Are Women Agents? Reading ‘Gender’ in Africa’s Rights Frameworks

Expert Content on Why Africa's return to pan-Africanism and quest for gender equality needs feminis

Mapping Perspectives on the EU as Mediator

Research on the European Union’s role as a meditator is nascent. It predominantly focuses on case studies or is cursorily embedded within wider research on the European Union (EU) as a crisis manager. Moreover, there is a significant disconnect between the established studies on mediation based in Conflict Analysis Studies and the EU’s foreign and security policy situated in Security Studies. Thus, there is a dearth of systematic engagement on the issue of EU mediation, although the EU often uses the language of mediation as a key component of its external commitments to conflict prevention, transformation and resolution. While advancements in mediation research suggest that there are certain determinants of mediation, and highlight key features that support and impede actors during conflict, this has not been systematically applied to the EU. Consequently, a key task of this workshop was to establish conceptual clarity and practical information about on the EU’s mediation roles. As a starting point, this workshop took stock of EU mediation knowledge from the perspective of different actors including academics, civil society and policy practitioners. In particular, it explored the limited academic engagement with this particular aspect of EU foreign and security policy. Additionally, the workshop critically interrogated how the EU understood its role in international mediation practice by exploring its capabilities and infrastructure and thereby locating opportunities and constraints to it performance. By bringing together various perspectives these discussions generated critical insights into where the remaining gaps in knowledge lay and the possibilities of academic partnerships with practitioners and policymakers to create new knowledge for Security and Conflict Analysis Studies

Privacy-Preserving Blockchain-Based Registration Scheme for AV Parking System

Autonomous Vehicles (AV) are a prime example of how innovation and automation are at the forefront of growing technology trends. The concern of parking systems is becoming apparent as research into ways to increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of AV continues. To ward against various internet attackers and secure users\u27 sensitive information, an efficient AV parking system must have powerful user privacy and cyber security capabilities. In my work, I present a blockchain-based privacy registration system for AV parking systems that meets the following criteria. The proposed scheme incorporates k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) - an efficient and lightweight algorithm - for encrypting and matching available parking slots of participating AV parking lots with the parking spaces of interest to AV users using vector matrices. Additionally, the incorporated blockchain eliminates the need for financial third parties and ensures secure payment fairness and transparency between the AV and parking lot. The proposed approach is also shown to be robust and efficient, according to our security and privacy analysis. Keywords: Blockchain, Parking Reservation, Autonomous Vehicles (AV), k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN), Parking Cloud Server (PCS

Regionalising Global Crises: The Financial Crisis and New Frontiers in Regional Governance

How are global crises, such as the current financial crisis, responded and dealt with? What are the consequences? Are there any links between regionalism and global crises in terms of stimuli, processes, and consequences? This edited volume brings together a range of examples to illustrate the development and importance of regional actors in the global governance of the political economy. Regionalising Global Crises highlights the regional level dynamics that exacerbate or contribute to solving the global economic crisis. It also explores the potential for change in the governance of the global political economy and international financial architecture by assessing the current and past financial crises through regional lenses. In particular, it addresses the debates that have emerged on the roles of regions and regional actors by undertaking empirical investigation of the impact of the crises on Africa, Europe, BRICS, and East Asia and their reactions to those events. As such it will provide an important empirical and methodological resource for students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in regional actors, comparative regionalism and international political economy

Gender and Queer Perspectives on Brexit

In Gender and Queer Perspectives on Brexit, editors Moira Dustin, Nuno Ferreira and Susan Millns bring together contributors to offer explicitly feminist and queer approaches to Brexit that broaden the scope of theoretical and policy debates. This is an important collection that tells a different story of the possible implications of Brexit, writes Toni Haastrup.Output Type: Book Revie

The undoing of a unique relationship? Peace and security in the EU–South Africa Strategic Partnership

When the European Union (EU) and South Africa acceded to a strategic partnership, they expanded into new areas of partnership. One of these areas was peace and security, which is the focus of this article. The article argues that, although there appears to be a shared understanding of what security means, the strategic partnership has not been utilised significantly to further this understanding in practice. This is largely due to the EU's preferences for a continental, multilateral approach over the bilateralism of a strategic partnership. At the same time, South Africa sees its strategic partnership with the EU as being outside of its broader commitment to regional security. As a result the peace and security element of the strategic partnership has not been leveraged effectively despite several entry points for action. The article thus concludes that both the EU and South Africa need to re-think the current arrangement. © 2017 The South African Institute of International Affairs