THE LION AND THE CAT: HOW DO CHILD SOLDIERS SHAPE CONTEMPORARY PEACE OPERATIONS?

Armed conflicts and insurgencies today have adopted ruthless tactics of warfare by coercively recruiting child soldiers. Child soldiers play many roles during armed conflicts, creating security concerns for peace and stability in the international community. This study explores the social, physical, and psychological impact of child soldiers on peacekeepers and communities during and after conflict. It examines the three levels of risk (low, medium, and high) related to the use of force in interactions between child soldiers and members of the military and peacekeeping forces. Furthermore, the study assesses how lower-risk-level interactions can escalate to life-threatening situations. Drawing on relevant international law, literature by subject matter experts, and the author’s personal experience in peacekeeping operations, the research discusses how child soldiers shape contemporary peace support operations using Sierra Leone’s past civil war as a case that involved varieties of UN and non-UN peacekeeping efforts. Finally, the study makes recommendations to policymakers aimed to thwart efforts to recruit children and prevent further interactions between peacekeepers and children during all stages of conflict.Major, Sierra Leone ArmyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

THE POST-1986 UK INSOLVENCY SYSTEM: A STUDY OF MODE OF RESOLUTION AND OF COMPANY OUTCOME

This thesis empirically investigates the United Kingdom (UK) insolvency code by focusing on the formal procedures available to distressed firms in the UK. The UK insolvency code is characterised as a creditor-oriented system that enforces a binding agreement between the company and the creditors with a view to maximising payouts to the creditors. However, the government has introduced two major legislative changes – the Insolvency Act 1986 and the Enterprise Act 2002 – to move the UK insolvency code away from its creditor-orientation and towards a system that will increase the chances of distressed, but viable, firms in the UK to reorganise. The introduction of the Insolvency Act 1986 paved the way for distressed companies in the UK to enter into a formal procedure (administration) specifically introduced as a means of encouraging a culture of reorganisation for distressed firms in the UK. This thesis investigates the functioning of the UK code, by focusing on the two main formal procedures available to distressed firms (administration and administrative receivership) after the introduction of the 1986 Act. The introduction of the Enterprise Act 2002 resulted to the abolition of the administrative receivership procedure while maintaining the administration procedure as the key formal rescue procedure in the UK insolvency code. Hence, conducting research in the UK formal insolvency procedure is important as it provides empirical evidence on the administration procedure, which is now the main rescue vehicle under the Enterprise Act 2002. The thesis focuses on the post-1986 regime in the UK. It consists of 8 chapters including 3 empirical chapters. Chapter 5 examines a large sample of UK firms that initiated administration or administrative receivership procedures between 1996 and 2001. The aim is to investigate the choice of the resolution form between administration and administrative receivership. The main research question is to investigate whether the newly introduced administration procedure catered for firms with a different set of financial and other characteristics to those that entered administrative receivership. The findings show that there are some distinguishing characteristics between firms entering administration and those entering administrative receivership, implying that administrative receivership was not necessarily the most appropriate insolvency procedure for all distressed firms. Chapter 6 examines a sample of UK firms that entered administration between 1996 and 2001. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the differences between firms that reorganised in administration versus those that liquidate. The key issue here is whether administration procedure can differentiate between firms potentially likely to survive and those likely to fail. The findings show that there are significant differences between firms that reorganise and those that fail in administration, suggesting that the administration procedure is able to discriminate between viable and non-viable firms. Chapter 7 examines the subsequent performance of UK firms that reorganised in administration between 1996 and 2001 relative to a matched sample firms from the same industry and of relatively the same size. The aim was to assess the subsequent performance of companies that reorganise in administration using several key ratios, covering the period from two years prior to failure until three years afterwards. The results show significant improvements in the financial performance of reorganised firms, relative to a matched sample firms, during the period after entering administration. In summary, these results show the importance of introducing the administration procedure in the Insolvency Act 1986. Prior to this date, there was the possibility that some of those firms that reorganised in administration post-1986 might have been liquidated as there was no formal procedure aiming to reorganise distressed firms at that time. The findings clearly show the potential of the administration procedure in attracting distressed firms capable of reorganising. That procedure has now become the foundation upon which the UK insolvency code is built as indicated by the Enterprise Act 2002. However, having said that, the 1986 system also opened the way for severely distressed companies that should have been liquidated speedily in administrative receivership to attempt reorganisation in administration, thus wasting those firms’ already severely depleted resources further. In my opinion, the Enterprise Act 2002 should safeguard against this by putting in place procedures to prevent economically distressed companies from attempting to reorganise in administration

Authentication problems and access optimization to information wifi networks

Ensuring security presents a thorny problem because communication in a wireless network uses a shared medium without the benefit of a physical security perimeter. To address this problem wireless security protocols use cryptographic techniques to protect the network but the results have not always been successful. Serious flaws have been discovered in the design, implementation and operation of widely deployed wireless security protocols and attacks developed to exploit these flaws. Our investigation adopts the viewpoint of a hostile adversary to identify and exploit vulnerabilities that remain in wireless security protocols. Purpose-written software tools have been created to facilitate the investigation, conduct attacks and assist in the identification of the underlying causes of the security flaws. Remedial measures are then proposed, implemented and evaluated for the most serious threats. This method is applied to an investigation of the security problems present in both current Land Mobile Radio (LMR) systems and next-generation wireless mesh networks

Foreign direct investment and economic growth in Africa

Abstract Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a valuable source of external finance to complement domestic savings, enhance domestic investment and increase employment in developing countries. It can potentially promote long-term growth and development through knowledge and technology transfers from foreign firms to domestic agents in host countries. With these benefits in mind, especially in relation to low-income African countries characterized by underdeveloped domestic financial markets, this thesis investigates the determinants of FDI, evaluates how well local firms can be integrated in FDI projects to enhance productivity growth and determines whether these investments have contributed to increasing productivity growth of host African countries. These issues are analysed in three constituent chapters of the thesis. The first study explores whether FDI from the different group of economies, stratified into the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), non-OECD emerging markets and intra-African economies, are driven by market-seeking, natural resource-seeking and efficiency-seeking motivations into host African countries. Evidence suggests that market-seeking and efficiency-seeking FDI are more growth enhancing than natural-resource seeking FDI. This study exploits recent bilateral FDI data to examine the underlying motivations and determinants of FDI into African economies. In doing so, the study contributes to the empirical literature by providing evidence on the specific factors that influence FDI into resource-rich and non-resource rich African economies. The study finds that the size of host markets and presence of natural resources have important influence on FDI into resource-rich countries, with market size determining FDI into non-resource rich countries, while investments from non-OECD emerging markets economies are also explained by the presence of lower labour costs. It is also evident that there are significant differences in determinants of FDI into African countries, between investors from African economies and counterparts from the OECD and non-OECD emerging markets. The results show significant differences between the drivers of FDI to South Africa and other African countries. The second study complements the first in analysing the determinants of FDI activity, by determining the sectors through which foreign affiliates and local firms are more likely to undertake joint activities in FDI projects. This is important in light of the growing need to promote knowledge and technology transfers from FDI in order to boost productivity in host sub-Saharan African countries. Over the years, FDI in sub-Saharan Africa were mostly undertaken in high technology sectors, which are presumably capital-intensive, by jointventure firms formed between transnational corporations and domestic firms. This pattern of investment has called into question whether foreign affiliates and local firms have greater propensity to jointly engage in FDI projects in capital-intensive activities. Considering this question, the study contributes to the empirical literature by determining the sectors through which such integration is more likely to occur. In trying to understand this relationship, the analysis used a large survey dataset on manufacturing and services firms for 19 sub-Saharan African countries. The survey was conducted by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in 2010. This data allows us to evaluate the integration decisions of firms, considering how physical capital intensity of foreign affiliates and skill intensity of the local workforce affect such decisions. The results reveal remarkably consistent finding that there is a higher likelihood that these firms will integrate production through capital-intensive than labour-intensive activities in sub-Saharan Africa. The third study investigates the growth enhancing effects of FDI into African countries, considering whether such impact depends on human capital capacity across countries. This study contributes to the empirical literature by exploiting host country heterogeneity in human capital capacity in explaining whether there are differences in the effect of FDI on productivity growth across countries. To consider such differences, recent country level data on total factor productivity growth and human capital stock, which is used as proxy for host country absorptive capacity, were used in a panel of 25 countries over the period 1996-2011. The analysis employed the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) which allows for host country heterogeneity in human capital capacity to determine whether the relationship between FDI and productivity growth is nonlinear. The results strongly support the nonlinearity between FDI and productivity growth. This suggests that the impact of FDI on productivity growth differs across African countries. The heterogeneity is explained by the variation in human capital capacity across these economies. The study reveals a minimum threshold of 6.94 average years of schooling for FDI to accelerate productivity growth in host African countries. The analysis suggests that FDI will raise productivity growth in countries which have attained or exhibited human capital capacity closer to this threshold, when further efforts are applied to enhance such capacity. Countries with human capital capacity far below the threshold, however, will not experience productivity gains from these investments

An Assessment of the Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Pre- and Post- ‘SODOTO’ Model of Intervention in the Mobile Teaching Kitchen

Despite improvements in the overall status of malnutrition in India, the numbers remain alarmingly high. In order to address this problem in rural India, the Need for Nutrition Education/Innovation Program (NNEdPro) Global Center for Health and Nutrition, the Remedy Clinic Study Group in Kolkata, and the Inner Wheel Club for Greater Calcutta launched the Bhavishya Shakti Mobile Teaching Kitchen (MTK) project in two slums in Kolkata, India. The Bhavishya Shakti MTK project seeks to ameliorate the level of malnutrition in rural India by improving diet diversity and awareness through cooking demonstrations of sustainable, nutritious, and affordable meals. Locally trained volunteers follow a ‘See One, Do One, Teach One’ (SODOTO) model to transfer nutrition knowledge to their peers