Addressing Sexual Violence in and beyond the 'Warzone'

Conflict-related sexual violence remains pervasive across the globe, and its widespread use has been reported in Rwanda, Liberia, Northern Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. As world leaders prepare to gather in London for the Global Summit on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict, it is important that they focus their attention on the multiple forms of sexual violence that occur in all conflict and conflict-affected settings, not just on its use as a ‘weapon of war’. This will be critical to ensuring that access to care and support for all survivors of sexual violence is improved and that these essential resources are delivered across state, humanitarian and development agencies, avoiding the creation of parallel and hierarchical support systems.UK Department for International Developmen

Tangled Ties: Al-Shabaab and Political Volatility in Kenya

In recent years, a spate of attacks has destabilised a swathe of Kenya’s peripheral counties as well as bringing terror to its capital, Nairobi. As violent insecurity spreads, it has fomented fear and stoked ethnic and regional divisions, precipitating security crackdowns and roiling the country’s infamously tumultuous politics. These developments belie sweeping constitutional reforms that have taken place to address and prevent violence in Kenya. Since Kenya stepped up its military involvement in Somalia in 2011, ostensibly to buffer the country from violence wrought by Al-Shabaab – the Somalia-based jihadi organisation – attacks have multiplied, ranging from the September 2013 siege of Nairobi’s Westgate shopping centre, to village massacres, to the targeted killings of police and religious figures. Yet Kenya’s government, while widening its military engagement in Somalia, was at first slow to recognise and respond to the hand of Al-Shabaab in the country’s widening violent insecurity since the start of its Somalia military operations. This study adds to existing analyses of Kenya’s shifting political and security dynamics by examining the role of external influences on its system of violence.UK Department for International Developmen

Failing Young People? Addressing the Supply-side Bias and Individualisation in Youth Employment Programming

International development actors increasingly focus on youth employment as a key development challenge. The recognition of high rates of unemployment, underemployment and job insecurity among young people around the world has led to a plethora of youth employment interventions, as well as often problematic discourses about youth ‘dividends’ and ‘bulges’, which instrumentalise young people and paint them as security threats. This report problematises and critiques some of the currently predominant models for getting young people into work. Examining the current state of play of donor policies, the report critiques the supply-side bias built into the majority of approaches, and aims to advance an understanding of the demand-side and structural constraints. If supply-side approaches are not matched by measures to address these constraints, it argues, interventions risk adversely incorporating young people into the economy. The report also develops a critique of the overall narrow economic and individualistic approach currently adopted, building on the concept of social navigation to understand how young people’s decisions and trajectories regarding work are shaped in reality. Young people are socially embedded: their agency and aspirations are shaped by social values, positions and expectations, as well as by their social relationships and immediate political contexts. Consequently, the report argues that policies need to be de-individualised, both conceptually and practically, to better reflect the real constraints, opportunities and forces that will shape young people’s engagement with work.UK Department for International Developmen

A LADM-based temporal cadastral information system for modelling of easement rights – A case study of Turkey

Type people to land relations are dynamic and, as a consequence, the nature of land title and cadastral data is of a dynamic nature. Land title and cadastral data are core components for a lot of property applications (e.g. taxation, valuation, mortgage). Those applications require up to date, complete and reliable data–including temporal data as in use in application forms and transactions. In this paper, the modelling of Rights, Restrictions and Responsibilities (RRR) is discussed with a focus on the modelling of easement rights in a case study in Turkey. Functional requirements with respect to the characteristics of easement rights are investigated based upon interviews with professional experts in the public and private sector. Then a prototype model was built based on a simple implementation of the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) RRR classes and by conforming to the national cadastral data management standards related to land registration systems. This new proposed model includes temporal cadastral attributes related to easements. This is materialised in the ‘Administrative Package’ and illustrated in the Turkey LADM country profile. We show that the LADM can be used to describe for the time dimension of cadastral information in Turkey, but that there are semantic differences, similarities and mismatches of classes and attributes between the LADM and the cadastral information system in Turkey. Proposed LADM-based model for the time dimension of cadastral information will be of immense advantage to land administrators, the governments and land users in Turkey

CLUSTERING AND INDEXING HISTORIC VESSEL MOVEMENT DATA WITH SPACE FILLING CURVES

This paper reports on the result of an on-going study using Space Filling Curves (SFCs) for indexing and clustering vessel movement message data (obtained via the Automated Identification System, AIS) inside a geographical Database Management System (Geo-DBMS). With AIS, vessels transmit their positions in intervals ranging from 2 seconds to 3 minutes. Every 6 minutes voyage related information is broadcast. Relevant AIS messages contain a position, timestamp and vessel identifier. This information can be stored in a DBMS as separate columns with different types (as 2D point plus time plus identifier), or in an integrated column (as higher dimensional 4D point which is encoded as the position on a space filling curve, that we will call the SFC-key). Subsequently, indexing based on this SFC-key column can replace separate indexes (where this one integrated index will need less storage space than separate indexes). Moreover, this integrated index allows a good clustering (physical ordering of the table). Also, in an approach with separate indexes for location, time and object identifier the query optimizer inside a DBMS has to estimate which index is most selective for a given query. It is not possible to use two indexes at the same time &ndash; e.g. in case of a space-time query. An approach with one multi-dimensional integrated index does not have this problem. It results in faster query responses when specifying multiple selection criteria; i.e. both search geometry and time interval. We explain the steps needed to make this SFC approach available fully inside a DBMS (to avoid expensive data transfer to external programs during use). The SFC approach makes it possible to better cluster the (spatio-temporal) data compared to an approach with separate indexes. Moreover, we show experiments (with 723,853,597 AIS position report messages spanning 3 months, Sep&ndash;Dec 2016, using data for Europe, both on-sea and inland water ways) to compare an approach based on one multi-dimensional integrated index (using a SFC) with non-integrated approach. We analyze loading time (including SFC encoding) and storage requirements, together with the speed of execution of queries and granularity of answers. Conclusion is that time spend on query execution in case of space-time queries where both dimensions are selective using the integrated SFC approach outperforms the non-integrated approach (typically a factor 2&ndash;6). Also, the SFC approach saves considerably on storage space (less space needed for indexes). Lastly, we propose some future improvements to get some better query performance using the SFC approach (e.g. IOT, range-glueing and nD-histogram).</p

Roots and Routes of Political Violence in Kenya’s Civil and Political Society: A Case Study of Marsabit County

Struggles to influence the balance of power and the distribution of economic resources in Kenya have a long history of violence: national and local, actual and threatened, physical and psychological. Somewhat controlled by sophisticated legal, administrative and political institutions and strongly tempered by a deep fund of intercommunity cooperation, violence has been kept in check, but remains persistent. The levels of violence vary from place to place and year to year, and seldom break out into full-scale clashes or war. Nonetheless, different forms of violence combine with politics to form a resilient chain that exerts powerful control over people’s lives and resists straightforward policy prescriptions or easy practical resolutions. This case study uses a definition of political settlements to frame the inquiry (Parks and Cole 2010). This approach defines political settlements as the informal agreements that govern the formal negotiation and distribution of goods, rights and responsibilities within the state. The study aims to show one manifestation of how the political settlement in Kenya is upheld by a variety of interlinked forms of ‘normal’ violence, themselves linked to economic dependencies. Today’s political settlement is founded in the new constitution of Kenya and structured by the new system of devolved government. We show how the informal rules of the political (un)settlement in operation at the most local level play a role in sustaining a violent political system.UK Department for International Developmen

Closed-form analytical expressions for the potential fields generated by triangular monolayers with linearly distributed source strength

The solution of the mixed boundary value problem of potential theory involves the computation of the potential field generated by monolayer and double layer source distributions on surfaces at which boundary conditions are known. Closed-form analytical expressions have been described in the literature for the potential field generated by double layers having a linearly distributed strength over triangular source elements. This contribution presents the corresponding expression for the linearly distributed monolayer strength. The solution is shown to be valid for all observation points in space, including those on the interior, edges and vertices of the source triangle