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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Armed conflict
It is estimated that of Syria's pre-war population, over half have been displaced from their homes, some having moved abroad and many remaining in the country despite the threats posed by civil war from Bashar Assad's government, ISIS, foreign intervention, and a proliferation of rebel groups and militias. Despite this, migration is just one option out of a broad set of potential self-protection strategies available to civilians, with other strategies including fighting, protesting, collaborating, or hiding. In this study, Justin Schon emphasises that civilian behaviour in conflict zones includes repertoires of survival strategies, instead of migration alone. Providing a microanalysis of civilian self-protection strategies during armed conflict in Syria, Schon draws on ten months of fieldwork in Turkey, Jordan, Kenya, and the United States, with over two hundred structured interviews with Syrian refugees. Exploring how civilians select specific survival strategies, their motives and opportunities, he reveals questions which have the potential to guide new research on civil wars, and affect how we think about other survival strategies, from political, violent, to environmental threats.
The history of international criminal justice is often recounted as a series of institutional innovations. But international criminal justice is also the product of intellectual developments made in its infancy. This book examines the contributions of a dozen key figures in the early phase of international criminal justice, focusing principally on the inter-war years up to Nuremberg. Where did these figures come from, what did they have in common, and what is left of their legacy? What did they leave out? How was international criminal justice framed by the concerns of their epoch and what intuitions have passed the test of time? What does it mean to reimagine international criminal justice as emanating from individual intellectual narratives? In interrogating this past in all its complexity one does not only do justice to it; one can recover a sense of the manifold trajectories that international criminal justice could have taken.
Rejecting claims that migration is a crisis for Europe, this book instead suggests that the 'migration crisis' reflects a more fundamental breakdown of a modern European tradition of humanism. Squire provides a detailed and broad-ranging analysis of the EU's response to the 'crisis', highlighting the centrality of practices of governing migration through death and precarity. Furthermore, she unpacks a series of pro-migration activist interventions that emerge from the lived experiences of those regularly confronting the consequences of the EU's response. By showing how these advance alternative horizons of solidarity and hope, Squire draws attention to a renewed humanism that is grounded both in a deepened respect for the lives and dignity of people on the move, and an appreciation of longer histories of violence and dispossession. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers working on migration in political science, international relations, European studies, law and sociology.
How and why do rebel groups initially form? Prevailing scholarship has attributed the emergence of armed rebellion to the explosion of pre-mobilized political or ethnic hostilities. However, this book finds both uncertainty and secrecy shrouding the start of insurgency in weak states. Examining why only some incipient armed rebellions succeed in becoming viable challengers to governments, How Insurgency Begins shows that rumors circulating in places where rebel groups form can influence civilians' perceptions of both rebels and the state. By revealing the connections between villagers' trusted network structures and local ethnic demography, Janet I. Lewis shows how ethnic networks facilitate the spread of pro-rebel rumors. This in-depth analysis of conflicts in Uganda and neighbouring states speaks to scholars and policymakers seeking to understand the motives and actions of those initiating armed rebellion, those witnessing the process in their community, and those trying to stop it.
This book offers a distinctive perspective on peace processes by comparatively analysing two cases which have rarely been studied in tandem, Ireland and Korea. The volume examines and compares Ireland and Korea as two peace/conflict areas. Despite their differences, both places are marked by a number of overlaid states of division: a political border in a geographical unit (an island and a peninsula); an antagonistic relationship within the population of those territories; an international relationship recovering from past asymmetry and colonialism; and divisions within the main groupings over how to address these relationships. Written by academics and practitioners from Europe and East Asia, and guided by the concepts of peacebuilding and reconciliation, the chapters assess peace efforts at all levels, from the elite to grassroot organisations. Topics discussed include: historical parallels; modern debates over the legacy of the past; contemporary constitutional and security issues; civil society peacebuilding in relation to faith, sport, and women's activism; and the role of economic assistance. The book brings Ireland and Korea into a rich dialogue which highlights the successes and shortcomings of both peace processes This book will be of interest to students of Peace and Conflict Studies, Irish Politics, Korean Politics, and International Relations.
This important book considers whether the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), which was established jointly through an unprecedented bilateral treaty between the United Nations (UN) and Sierra Leone in 2002, has made jurisprudential contributions to the development of the nascent and still unsettled field of international criminal law. A leading authority on the application of international criminal justice in Africa, Charles Jalloh argues that the SCSL, as an innovative hybrid international penal tribunal, made useful jurisprudential additions on key legal questions concerning greatest responsibility jurisdiction, the war crime of child recruitment, forced marriage as a crime against humanity, amnesty, immunity and the relationship between truth commissions and criminal courts. He demonstrates that some of the SCSL case law broke new ground, and in so doing, bequeathed a 'legal legacy' that remains vital to the ongoing global fight against impunity for atrocity crimes and to the continued development of modern international criminal law.
Expanding from her path-breaking work in Unspeakable Truths, Priscilla Hayner focuses on a new challenge in The Peacemaker's Paradox: the age-old problem of negotiating peace after a war of atrocities. Drawing on her first-hand involvement in peace processes and interviews from the frontlines of peace talks, the author recounts many heretofore-untold stories of how justice has been negotiated, with great difficulty, and what this tells us for the future. Those with the most power to stop a war are the least likely to submit to justice for their crimes, but the demand for justice only grows louder. She also asks how the intervention of an international tribunal, such as the International Criminal Court, changes how a war is fought and the possibility of brokering peace. The Peacemaker's Paradox looks far and wide, from Gaddafi's Libya to the FARC talks in Colombia, to provide an unparalleled exploration of these thorniest of issues. A combination of interview-based reporting and political analysis, The Peacemaker's Paradox brings clarity to a field fraught with both legal and practical difficulties.
War remains a grim fixture of the human landscape, and because of its tremendous and ongoing impact on the lives of millions of people, has always attracted the attention of careful, rigorous, and empathetic moral philosophers. And while war is synonymous with death and ruin, very few people are willing to surrender to moral nihilism about war-the view that all really is fair. At the center of debates about war remains the most important question that faces us during battle: whom are we allowed to kill? This volume collects in one place the most influential and groundbreaking philosophical work being done on the question of killing in war, offering a "who's who" of contemporary scholars debating the foundational ethical questions surrounding liability to harm. In ten essays, it expands upon and provides new and updated analyses that have yet to be captured in a single work. Essays explore questions such as: Are some soldiers more deserving of death than others? Should states allow soldiers to conscientiously object (to opt out of war) on a case-by-case basis? Can a theory of rights best explain when it is permissible to kill in war? When are we allowed to violently resist oppression that is itself nonviolent? Is there anything wrong with targeting people with autonomous weapons? As a convenient and authoritative collection of such discussions, this volume is uniquely suited for university-level teaching and as a reference for ethicists, policymakers, stakeholders, and any student of the morality of killing in war.
In international humanitarian law (IHL), the principle of distinction delineates the difference between the civilian and the combatant, and it safeguards the former from being intentionally targeted in armed conflicts. This monograph explores the way in which the idea of distinction circulates within, and beyond, IHL. Taking a bottom-up approach, the multi-sited study follows distinction across three realms: the kinetic realm, where distinction is in motion in South Sudan; the pedagogical realm, where distinction is taught in civil-military training spaces in Europe; and the intellectual realm, where distinction is formulated and adjudicated in Geneva and the Hague. Directing attention to international humanitarian actors, the book shows that these actors seize upon signifiers of 'civilianness' in everyday practice. To safeguard their civilian status, and to deflect any qualities of 'combatantness' that might affix to them, humanitarian actors strive to distinguish themselves from other international actors in their midst. The latter include peacekeepers working for the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), and soldiers who deploy with NATO missions. Crucially, some of the distinctions enacted cut along civilian-civilian lines, suggesting that humanitarian actors are longing for something more than civilian status - the 'civilian plus'. This special status presents a paradox: the appeal to the 'civilian plus' undermines general civilian protection, yet as the civilian ideal becomes increasingly beleaguered, a special civilian status appears ever more desirable. However disruptive these practices may be to the principle of distinction in IHL, the monograph emphasizes that even at the most normative level there is no bright line distinction to be found.
Conflict is ubiquitous and inevitable, but people generally dislike
it and try to prevent or avoid it as much as possible. So why do
clashes of right and wrong occur? And why are some more serious
than others? In Moral Time, sociologist Donald Black presents a new
theory of conflict that provides answers to these and many other
questions.
The recent Afghanistan and Iraq wars were very controversial. The conflicts' casualties, intractability and the apparent failure of the US and its allies to achieve their objectives mean that many see the wars as failures. This resulted in a loss of confidence in the West of the utility of force as an instrument of state power. Both wars have been well described by journalists. There is no shortage of memoirs. But there is little discussion of how the conduct of these wars and capabilities of the forces involved changed and evolved, and of the implications of these developments for future warfare. This book gives readers a clear understanding of the military character dynamics of both wars and how these changed between 2001 and 2014. This includes the strategy, operations, tactics and technology of the forces of the US and its allies, Afghan and Iraqi government forces as well as insurgents and militias, showing how they evolved over time. Many of these developments have wider relevance to future conflicts. The book identifies those that are of potential wider application to US, NATO and other western forces, to insurgents, as well as to forces of states that might choose to confront the west militarily.
Examining the thematic intersection of law, technology and violence, this book explores cyber attacks against states and current international law on the use of force. The theory of information ethics is used to critique the law's conception of violence and to develop an informational approach as an alternative way to think about cyber attacks. Cyber attacks against states constitute a new form of violence in the information age, and international law on the use of force is limited in its capacity to regulate them. This book draws on Luciano Floridi's theory of information ethics to critique the narrow conception of violence embodied in the law and to develop an alternative way to think about cyber attacks, violence, and the state. The author uses three case studies - the 2007 cyber attacks against Estonia, the Stuxnet incident involving Iran that was discovered in 2010, and the cyber attacks used as part of the Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election - to demonstrate that an informational approach offers a means to reimagine the state as an entity and cyber attacks as a form of violence against it. This interdisciplinary approach will appeal to an international audience of scholars in international law, international relations, security studies, cyber security, and anyone interested in the issues surrounding emerging technologies.
Belligerent occupations existed in both World Wars and have occurred more recently in all parts of the world (including Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Congo, Northern Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, Eritrea and Ethiopia). Owing to its special length - exceeding half a century and still in progress - and the unprecedented flow of judicial decisions, a special focus is called for as regards to the occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel. International law addresses the subject of belligerent occupation in some detail. This second, revised edition updates the text (originally published in 2009) in terms of both State practice and doctrinal discourse. The emphasis is put on decisions of the Security Council; legislation adopted by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq; and predominantly case law: international (Judgments of the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the European Court of Human Rights; Advisory Opinions and Arbitral Awards) as well as domestic courts.
Rain Liivoja explores why, and to what extent, armed forces personnel who commit offences abroad are prosecuted under their own country's laws. After clarifying several conceptual uncertainties in the doctrine of jurisdiction and immunities, he applies the doctrine to the extraterritorial deployment of service personnel. Comparing the law and practice of different states, the author shows the sheer breadth of criminal jurisdiction that countries claim over their service personnel. He argues that such claims disclose a discrete category of jurisdiction, with its own scope and rationale, which can be justified as a matter of international law. By distinguishing service jurisdiction as a distinct category, the analysis explains some of the peculiarities of military criminal law and also provides a basis for extending national criminal law to private military contractors serving the state. This book is essential for scholars and practitioners in international and criminal law, especially in military contexts.
The revolt of 1857 continues to arouse interest and debate. This book, first published in 1984 and now in paperback for the first time, remains one of the best studies of popular resistance and peasant rebellion. This revised edition features a new introduction, which provides an update on the historiography of peasant revolt. The author also charts some of these changes and their relevance to a deeper understanding of the uprising of 1857.
Looking beyond the events of the second intifada and 9/11, this book reveals how targeted killing is intimately embedded in both Israeli and US statecraft, and in the problematic relationship between sovereign authority and lawful violence underpinning the modern state system. It details the legal and political issues raised in targeted killing as it has emerged in practice, including questions of domestic constitutional authority, the use of force in international law, the law of belligerent occupation, the law of targeting and human rights law. The distinctive nature of Israeli and US targeted killing is analysed in terms of the compulsion of legality characteristic of the liberal constitutional state, a compulsion that demands the ability to distinguish between legal 'targeted killing' and extra-legal 'political assassination'. The effect is a highly legalized framework for the extraterritorial killing of designated terrorists that may significantly affect the international law of force.
Can we understand torture by focusing on the torture chamber or even on the states in which it is practiced, or do we have to consider the wider political context in which it is embedded? This is the central question of this book which explores concepts of state crime for understanding and responding to the indirect use of torture by external nation states. Drawing on the cooperation between France and Argentina in Argentina's Dirty War, this book explores the utility of the concept of state crime for understanding and responding to the indirect use of torture by external nation states with a detailed examination of the exportation of torture techniques and training expertise as complicity in torture. Discussing the institutionalisation of torture in its international structural context, this book focuses on examining three alleged manifestations of the torturer: direct perpetrator, institutional perpetrator, and transnational institutional perpetrator. Important reading for those in the fields of criminology, sociology, international relations and human rights law, this book will also be of key interest to scholars and students in the areas of state crime, human rights and imperialism.
This book analyses collective punishment in the context of human rights law. Collective punishment is a concept deriving from the law of armed conflict. It describes the punishment of a group for an act allegedly committed by one of its members and is prohibited in times of armed conflict. Although the imposition of collective punishment has been witnessed in situations outside armed conflict as well, human rights instruments do not explicitly address collective punishment. Consequently, there is a genuine gap in the protection of affected groups in situations outside of or short of armed conflict. Supported by two case studies on collective punishment in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Chechnya, the book examines potential options to close this gap in human rights law in a way contributing to the empowerment of affected groups. This analysis centres on the European Convention on Human Rights due to its relevance to the situation in Chechnya. By questioning whether human rights instruments can encompass a prohibition of collective punishment, the book contributes to the broader academic debate on rights held by collectivities in general and on collective human rights in particular. The book will be of interest to students, academics and policy makers in the areas of International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law.
This book offers an explanation and evaluation of preventative diplomacy in an age of increasing precariousness. It emphasises the importance of pursuing diplomacy and human security in connection with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which promote development grounded in peace, justice, and universal respect for human rights. It explores and uncovers efforts to set up diplomatic channels designed to ensure relations between the great powers, intra- and inter-state conflict, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, human rights, and the global watch over human security do not escalate out of control. Discussing evolving tensions between the United States and China, and the United States and Russia, this book recalls past examples of preventive diplomacy between them, and explores ideas for the exercise of preventive diplomacy in the future. Presenting evidence that contemporary preventive diplomacy is pursued not only by international or regional officials but also by nongovernmental organizations and individuals, the book emphasises the need to pursue and enhance a comprehensive effort to realize SDG16 and human security. The book contains a range of practical recommendations to improve preventive diplomacy and provides a unique optic into understanding the threats facing the planet. It will be of interest to scholars and students of diplomacy, security studies, global governance and practitioners in government and international organisations. .
In early summer 1982--winter in the South Atlantic--Argentina's military junta invades the Falklands. Within days, a Royal Navy Task Force is assembled and dispatched. This is the story of D Squadron, 22 SAS, commanded by Cedric Delves. The relentless tempo of events defies belief. Raging seas, inhospitable glaciers, hurricane-force winds, helicopter crashes, raids behind enemy lines--the Squadron prevailed against them all, but the cost was high. Holding fast to their humanity, D Squadron's fighters were there at the start and end of the Falklands War. Theirs was the first Union Jack raised over Government House in Stanley. Across an Angry Sea is a chronicle of daring, skill and steadfastness among a tight-knit band of brothers; of learning fast, fighting hard, and winning through.
Having suffered military defeat at the hands of advanced Western powers in the 1850s, Russia and Japan embarked upon a program of catch-up and modernization in the late-19th Century. While the two states sought in the main to replicate the successes of the advanced great powers of the West, the discourse on national identity among Russian and Japanese elite in this period evinced a considerable degree of ambivalence about Western dominance. With the onset of the crisis of power and legitimacy in the international order ushered in by the First World War, this ambivalence shifted towards more open revolt against Western dominance. The rise of communism in Russia and militarism in Japan were significantly shaped by their search for national distinctiveness and international status. This book is a comparative historical study of how the two "non-Western" great powers emerged as challengers to the prevailing international order in the interwar period, each seeking to establish an alternative order. Specifically, Anno examines the parallels and contrasts in the ways in which the Russian and Japanese elites sought to define the two countries' national identities, and how those definitions influenced the two countries' attitudes toward the prevailing order. At the intersection of international relations theory, comparative politics, and of historical sociology, this book offers an integrated perspective on the rise of challengers to the liberal international order in the early-twentieth century.
This book brings together a diverse range of international voices from academia, policymaking and civil society to address the failure to connect historical dialogue with atrocity prevention discourse and provide insight into how conflict histories and historical memory act as dynamic forces, actively facilitating or deterring current and future conflict. Established on a variety of international case studies combining theoretical and practical points of view, the book envisions an integrated understanding of how historical dialogue can inform policy, education, and the practice of atrocity prevention. In doing so, it provides a vital basis for the development of preventive policies sensitive to the importance of conflict histories and for further academic study on the topic. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of history, psychology, peace studies, international relations and political science.
In 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians marched peacefully to demand democratic reforms. Within months, repression forced them to take arms and set up their own institutions. Two years later, the inclusive nature of the opposition had collapsed, and the PKK and radical jihadist groups rose to prominence. In just a few years, Syria turned into a full-scale civil war involving major regional and world powers. How has the war affected Syrian society? How does the fragmentation of Syria transform social and sectarian hierarchies? How does the war economy work in a country divided between the regime, the insurgency, the PKK and the Islamic State? Written by authors who have previously worked on the Iraqi, Afghan, Kurd, Libyan and Congolese armed conflicts, it includes extensive interviews and direct observations. A unique book, which combines rare field experience of the Syrian conflict with new theoretical insights on the dynamics of civil wars.
The words 'rebellion' and 'revolution' have gained renewed prominence in the vocabulary of world politics and so has the question of justifiable armed 'resistance'. In this book Christopher J. Finlay extends just war theory to provide a rigorous and systematic account of the right to resist oppression and of the forms of armed force it can justify. He specifies the circumstances in which rebels have the right to claim recognition as legitimate actors in revolutionary wars against domestic tyranny and injustice, and wars of liberation against wrongful foreign occupation and colonialism. Arguing that violence is permissible only in a narrow range of cases, Finlay shows that the rules of engagement vary during and between different conflicts and explores the potential for irregular tactics to become justifiable, such as non-uniformed guerrillas and civilian disguise, the assassination of political leaders and regime officials, and the waging of terrorist war against civilian targets. |
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