Showing posts from category conflict.
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Chad Briggs: Dealing With Risk and Uncertainty in Climate-Security Issues
›July 21, 2010 // By Wilson Center StaffWe must do more than simply take our current understanding of climate-change risk and extrapolate it into the future, asserted Chad Briggs of the Berlin-based Adelphi Research in a video interview with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program.
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In Kampala, African Leaders Discuss Maternal Health While Attacks Renew Concern over Somalia
›July 19, 2010 // By Schuyler NullLeaders from 49 African countries are meeting today in Kampala, Uganda, at the start of a scheduled week-long African Union (AU) summit on maternal and child health. Uganda is a fitting location, as it faces some of the toughest health and demographic challenges in Africa, including a very young and rapidly growing population and poor maternal health services. However, with the memory of last week’s twin bomb blasts still fresh, peace and security issues will surely be on the agenda as well.
Somalia’s lead insurgency group, Al Shabab, took responsibility for the attacks in Kampala, which killed more than 70 people. Al Shabab’s first prominent cross-border attack is only the latest sign that Somalia’s issues – which also include a very young and rapidly growing population – are starting to spill over its borders. For more on Somalia’s deepening crisis and its effects on the East African region, see New Security Beat’s recent analysis: “As Somalia Sinks, Neighbors Face a Fight to Stay Afloat.”
Sources: AP, Washington Post.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Ugandan African Union contingent in Mogadishu, Nov. 25, 2007” courtesy of flickr user david axe. -
DRC’s Conflict Minerals: Can U.S. Law Impact the Violence?
›July 13, 2010 // By Schuyler NullApple CEO Steve Jobs, in a personal email posted by Wired, recently tried to explain to a concerned iPhone customer the complexity of ensuring Apple’s devices do not use conflict minerals like those helping to fund the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. However much one might be tempted to pile on Apple at the moment, Mr. Jobs is on to something with regard to the conflict minerals trade – expressing outrage and raising awareness of the problem is one thing but actually implementing an effective solution is quite another.
As finely articulated in a number of recent articles about conflict minerals in the DRC (see the New York Times, Guardian, and Foreign Policy for example), the Congo is, and has been for some time, a failed state.
Although a ceasefire was signed in 2003, fighting has continued in the far east of the country around North and South Kivu provinces, home to heavy deposits of tin, gold, coltan, and other minerals. The remote area is very diverse ethnically and has seen clashing between government troops and various militias from the Congo itself as well as encroachments by its neighbors Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. Referred to as “the Third World War” by many, there are by some accounts 23 different armed groups involved in the fighting, and accusations of massacres, rampant human rights abuses, extortion, and pillaging are common. According to the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, “there is almost total impunity for rape in the Congo,” and a survey by the International Rescue Committee puts the estimated dead from preventable diseases, malnutrition, and conflict in the area at over five million over the past decade (or 45,000 deaths a month).
At a recent event in Washington, DC on this terrible conflict (see Natural Security for an excellent summary), DRC Ambassador Faida Mitifu expressed her hope to the audience and panel (including U.S. Under Secretary of State Robert Hormats) that they would not limit themselves to “just talking.” Hosts John Pendergast and Andrew Sullivan of the NGO Enough Project hope to address the demand side of Congo’s mineral trade by pushing Congress to pass the Conflict Minerals Trade Act, which would require U.S. companies to face independent audits to certify their products are conflict mineral-free.
But Laura Seay, of Texas in Africa and the Christian Science Monitor, is dubious of this proposal, pointing out that:Without the basic tools of public order in place and functioning as instruments of the public good in the DRC, the provisions of this bill are likely to work about as well as the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme does in weak states that lack functioning governmental institutions – which is to say, not at all.
The Kimberely Process (KP) is a certification scheme that is supposed to stem the flow of “blood diamonds” that support corrupt regimes and fuel human rights abuses. But the KP’s governing body has recently reached a crisis of action over whether or not to punish Zimbabwe for alleged abuses, with one diamond magnate even claiming, according to IRIN, that “corrupt governments have turned the KP on its head – instead of eliminating human rights violations, the KP is legitimizing them.”
The problem with international transparency schemes like the Kimberely Process, the proposed Conflict Minerals Act, or even EITI, is that at the very least, a functioning government – if not a beneficent one – is needed to enforce regulations at the source. In the DRC’s case, not only does the government have little to no authority over the affected areas, but the mining militias are smuggling their loot, on foot in some cases, directly into neighboring countries anyway. By the time they reach U.S. companies (if ever – Americans are not the only consumers in the world), conflict minerals have passed hands so many times that proving their provenance is next to impossible.
Then there is the question of whether or not cutting off the militias, rogue military officials, and government forces from conflict mineral monies would even end violence in the region in the first place. Certainly many armed groups gain a great deal from their illegal mining activities (as do some locals), but is it the root cause of their discontent? In the best case scenario where mining revenues are actually decreased, would that really convince the remnants of the Hutu Interahamwe, fleeing retribution from the now majority-Tutsi Rwandan government, to suddenly put down their weapons? How about the Mai Mai, who are fighting the Hutu incursion into their homeland?
I for one find that hard to believe. Stopping the conflict mineral trade from afar is very difficult, if not impossible, and even if we could end the trade, it would not necessarily stop the suffering. Illegal mining does play a large part in supporting rebel groups, but to address the human security problems that have so horrified the world, international attention ought to first be turned toward improving governance mechanisms in the Congo and rethinking the troubled UN peacekeeping mission (how about more involvement out of U.S. AFRICOM too?). The failure of the current UN mission is well documented, but withdrawing the largest peacekeeping force in the world in the face of continued violence, including the recent death of Congo’s most famous human rights activist under suspicious circumstances, seems more likely to cause harm than good.
Would passing the Conflict Minerals Act make Apple consumers feel better? Perhaps. But that’s not the point. Environmental security measures that prevent the DRC’s tremendous mineral wealth from being used to fund conflict can only make an impact if the government has some measure of accountable control over the area. To make a real difference in east Congo, human security must first be addressed directly and forcefully.
Sources: BBC, Christian Science Monitor, Daily Beast, Human Rights Watch, IPS News, IRIN News, International Rescue Committee, Enough Project, Foreign Policy, GlobalSecurity.org, Globe and Mail, New York Times, Share the World’s Resources, Southern Times, Times Online, UN, Wired.
Image Credit: “Minerals and Forests of the DRC” from ECSP Report 12, courtesy of Philippe Rekacewicz, Le Monde diplomatique, Paris, and Environment and Security Institute, The Hague, January 2003. -
Stacy VanDeveer: Will Using Less Oil Affect Petrostate Stability?
›July 12, 2010 // By Schuyler NullIf we were to actually use less fossil fuel, what would happen to today’s petrostates? “If the oil revenues dry up or even decline a little bit you might have a real serious crisis,” said Stacy VanDeveer of the University of New Hampshire, during an interview with ECSP. We spoke to VanDeveer following his presentation at the Wilson Center event, “Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation.”
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Time to Give a Dam: Alternative Energy as Source of Cooperation or Conflict?
›July 8, 2010 // By Kayly OberMitigation can be a means to peace, not just conflict, said Stacy VanDeveer in the lead up to Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation at the Woodrow Wilson Center on June 10. VanDeveer believes that mitigation techniques, particularly alternative energy sources like hydroelectric dams, could stimulate cooperation rather than exacerbate threats.
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India’s Maoists: South Asia’s “Other” Insurgency
›July 7, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe Indian government’s battle with Maoist and tribal rebels – which affects 22 of India’s 35 states and territories, according to Foreign Policy and in 2009 killed more people than any year since 1971 – has been largely ignored in the West. That should change, as South Asia’s “other” insurgency, fomenting in the world’s largest democracy and a key U.S. partner, offers valuable lessons about the role of resource management and stable development in preventing conflict.
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Is the Third Pole the Next Site for Water Crisis?
›July 1, 2010 // By Tara InnesThe Hindu-Kush Himalaya area may host future water crises as glaciers melt, population rapidly increases, and competition over scarce water resources intensifies, says a recent report from the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King’s College.
Himalayan glaciers – often called the “third pole” because they house the greatest volume of frozen water outside the polar regions – provide the headwaters for 10 major river systems in Asia. Despite clear evidence that the HKH glaciers are receding, recent controversy over the 2007 IPCC report has sidetracked the discussion from the degree of glacial melt and its impacts on the surrounding environment.
Glacial melt sends more water into the rivers in the rainy season, and less water in the dry season. This variability will increase both floods and droughts, which in turn can damage agriculture and create food shortages. Melting glaciers can also create “glacial lakes” that are prone to sudden bursting, causing disastrous flooding downstream (ppt).
According to The Waters of the Third Pole: Sources of Threat, Sources of Survival, climate change is already having significant impacts in the Himalayan region, intensifying natural disasters and the variability of the summer monsoon rains, and increasing the number of displaced people and government attempts to secure water supplies from its neighbors.
Rivers of People: Environmental Migrants
One of the major consequences, the report argues, could be “growing numbers of environmental migrants,” which the authors define as “people moving away from drying or degraded farmland or fisheries, and the millions displaced by ever-larger dams and river-diversion projects”—and including the Chinese government’s forced “‘re-location of people from ecologically fragile regions.”
Today, about 30 million (15 percent) of the world’s migrants are from the Himalayan region, the report says, warning that “in the next decade, should river flows reduce significantly, migration out of irrigated areas could be massive.” But the authors acknowledge that reliable estimates are rare – a problem pointed out in The New Security Beat.
However, it is clear that the region’s population is growing and urbanizing rapidly: By 2025, one-half of all Asians will live in cities, whereas one generation ago, the figure was one in 10. This incredible shift, says the report, places “some of the greatest pressures on water through increased demand and pollution.”
Water War or Water Peace?
The Waters of the Third Pole warns that growing scarcity could “raise the risk of conflict in a region already fraught with cross-border tensions.” While interstate tensions over water have been minimal to date, they could potentially increase in areas where significant percentages of river flow originate outside of a country’s borders – in 2005 Bangladesh relied on trans-boundary water supplies for 91 percent of its river flow, Pakistan for 76 percent, and India for 34 percent. Intra-state conflict is also expected to increase. The report notes, “In China alone, it has been reported that domestic uprisings have continued to increase in protest about water management or water-quality issues.”
However, the water-conflict link remains shaky within the scholarly community. As Dabelko recently told Diane Rehm about the region, “There are prospects for tensions, but quite frankly, water is difficult to [obtain] through war. It’s hard to pick it up and take it home.”
The report points out some areas in which water may actually pose an opportunity for regional cooperation rather than conflict, such as developing knowledge-sharing networks like the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development. The presence of such networks may help establish channels of communication and aid in diffusing other cross-border tensions. But the authors caution that “environmental cooperation generally lags far behind economic cooperation in the HKH region.”
The report concludes that policymakers must move the region higher on the humanitarian agenda; construct a framework for action that includes non-intrusive international support; and more thoroughly address knowledge and communication gaps.
Photo Credit: “Annapurna ways, Nepal,” courtesy of flickr user rakustow. -
Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation
›The European Union’s biofuel goal for 2020 “is a good example of setting a target…without really thinking through [the] secondary, third, or fourth order consequences,” said Alexander Carius, co-founder and managing director of Adelphi Research and Adelphi Consult. While the 2007-2008 global food crisis demonstrated that the growth of crops for fuels has “tremendous effects” in the developing world, analysis of these threats are underdeveloped and are not incorporated into climate change policies, he said. [Video Below]
