalists killed in a single year was 67, in 2007, when violence in Iraq was raging.
Abstract: Because of their growing membership and globalization, urban youth gangs have become a public security threat that must be addressed. Gangs once provided outlets for marginalized youths to socialize, control territory, and release aggression. More recently, some have evolved into informally affiliated international criminal networks. Two predominantly Hispanic gangs -- Calle 18 and Mara Salvatrucha -- began to proliferate in Los Angeles during the 1960s and now have fraternal links to some 130,000 to 300,000 members in Mexico and Central America and have expanded across the United States to major cities and rural communities on the Eastern Seaboard. Gang activities range from defending neighborhood turf to armed robbery, extortion, alien smuggling, and arms and drug trafficking. Gangs provide a handy supply of young collaborators for organized crime. Their transnational nature is facilitated by fluid migration across porous national borders, incarceration with experienced criminals in U.S. prisons, and the weak rule of law in Mexico and Central America. Although no hard evidence links them with terrorist networks, transnational gangs are a potential menace to the stability of North American neighbors of the United States.
Abstract: The 110th Congress has maintained a keen interest in the effects of crime and
gang violence in Central America and its spillover effects on the United States. Since
February 2005, more than 2,000 alleged members of the violent Mara Salvatrucha
(MS-13) gang have been arrested in cities across the United States. These arrests
have raised concerns about the transnational activities of Central American gangs,
and governments throughout the region are struggling to find the right combination
of suppressive and preventive policies to deal with them. Some analysts assert that
increasing U.S. deportations of individuals with criminal records to Central American
countries may be contributing to the gang problem.
Several U.S. agencies have been actively engaged on both the law enforcement
and preventive side of dealing with Central American gangs. An inter-agency
committee worked together to develop a U.S. Strategy to Combat Criminal Gangs
from Central America and Mexico, which was announced at a July 2007 U.S.-Central
American Integration System (SICA) summit on security issues. The strategy, which
is now being implemented, states that the U.S. government will pursue coordinated
anti-gang activities through five broad areas: diplomacy, repatriation, law
enforcement, capacity enhancement, and prevention.
During the first session of the 110th Congress, several Members introduced
immigration legislation – H.R. 1645 (Gutierrez), S. 330 (Isakson), and S. 1348
(Reid) – that included provisions to increase cooperation among the United States,
Mexico, and Central America in the tracking of gang activity and in the handling of
deported gang members. However, none of those bills were enacted. On October 2,
2007, the House passed H.Res. 564 (Engel) supporting expanded cooperation
between the United States and Central America to combat crime and violence. The
Consolidation Appropriations Act, FY2008 (H.R. 2764/P.L. 110-161), included the
provision of $8 million to the State Department to combat criminal youth gangs, $3
million more than the Administration’s request.
In June 2008, Congress appropriated $60 million for Central America in the
FY2008 Supplemental Appropriations Act, H.R. 2642 (P.L. 110-252). Those funds
will serve as initial funding for the Mérida Initiative, a new anticrime and counterdug
aid package for Mexico and Central America. With that funding, the State
Department reportedly plans to use roughly $13 million to support direct anti-gang
efforts, with another $4 million included for justice sector reform, $8.6 million for
police reform, and $18 million for related development programs.
This report describes the gang problem in Central America, discusses country
and regional approaches to deal with the gangs, and analyzes U.S. policy with respect
to gangs in Central America. It will be updated periodically. For more information
on the Mérida Initiative, see CRS Report RS22837, Merida Initiative: U.S. Anticrime
and Counterdrug Assistance for Mexico and Central America. For information on
the activities of Central American gangs in the United States, see CRS Report
RL34233, The MS-13 and 18th Street Gangs: Emerging Transnational Gang Threats.
Abstract: Although all countries, in theory report their authorized transfers - and
such information may even be available in certain public databases - the
task of providing an overview of SALW transfers, their parts and
munitions, is an arduous one. Nonetheless, despite the difficulties, we
have some extremely positive initiatives on a global scale, such as for
example, the Small Arms Survey, recognized as an important source of
information, especially on SALW production and transfers, as well as the
Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers (NISAT) which has a
database containing transfer records going back to 1962.Despite these
important initiatives, themselves when researchers, activists and policy
makers try to understand a regional market, such as Latin America and
the Caribbean, they encounter a dearth of information. With the intent of addressing this shortcoming, En La Mira has, since 2007, dedicated an
issue to transfers of SALWs, parts and ammunition in this region. Further, according to statistics from the United Nations Commodity Trade
Statistics Database (UN-Comtrade or Comtrade), USD 6.7 billion were
exported between 2004 and 2006, while USD 6.5 billion were imported.
Despite the fact that Latin America and the Caribbean represent 6% and
3%, respectively, of total transfers worldwide during this period, 42% of
firearms related homicide is committed in the region. This discrepancy
between the international transfer volume share and the levels of armsrelated
violence in Latin America and the Caribbean calls attention to
itself, above all because of the tragic and startling number of homicides.
Obviously, far from wishing to increase arms transfers in order to be more
in sync with homicide rates, we decided, a year ago, to study this issue
and periodically monitor its development based on our interest in
understanding the primary legal entry and exit routes of firearms and
ammunition. The result is a report - based on customs information as
stated by Latin American and Caribbean countries and their respective
partners - whose objective is to describe the movement of the SALW
imports and exports, as well as ammunition and parts, during the present
decade. Based on this data, we answer the following questions: who
exported and who imported? From whom? What? And when?
It is worth restating that the intent of this report is not to explain the
cause of arms imports and exports by Latin American countries. Beyond
merely providing information, we do indeed wish to awaken, by means of
the information presented here, the curiosity of other researches, activists
and government staff members such that they may continue to perform research in their countries regarding the transparency of this information,
on who is using the transferred SALW, and how.
The data used for this report came from the NISAT database, which
contains more than 800,000 entries for SALW transfers worldwide since
1962. The NISAT database gets its information from different sources,
COMTRADE among them. In this study we decided to restrict ourselves
to data from this latter source because, in theory, all countries report
transfers to the UN. This data is declared in accordance with the
Harmonized System (SH) merchandise classification system. The HS has
existed since 1988and, in 2007, was revised for the fourth time; previous
revisions were in 1992, 1996 and in 2002. Regarding the period analyzed,
we are looking at data up until 2006, since at the time the study closed
this was the most recent year available on NISAT.
Abstract: La Coalition pour la Cour Pénale Internationale (CPI) - un réseau de plus de 2.500 organisations non gouvernementales de la société civile dans 150 pays- a invité aujourd'hui le Salvador, le Guatemala et le Nicaragua à rejoindre le reste de l'Amérique latine et des Caraïbes en démontrant leur engagement pour la justice internationale et l'état de droit en ratifiant le Statut de Rome de la Cour Pénale Internationale (CPI). La CCPI a choisi de concentrer ses efforts durant le mois d'août 2008 sur ces trois pays comme éléments de la Campagne de Ratification Universelle.
Abstract: Central America has the reputation of being a violent region with high crime rates, youth gangs, drug traffic, and ubiquitous insecurity. Politicians, the media, and social scientists in and outside the region often claim that the societies are in complete agreement with their judgment of the situation and that all society members are calling for law and order and social segregation. Focusing on Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, the paper analyzes the social perception of violence and crime. On the basis of essays written by secondary school students and interviews with citizens from all walks of life in the three countries, the paper points out how elite arguments on violence and crime are translated into
everyday life, and what society members suggest be done to deal with these problems. The sources prove that there are noticeable hegemonic discourses on violence and crime in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Simultaneously, a majority of the respondents call for social and integrative solutions rather than the so-called “iron fist.” The repressive trend in Central American policies therefore does not necessarily receive the presumed affirmation asserted by many authorities on and in the region.
Abstract: The paper analyzes the social construction of youth violence in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and El Salvador on the one hand, and the related security policies of the three states, on the other. In each country, there is an idiosyncratic way of constructing youth violence and juvenile delinquency. Also, each country has its own manner of reaction to those problems. In El Salvador youths are socially constructed as a threat to security, and the state implements predominantly repressive policies to protect citizens against that threat. In Nicaragua and Costa Rica, where the social discourse on youth violence is less prominent, the state's policies are neither very accentuated nor very coherent, whether in terms of repressive or nonrepressive measures. There are strong relations and mutual influences between the public's fear (or disregard) of youth violence and the state's policies to reduce it.
Abstract: The United Nations and other international agencies conducted three major post-conflict peacebuilding operations in central America in the 1990s: in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. Like the many other international peacebuilding missions that were deployed during the 1990s, the operations in Central America aimed to assist local actors in the implementation of peace settlements after civil wars, and more generally to create the conditions for what UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called a 'stable and lasting peace,' or a peace that is likely to endure for the foreseeable future. Peacebuilding, in other words, is more than merely the supervision of ceasefires among former combatants. According to both Annan and his predecessor, Boutros Boutros Ghali, the overarching goal of peacebuilding is to eliminate the underlying sources of conflict in a war-shattered state, in order to reduce the likelihood of renewed violence.
Abstract: Following the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the new world order did not bring about a closure of revolutionary warfare. In fact, the Soviet-inspired wars of liberation against imperialism have been eclipsed by reactionary, jihadist wars. By all indications in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, and Iraq, Islamic militants have embraced revolutionary warfare, although not Mao’s People’s War model. Therefore, a study of revolutionary warfare is apt because the conflict between the West and radical jihadism will continue to take place in dysfunctional, collapsing, or failed states. The author examines the political-military lessons from these conflicts and suggests that the United States should minimize the level and type of assistance to states fighting in an insurgency because these states possess greater advantages than previously supposed.
Abstract: It has become common to state that youth gangs and organized crime have seized Central America. For theories on contemporary Central American violence, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua present important test cases, demonstrating the need to differentiate the diagnosis. First, national discourses on violence differ from country to country, with varying threat levels, patterns of attention, and discursive leitmotivs. Second, there are border-crossing discursive nodes such as the mara paradigm, the perception of grand corruption, and gender-based violence tied to cross-national, national or sub-national publics.
The paper explores the ambiguity and plurivocality of contemporary discourses on violence, emanting from a variety of hegemonic and less powerful publics.
Abstract: Au Nicaragua, les attaques des contre-révolutionnaires sont repoussées par une armée mal préparée, avec l’aide des milices et d’une forte majorité de la population mobilisée derrière le gouvernement sandiniste. (Juin 1983.)
Abstract: This 18-page report documents how this ban on abortion has made women afraid to seek even legal health services. Fearing prosecution under the new law, doctors are unwilling to provide necessary care. The report is based on interviews with officials, doctors from the public and private health systems, women in need of health services, and family members of women who died as a result of the ban.
Abstract: The world is coming to recognise the interdependence of security and development issues. Moral imperatives
aside, poverty is no longer acceptable for reasons of simple common safety. Technology and globalisation
have made it possible for even the most marginalized groups to pose a threat to the most powerful.
Areas allowed to descend into social disarray generate, and provide refuge for, organised criminals and political
militants. Global security requires global development.
The problem is that the opposite is also true: development requires security. Investors do not put their
money in places where the rule of law does not prevail. Skilled labour does not reside in countries where
personal safety is at risk. Crime and corruption are derailing attempts to address the global polarisation of
wealth, as people choose not to invest their lives or their money where they are insecure. For the poor that
remain, the threat of crime retards their efforts to better themselves, as they structure their activities around
avoiding victimisation. Trust among countrymen is lost, and with it goes social cohesion. Cynicism about
the ability to succeed within the law breeds further insecurity, and whole regions can find themselves locked
into a downward spiral of victimisation and social disinvestment.
Further, crime and corruption undermine democracy itself. The primary responsibility of the state is to
ensure citizen security, and when it fails to establish basic internal order, it loses the confidence of the
people. When civil servants and elected officials come to be viewed as part of the crime problem, citizens
effectively disown their government. They become subjects rather than citizens. Whatever role the state
might play in development is seriously challenged by the loss of popular support.
It is therefore imperative that crime be addressed as a key development issue. Until threats to life and property
can be brought to acceptable levels, developing countries with serious crime problems will struggle to
gain the public confidence needed for forward progress. A foundational level of order must be established
before development objectives can be realised.
Due to its geographic location between the world's cocaine suppliers and its main consumers, Central
America has been exposed to exogenous organised crime pressures that would be challenging for countries
many times as large. Unfortunately, the region is particularly vulnerable to incursion by organised crime
due to a range of domestic factors, and this report opens by considering several of these, including social
and economic pressures, lack of law enforcement capacity, and a history of conflict or authoritarian rule. It
then looks at the nature of organised crime and violence in the region in some detail. Finally#, it considers
how the crime problem is undermining development efforts.
Abstract: Freedom House welcomes the vote by the United Nations General Assembly to elect Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina for the two open seats for Eastern European States in yesterday's election to the UN Human Rights Council. Belarus, the third candidate for the East Europe vacancies, was defeated in a tight race following a vigorous campaign by numerous human rights organizations and countries opposed to the candidacy of a country with one of the world's most abysmal human rights records.
Abstract: In March 2003, a U.S.-led multinational force began operations in Iraq. At that time, 48 nations, identified as a "coalition of the willing," offered political, military, and financial support for U.S. efforts in Iraq, with 38 nations other than the United States providing troops. In addition, international donors met in Madrid in October 2003 to pledge funding for the reconstru#ction of Iraq's infrastructure, which had deteriorated after multiple wars and decades of neglect under the previous regime.
This testimony discusses (1) the troop commitments other countries have made to operations in Iraq, (2) the funding the United States has provided to support other countries' participation in the multinational force, and (3) the financial support international donors have provided to Iraq reconstruction efforts.
Abstract: The armed conflicts that burdened Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution (1974-1979) and the Contra War (1979-1990) caused a multitude of problems in the country. Environmental problems were part of both the causes and consequences of the armed conflicts. Inequality of income distribution and increasing poverty were the primary causes of the revolution, but indirect environmental causes included destruction of hardwood forests, elimination of wildlife habitats, and toxic waste dumping. During the Contra War, the Sandinista government not only faced extreme economic problems stemming from United States economic sanctions but it also faced a variety of environmental problems including landmines hidden throughout the country, pesticide runoff, and soil erosion.
Abstract: Strengthening Resistance focuses on the points of intersection in the social, political and public health crises of violence against women and HIV/AIDS. The report uses a human rights lens to focus on critical political challenges and on innovative strategies used by activists worldwide as they respond to the links between violence and HIV/AIDS. From street theater to telenovelas/soap operas to traditional lobbying, activists in both VAW and HIV/AIDS communities are beginning to work together to focus attention to ways both crises are causes and consequences of each other. Neither can be addressed adequately without taking into account the links between them and the human rights implications of each crisis on its own, and in conjunction with the other. Strengthening Resistance is designed as an overview of the most salient issues, and is meant for activists and policy makers alike who may be familiar with HIV/AIDS, violence against women or human rights but not necessarily the nexus across all of these areas. The report highlights nine creative advocacy initiatives from different countries and regions, offers recommendations to a range of actors and contains a resource section for further study.
Abstract: Rising crime is threatening democratic development and slowing economic growth across Central America and Mexico. Gang activity has transcended the borders of Central America, Mexico, and the United States and evolved into a transnational concern that demands a coordinated, multi-national response to effectively combat increasingly sophisticated criminal gang networks. Recognizing that gang activity is a complex, multi-faceted and transnational phenomenon, the USAID Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean Office of Regional Sustainable Development (LAC/RSD) initiated the Central America and Mexico Gang Assessment in 2005 to study the phenomenon and propose solutions in five countriesxe2x80x94El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua.
Abstract: Nicaragua's gang problems are much different from those of its neighbors to the north. The level of violence reported in El Salvador, Honduras, or Guatemala is not found in the country. This is remarkable, given the number of weapons cached from the conflict in the 1980s. During this time, the population migrated from rural areas to urban areas, and gangs began to form in urban neighborhoods as a mechanism of survival. By the mid-1990s, neighborhood gangs were prevalent in many cities. Gangs, or pandillas, saw themselves as motivated by their "love for the neighborhood." Gang criminal tendencies were mugging, pick pocketing, shoplifting, and other low-level crimes. Gang warfare was waged between rival gangs in many of the 600 neighborhoods and squatter settlements in and around Managua. Confrontations with other gangs would start with sticks and stone-throwing and eventually escalate to guns, fragmentation grenades, and mortars. Neighborhoods became war zones, and people were reluctant to leave their homes unless necessary. Drug use was a part of the gang culture, although it was usually limited to marijuana, glue sniffing, and alcohol. By the early 2000s, Nicaraguan youth gangs became involved in the narco-trafficking trade that had existed along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua for decades. Gangs were involved in local wholesaling and pushing on the streets.
Abstract: Panama is a representative democracy with an elected executive composed of a president and two vice presidents, an elected 78-member unicameral legislature, and an appointed judiciary. In May, voters elected President Martin Torrijos of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) in generally free and fair elections, observed by domestic and international organizations. The Constitution provides for an independent judiciary; however, the judicial system was subject to corruption and political manipulation.
The Panamanian Public Forces consist of the Panamanian National Police (PNP), the National Maritime Service (SMN), the National Air Service (SAN), and the Institutional Protection Service (SPI). A 1994 constitutional amendment formally prohibits the establishment of a permanent military, although it contains a provision for the temporary formation of a "special police force" to protect the borders in case of a "threat of external aggression." The Ministry of Government and Justice oversaw the PNP, the SMN, and the SAN; the Ministry of the Presidency supervised the SPI. Security forces responded to civilian authority, had civilian directors, and had internal review procedures to deal with misconduct. There were occasional reports that some members of the security forces committed human rights abuses.
Abstract: The end of the Cold War was to usher in a new era of international peace and security. Instead, new types of conflicts have emerged and the international community has had to react quickly. New threats to peace have been countered with varying doses of peacemaking, peacekeeping, and, today, peacebuilding. This newest approach xe2x80x94 peacebuilding xe2x80x94 recognizes that the sources of violent conflict are complex and that human security and international stability will only be achieved by integrating political, military, and development efforts.
Canada and Missions for Peace explores Canada's involvement in recent international efforts to resolve violent conflicts in Nicaragua, Cambodia, and Somalia. It examines the complex interface between foreign policy, international security, and international development. In doing so, this book joins the ever-growing body of scholarship on the new peacebuilding agenda, offering a unique vantage point:
* It focuses on the motivations, dynamics, and impacts of Canadian foreign policy;
* It situates the Canadian effort within three very different and complex conflicts: Nicaragua, Cambodia, and Somalia; and
* It provides sobering insight and useful recommendations to guide future policy and programing in peacebuilding.
Perhaps it is too early to tell if a concern for international security can be combined with a concern for human security and well-being to form a new peacebuilding "architecture." The lessons and insight contained in Canada and Missions for Peace, however, will bring this vision into clearer focus.
Abstract: Nicaragua is a country overwhelmed by its history. Since colonial times, Nicaragua has suffered from political instability, civil war, poverty, foreign intervention, and natural disasters. Successive governments have been unable to bring political stability or significant economic growth to the country. Personal and foreign special interests have generally prevailed over national interests, and repeated foreign intervention in Nicaraguan political and economic affairs has resulted in nationalistic reactions and a legacy of suspicion of foreign governments and their motives.
Abstract: Nicaragua has a population of 5.1 million and an annual population growth rate of 2.7 per cent; 53 per cent of the population is under 18 years of age. Nicaragua's main challenge is to overcome inequity and poverty, which affect children and women most severely. The breakdown of income distribution shows that 45 per cent of all income goes to the richest 10 per cent of the population, while only 14 per cent goes to the poorest. Nicaragua is the third poorest country in the Americas, with a per capita gross national product of $453. Poverty affects 2.3 million persons, 831,000 of whom live in extreme poverty, mainly in the Central and Atlantic regions.
