Donors, Democracy and Sovereignty: the Politicisation of Aid and its Impact on African-EU Relations

The chapter looks at the changes in aid priorities that have taken place in recent years towards an emphasis on democratisation and good governance. It asks how democratisation and good political governance can be supported and furthered through aid. Is this an effective and efficient way of spending aid money? What are the economic and political problems with this approach? Are there better ways of supporting democratisation than through aid? While efforts to promote democracy are laudable, political conditionalities have made the provision of aid more politically intrusive and controversial, and it has made recipient states of aid acutely aware of the sovereignty loss the acceptance of aid may incur. This is an important factor if we are to understand the current strain in African-European relations

'South Africa’s Security Engagement in the Region – Lessons for IBSA?’

The chapter looks at South Africa’s interaction with its neighbours, and its policies, aims, ambitions and vision for the subregion of Southern Africa as well as the African continent as a whole. It starts by defining which geographical areas are seen to constitute South Africa’s ‘region’. It then discusses the main actual or potential security threats in this region which affect South Africa’s foreign and security policies. Moving on to South Africa’s status and position in the region, the question is raised whether South Africa is a middle power, an emerging power, or even a hegemon. This debate is followed by a review of the foreign and security policies South Africa has pursued in the last decade in Africa. This review reveals that South Africa, perhaps paradoxically, wields more influence in the continental African Union than it does in its own neighbourhood of Southern Africa

'Making or Breaking the Conflict Cycle: The Relationship Between Underdevelopment, Conflict and Forced Migration’

This paper looks at the relationships between development, conflict and forced migration with the purpose of investigating how humanitarian, refugee and development assistance policies can help developing countries resolve or prevent violent conflicts.The first part of the paper looks at the causes and consequences of violent conflict and forced migration. It discusses the role of economic factors in causing conflict and forced migration. Conversely, it also investigates the negative impact on development, poverty and economic growth caused by violent conflict and forced migration. Part Two of the paper looks at how this vicious cycle can be broken, with particular emphasis on how developmental and humanitarian aid can be honed to strengthen the prospects for peace and security

African Agency in a Changing Security Environment: Sources, Opportunities and Challenges

This special issue contributes to the growing debate on the nature and limits of African agency. It does so by focusing on the possibilities of and constraints on agency in the security sphere. This is a sphere traditionally characterised as dominated by existential threats and the imperative of survival. Hence it is often considered to present an especially restrictive environment for agency, particularly of the transformative kind.We do not take this traditional understanding of security for granted, but adopt a constructivist viewpoint. The articles included in this special issue have in common that they all aim to critically explore the way in which security threats and appropriate responses are perceived, defined and pursued by African actors, whether multilateral institutions, states, communities or individuals. We argue in favour of an understanding of agency which is relational and contextualised, where structures and agency are continuously reproduced over time and co-constitutive, a theme reflected across the studies presented. Through this approach we aim to challenge narrow, structure-dominated and overly restrictive approaches to understanding the responses of African actors to contemporary security challenges. We define security in a broad manner. Some studies are concerned with traditional security threats to states and regions, while others focus on the human security needs of individuals to not just survive on the margins of existence but to exercise their agency to improve, or at least attempt to improve, their lives

UNHCR and the Securitization of Forced Migration

Since the end of the Cold War, and particularly after the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, refugee movements have increasingly been portrayed by state policy makers, the media, and even the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as a threat to security. This development is intrinsically linked to the widening of the concept of security in the post-Cold War period beyond the traditional Realist notion of national security as the military protection of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. This trend can be seen in the academic literature as well as in the discourses of states, regional organizations, and the UN. It is a phenomenon that can be observed in the industrialized North as well as in the developing South, albeit in different manifestations. The securitization of forced migrants, whether they be mass influxes of refugees in the global South or asylum seekers in the North, has had a significant impact not only on how we talk about displacement but also on what solutions we deem appropriate for dealing with their sutuation. Using the securitization approach of the Copenhagen School, this chapter will trace this securitisation process of forced migration over the past two decades, with particular focus on the discourse of the UNHCR. It will then discuss the consequences of this securitization for the treatment of asylum seekers in the North and mass refugee flows in the South. The links between, on the one hand, Northern attitudes and actions to deter and return asylum seekers, and on the other hand, an increased unwillingness to receive refugees in the South will also be explored

The Rise and Decline of a Global Security Actor: UNHCR, Refugee Protection and Security

This book investigates the rise of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as a global security actor, following the refugee agency through some of the past two decades’ major conflict-induced humanitarian crises and complex emergencies, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo and eastern Zaire/Congo. It analyses UNHCR’s momentous transformation from a small, timid legal protection agency to the world’s foremost humanitarian actor playing a central role in the international response to the many wars of the tumultuous last decade of the twentieth century. Then, as the twenty-first century set in, the agency’s political prominence waned. It remains a major humanitarian actor, but the polarized post-9/11 period and a worsening protection climate for refugees and asylum seekers spurred UNHCR to abandon its claim to be a global security actor and return to a more modest, quietly diplomatic role. The rise of UNHCR as a global security actor is placed within the context of the dramatic shift in perceptions of national and international security after the end of the Cold War. Prominent among ‘new’ security issues were the perceived threats posed by refugees and asylum seekers to international security, state stability, and societal cohesion. This book investigates UNHCR’s response to this new international environment; adopting, adapting and finally abandoning a security discourse on the refugee problem

The Securitization of Forced Migration

The systematic inclusion of refugees, asylum seekers, and other categories of migrants on the research agendas of security scholars is a relatively recent phenomenon. Forced migrants were mostly ignored by Security Studies during the Cold War. The growth in interest in the security dimension of forced migration has gone hand in hand with the widening of the security agenda taking place around the end of the Cold War. Refugee and migrant flows were among the earliest and most prominent new security issues proposed in the turbulent first years of the post-Cold War period. Twenty years later there is a vast and diverse literature, covering a range of theoretical perspectives within Security Studies, on the relationship between forced migration and security. Applying the insights of the securitization approach, this chapter discusses the question of how, why, in what context, and with what consequences, refugees and asylum seekers (as well as other migrants) can be constructed as security issues. Different versions of the securitization approach are used to shed light on different securitization processes