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2016, States of Fragility 2016
This final chapter of States of Fragility 2016 describes a tool for understanding violence better, and makes recommendations addressed at the broader fragility and violence community. The violence lens, a tool first presented by the OECD in 2009, is updated to better understand violence today. The report then highlights some areas where the development community can more effectively address fragility and violence. These are grouped as policy, programming and financing recommendations. The report concludes with a call to alleviate the toll of violence and fragility on those who are most left behind. 134 STATES OF FRAGILITY 2016: UNDERSTANDING VIOLENCE © OECD 2016
This Evidence Report details key insights from the Institute of Development Studies Addressing and Mitigating Violence programme, which involved detailed political analysis of dynamics of violence as well as efforts to reduce and prevent violent conflict across a number of countries and areas in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. In particular, the evidence highlighted here is from violent settings that do not neatly fit categories of ‘war’ or ‘peace’. The findings of these studies, published as a series of open-access reports, Policy Briefings and blogs, were discussed by conflict and security experts as well as thinkers from aid and advocacy organisations at a consultative session in London in November 2015. This report uses evidence from the programme to critically reflect on policy and programming policy approaches for reducing violence. Specifically, it provides a synthesis of findings around these themes: (1) the nature of violence and how it might be changing; (2) the connectivity of actors across levels and space; and (3) the significance of identities and vulnerabilities for understanding and responding to violence. The report concludes by examining the implications of the research for the violence reduction paradigm.
This paper presents new and unpublished global data and innovative analysis of the “lethal violence” indicator. The key research questions are the following: What are the extent and the distribution of lethal violence worldwide? Can data on trends and patterns of lethal violence inform prevention policies and programmes? The hypothesis is that the analysis of the database will confirm that the majority of lethal violence is related to non-conflict settings and that there is a correlation between levels of violence and the performance in the achievement of the MDG.
The new Sustainable Development Goal to reduce armed violence is a welcome commitment but the prescriptive nature of its approach is problematic – there is ‘no one size fits all’. Rather, focus needs to be on how violence operates in particular settings. Evidence from IDS’ Addressing and Mitigating Violence programme highlights the need to pursue bespoke approaches to tackling violence. We must recognise how different types of violence interlink and reinforce each other; how transnational and local-level actors involved with violence connect and operate; and how democratic spaces, and agency, need support and consideration for the pursuit of peaceful outcomes.
Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies
Every year, over 1 billion children experience violence. Violence affecting children undermines their health, education and development, often with negative lifelong consequences and intergenerational impact; in recognition of its impact on sustainable development, combatting such violence is prioritised within the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Multi-Country Study on the Drivers of Violence Affecting Children in Peru, Italy, Viet Nam and Zimbabwe sought to understand what drives violence in these countries and what can be done about it, working hand-in-hand with national governments and local research institutes. Preventing violence is complex and strategies to address it in all its forms must be understood and addressed within a child's entire social ecology-including the constantly changing structural and institutional forces that shape childhood. Both the Study's process and its research products are noteworthy. The human-centred design and applied approach, one that yielded national processes of data analysis and understandings of violence, generated a host of outcomes during the life of the study. On a national policy level, these include the engagement of government ministries not typically involved in debates around children's well-being, as well as contributing to legal reforms and budget reallocations that, in some cases for the first time ever, directed government funding to nationally-led violence prevention research. Using the research as an intervention, the study fostered institutional normative change across all four countries and within the corridors of power that are traditionally slow to respond to violence as a priority issue. The future challenge, currently underway, will be to support national partners as they apply the Study's findings to improve prevention and response programming and advocate for sustainable change.
2009
Violence exacts a high cost on world development. In about 60 countries, over the last ten years, violence has significantly and directly reduced economic growth. It has hampered poverty reduction efforts and limited progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. About half of these 60 countries currently experience violent conflict or are in post-conflict transition. The other half experience high levels of violent crime, street violence, domestic violence, and other kinds of common violence. 1 Common violence has often increased significantly in post-conflict countries after largescale political motivated violence ends. Such cases include Somalia, Liberia, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Conversely, countries with high levels of common violence have shown tendencies toward sporadic large-scale instability, for example Kenya (ethnic violence) and Brazil (urban riots). Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, crime and violence detract an estimated 14.2 percent from the region's GDP. 2 2003 figures indicate that the economic cost of violence in El Salvador was approximately 11.5 percent of the country's GDP or US$ 1.7 billion. In Guatemala, 1 "Common violence" is defined in opposition to politically motivated violence. Therefore, common violence is considered violence occurring as a result of social conflict not related to political motives or events (such as war, genocide, and assassinations). It is often, though not always, related to personal and property crime.
This introductory chapter provides an overview of how and why development and security interact, highlighting why this interaction matters in the context of debates about whether to include a goal for achieving peaceful and inclusive societies in the post-2015 global development framework. The chapter summarizes the state of play (up to late 2014) regarding the integration of such a goal into the post-2015 development agenda and provides an overview of efforts to develop specific goals, targets, and indicators dealing with security, safety, and armed violence. Regardless of the outcome of the post-2015 negotiations, such efforts will be relevant to whatever new development framework emerges.
2005
The Impact of Armed Violence on Poverty and Development: Full Report of the Armed Violence and Poverty Initiative. Mandy Turner, Jeremy Ginifer, Lionel Cliffe Bradford: Centre for International Cooperation and Security, 2005.
2013
IDS is a charitable company limited by guarantee and registered in England (No. 877338). The IDS programme on Strengthening Evidence-based Policy works across seven key themes. Each theme works with partner institutions to co-construct policy-relevant knowledge and engage in policy-influencing processes. This material has been developed under the Addressing and Mitigating Violence theme. The author would like to thank Robin Luckman, Mick Moore and Jeremy Lind for their helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. The development of this material has been led by IDS who holds the copyright. The material has been funded by UK aid from the UK Government, however the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK Government's official policies. AG Level 2 Output ID: 358 Contents Executive summary 1 'External stresses': what's behind a term? 2 'External stresses' and 'new' forms of violence: the case of transnational cocaine trafficking 3 Tackling transnational trafficking and insecurity: beyond buffering institutions and enhanced regional cooperation 4 Implications for policy analysis References Executive summary Following on from the World Bank's World Development Report 2011 on conflict, security and development, a debate has emerged about the role of so-called 'external stresses' in generating 'new' forms of violence and insecurity in poor and fragile countries. The Bank posits that the combination of internal stresses (e.g. low income levels, high youth unemployment) and external stresses (e.g. cross-border conflict spillovers, illicit drug trafficking) heightens the risk of different forms of violence, which are not confined to interstate and civil war but range from communal conflicts to criminal violence and terrorism. This perspective is useful in as much as it makes explicit that instability and political disorder are not only related to domestic weaknesses of fragile states, but are also conditioned by outside forces. Yet the binary internal-external/fragility-vulnerability model that underpins the World Bank's analysis of external stresses appears to be too limited to inform strategies to address the challenges that arise from pressures as diverse as illicit transnational trafficking, price and resource shocks, and cross-border conflict spillovers. A more comprehensive and nuanced framework for policy analysis is called for, based on the recognition that external stresses: (a) tend to involve external, internal as well as transnational actors and variables that are often interrelated; (b) create both losers and winners, and can promote the interests of powerful state and non-state groups in and outside of the country or world region under 'stress'; and (c) do not all have the same kind of impact on states and societies in terms of generating violence.
International Peacekeeping, 2009
IDB Publications, 1999
This document is one of a series of technical notes that describe the nature and magnitude of violence in the region, its causes and effects, and how it can be prevented and controlled. The notes provide useful information on designing programs and policies to ...
Ids Bull Inst Develop Stud, 2009
A Micro-Level Perspective on the Dynamics of Conflict, Violence, and Development, 2013
2016
IDS is a charitable company limited by guarantee and registered in England (No. 877338). The IDS programme on Strengthening Evidence-based Policy works across seven key themes. Each theme works with partner institutions to co-construct policy-relevant knowledge and engage in policy-influencing processes. This material has been developed under the Addressing and Mitigating Violence theme. The production of this report would not have been possible without guidance and feedback from Jeremy Lind and Robin Luckham. The material has been funded by UK aid from the UK Government, however the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK Government's official policies. AG Level 2 Output ID: 702 Contents Abbreviations Executive summary 1 Introduction 2 Methodology 2.1 Case selection 2.2 Analytic approach 2.3 Data sources 2.4 Key terms and concepts 2.5 Structure of the report 3 Trajectories of violence in Kenya and Uganda: identity, land and statemaking 3.1 State-making and trajectories of conflict in Kenya 3.2 State-making and trajectories of conflict in Uganda 3.3 Conclusions 4 Trajectories of violence in Ghana and Ivory Coast: shared characteristics and divergent development trajectories 4.1 State-making and trajectories of conflict in Ghana 4.2 State-making and trajectories of conflict in Ivory Coast 4.3 Conclusions 5 Contemporary geographies and dynamics of violent conflict in East and West Africa 5.1 The landscape of violent conflict in Kenya and Uganda 5.2 The landscape of violent conflict in Ghana and Ivory Coast 6 Cross-regional trends in violence dynamics and peace-building 6.1 Peace-building and violence mitigation in Kenya and Uganda 6.2 Peace-building and violence mitigation in Ghana and Ivory Coast 7 Conclusions 7.1 A contextual approach to understanding and reducing violence 7.2 Historical legacies of state-making contribute to contemporary landscapes of violence when they justify systematic exclusions 7.3 State and non-state actors play important and often complex roles in violence dynamics 7.4 It is critical to understand how hyper-localised conflict systems and horizontal inequalities feed into broader national and international geographies of violence 7.5 Gender-informed strategies for building inclusion will benefit the safety, health and wellbeing of men, women, boys and girls in conflict-affected settings 7.6 Election cycles are flashpoints for violence, revealing the failure of formal democratic institutions to ensure inclusion 7.7 Towards violence reduction: investing in knowledge and setting an inclusive agenda References Boxes Box 3.1 Political legacies of British colonial rule in East Africa Box 5.1 Complexities of multi-stakeholder political violence in the 2007-08 postelection crisis Box 7.1 SDG 16 select targets ACLED
Chapter One (A Unified Approach to Armed Violence) shows high levels of gang violence in Guatemala or Honduras, vigilante justice in postwar and fragile states such as Liberia or Timor- Leste, post-election violence in Côte d’Ivoire or Kenya, and high levels of urban crime in cities such as Kingston or Rio de Janeiro amply demonstrate how the lines between armed conflict and criminal violence are increasingly blurred. In Iraq since 2003, for example, the targeting of non-combatants by insurgents, militias, and sectarian groups may seem chaotic or random at first glance, yet a closer look at underlying patterns of violence suggests that seemingly arbitrary or criminal violence may also serve political purposes in line with the goals of armed groups. In many places, non-conflict violence is linked to highly organized criminal activity, or to different forms of ‘political violence’, either targeting political opponents or government officials (such as mayors, teacher, police officers, or journalists), or seeking to influence and modify government policies through corruption and use of force. In these contexts, the label ‘homicide’—which implies ostensibly apolitical interpersonal and criminal violence—is slightly misleading.
Journal of International Development, 2011
Violence has been shown to be a global challenge resulting in long-lasting social, medical, and mental health sequelae. In this article, we focus on massive social violence, such as war and civil war. Social suffering and mental health problems related to violence as a global public health problem can be tackled only with a holistic approach that addresses the specific region, culture and group and the limited resources available in most countries. Research that can give a reliable assessment of complex long-term outcomes is still largely missing, and can be seen as a major and complex challenge for future study.
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