Verbal Abuse: Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and Violence Against Women

There is a significant debate in contemporary feminist political thought and amongst activist organizations regarding the “trafficking of women” and the questions and problems attendant to this phenomenon. Furthermore, the work of many feminist groups now concerned with and often party to the exercise of state and international regulatory power has drawn a great deal of attention to trafficking within the United Nations, individual nation-states (particularly the United States) and a slew of increasingly powerful NGOs. These different organizations all operate at a similar structural and prescriptive level, using legal and normative models to enact protocols and legislation specifically naming, defining and acting on human trafficking. Regardless of the apparent fervor and media attention given to trafficking in recent years, the problem is still widespread, and there is significant criticism of existing trafficking models, both for their failure to achieve even stated goals, and for the way their definitions of trafficking – particularly sex trafficking – affect women.La

Democratic Jihad ? Military intervention and democracy

Democracies rarely if ever fight one another, but they participate in wars as frequently as autocracies. They tend to win the wars in which they participate. Democracies frequently build large alliances in wartime, but not only with other democracies. From time to time democracies intervene militarily in ongoing conflicts. The democratic peace may contribute to a normative justification for such interventions, for the purpose of promoting democracy and eventually for the promotion of peace. This is reinforced by an emerging norm of humanitarian intervention. Democracies may have a motivation to intervene in non-democracies, even in the absence of ongoing conflict, for the purpose of regime change. The recent Iraq War may be interpreted in this perspective. A strong version of this type of foreign policy may be interpreted as a democratic crusade. The paper examines the normative and theoretical foundations of democratic interventionism. An empirical investigation of interventions in the period 1960-96 indicates that democracies intervene quite frequently, but rarely against other democracies. In the short term, democratic intervention appears to be successfully promoting democratization, but the target states tend to end up among the unstable semi-democracies. The most widely publicized recent interventions are targeted on poor or resource-dependent countries in non-democratic neighborhoods. Previous research has found these characteristics to reduce the prospects for stable democracy. Thus, forced democratization is unpredictable withregard to achieving long-term democracy and potentially harmful with regard to securing peace. But short-term military successes may stimulate more interventions until the negative consequences become more visible.Population Policies,Peace&Peacekeeping,Parliamentary Government,Politics and Government,Political Systems and Analysis

The emerging interventionists of the GCC

There is a shift occurring within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in which new regional leaders are emerging, buoyed by a decade of unprecedented wealth generation from the 2000s commodities boom and increased foreign investment. Specifically, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have emerged as activist states in their interest and willingness to intervene both militarily and financially in the politics of neighbouring Arab states. Contrary to their collective and individual foreign policies of the last 40 years, the GCC states have intervened in each other’s domestic politics and in the domestic politics and revolutions of the wider Middle East and North Africa region. While Saudi Arabia enjoyed a period of dominance among its Gulf Arab neighbours for many years, even occasionally threatening the borders of Qatar and the UAE, the prevailing policy of Gulf states has been non-interference and support for Arab leaders, as a principle of religion and politics. In essence, the evolving nature of interventionism in the GCC is moving away from Saudi dominance towards the emergence of new actors willing to engage in the region and on the international stage. We can trace this policy shift through the simultaneous yet separate evolution of domestic, regional and international political economy. This paper argues that shifts in leadership at the national levels have coincided with larger trends in the regional and international economy which have enabled different, yet both assertive, interventionist foreign policies to emerge from Qatar and the UAE. The result is a moment of financial and military interventionism unprecedented in Arab Gulf politics

Humanitarian intervention and foreign policy in the Conservative-led coalition

This paper examines the role of humanitarian intervention as a tool of foreign policy in the Conservative-led Coalition. The first section of the paper provides historical context and assesses the traditional approaches to humanitarian intervention as an instrument of foreign policy of Conservative governments since the end of the Cold War. This analytical narrative considers the Major Government's response to the Bosnian War. The second section of the paper considers the Conservative-led Coalition's approach to humanitarian intervention in two ways: first by an examination of the influence of Blair's humanitarian intervention and secondly, by an evaluation of British involvement in the Libyan Revolution of 2011. The third and final section of the paper offers an explanatory interpretation of the Conservative-led Coalition's humanitarian intervention. This interpretation is predicated on an English School theoretical framework for understanding international relations and, in particular, advances the argument that the global worldview of David Cameron, William Hague and their liberal Conservative colleagues can be understood as solidarist

What Can Faith-Based Forms of Violent Conflict Prevention Teach Us About Liberal Peace?

Faith-based actors are often recognised as contributors to both conflict and peace. However, their work to prevent violent conflict, rather than bring an end to or recover from it, is largely unexplored. This is despite the growth of conflict prevention as a global social norm and field of practice. Based on collaborative research with faith groups and organisations in Nigeria, the Solomon Islands and Zanzibar (Tanzania), this paper examines faith-based forms of violent conflict prevention. It argues that faith-based approaches exist on a spectrum, from instinctive and ad hoc initiatives run by individuals and local places of worship to large-scale, systematised interventions led by global faith-based development organisations. Yet, while faith-based approaches to violent conflict prevention vary in form and function, they are consistent and distinctive in their emphasis on building resilient relationships at the local level, modelling forms of prevention embedded within local culture and that recognise the emotional and spiritual dimensions of transformative change. Faith-based approaches offer insights valuable to the wider conflict prevention field, which is increasingly critiqued for its liberal underpinnings and emphasis on technical and technological solutionism. Lessons emerge for others implementing prevention programmes, who could adapt elements of the unhurried, values-led, relationally sensitive approach demonstrated by some faith-based actors, albeit within their own structural limitations. Policymakers should support such adaptations and expand their view of prevention to explicitly include faith-based forms of activity, as to do otherwise risks missing opportunities and reproducing existing failures

Is the EU's Foreign Policy Identity an Obstacle? The European Union, the Northern Dimension and the Union for the Mediterranean

The impact of the EU policies on its borderlands has been highly varied. We will argue that a valuable addendum on Rationalist explananda for such varied impact, can be found be exploring how the EU constructs its international identity vis-à-vis neighboring countries. We will use the Northern Dimension and the Union for the Mediterranean to verify how the EU identitarian projection creates contradictions and/or dissonance with neighboring countries to illustrate the uneven impact of EU policies.European foreign policy, Union for the Mediterranean, Northern Dimension, Baltic Sea, Identity