The other War on Terror revealed: global governmentality and the Financial Action Task Force's campaign against terrorist financing

Abstract. Despite initial fanfare surrounding its launch in the White House Rose Garden, the War on Terrorist Finances (WOTF) has thus far languished as a sideshow, in the shadows of military campaigns against terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq. This neglect is unfortunate, for the WOTF reflects the other multilateral cooperative dimension of the US-led ‘war on terror’, quite contrary to conventional sweeping accusations of American unilateralism. Yet the existing academic literature has been confined mostly to niche specialist journals dedicated to technical, legalistic and financial regulatory aspects of the WOTF. Using the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as a case study, this article seeks to steer discussions on the WOTF onto a broader theoretical IR perspective. Building upon emerging academic works that extend Foucauldian ideas of governmentality to the global level, we examine the interwoven overlapping national, regional and global regulatory practices emerging against terrorist financing, and the implications for notions of government, regulation and sovereignty

Study on cash transfers for seed security in humanitarian settings

This study examines the barriers and opportunities for cash transfers to be used to address seed security in humanitarian situations. Cash, while not a new approach, has gained momentum in recent years, especially with the emergence of the Cash Learning Partnership (CaLP) and humanitarian organizations’ commitments through the Grand Bargain.2 Historically, direct seed distribution (DSD) has dominated agricultural responses in emergencies. While effective in many situations, other modalities of addressing farmers’ needs have also proven to be effective, including seed and voucher fairs and, increasingly, cash transfer responses. The latter response typically provides farmers greater choices to make decisions about their seed needs and preferences. However, as with direct distribution and vouchers, cash can be a viable option but may not always be appropriate in every situation. The quality of seed is of paramount importance in choosing a response and has been an ongoing (and often contentious and political) discussion for decades. The results of this study advocate for a multi- stakeholder perspective on the quality of seed, while offering farmers the most flexible and most appropriate response possible for their given situation. In some cases, this will be cash transfers, but certainly not in all cases. A range of options offers the best chance for a successful, responsive, and appropriate program. The evidence base on outcomes from using cash for seed in humanitarian contexts is limited, however, reviewing a series of examples shows the breadth and range of options that are being explored. The cases from an array of organizations and countries including Iraq, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Madagascar, and Guatemala, show that understanding the context is key to the response analysis and the choice of modality. Organizational approaches and previous experience also played a role in the choice of modality. The evidence to date shows that cash, in addition to complementary programming such as technical or business training, offers promise for seed security interventions. In addition, initiatives to support both the demand and supply side of the market have proven to be effective. Key findings include: 1. Market and needs assessments must include a seed component or SSSA to ensure a response designed to address the right problem, not the assumption. For markets, both informal and formal seed markets need to be included. 2. Good needs assessments, response analysis and program design help ensure participants’ spending cash on what implementers anticipate they will. 3. Program participants’ preferences on modalities are not consistently included in response analysis. 4. Mixed modalities (cash and vouchers, or cash and DSD) can broaden crop choices. 5. Quality screenings for seed are taking place; the quality of seed is important to organizations and project participants. 6. Cash for seed security interventions are limited, but growing in prevalence. 7. Providing cash plus complementary support is a promising practice for fostering seed security. 8. The nexus between relief and development is critical—designing projects with a longer-term development view: cash can prepare the way for farmers to continue true market engagement post-relief, spur business development in subsequent seasons, and offer opportunities for financial inclusion. 9. Supporting supply side to bring quality seed markets ‘closer’ to project participants should be considered along with demand-side interventions (cash, voucher and other). 10. Investment in preparedness provides a better foundation to implement impactful cash for seed security response. The risks, mitigating actions, opportunities and enablers for cash and seed security response are also explored. The study concludes with actionable and practical recommendations for further advancing the evidence base, as well as implementation suggestions. Continuous collaboration of key stakeholders in seed systems is essential to advance the discussions and action on the way forward with cash and seed systems

BOF4WSS : a business-oriented framework for enhancing web services security for e-business

When considering Web services' (WS) use for online business-to-business (B2B) collaboration between companies, security is a complicated and very topical issue. This is especially true with regard to reaching a level of security beyond the technological layer, that is supported and trusted by all businesses involved. With appreciation of this fact, our research draws from established development methodologies to develop a new, business-oriented framework (BOF4WSS) to guide e-businesses in defining, and achieving agreed security levels across these collaborating enterprises. The approach envisioned is such that it can be used by businesses-in a joint manner-to manage the comprehensive concern that security in the WS environment has become

9 steps to scale climate-smart agriculture: Lessons and experiences from the climate-smart villages in My Loi, Vietnam and Guinayangan, Philippines

The Climate-Smart Village approach is a CCAFS agricultural research for development (AR4D) strategy for stimulating the scaling of climate-smart agriculture. CSVs are established in Southeast Asia through the CCAFS program to serve as sites for “testing, through participatory methods, technological and institutional options for generating evidence of CSA effectiveness as well as drawing out scaling lessons for policy makers from local to global levels (CCAFS, 2016). The CSVs in My Loi in Vietnam and Guinayangan in the Philippines were established following this strategy starting 2014 by the World Agroforestry (ICRAF) Vietnam and the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction, respectively. This guidebook showcases the common experiences of the IIRR and ICRAF in the Philippine and Vietnam CSVs, which are outlined in 5 major stages and broken into 9 steps

Using Lightweight Formal Methods for JavaScript Security

The goal of this work was to apply lightweight formal methods to the study of the security of the JavaScript language. Previous work has shown that lightweight formal methods present a new approach to the study of security in the context of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The current work has attempted to codify best current practices in the form of a security model for JavaScript. Such a model is a necessary component in analyzing browser actions for vulnerabilities, but it is not sufficient. It is also required to capture actual browser event traces and incorporate these into the model. The work described herein demonstrates that it is (a) possible to construct a model for JavaScript security that captures important properties of current best practices within browsers; and (b) that an event translator has been written that captures the dynamic properties of browser site traversal in such a way that model analysis is tractable, and yields important information about the satisfaction or refutation of the static security rules

Corporate governance and employment relations

Using the 2004 United Kingdom Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004), this paper examines the impact of corporate governance on HRM practices and employment relations outcomes within organizations in the UK. The analysis suggests that when a remote external stake-holder is assigned dominance, particularly in the case where their liability is limited and the organization is large, the conditioning of managerial commitments on the requirements of the dominant stake-holder has the potential to undermine the effectiveness of the HRM system in achieving its objectives