Impact of climate governance in increasing resilience among cyclone sidr and aila affected people in bangladesh

This paper discusses climate governance policies in Bangladesh and investigates to what extent are those policies contributing to increasing resilience among cyclone Sidr and Aila affected coastal people of Bangladesh. Climate governance has emerged in recent years in order to address the governance challenges within climate change programmes and policies and to reduce the vulnerability of disaster victims by engaging with multiple stakeholders from both government and non-government institutions with specific objectives to ensure governance issues and ensure use of funds for most vulnerable communities. In other words, it is the rule making decision, making mechanisms and modes within a given system or society that determine how institutions’ interest are articulated, coordinated and negotiated; how power and authority are distributed, controlled and exercised and how resources are accessed, allocated, used and exchanged; and how conflicts are mitigated or resolved to enable and sustain effective climate change mitigation and adaptive response. This study draws on structured interviews of 285 affected villagers and data were collected using questionnaire survey and data were analysed by using frequency distribution, confidence interval test, cross tabulation and chi-square tests. The results show that climate governance does not have much contribution in increasing resilience among the cyclone Sidr and Aila affected vulnerable of Bangladesh. More specifically, the results show that only about 12% houses are pucca in Sidr affected areas and 16% houses are pucca in Aila affected areas. Likewise, the cross tabulation results show that more than 77% of respondents have very low level of resilience to cyclone and more than 95% of respondents have vulnerability between very low to moderate level. About 79% of respondents have a very low level of resilience in terms of cyclones and more than 71% in terms of building capacity to resilience. This study makes significant contribution to the body of knowledge by investigating the impact of climate governance policies in increasing resilience among post-cyclone Sidr and Aila affected people of Bangladesh

Institutional barriers to successful innovations: Perceptions of rural farmers and key stakeholders in southwest Nigeria

Diffusion studies in sub-Saharan Africa have typically focused on the impact of traditional adoption factors on uptake of technological innovations. This study draws on semi-structured interviews of rural farmers and in-depth interviews of stakeholders in southwest Nigeria to examine the impact of institutional factors on the success of technological innovations. The findings indicate that government policies, markets, financial institutions, infrastructure and other institutional conditions play significant role on the success of technological innovations. A successful innovation package should integrate institutional reforms with promotion of innovative inputs, and vibrant farmers’ cooperatives can be at the heart of such agrarian reform. This is the accepted manuscript of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development 2014, 6(4) © 2014. Institutional barriers to successful innovations: Perceptions of rural farmers and key stakeholders in southwest Nigeria is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/20421338.2014.96603

Impact of Boko Haram activities in the Lake Chad region of Africa

The Boko Haram insurgency has remained the single major security threat to peace, stability and development in the Lake Basin and its fringes. The countries sharing common boundaries along the Lake Chad continue to grapple with security challenges resulting from the insurgency. The immediate effect of the terrorist activities was population displacement. To understand the magnitude of the situation, section one of the paper dwell on how Boko Haram, the prime instigator of the precarious situation being experienced metamorphosed from a fragmented so called religious movement into one of the worst terrorist groups in the history of the Sub-Saharan Africa. The group’s activities were initially localised and isolated, but eventually escalated to regional and international dimension, with tragic consequences. The second part analyses theoretical concepts especially; socio-economic theory of human deprivation, “frustration” and resulting in “aggression”. The section highlights the socio-political theory of state institutional demise compounded by porous borders with large scale ungoverned space in the Sahel region as causative agents and vehicles that created the current security situation. Section three of the paper appraises the role of the Multi National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) in the insurgents. The nexus or linkages between National, Regional and International efforts and collaborations galvanised to collectively confront and address the monumental security challenges will also be highlighted. Finally, the presentation discusses the successes so far recorded in restoring peace, security and general wellbeing of the populace in the Lake Chad Basin. Furthermore, the daunting challenges still being faced by the Nigerian State towards consolidating on the successes already made are outlined. Finally, the paper makes projections and recommendations on the way forward to bring to an end the unquantifiable human misery being experienced as a result of the insurgency

Securitization and Community-Based Protection Among Chin Refugees in Kuala Lumpur

This article examines refugee-led community organizations among Chin refugees from Myanmar in Kuala Lumpur. It uses a structuration analysis that recognizes refugee-led organizations as complex governance entities engaged in a dynamic relationship with (among others) national policies of securitization of forced migration and international humanitarian governance. This approach expands the existing literature on the securitization of forced migration by exploring refugees’ lived experiences in a context of south–south migration. It expands the literature on community-based protection by going beyond recognizing the existence of refugee-led organizations to analyse their construction, constitution and consequences. Three primary areas of work by Chin refugee groups are analysed in relation to their immediate activity and longer term effects: organization (‘building ethnic unity in adversity’), documentation (‘asserting a bureaucratic identity’) and socialization (‘learning to be illegal’). These long-term effects indicate the possible impact of local protection activities on macrostructural processes such as identity construction and migration choices.construction, constitution and consequences. Three primary areas of work by Chin refugee groups are analysed in relation to their immediate activity and longer term effects: organization (‘building ethnic unity in adversity’), documentation (‘asserting a bureaucratic identity’) and socialization (‘learning to be illegal’). These long-term effects indicate the possible impact of local protection activities on macrostructural processes such as identity construction and migration choices

The Influence of International Law on the International Movement of Persons

Many migration theories identify ‘the law’ as a significant constraint on the international movement of persons. While this constraint often operates through national migration legislation, this study examines the influence of international law in shaping contemporary patterns in the international movement of persons at the macro level. The analysis begins with an examination of the long-established power of a State to regulate cross-border movement of persons as an inherent attribute of State sovereignty, together with the accepted limitations on a State’s power to control entry and exit. Yet, international law reaches well beyond the movement of people across borders. The development of international human rights law has been a key constraint on state action in the United Nations era by also regulating the treatment of migrants within a State’s borders. The study considers how international law has responded to current migration issues, including: protection of migrant women and children; suppression of smuggling and trafficking of people; labour migration; and environmental migration. As in other areas of international society, there has been a proliferation of institutions through which international migration law is made and enforced. The most prominent among them are the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), but the establishment of other entities with overlapping mandates has given rise to calls for a new international migration regime based on streamlined institutional arrangements. The study concludes that international law is an imperfect framework for regulating the international movement of persons because it has developed in a piecemeal fashion over a long time to deal with issues of concern at particular points in human history. Yet, despite its shortfalls, international law and its associated institutions unquestionably play a most important role in constraining and channeling state authority over the international movement of persons

Social Control in Transnational Families: Somali Women and Dignity in Johannesburg

Transnational mobility often separates families and distances individuals from the kinship and social structures by which they organized their lives prior to migration. Myriad forms of insecurity have been the impetus for Somali movement into the diaspora, with people fleeing the realities of conflict that have marked Somalia for decades while physically dividing families as individuals settle in different countries around the world. Mobility has altered the dynamics of households, families, and communities post-migration, reshaping social constructions as individuals move on without the familial support that sustained them in Somalia. While outcomes of these hardships are variable and often uneven in different settlement spaces, migration can offer new opportunities for people to pursue avenues from which they were previously excluded, such as by assuming roles and responsibilities their relatives once filled. These changes precipitate shifting identities and are challenging for women who find themselves self-reliant in the diaspora, particularly in the absence of (supportive) husbands and close kin.Drawing on ethnographic research in Johannesburg’s Somali community, this chapter explores the assumption that migration provides an opening for women to challenge subordinating gender norms. Settlement often grants women greater freedom to make choices in their lives, such as in employment and personal relationships, and yet they remain constrained by networks that limit their autonomy. Even with transnational migration and protracted separation, women are family representatives who must uphold cultural notions of respectability despite realities that position them as guardians and family providers. Women remain under the watchful eye of their extended families through expansive networks and the ease of modern communication, which facilitate a new form of social control as women’s behavior is carefully monitored and reported to relatives afar. These actualities raise questions about the degree to which transnational movement is a liberating force for women or rather a reconfiguration of social control. I argue that despite women’s changing position in their households and families, they remain limited by social control within their extended families and communities

A discursive review of the textual use of ‘trapped’ in environmental migration studies: The conceptual birth and troubled teenage years of trapped populations

First mooted in 2011, the concept of Trapped Populations referring to people unable to move from environmentally high-risk areas broadened the study of human responses to environmental change. While a seemingly straightforward concept, the underlying discourses around the reasons for being ‘trapped’, and the language describing the concept have profound influences on the way in which policy and practice approaches the needs of populations at risk from environmental stresses and shocks. In this article, we apply a Critical Discourse Analysis to the academic literature on the subject to reveal some of the assumptions implicit within discussing ‘trapped’ populations. The analysis reveals a dominant school of thought that assisted migration, relocation, and resettlement in the face of climate change are potentially effective adaptation strategies along a gradient of migrant agency and governance

Displacement and Resettlement: Understanding the Role of Climate Change in Contemporary Migration

How do we understand displacement and resettlement in the context of climate change? This chapter outlines challenges and debates in the literature connecting climate change to the growing global flow of people. We begin with an outline of the literature on environmental migration, specifically the definitions, measurements, and forms of environmental migration. The discussion then moves to challenges in the reception of migrants, treating the current scholarship on migrant resettlement. We detail a selection of cases in which the environment plays a role in the displacement of a population, including sea level rise in Pacific Island States, cyclonic storms in Bangladesh, and desertification in West Africa, as well as the role of deforestation in South America’s Southern Cone as a driver of both climate change and migration. We outline examples of each, highlighting the complex set of losses and damages incurred by populations in each case

Sexual Violence in the Eritrean National Service

Claims of sexual violence against female conscripts by military commanders abound in the Eritrean national service (ENS). Hitherto there has been no attempt to subject these claims to rigorous empirical scrutiny. This article is a partial attempt to fill the gap. Using data collected through snowball sampling from 190 deserters (51 females and 139 males) in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, South Africa, Kenya and Sweden, supplemented by data from systematically selected key informants, it examines the extent to which female conscripts serving in the ENS are subjected to sexual violence and harassment by their commanders. The extensive data based on the perceptions and experiences of respondents who served on average about six years before deserting; imply that sexual abuse is rampant in the EN

The Eritrean National Service: Servitude for the Common Good and the Youth Exodus

Gives voice to the conscripts who are forced to serve indefinitely without remuneration under the ENS in a powerful critical survey of its effect from the Liberation Struggle to today