1,720,992 research outputs found
Liberal Interventionism::The Crisis Within
No full textLiberal interventionism today is not only responding to crises in countries experiencing violent conflict, distress and disaster. It also responds to a crisis within
Biometric voter registration:A new modality of democracy assistance
No full textIt has been argued that we are witnessing a retreat from democracy promotion in liberal interventionism. Focusing on the roll-out of biometric voter registration (BVR) across Africa, as supported by institutions such as the United Nations Development Programme, this article suggests that rather than a retreat we are seeing the emergence of a new and seemingly lighter approach to liberal democracy promotion. Through an analysis of the use of BVR in Kenyan elections, the article illustrates some key implications of this development. At the local level, the framing of BVR as a ‘solution’ omits important challenges to democratic elections in Kenya. At the global level, the roll-out of BVR reinforces unequal global power structures, for example by constituting an increasing number of African states as laboratories for the trialling of a technology which, due to fears of hacking, has now been rolled back in the US. To make this argument, the article combines insights from recent debates about the state of liberal interventionism, with insights from Michel Foucault and Sheila Jasanoff about the politics of technology
Somalia: De fejl, vi skal undgå:Efter mange års internationalt engagement er vejen frem: Fortsat internationalt engagement. Ellers vil Somalias problemer blive vores.
No full textSkal Somalia blive et stabilt land, kræver det, at det internationale samfund engagerer sig. Hvis de ikke adresseres, kan nogle af Somalias store udfordringer blive til problemer for omverdenen - herunder stærkere terrorgrupper, maritime trusler og nye flygtningestrømme.Fremskridtene i landet er langsomme og til tider svære at få øje på. Men erfarne udenlandske nødhjælpsarbejdere minder om, hvordan situationen var før 2008, da det internationale samfund satte ind mod pirateri. "I 2008 var Mogadishu en krigszone. Somalia var et særdeles farligt sted at operere, og internationale aktører stod på daglig basis overfor dødelige trusler. I dag har dette ændret sig. Markeder i Mogadishu summer af liv,” siger en FN-medarbejder til mig: ”Der er en reel tro på fremskridt og forandring”.Men den fremgang, som er sket de seneste år, er skrøbelig og på igen måde irreversibel. Derfor er et afgørende vigtigt at donorlande, som Danmark, fastholder et engagement i landet. Vi vil få det at mærke, hvis situationen i Somalia forværres, så det fx påvirker nabolandet Etiopien med 100 millioner indbyggere. <br/
Intervention, Materiality, and Contemporary Somali Counterpiracy
No full textTaking seriously debates in IR about the significance of materiality and noticing the prominence of materiality in contemporary counterpiracy interventions, this article combines insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS) with insights from the poststructuralist intervention literature. Both literatures highlight the importance of “constitutive effects.” Poststructuralists do so with attention to the effects of intervention in constituting, temporarily, the meaning of sovereignty, and STS scholars do so with attention to constitutive effects that processes at the level of materiality give rise to. By combining these two literatures, this article asks: how might we think about the constitutive effects of material aspects of counterpiracy interventions? This question is explored through a focus on two donor-funded pirate prisons in Somalia. By operationalizing the STS notions of coproduction (Jasanoff 2004c) and solution/problem-framings (Beck et al. 2016), the article broadens the study of how intervention practices give rise to constitutive effects by explicitly attending to processes at the level of materiality. This approach enables the article to highlight an important tension in contemporary intervention practices: a tension between donor's desire to delimit intervention contributions and the risk that such contributions (including presumably more easily delineated material aspects) give rise to effects that challenge this faith in neatly delimited forms of intervention. This tension is not only relevant in relation to Somali counterpiracy, but also in other intervention contexts. The article thus illustrates show STS insights can help advance our appreciation of the manifold dimensions and effects of contemporary interventionism
Biometric data flows and unintended consequences of counterterrorism
No full textExamining unintended consequences of the makings and processing of biometric data in counterterrorism and humanitarian contexts, this article introduces a two-fold framework through which it analyzes biometric data-makings and flows in Afghanistan and Somalia. It combines Tilley's notion of living laboratory and Larkin's notion of infrastructure into a framework that attends to the conditions under which biometric data is made and to subsequent flows of such data through data-sharing agreements or unplanned access. Exploring such unintended consequences, attention needs to be paid to the variety of actors using biometrics for different purposes yet with data flows across such differences. Accordingly, the article introduces the notion of digital intervention infrastructures, with biometric databases as one dimension. </p
Preventing Violent Escalation:the international pursuit of conflict transformation in Burundi
No full textBiometrics as security technology: Expansion amidst fallibility
No full textBiometric technology has been afforded a central role in the security architecture that Western governments have forged since the events of 9/11 2001. With biometrics the body becomes the anchor of identification. In a security architecture centred on identification of persons of interest and determination of their status as friend or foe, biometrics has come to be praised for its supposedly exceptional capacity to identify reliably. This report situates the use of biometrics as a security technology in relation to this promise of superior identification on the one hand and, on the other, to the various concerns that critics have raised. It argues that it is vital that decision makers acknowledge how biometrics is neither a flawless nor a politically neutral technology. Unless caution and concerns are taken seriously the risk is that biometrics will produce new forms of insecurity - rather than increased security
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