CIAO DATE: 02/08
While the international community focuses on major humanitarian and refugee emergencies, 60-70 per cent of the world's refugees displaced by conflict and human rights violations have been languishing in a state of neglect and insecurity in camps and urban slums - some for over twenty years. Protracted situations exist in the Caucasus, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East and West Africa. This article will focus on protracted displacement in Asia. It begins by providing an overview of the scale of displacement in the region. It then examines some of the causes and consequences of long-term displacement and recent efforts of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other humanitarian and development agencies to provide relief, protection, and durable solutions for over a million displaced people in Asia.
Attempts to address the problem of trafficking in persons on an international, regional and national basis are relatively recent. The 'Bali Process' refers to an ongoing programme of practical cooperation between over 40 Asian and Pacific countries which arose out of the Regional Ministerial Conferences on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime held in Bali in February 2002 and April 2003. The Conferences, together with the United Nations' Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, provided the impetus for the enactment of national legislation to criminalize trafficking in persons. This article analyses the criminal justice response to trafficking persons in the Asia-Pacific region since the enactment of the Protocol and argues that there are numerous practical problems with the enforcement of new trafficking provisions. Drawing on case studies in Australia and New Zealand, it is argued that other offences may be more easily enforced and that the emphasis on enacting new offences detracts from addressing human rights issues and the social dynamics of migration.
The Pacific Region has justifiably become increasingly concerned about insecurity in the Pacific island countries. In the longer term, the solution to this insecurity lies not in the military intervention of Regional Assistance Missions, or the external imposition of good governance programmes, but in economic development that specifically gives young people a stake in their country rather than a motivation for unrest or permanent emigration. The paper discusses the potential for seasonal migration from Melanesia, as contrasted with permanent emigration from Polynesia, to make a contribution both to island economies and to regional security. Kiribati's and Tuvalu's experiences with the temporary migration of seafarers are examined for possible lessons. The recently implemented New Zealand seasonal migration programme for the Pacific is set out as a possible model for further development.
This article explores the intersections between migrants (international, internal and settler-descendent), gender, and human security. It focuses on Fiji, Bougainville and New Caledonia as distinctive Pacific contexts in which to analyse how colonial and contemporary migration flows have contributed to the destabilization of local communities. It works to complicate the pervasive discourse about women as 'victims' of conflict by describing women's contributions to peace-building and human security in Fiji and Bougainville, as well as women's involvement in conflict in Kanak peoples' struggles for independence in New Caledonia and their subsequent peace-building efforts. The Fiji Women Peace and Security Coordinating Committee exemplifies how indigenous women are working with contemporary settler-descendents of colonial migrants as committed peace-builders. In Bougainville continuous conflict is linked to the stresses generated by contemporary migration, as people move within Papua New Guinea and others move from the Solomon Islands and elsewhere to obtain value from resource extraction enterprises, thus creating ongoing tensions with and within indigenous communities. Yet collectives such as the Bougainville Women for Peace and Freedom group have effectively worked to build peace in their island's communities. Although Kanak women contributed to struggles for social, political and economic independence in New Caledonia throughout the 20th century, which arose from a history of colonial migration and the social impact of contemporary migration, in recent years Kanak women have worked towards the reconciliation of indigenous Kanak communities with settler-descendent and contemporary international migrants via political structures and organizations.
American ballistic missile defence remains highly contentious and has been the source of much academic debate. This article undertakes an overview of assessments analysing the rationales behind missile defence. Through the application of a Critical Security Studies perspective, it addresses the underlying assumptions and potential limitations of these assessments. In particular it seeks to show that the current literature on missile defence is predicated on a prior distinction between politics and technology. This, however, is itself problematized within critical approaches as constitutive of a particular mode of thought integral to the maintenance of the very weapons missile defence proposes to address.
Despite high levels of AIDS in Africa, there are few indications that the pandemic is directly leading to imminent state failure amongst those countries on the continent that manifest exceptionally high AIDS prevalence. Of the factors that threaten the ability of governments to govern, AIDS (or any other health threat, for that matter) is seen to be a derivative threat - at most. However, there has been significant conjecture about the purported link between the pandemic and state fragility. This polemic has been fuelled by the securitization of disease that has become so prevalent in the multilateral arena since 9/11 in particular. However, social science has for the most part left the key concepts in this arena uncomfortably unexplored, and there have been few attempts to speak intelligently about empirical or other indices of the epidemic's impact at the macro (state) level. This article is an attempt to come to grips with some of these issues, specifically in the context of the mature epidemics ravaging Africa.
Since the electoral win of the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas's 'Change and Reform' candidates in legislative elections in January 2006 and the subsequent formation of a Hamas government in April 2006 the dynamics of democratic politics on the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been severely undermined and challenged. By June 2007 Hamas had complete control of the Gaza Strip and President Abbas had formed a separate 'emergency government' located on the West Bank. This paper examines the prospects for democracy in the Palestinian Authority territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to what extent political factions are subverting institutions and frameworks for democratic rule in order to create outcomes where they extend a monopoly of power. The paper questions the extent to which the lexicon of Hamas's 'Islamism' has manifested itself as Islamic governance since the organization obtained power through the ballot box in 2006. The paper ends with a discussion of some of the challenges facing Hamas and Fatah and the new political arrangements for governance, given the dynamics and debate outlined.