Facing up to Global Insecurity: New Frameworks and New Tools
Issue:Global militarisation
Thinking through the consequences of the changing nature of global security, both in terms of threat assessments and policy responses to those threats (military and non-military), will certainly require new approaches at the broad conceptual level. Max G. Manwaring, a Professor of Military Strategy in the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the U.S. Army War College has written an interesting piece on what he calls the “new security reality” in which business-as-usual approaches are of little use.
Image source: Utah National Guard.
Read more »Posted on 1/10/12
No Sustainable Peace and Security Without Women
Issues:Global militarisation, Marginalisation
There will be no sustainable security if we do not equally value the needs, experiences and input of men and women. A new report published by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), funded by ActionAid and Womankind Worldwide, examines the role women play in local community peacebuilding in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. The report states “despite the increased international attention to women’s participation in peacebuilding, the achievements and challenges facing women building peace at the local level have been largely overlooked”.
Image source: United Nations Photo
Read more »Posted on 27/09/12
The United States, Niger & Jamaica: Food (In)Security & Violence in a Globalised World
Issues:Climate change, Competition over resources, Marginalisation
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) defines food security as “all people at all times having both physical and economic access to the basic food they need”. However, due to a complex range of interconnected issues from climate change to misguided economic policies, political failure and social marginalisation, over 2 billion people across the world live in constant food Insecurity. It is important to take a sustainable security approach to look at the importance of “physical and economic access to basic food” by exploring the links between food insecurity and violence.
Image source: Bioversity International
Read more »Posted on 24/09/12
"Chronic Violence": toward a new approach to 21st-century violence
Issues:Global militarisation, Marginalisation
The Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) recently published a Policy brief by Tani Marilena Adams, proposing and outlining the concept of “chronic violence” to “characterise the crisis of escalating social violence that currently affects about one-quarter of the world’s population”.
Basing her analysis largely on Latin America, Adams approaches “chronic violence” from a sustainable security standpoint, arguing that violence itself should not be seen as the disease to be controlled, and the problem to be solved, but rather as a symptom of many complex underlying issues that need to be addressed.
Image source: Shehan Peruma
Read more »Posted on 12/09/12
The New Insecurity in a Globalized World
Issues:Global militarisation, Marginalisation
Writing for SustainableSsecurity.org, Elizabeth Wilke argues that a new conceptualization of insecurity and instability is needed in a world with greater and freer movement of goods, services and people – both legal and illicit – greater demands on weakening governments and the internationalization of local conflicts. The new insecurity is fundamentally derived from the responses of people and groups to greater uncertainty in an increasingly volatile world. Governments, and increasingly other actors need to recognize this in order to promote sustained stability in the long-term, locally and internationally.
Image source: bass_nroll
Read more »Posted on 6/09/12
National security and the paradox of sustainable energy systems
Issue:Competition over resources
The transition away from a centralised global economy built around conventional energy sources to a decentralised global economy mostly fuelled by renewable resources is one we must make for the sake of our children’s futures and that of our planet. Writing for sustainablesecurity.org, Phillip Bruner asks if national security is at present, deeply concerned with preserving access to conventional energy, then how would national security for a decentralised renewable energy Internet be managed? Who would manage it? And what role, if any, could the public play in helping to alleviate some of the burdens of 21st century threat mitigation?
Image source: Truthout
Read more »Posted on 8/08/12
