Global Security, Rights and Development (GSRD)

Alan Collins 

Caner Sayan 

David Bewley-Taylor 

Gerard Clarke 

Jamie Stacey

Krijn Peters 

Kris Stoddart

Leah Owen 

Luca Trenta 

Student Members:

Noble Chibueze Eyisi – PhD Student

Collins, A. & Soon, E. (2023). The spiral model, scope conditions, and contestation in the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights. The Pacific Review, 0, 1-32. 

 In 2009 ASEAN established a human rights body—the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR)—and tasked it with promoting and protecting human rights in Southeast Asia within ASEAN’s framework of cooperation and to encourage member states to ratify international human rights treaties and act in accordance with them. AICHR has ten Representatives, one for each ASEAN member, and these individuals are tasked with fulfilling AICHR’s mandate. In this article, we utilise the mechanisms and scope conditions contained in the revised Spiral Model to assess the opportunities and challenges that exist in aiding and frustrating their attempts to fulfil AICHR’s mandate to promote and protect human rights.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2023.2168034

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa62309 

Collins, A. & Soon, E. (2022). The AICHR as a participatory space: contesting the secretive face of power. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 76(4), 359-378. 

The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) is often regarded unfavourably, depicted at best as irrelevant in the battle to promote and protect human rights in Southeast Asia, and at worst, complicit in the abuse of human rights by its silence in the face of the region’s human rights’ tragedies. While AICHR has many limitations, we regard it as a work-in-progress, evolving as it was always meant to. To understand this evolution, we conceive of AICHR as a participatory space in which contestation of what AICHR can, and cannot, do is being undertaken by its Representatives.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2021.2016610

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa59029 

Mirzania, P., Gordon, J., Balta-Ozkan, N., Sayan, C., & Marais, L. (2023). Barriers to powering past coal: Implications for a just energy transition in South Africa. Energy Research & Social Science, 101, 103122

The feasibility of South Africa’s just energy transition, as dictated by the speed of phasing out coal and scaling up renewables, will rest on a range of techno-economic, socio-political, and socio-technical factors. Interactions between these dimensions of the transition carry significant implications for energy justice. In response, this paper proposes the Just Transition Feasibility Framework (JTFF) to better evaluate how feasibility constraints may impact South Africa’s energy transition ambitions, and its more recent commitments to energy justice. Drawing on qualitative findings from interviews with South African energy experts, the study provides critical insights on the national- and community-scale implications of current energy policies. 

Links to article full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103122

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa63581

Sayan, C., Wagaba, B., Haemmerli, H., Gill, J., & Parker, A. (2023). Understanding small NGOs’ access to and use of geological data and expertise in delivering SDG 6 in eastern Africa. Journal of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene for Development, 13(5), 312-321.

Groundwater resources have the potential to meet the water demands of vulnerable communities in eastern Africa. To ensure such groundwater resources are managed sustainably, robust geological knowledge must be available and utilised by those managing groundwater. Small NGOs are one type of practitioner working on water-related projects with remote and vulnerable communities. This study aimed to understand the access to and use of geological data and expertise by small NGOs involved in water-related projects, through an online survey and key-informant interviews. The study revealed that small NGOS want to use geological data but bureaucracy makes it difficult to access free, existing government geological data sources, and that datasets are not always stored appropriately.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.2166/washdev.2023.233

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa63580

Bewley-Taylor, D. & Hallam, C. (2021). The International Drug Control Regime: Crisis and Fragmentation. In Annette Idler and Juan Carlos Garzon Vergara (Ed.), Transforming the War on Drugs: Warriors, Victims and Vulnerable Regions (pp. 83-112). Hurst & Company 

This chapter presents more recent tensions around the policy direction that the so-called Vienna consensus entailed. The chapter explores the specific set of interwoven and interrelated themes that have challenged the International Drug Control Regime. It explains the regulatory architecture of the International Drug Control Regime, including the main stakeholders in the system and their interests, as well as the broader trends in the architecture. It argues that there are political differences among the various stakeholders that increasingly fracture the regime: while some states push for some type of reform, others resist change. The chapter concludes that there will be a turning point that is likely to either fragment or reconfigure the system.

Links to chapter: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197604359.003.0004

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa63127 

Bewley-Taylor, D. (2022). The Creation and Impact of Global Drug Prohibition. The Oxford Handbook of Global Drug History (pp. 304-322). Oxford University Press 

This chapter examines the development of the international drug control system from its inception in 1909 through to the United Nations General Assembly on Drugs (UNGASS) in 1998. It begins by charting the shifting impact of US campaigns to export its prohibitionist ideology via international legal structures in the foundational years between the Shanghai Opium Commission and the outbreak of the World War II in Europe. US ideals and efforts remained ineffective during the League of Nations decades. The chapter then examines the rapid transformation of drug politics after World War II under the auspices of the United Nations and into the modern era of international drug control. This led to the bedrock of the global drug prohibition regime, the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and the modern UN institutions around it. The chapter then traces the development and perpetuation of the international control system since the watershed 1961 treaty until UNGASS 1998.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190842642.001.0001

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa63126 

Bolger, D. (2023). “Irregular” Migration, Intersectionality, and Race. Immigrant Lives (pp. 131-C7P87). Oxford University Press New York 

This chapter examines successive Australian governments’ immigration policies that have inflamed racially driven fears of migrants based on a historical concern of “invasion.” The chapter argues that migrants seeking to enter Australia are frequently dichotomised as either “desirable” or “undesirable,” with asylum seekers and refugees being portrayed as culturally and innately incompatible with Australian societal expectations. It further posits that debates on asylum seekers and refugees have increasingly centered on incompatibility, deviancy, and the need for “border protection,” resulting in refugees—especially those arriving by boat—being frequently presented in polemical terms as an “influx” of “aliens” or “back-door” entry seekers.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197687307.003.0007

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64806  

Clarke, G. (2021). The Credibility of International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) and the Oxfam Scandal of 2018. Journal of Civil Society, 17(3-4), 219-237. 

In 2018, one of the largest international development non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the world, Oxfam GB, became engulfed in a scandal which quickly spread to other international NGOs (INGOs). The crisis arose from the sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment (SEAH) of the beneficiaries and staff of leading INGOs and caused significant reputational harm to these organisations amid declining public trust and intense political and media scrutiny. The crisis raises significant questions about the credibility of INGOs and the policies necessary to restore public trust. This article reviews the background to the crisis and the responses to it from Oxfam GB & Oxfam International, by other INGOs and by the funders and regulators tasked with overseeing them, focusing on the United Kingdom.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2021.1994200

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa57441 

Clarke, G. (2021). “Thinking and Working Politically”: The case of donor‐supported reform coalitions in the Philippines. Development Policy Review, 39(3), 398-418. 

Description: Reform coalitions represent a potential means for donors to support macro-political reform in developing countries, enabling them to avoid the limitations of micro-political or public sector reform where appropriate circumstances exist. Donor support for reform coalitions, however, is difficult to engineer and fraught with political risk, including the risk of partisan taint. This article therefore explores the efforts of Australian Aid and the World Bank to promote reform coalitions and constituencies in the Philippines during the presidency of Benigno S. Aquino III (2010–2016) and to institutionalise the reform agenda of his administration.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12494

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa53344 

Jenkins, J., Mokuwa, E., Peters, K., & Richards, P. (2021). Rural–urban connectivity strengthens agrarian peace: Evidence from a study of gender and motorcycle taxis in Sierra Leone. Journal of Agrarian Change, 21(4), 776-795. 

Description: Rural-based insurgencies disrupted the forest margins of Upper West Africa in the 1990s. A subsequent return to peace was accompanied by strong growth in small-scale trade in foodstuffs and other agrarian produce in high demand in towns. Motor cycle taxis are a feature of this increased rural–urban market integration. It was a mode of transport pioneered by ex-combatants. Where rural women were once attacked by rural young men without job prospects press ganged into fighting for the rebels, bike taxi riders now carry them to rural periodic markets, many of which are new since the end of conflict. The study provides an analytical account of these developments, drawing on discussions with villagers in three heavily war-affected localities of Sierra Leone.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12423

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa56922 

Jenkins, J., Peters, K., & Richards, P. (2020). At the end of the feeder road: Upgrading rural footpaths to motorcycle taxi-accessible tracks in Liberia. NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 92, 100333 

Access to transport is essential for agrarian development in isolated rural areas. Over the last 20 years, most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have seen a dramatic change in farm-to-market transport following the introduction and spread of motorcycle taxis. So far, this has been a spontaneous and market-driven phenomenon. What kind of infrastructure development is needed to further support this local revolution in farm transport? Our study uses a technographic frame to describe and assess the socio-economic and technical impact of upgrading inter-village footpaths to render them usable by motorcycle taxis in off-road rural northern Liberia. We gathered pre-intervention baseline data and post-intervention impact data over a three-year period in villages benefitting from the intervention and in control villages.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2020.100333

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa55183 

Owen, L. (2022). “Parasitically Occupying Bodies”: Exploring Toxifying Securitization in Anti-Trans and Genocidal Ideologies. Peace Review, 34(4), 481-494. 

What is the “internal logic” of extreme anti-minority ideologies? While phenomena such as dehumanisation are widely recognised as playing an important role in legitimating mass violence, recent scholarship invites us to consider the impact of “toxification” and other securitising and threat-framing discourses in motivating “defensive” action against minority groups. Using such a framework, this essay investigates anti-trans discourses that advocate for action against a supposed “trans epidemic”. It finds that notions of infiltration, corruption, and intimate danger – associated with “toxifying” genocidal discourse – are likewise core to anti-trans ideological formations, with many distinctive elements in common. Where the two differ, however, is in their links with material security politics – genocidal toxification readily aligns with more “traditional” national security politics, something that has not occurred with anti-trans discourse.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10402659.2022.2129000

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa61366 

Trenta, L., Fahey, K., & Atkinson, D. (2023) Secrecy and the politics of selective disclosures: the US government’s intervention in Guatemala. Journal of Intelligence and National Security 

Recent scholarship debates the signaling function of secrecy and covertness. At the international level, covertness is used to achieve strategic objectives without risking escalation or openly violating international law. Domestically, secrecy is understood as a method to pacify domestic constituencies. These are typically understood as obstacles to the conduct of (covert) foreign policy. Building primarily on archival material, the analysis highlights the role of ‘selective disclosures’ of information regarding covert operations. This article analyses the Eisenhower Administration’s 1954 intervention in Guatemala (PBSUCCESS). We find that the executive used disclosures – and not secrecy – to pacify hawkish domestic constituencies.

Links to full article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2023.2279317

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64841 

Trenta, L. (2021). Remote killing? Remoteness, covertness, and the US government’s involvement in assassination. Defence Studies, 21(4), 468-488. 

The recent assassinations of General Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh have renewed debates surrounding governments’ use of assassination. Some commentators have interpreted these episodes as an escalation in practices of “remote warfare.” Recently, the literature on remote warfare has expanded to include multiple activities at – and below – the threshold of war. From its original focus on geographical distance, “remoteness” now encompasses the “political” distance of deployments of force. In this understanding, “remoteness” has blurred the line separating the methods used to deploy force and the ways – overt or covert – in which they are deployed. Having highlighted the role of covertness, this article establishes that assassination should be included in the “remote warfare” canon.

Links to full abstract and article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14702436.2021.1994393

SU Repository: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa58441 

An Enquiry into Neopatrimonialism and Clientelism in Nigeria’s Rentier State: A Case Study of Nigeria’s Oil Sector Synopsis:

This research work seeks to understand the root causes of corruption in Nigeria which is neopatrimonialism and rent seeking. It explores and tries to understand why rent seeking which is legal and productive in other countries is unproductive in Nigeria. It also analyses the behaviour of Nigeria’s elite, why and how it has entrenched corruption in the country and the challenges the Nigerian government will face in consolidating a transition from a fragile natural state to a mature natural state. Moreover, it looks at the pernicious effects of rent seeking behaviour and how neopatrimonial leaders have ripped Nigerians of their collective futures and dreams.