Why Smart Sanctions Still Cause Human Insecurity

This article seeks to answer the questions of whether sanctions are smart as designed and why if they are not. Evidence appears to suggest that smart sanctions are not intelligent enough to change political leaders alleged violent behavior or to protect innocent civilians from direct or physical as well as indirect or structural violence. Targeted government officials can always find ways to outsmart the sanction sender actors by resisting the latters coercive efforts because of their willingness and ability to take repressive action against their people and find alternative trading partners as well as support from powerful undemocratic states. Instead of minimizing human suffering, sanctions tend to exacerbate regime insecurity and perpetuate international alliance politics. The cases of Myanmar and North Korea validate this proposition

Human Security after 25 Years: Some Introductory Remarks and Critical Reflections

After 25 years, the global vision for human security as a concept and a policy commitment remains unfulfilled in most parts of the world. In fact, more and more evidence points to the growing reality that the idea of securing people has once again succumbed to the traditional concepts of state security and regime security, as it did after World War II. Part of the problem can be found in some major policy instruments adopted by proponents of human security. Military intervention for human protection, economic sanctions and judicial punishment or threats thereof, which have been regarded as policy instruments to protect people or promote human security, have proved to be either insufficient or ineffective, and at worst counter-productive

The Limits and Potential of Liberal Peacebuilding for Human Security

The overall record of peacebuilding as a post-Cold War liberal project has proved to be more positive than negative, especially in conflict termination. However, the peacebuilding agenda has had its limits in terms of progress in democratization, judicial institution-building and economic development, despite potential for greater success. Peacebuilders are more likely to succeed in transforming societies torn by armed conflict if they can avoid making the process excessively competitive. Democratization and capitalist development are already competitive processes, and the pursuit of retributive justice takes the form of judicial punishment. Together these strategies can form a recipe for competition and conflict, especially in institutionally weak states where the history of distrust among warring factions or former enemies is long and intractable

Introduction: Human Security at 20 - Lysøen Revisited

The 1994 Human Development Report, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), introduced and formalized the concept of human security. The UN agency argued that the concept of security should be expanded beyond the traditional state-centric, politico-military dimension. According to the Report, human security means economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. The concept is generally defined as freedom from fear (from direct physical violence) and freedom from want (from indirect and nonphysical or structural violence) (UNDP 1994). Although the idea of human security was not entirely new, the UNDP Report made a global impact on intellectual and policy thinking. Sorpong Peou (2014) argues that the study of human security has now emerged as an academic field. However, as David Black, Astri Suhrke and others point out in their respective articles in this special issue, human security as a normative concept has lost much of its persuasive power among policymakers. Our purpose here is not to ignore this policy challenge but to assess the progress the human security agenda has made, identify remaining obstacles, and continue the search for more creative ways that would help us build a more humane world

Interparty and Intraparty Factionalism in Cambodian Politics

Cambodia's hegemonic party system that emerged after the violent removal of First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh early in July 1997 has now given way to a one-party state, which still remains prone to tension and instability. The party system has become less factionalised and can be characterised as moving from high to medium factionalism. This development resulted from the growing domination of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) and the weakening of the opposition parties, such as National United Front for an Independent, Netural, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia, which splintered and become almost irrelevant in Cambodian politics. The Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) emerged as the main opposition party after the 2013 election but was then banned from competing in the 2018 election. Although the CNRP remains united by its anti-CPP position, it is still fractured along political lines between two former opposition parties - the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party. Historical institutionalism sheds some new light on the variation of political developments among political parties and within them, but does not supplant the fact that party leaders are rational to the extent that they select strategies in pursuit of their interests defined as power or security under specific institutional constraints or the lack thereof