Gramizzi, Claudio, and Jérôme Tubiana

Amid claims of declining violence and wider regional transformations, the Darfur conflict has all but vanished from the international agenda since 2010. Virtually unnoticed by the international community, the conflict has moved into a new phase, in which the Government of Sudan has shifted away from using Arab proxy militias only to rely on newly formed (and newly armed) non-Arab proxies. ‘Forgotten Darfur’ documents how this development has fundamentally changed the ethnic map of eastern Darfur, drawing on previously latent tensions between non-Arab groups over land, ethnicity, and local political dominance—and generating some of the most significant ethnically directed violence since the start of the conflict in 2003.

‘Forgotten Darfur’ also reports how patterns of arms supplies to Sudanese government forces and proxy militias in Darfur have been almost entirely unimpeded by the international community, including the ineffectual UN arms embargo on Darfur. The Sudan Air Force has continued to move weapons into Darfur with complete impunity; it supported ground attacks with aerial bombardment in all of Darfur’s states during 2011 and in West and North Darfur during 2012, despite the UN Security Council’s prohibition on such offensive aerial operations since 2005.

The report also documents how transformations, regime change, and realignments in Chad, Libya, and South Sudan have not fully removed either the mechanisms of the motives for cross-border flows of arms, personnel, or political support to Darfur’s armed actors. In particular, ‘Forgotten Darfur’ explores relations between rebels and communities in western South Sudan and South Kordofan, and their potential to draw the Darfur conflict into much larger North–South confrontations. Increased linkages between Darfur’s rebel groups and the SPLM-N in South Kordofan, and the overlooked potential for conflict on the Darfur–Bahr al Ghazal border, are also highlighted.

Durch, William J., Madeline L. England, Fiona B. Mangan, and Michelle Ker

Over the last decade or so, the UN Security Council gave complex UN peace operations broader mandates in police development, followed by mandates to help restore criminal justice systems and eventually for advisory support to national prison systems. The UN's rule of law community recognizes that an emphasis on quality of people and plans, what the UN calls a "capability-based approach," has to replace a quantity-based approach to meeting the requirements of such mandates.

The study was set up to search for "minimum essential tasks" - those that 1) always seem needed in comparable ways across missions; and 2) seem to consistently have the desired effects on the host country's approach to police, justice and corrections. It found that while certain tasks may always be needed, their implementation is often dependent on characteristics of a mission's operational environment over which the mission cannot exert direct control. Missions face perhaps irresolvable dilemmas in being asked to deploy quickly into places where politics can prevent the quick actions that peacebuilding precepts dictate, or with resources inadequate to substitute for capacities that government lacks. That is, they often have resources sufficient to offer some security and stability but not sufficient for very much else. The study identifies areas where the imprints left by the police, justice and corrections components of UN missions are larger than those of other players and offers recommendations for those components.

Beath, Andrew, Fotini Christia, and Ruben Enikolopov

In areas afflicted by civil conflict, development projects can potentially serve an important counterinsurgency function by redressing grievances of marginalized groups and reducing violence. Using a large-scale randomized field experiment in Afghanistan, this paper explores whether the inclusion of villages in the country’s largest development program alters perceptions of wellbeing, attitudes toward government, and violence in surrounding areas. The results indicate that the program generally has a positive effect on all three measures, but has no effects in areas with high levels of initial violence. These findings demonstrate that development programs can buttress government support and limit the onset of insurgencies in relatively secure areas, but that their effectiveness is more constrained in areas where insurgents are already active.

Drawing on comprehensive country-level data, including both conflict-related and criminal violence, it estimates that at least 526,000 people die violently every year, more than three-quarters of them in non-conflict settings. It highlights that the 58 countries with high rates of lethal violence account for two-thirds of all violent deaths, and shows that one-quarter of all violent deaths occur in just 14 countries, seven of which are in the Americas. New research on femicide also reveals that about 66,000 women and girls are violently killed around the world each year.

This volume also assesses the linkages between violent death rates and socio-economic development, demonstrating that homicide rates are higher wherever income disparity, extreme poverty, and hunger are high. It challenges the use of simple analytical classifications and policy responses, and offers researchers and policy-makers new tools for studying and tackling different forms of violence.

Kurtenbach, Sabine

Postwar societies are high-risk contexts for youth violence. Nevertheless, not all postwar societies are equally violent. This article explores how these variations can be explained by focusing on the interaction between youths and adult society in a comparison of Guatemala and Cambodia. Starting from the concept of socialization and the possibilities of performing status passages to adulthood, it analyzes not only the different risk factors but also the agency of young people and society in trying to cope with and overcome obstacles on the pathway to adulthood. Different patterns of war termination and of reconstruction after war’s end are identified as major intervening variables that explain the variations in youth violence in as well as across the case studies.

Vorrath, Judith

Over the last decade, researchers and policy-makers have paid increasing attention to diasporas. They have focused on diasporas not merely as a challenge, but as a source of largely untapped potential. Their transnational nature and peculiar position as non-state actors linking host and home countries has been identified as an important basis for engagement. Diaspora groups from sub-Saharan Africa in Europe, which according to a 2008 Council of Europe parliamentary report on immigration are roughly estimated to comprise between 3.5 and 8 million people, are not only a relevant force, but often come from homelands that have experienced or are still facing armed conflict. Against this background, this Occasional Paper addresses the question of what contribution diaspora communities can make to promoting peace in their homelands and how the European Union can engage with African diasporas in the field of peace and security.

Duthie, Roger

Transitional Justice is often pursued in contexts where people have been forced from their homes by human rights violations and have suffered additional abuses while displaced. Little attention has been paid, however, to how transitional justice measures can respond to the injustices of displacement. Transitional Justice and Displacement is the result of a collaborative research project of the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement. It examines the capacity of transitional justice measures to address displacement, engage the justice claims of displaced persons, and support durable solutions, and analyzes the links between transitional justice and the interventions of humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding actors. The book makes a compelling case for ensuring that justice measures address displacement and that responses to displacement incorporate transitional justice.

Locke, Rachel

Transnational organized crime is a global challenge posing serious threats to our collective peace and security. But in conflict-affected and fragile states the threats of transnational organized crime present particular and insidious challenges requiring new and innovative responses. Not only does TOC undermine the strength of the state, it further affects the critical and often contested relationship between the state and society. In fragile and conflict-affected states it is precisely the degraded nature of this relationship that often prevents progress toward greater peace and prosperity. While there is now an established correlation between conflict and state fragility, much less is understood about the relationship between transnational organized crime, conflict, and fragility. This report examines the dynamics between conflict, state fragility, and TOC, demonstrating how the three fit together in an uneasy triumvirate, and it presents ideas for a more effective response.

Daly, Catherine, Kimberly Heinle, and David A. Shirk

This special report is the result of research and monitoring efforts by the Justice in Mexico Project based at the Trans-Border Institute of the University of San Diego. The report begins with an overview of the growing role of the Mexican military domestic affairs over the last few decades, and especially under the Calderón administration. The report then provides documentation and analysis of the pattern of human rights complaints that have been formally registered against the military since Calderón took office in December 2006 and through mid-2012. Next, the report provides an explanation of Mexico’s current international human rights obligations, the factors that have limited protections against military human rights abuses in Mexico, and the recent progress that has been made in recent years in strengthening these protections. With the hope that Mexico will maintain its current direction and momentum in strengthening human rights protections, this report offers policy recommendations on how to continue to curb military human rights abuses in Mexico.

Okonta, Ike

The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), an ethnicmilitia, emerged in the Igbo-speaking region of Nigeria in 1999, shortly after military rule ended and Olusegun Obasanjo took office as elected President. MASSOB’s stated goal is the struggle for Igbo self-determination and the re-emergence of a new sovereign state in the eastern part of the country to be known as the ‘United States of Biafra’, thereby raising the spectre of a possible break up of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This Discussion Paper examines the circumstances of MASSOB’s emergence in a period of political transition and considerable uncertainty as the Nigerian armed forces began to prepare to relinquish their grip on power, and the specific ways the promoters of this ethnicmilitia movement have shaped Nigeria’s still unfolding democratization process since 1999.

Gounden, Vasu

The last decade has witnessed a revolution – both conceptually and operationally – in the commitment to protect civilians during conflict in general and in peace and stabilisation operations in particular. The protection of civilians agenda has recently gained considerable momentum. Its role within the humanitarian community has been consolidated and become a primary objective in peace and security operations. Currently, the African Union (AU) is in the process of developing its own approaches to the protection of civilians that are relevant and applicable to the African context. This article presents an overview of the evolution of the protection of civilians concept and its implementation with a focus on recent developments within the AU. Further, it presents some general challenges and opportunities for the AU. It raises some key questions on the on-going debate around the Au’s development of protection of civilians policies.

War and political violence have led to four major waves of displacement in Syria since 1967, forc¬ing up to two million people to flee their homes. The current uprising, now in its second year, has alone displaced as many as 1,500,000 people internally according to SARC. At least 500,000 more live in situations of protracted displacement stemming from Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights in 1967, the forcible eviction of Kurds from the north-eastern province of al-Hasakah during the 1970s and the 1982 assault on the city of Hama, which put down a revolt by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

For the last 15 months the Syrian authorities have been confronted with a popular uprising, part of a broader phenomenon across the Arab world which has seen the fall of long-established authoritarian governments. These had ruled for more than a generation, overstretching the rhetoric of anti-colonialism, anti-Zionism and pan-Arab nationalism. Overtime, these ideologies provided these governments with a veil for violence meted out against their own populations and the displacement that it caused. It was under this veil that Syria previously conducted its campaign against the Kurds and the inhabitants of Hama with relative impunity.

This report covers the causes and scale of Syria’s four displacement crises and IDPs’ protection needs arising from them. It examines the national response, which – with the exception of the Golanese, who embody the country’s resistance to Israel’s hegemony - has largely been to ignore IDPs’ plight. It also looks at the response of the international humanitarian community, which despite the widespread media coverage of the conflict afforded by the digital age, remains re¬stricted in its capacity to assist IDPs and other Syrians in need.