Brazil: an Emerging Southern Drone Actor

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This blog post uses the case of Brazil to reflect on how actors in the Global South now engage with drone technology. This technology has been employed across a series of areas where Brazilian stakeholders are involved or seek to become more involved, both at the domestic and international levels: from aiding the work of the police and military to supporting environmental and health agencies and contributing to agriculture, mining, energy production and construction activities.

Drones have been used by the Brazilian Armed Forces in the UN peacekeeping operation in Haiti. Credit: Joel Silva/ Folhapress

So far, the academic debate on drone development and deployment has been focused on actors in the Global North while countries, communities and individuals in the Global South are mostly portrayed as targets or as victims of drone interventions. Comparatively, little attention has been given to the increasing use of drones by Southern civil society, government and private sector actors. Discussions of drone proliferation tend to assume that the drone industry is a monolithic and geographically concentrated entity. While the drone industry is still dominated by major players from the United States and Israel, countries like Brazil are claiming a more proactive role, not only merely as consumers, but also as developers and exporters of drone technology.

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The Gender Asset in Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Processes (DDR)

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Regrouping of ex-combatants in Nepal. Photo: Chiranjibi Bhandari

The Potentials of Changing Gender Patterns.

Both genders – female and male – can be actors as well as victims in armed conflict, depending on the context.

Changed gender roles among ex-combatants of armed groups constitute a potential source of change towards more balanced gender relations in the larger post-conflict society.

It is necessary to take into account the particular needs of victims of armed conflict, but it is equally important to bear in mind that female and male conflict actors also represent resources that bring their new skills and experiences into the post-conflict situation.

  • Changing gender roles during armed conflict can be an asset in a post-conflict situation.
  • Skills acquired by female and male ex-combatants during conflict should be documented and acknowledged during the DDR process for constructive use in peacetime.
  • Family ties constitute a pull factor of male demobilization and should be actively used in efforts to change violent models of masculinity.
  • Soldiers of both genders with a long history in an armed group tend to develop a common identity and to benefit from reintegration programs that allow them to stay together in post-conflict communities.

Read more in a recent policy brief from the PRIO Centre on Gender, Peace and Security.

Seeing Flight as a Non-violent Option: One Way to Change the Discourse about the World’s 60 Million Refugees

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In Brussels, more than 1,200 people protest against Europe’s unwillingness to do more about the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, April 23rd, 2015. Photo: Amnesty

Today, one in every 122 humans living on the planet is a refugee, an internally displaced person, or an asylum-seeker. In 2014, conflict and persecution forced a staggering 42,500 persons per day to leave their homes and seek protection elsewhere, resulting in 59.5 million total refugees worldwide. According to the UN refugee agency’s 2014 Global Trends report (tellingly entitled World at War), developing countries hosted 86% of these refugees. Developed countries, such as the U.S. and those in Europe, host only 14% of the world’s total share of refugees.

Yet public sentiment in the West has been tough on refugees lately. Resurgent populist and nationalist leaders routinely play to public anxieties about refugees as “lazy opportunists,” “burdens,” “criminals,” or “terrorists” in response to today’s refugee crisis. Mainstream parties aren’t immune to this rhetoric either, with politicians of all stripes calling for increased border controls, detention centers, and the temporary suspension of visa and asylum applications.

Importantly, none of these panicky characterizations of refugees is born out by systematic evidence.

This Week in South Sudan – Week 4

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Monday 25 January Observers and stakeholders have called on South Sudan’s government and the SPLM (IO) to resolve the deadlock over forming a transitional government. Tuesday 26 January SPLM (IO) leader Riek Machar claims that the government of President Salva Kiir continues to violate the August peace agreement and he wants the United Nations and… Read more »

This Week in South Sudan – Week 3

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Monday 18 January Residents of Wonduruba, Central Equatoria State, accused government forces of killing five civilians on 14 January while collecting food from their abandoned homes in Gobur village. According to the SPLM (IO) spokesperson, Riek Machar will not return to Juba unless President Salva Kiir revokes the reform dividing South Sudan into 28 states…. Read more »

This Week in South Sudan – Week 2

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Monday 11 January At least five dead after clashes between Dinka Bor herders and Bari farmers in Lobonok, Central Equatoria. The Bor herders and the Bari community later agreed to settle their differences peacefully. Tuesday 12 January According to UNICEF, 51 per cent of South Sudanese children between 6 to 15 years of age, 1.8… Read more »

The Discreet Charm of Passenger Data: Big Data Surveillance Coming Home

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Several governments see in the mass-surveillance of passenger data the key tool of counter-terrorism. These data are generally known as PNR – Passenger Name Records, and their potential for law enforcement has been discussed at least since the 1990s. Now European Union (EU) debates about the creation of a European PNR scheme seem settled once and for all. Others have already provided legal analyses of the measure to come. Here the goal is different: I aim to show how urgent it is to start researching the political dimensions of this security program right when all politics fade away.

Example of a PNR. PHOTO: Edward Hasbrouck, The Practical Nomad.

While PNR were part of my PhD research and as such a big chunk of my everyday world, I often have quite a hard time to explain what PNR are beyond a quite small circle of geeks. It was even difficult to explain colleagues how this kind of topic may be relevant for international and EU studies. Blame it on my lack of training or competence in the vulgarization of scientific research. Blame it on my choice of a theme considered either a technicality or something for ‘legal scholars only’.

Since November 2015, things (might) have changed. The surveillance of air passengers has become a trumpeted European priority in the revamped War on Terror, while before it was largely considered an expert-only business. Several political declarations voice the need to create a system able to identify potential ‘returning jihadists’ and better track their travels within and outside of Europe, and the EU institutions seem closer than ever to adopt legislation on the matter. But, what are we speaking about when we speak about PNR? And what are the challenges ahead for researchers, advocates and institutions alike?

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This Week in South Sudan – Week 1

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Tuesday 5 January BBC Radio “Saving South Sudan’s Lost Girls” Wednesday 6 January The South Sudan Armed Forces/South Sudan Federal Democratic Party (SSAF/SSFDP) dismissed allegations that they are connected to Gabriel Changson or General Peter Gatdet Yak group. The newly appointed governor of Wau State, Elias Waya Nyipuoc, criticized his predecessor’s administration for failing to… Read more »

Unfriended: How Russia’s Syria Quagmire is Costing it Middle Eastern Allies

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Russian missile cruiser Varyag has left its home port Vladivostok and arrived to the Mediterranean.

At a time when most Russians were taking a long break from politics until after the Orthodox Christmas on January 7, there has been no respite in Russia’s air operations in Syria, nor in the quarrel with Turkey. Rather than focus on the bread-and-butter issues of making ends meet, Russian policymakers seem to be instead preparing their next round of conflict escalation in an attempt to energize the populace around a new rallying cry.

The Kremlin cannot afford a sobering up that awakens the public to the stress of falling incomes and shameless corruption. So, it is working to supply another attention-grabbing crisis. The incentives for fanning violent conflicts, therefore, are greater than just “Vladimir Putin’s obsession for payback,” as Garrett Campbell recently (and accurately) described on this blog. Moscow cannot be content with than an eye for an eye, it needs a victory bright enough to camouflage Russia’s grim economic reality.

For the rest of the article, visit Brookings’ “Order from Chaos” blog.

Governments Don’t Outsource Atrocities to Militias. Here’s What Really Happens

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Syrian refugees at the Macedonian border in August 2015. Photo: EPA/Georgi Licovski/Freedom House

Refugees are fleeing Syria in such astonishing numbers because armed groups continue to target civilians with violence.

That’s what we heard in September when the U.N. Human Rights Council discussed the most recent report of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria. The commission’s chair, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, made a plea for international action to end the conflict, pointing to gross violations of the laws of war by all the warring parties: indiscriminate bombing of civilian homes, the deliberate torture and murder of civilians, and widespread rape and sexual violence as acts of war.

On Nov. 19, the U.N. General Assembly’s Third Committee approved a draft resolution based on the commission’s report, which strongly condemned these human rights violations and called for greater accountability.

The commission cites the Syrian Armed Forces for many of these atrocities, as well as the plethora of pro-government militias like the shabiha, the Popular Committees and the many loosely organized militias referred to collectively as the National Defense.Read More