World Peace Foundation Publications
Books, research paper, reports and other publications distributed by World Peace Foundation
Books
Accountability for Mass Starvation:
Testing the Limits of the Law
Edited by Bridget Conley, Alex de Waal, Catriona Murdoch, and Wayne Jordash QC
Oxford University Press, August 2022
Accountability for Mass Starvation illustrates complications of historical and ongoing situations where starvation is used as a weapon of war, and provides expert analysis on defining starvation, early warning systems, gender and mass starvation, the use of sanctions, journalistic reporting, and memorialization of famine.
New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two hundred years of war on disease and it’s alternatives
ALEX DE WAAL
The book explores how these scripts were drafted, and their consequences for politics and science in the gap between the outbreak of a new pandemic pathogen and the scientific discovery and application of what is needed for containment and cure. It examines three historic pandemics—cholera in 19th century Europe and India, the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, and late-century HIV/AIDS in Africa and around the world—and the preparedness plans for ‘disease X’ over the last 25 years. The goal is to help explain what is familiar and what is unexpected in the current Covid-19 crisis. The book will make the argument for a critical perspective on the politics of pandemics and in favor of a more democratic and inclusive approach to public health.
Memory from the Margins: Ethiopia’s Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum
BRIDGET CONLEY
(Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
This book asks the question: what is the role of memory during a political transition? Drawing on Ethiopian history, transitional justice, and scholarly fields concerned with memory, museums and trauma, the author reveals a complex picture of global, transnational, national and local forces as they converge in the story of the creation and continued life of one modest museum in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa—the Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum. It is a study from multiple margins: neither the case of Ethiopia nor memorialization is central to transitional justice discourse, and within Ethiopia, the history of the Red Terror is sidelined in contemporary politics. From these nested margins, traumatic memory emerges as an ambiguous social and political force. The contributions, meaning and limitations of memory emerge at the point of discrete interactions between memory advocates, survivor-docents and visitors. Memory from the margins is revealed as powerful for how it disrupts, not builds, new forms of community.
Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine
ALEX DE WAAL
(Polity Press, 2018)
In Mass Starvation, world-renowned expert on humanitarian crisis and response Alex de Waal, provides an authoritative history of modern famines: their causes, dimensions, and why they ended. He analyzes starvation as a crime, and breaks new ground in examining forced starvation as an instrument of genocide and war. Refuting the enduring but erroneous view that attributes famine to overpopulation and natural disaster, he shows how political decision or political failing is an essential element in every famine, while the spread of democracy and human rights, and the ending of wars, were major factors in the near-ending of this devastating phenomenon.
Indefensible: Seven Myths that Sustain the Global Arms Trade
EDITED BY PAUL HOLDEN
(Zed Books, 2016)
The global arms trade is suffused with corruption, imperils the vulnerable and makes us all less safe. Yet arms merchants and their government supporters can turn to a set of time-honed and well-packaged arguments to justify the status quo. Each one of the claims is either deeply questionable or simply untrue. The arms business needs to be undressed. Then, we will find its claims are indefensible; nothing more than myths. The WPF’s Project Indefensible debunks the seven core myths that the arms industry uses to deflect criticism and explains what can be done. The project was sponsored by WPF, and the book’s author is Paul Holden, our colleague at Corruption Watch, along with collaborators Bridget Conley-Zilkic, Alex de Waal, Sarah Detzner, John Paul Dunne, Andrew Feinstein, William Hartung, Lora Lumpe, Nic Marsh, Sam Perlo-Freeman, Hennie Van Vuuren, and Leah Wawro.
How Mass Atrocities End: Studies from Guatemala, Burundi, Indonesia, the Sudans, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq
EDITED BY BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC
(Cambridge University Press, February 2016)
Given the brutality of mass atrocities, it is no wonder that one question dominates research and policy: what can we, who are not at risk, do to prevent such violence and hasten endings? But this question skips a more fundamental question for understanding the trajectory of violence: how do mass atrocities actually end?
This volume presents an analysis of the processes, decisions, and factors that help bring about the end of mass atrocities. It includes qualitatively rich case studies from Burundi, Guatemala, Indonesia, Sudan, Bosnia, and Iraq, drawing patterns from wide-ranging data. As such, it offers a much needed correction to the popular “salvation narrative” framing mass atrocity in terms of good and evil. The nuanced, multidisciplinary approach followed here represents not only an essential tool for scholars, but also an important step forward in improving civilian protection.
The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power
ALEX DE WAAL
(Polity Press, 2015)
Alex de Waal’s latest book (Polity Press, September 2015) draws on his thirty-year career in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, including experience as a participant in high-level peace talks, to provide a unique and compelling account of how these countries leaders run their governments, conduct their business, fight their wars and, occasionally, make peace.
De Waal shows how leaders operate on a business model, securing funds for their political budgets which they use to rent the provisional allegiances of army officers, militia commanders, tribal chiefs and party officials at the going rate. This political marketplace is eroding the institutions of government and reversing statebuilding and it is fueled in large part by oil exports, aid funds and western military assistance for counter-terrorism and peacekeeping.
The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa is a sharp and disturbing book with profound implications for international relations, development and peacemaking in the Horn of Africa and beyond.
Advocacy in Conflict: Critical Perspectives on Transnational Activism
Ed. by Alex de Waal with Jennifer Ambrose, Casey Hogle, Trisha Taneja, and Keren Yohannes
(Zed Books 2015)
Conflicts in Africa, Asia and Latin America have become a common focus of advocacy by Western celebrities and NGOs. This provocative volume delves into the realities of these efforts, which have often involved compromising on integrity in pursuit of profile and influence.Examining the methods used by Western advocates, how they relate to campaigns in the countries concerned, and their impact, expert authors evaluate the successes and failures of past advocacy campaigns and offer constructive criticism of current efforts. Taking in a range of high-profile case studies, including campaigns for democracy in Burma and Latin America, for the rights of Palestinians in Gaza, and opposing the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, the authors challenge the assumptions set forth by advocacy organizations.
Advocacy in Conflict was developed from the 2013 World Peace Foundation Student Seminar, Western Advocacy in Conflict: Methods, Impacts and Ethics, and is edited by Alex de Waal, with Jennifer Ambrose, Casey Hogle, Trisha Taneja and Keren Yohannes with contributions from many of the seminar participants. The seminar briefing full text available as a PDF download.
Listen to an interview “The Is Hell” conducted with Alex de Waal about the book.
Occasional papers
The World Peace Foundation hosts an occasional paper series to address topics related to our thematic research areas.
| Traumatic Decarbonization in Venezuela and Ecuador Katrina Burgess and Javier Corrales FEBRUARY 2023 When global oil prices fell precipitously in 2014, Venezuela and Ecuador were both ruled by left-populist parties reliant on massive oil rents. And yet their governments responded very differently to the oil shock. This paper seeks to explain why Venezuela and Ecuador took such divergent paths despite their similar starting points. |
Decarbonization and Political Transformation in Iraq: Impact on Politics, Society, and Regional Relations Shahla al-Kli and Jared Miller FEBRUARY 2023 What happens when a petrostate loses its oil rents? While the oil market continues to go through boom-and-bust cycles, cases such as Iraq provide evidence of how the rapid loss of oil revenues—traumatic decarbonization—may affect the politics and stability of these petrostates. In Iraq, multiple shocks to oil revenues from 2014 through 2020 fundamentally altered the organization and concentration of political power in Iraq with destabilizing and democratic consequences. Using the Political Marketplace Framework as an analytic framework, this paper argues that the successive traumatic shocks to Iraq’s oil revenues bankrupted the government triggering a nominal decentralization process, the fracturing of sectarian power, and contributed to a breakdown of sectarianism among the Iraqi people. |
Traumatic Decarbonization in Carbon-Based Political (Un)settlements Aditya Sarkar FEBRUARY 2023 This paper synthesizes findings from six case studies that have experienced instances of decarbonization over the past decade: Ecuador, Iraq, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, and Venezuela, and two thematic papers – on peace-making during oil shocks, and a broad review of the existing literature on energy transition in fragile states. This allows for examination of what has already happened in contexts which have gone through decarbonization, which yields insights into what might happen in other rent-dependent political systems during energy transitions. |
The New Era of Turbulence: Peacemaking Trends in Post-Carbon Times Jan Pospisil FEBRUARY 2023 Based on an empirical comparison of peace processes in carbon-dependent economies over time, this article investigates the impact of decarbonisation and the related decline of political finance in respective political marketplaces on peacemaking. |
Oil, Gold and Guns: The Violent Politics of Sudan’s Resource Booms Luke Patey FEBRUARY 2023 Sudan lost three-quarters of its oil resources after South Sudan’s separation in 2011. This paper explores the consequences of Sudan’s experience with traumatic decarbonization and how this informs thinking on the durability of systems of monetized political governance: political market- places. |
The Politics of an Oil Crash; How the 2020 Oil Shock Affected Political Settlements in Nigeria and Implications for Future Shocks Jared Miller FEBRUARY 2023 From the Nigerian people to scholars, and even Nigerian government officials, the Nigerian government is often described as an elite cartel focused on dividing up the immense oil spoils. Oil has historically accounted for 65 – 85 percent of government revenues, but what happens when the oil money dries up? What happens when Nigeria’s rentier state loses its main source of revenue? While this was once a distant question, the 2020 twin demand and supply shocks to oil have not only brought this question center stage but have also provided evidence of how traumatic decarbonization, rapid loss of oil revenues, will affect contemporary Nigerian politics. |
Making Markets: South Sudan’s War Economy in the 21st Century Joshua Craze FEBRUARY 2023 From 2005-13, relations between competing elite actors in South Sudan were organized through a political marketplace in which payments derived from oil rents were used to purchase the loyalty of armed men. During the same period, marketization, urbanization, and the politics of state-building remade South Sudan’s underlying political economy. With the outbreak of civil war in 2013 and the collapse of the country’s oil revenues, it was this transformed political economy that enabled the state to maintain its grip on power, as the government distributed positions and licenses to local actors, who then used such prestations to tax, raid, and otherwise immiserate the populations under their control. A shift from a political economy predicated on the distribution of oil revenues to one based on the apportionment of positions and licenses has intensified inequality in South Sudan and enabled continued elite domination. |
| Energy Transition in Fragile States: A Critical Primer Tarun Gopalakrishnan and Jared Miller FEBRUARY 2023 There is increasing global recognition of the need to move away from carbon-based fuels towards renewable energy sources in order to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. What are the distributional implications of this transition? While there are numerous analyses focused on Western and developed countries, how will it impact fragile states, especially those which produce fossil fuels? This is the driving question we seek to answer in this paper. |
The Long arms(s) of the State: The role of the Wagner Group in Russia’s pivot to Africa, 2017-2022 Kiana C.H. Nedele FEBRUARY 2023 This project aims to examine Russian official and paramilitary moves in central Africa 2017-May 2022 with an emphasis on the outsized role of the greater Wagner Group network, looking at the interplay of motivations and receptions from the Russian and African perspectives. |
Digital feast and famine: Digital technologies and humanitarian law in food security, starvation and famine risk Susanne Jaspars, Catriona Murdoch and Nisar Majid JUNE 7, 2022 This paper explores the role of digital technologies in the violation and application of humanitarian law, and its consequences for famine risk and prevention. The last decade has seen a return of severe famine and mass starvation (De Waal, 2018), and at the same time a digitalisation of food security and famine response. As current famines are mostly conflict-related, and digital technologies have also become part of the way in which war is fought, the adoption of these technologies raises issues with regard to International Humanitarian Law (IHL) or rather the rules of war and the protection of civilians. This research is supported by the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep), funded by UK Aid from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) for the benefit of developing countries. |
Weaponized storytelling à la française: Demystifying France’s narratives around its arms export policies Emma Soubrier APRIL 1, 2022 French storytelling about its weapons exports include that its processes are already “strict, transparent and responsible” enough as they are and hat weapons sales are an ntrinsically essential support to the country’s strategic autonomy and foreign policy interests. Analysis of exports to five conflict zones suggests that this self-perception is at best incomplete, at worst, erroneous. Demystifying these stories and conducting a sober assessment of their validity is critical because the evolving dynamics of armed conflict around the world heighten the need for genuine accountability in the global arms trade. Crucially, if left unchecked, these dynamics also precisely undermine France’s strategic autonomy and its foreign policy interests, notably because of the growing reverse influence of client states and the long-term destabilization linked to arms (re)transfers to non-state actors. Full report also available in French. This report is part of the research program “Defense Industries, Foreign Policy and Armed Conflict” funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and is carried out in partnership with the OpenSecrets. |
| On the Front Lines: Conflict zones and U.S. Arms Exports Jennifer Erickson (World Peace Foundation) MARCH 23, 2022 The Report finds that conflict does little to alter existing intergovernmental arms trade relationships, even when recipients’ policies and practices do not serve US interests. In contrast, there is unlikely to be an established pre-conflict arms trade between supplier states and armed rebel groups. Instead, the United States may initiate or facilitate arms supplies – small arms especially – as a form of political and military support during conflict. This occurs despite the risk that small arms are frequently diverted to illicit markets or to groups opposed to the United States. This report is part of the research program “Defense Industries, Foreign Policy and Armed Conflict” funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and is carried out in partnership with the OpenSecrets. |
| Missing in Action: UK arms export controls during war and armed conflict Anna Stavrianakis MARCH 15, 2022 The Report finds that despite over twenty years of controls that include commitments not to aggravate conflict, adversely affect regional stability or contribute to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law, the outbreak of war or conflict has little or no restraining effect on UK arms exports, even where violations of human rights and humanitarian law are documented. The UK has participated in wars, transferred weapons to its allies and partners involved in those wars, and supplied weapons to states involved in wars, and continued to do so well after violations become known. Such exports are typical of UK export policy, not the exception to it. Exports to countries involved in war are among the UK’s largest and longest-standing arms customers. This report is part of the research program “Defense Industries, Foreign Policy and Armed Conflict” funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and is carried out in partnership with the OpenSecrets. |
| Ending Solitary Isolation: Is it within reach in Massachusetts? Bridget Conley JANUARY 2022 This paper provides an overview of solitary confinement in Massachusetts’ prisons and jails, since 2018, with focus on the prison system administered by the Commonwealth’s Department of Correction (DOC). It reviews the research evidence that documents the psychological, physical, and community harms that result from practices of solitary isolation. And it provides evidence for why meaningful prison reform requires legislative action. |
| Gender, Famine and the Female Mortality Advantage Kinsey Spears, Bridget Conley, and Dyan Mazurana World Peace Foundation and the Feinstein international Center DECEMBER 2021 During times of famine, sex, gender and age differences matter. These factors impact who dies, who lives, and how people suffer; they shape lives and livelihoods before, during and after crises. But precisely how and why these factors intersect with famine conditions is an issue of much debate. This Paper investigates the evidence and explanations for sex, gender and age differences across 25 famines, analyzing: the cause of death, biological factors, health outcomes for famine survivors, in situ coping strategies, and migration patterns. It takes into account the potential long-term gender and age health and socio-cultural risks associated with exposure to mass starvation. It concludes by addressing implications for protection and accountability. |
| Starving Tigray: How Armed Conflict and Mass Atrocities Have Destroyed an Ethiopian Region’s Economy and Food System and Are Threatening Famine World Peace Foundation APRIL 2021 The people of Tigray, Ethiopia, are suffering a humanitarian crisis that is entirely man-made. This special report from the World Peace Foundation documents how Ethiopian and Eritrean belligerents in the war in Tigray have comprehensively dismantled the region’s economy and food system. We provide evidence of their ongoing actions to deprive people of objects and activities indispensable to their survival—actions that amount to international crimes. We track the process of deprivation conducted in a widespread and systematic manner. We indicate where it is leading: in coming months, to mass starvation and a risk of famine; in the longer term, to sustained food insecurity and dependence on external assistance. |
| Business as Usual: How major weapons exporters arm the world’s conflicts Sam Perlo-Freeman MARCH 2021 This report is part of the WPF research program, Defense industries, Foreign Policies and Armed Conflict, funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and carried out in partnership with the Center for Responsive Politics. It asks: why, despite robust regulation mechanisms in key exporting countries and international monitoring efforts, has the global arms trade proven remarkably resistant to effective controls – with direct enabling consequences on conflict situations? Access the full report, Press release, Executive Summary (English), Executive Summary (Arabic), Executive Summary (French) This report is part of the research program “Defense Industries, Foreign Policy and Armed Conflict” funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and is carried out in partnership with the OpenSecrets. |
| Forgotten Victims?:Women and COVID-19 Behind Bars Amaia Elorza Arregi, Bridget Conley, Matthew Siegel, and Arlyss Herzig NOVEMBER 2020 COVID-19 and the policies designed to counter it in American prisons pose distinct medical, emotional, psychological, and economic threats for incarcerated women and their families. Drawing on analysis of 138 women’s state and federal prisons across the United States, coupled with review of research on women’s prisons, and detailed profiles of the hardest hit facilities with insights from the women incarcerated inside them, this paper provides unique insight on the impacts of COVID-19 behind bars |
| No End State: Exploring Vocabularies of Political Disorder Alex de Waal October 2020 Every day we read that we live in an age of disorder. But what does that mean? Are our intellectual tools for ordering the world just not sharp enough? In this essay, Professor Alex de Waal tries to clarify what we mean when we talk about disorder in society, politics and global affairs. |
| 96 Deaths in Detention: A View of COVID-19 in the Federal Bureau of Prisons as Captured in Death Notices Bridget Conley and Matthew Siegel August 26, 2020 This paper is part of the WPF program on COVID-19 in American prisons, Detentionville. It reflects the concern that the possibilities for advancing peace globally are tied to the protection of the most vulnerable civilian populations. While our previous work has focused on threats of systematic violence against civilians, often in the context of armed conflict or political repression, the Detentionville project asserts that protection must be conceptualized as a globally integrated practice, whereby domestic and foreign policy exist along a continuum. In the context of American mass incarceration, long-standing, systemic injustices that devalue the lives of the disproportionately incarcerated Black and poor people, have now combined with an acute threat to their lives and health: COVID-19. |
| An African Agenda for Peace, Governance and Development at Thirty Said Djinnit and El-Ghassim Wane July 2020 This paper is primarily a piece of diplomatic history that retrieves the OAU’s initiative from its obscurity. It provides detailed narrative about this turning point in Africa’s history, explaining the motivation for the newly-appointed Secretary-General of the OAU, Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim, as he sought, with the support of his collaborators, to marshal a coordinated African response to the momentous events taking place at that time, and to ensure that the norms and principles of the OAU would be revived and refashioned for the decade ahead. The paper also details how the OAU Secretariat managed the process of moving from the February 1990 session of the Council of Ministers to the discussions of the OAU policy organs in July that year, leading to the adoption of the final text of the Declaration. |
| Vanguardist Nationalism in Eritrea Paulos Tesfagiorgis June 2020 This paper examines Eritrea’s history through the lens of the theory and practice of nationalism and self-determination by the vanguard of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front. It provides an account of the succession of colonial rulers and the evolution of an Eritrean nation, followed by the crystallisation of Eritrean nationalism. The paper documents how the Constitutional Commission of Eritrea went about its work, and how its outcome was thwarted by intervention. The paper examines how Eritrean nationalism and self-determination developed through two processes, public discourse among Eritreans around the question of the future of the territory, while the practical political exercise of self-determination was achieved only through the military victory of a vanguardist liberation front. |
| A typology of corrupt third-parties in the legal arms trade Xiaodon Liang April 1, 2020 The use of third-parties in corrupt international arms deals is ubiquitous. Agents and intermediaries play a role in many of the cases included in the World Peace Foundation’s Compendium of Arms Trade Corruption. Indeed, their near-universal appearance in the compendium entries means that merely highlighting their presence reveals little. It is the variety of roles these actors have played in arms deals that demands greater attention. This paper presents a preliminary typology of arms trade intermediaries as encountered in the more than 40 cases of corruption in the compendium. |
| Red Flags and Red Diamonds: the warning signs and political drivers of arms trade corruption: By Sam Perlo Freeman September 19, 2019 This report by Dr. Sam Perlo-Freeman (WPF, CAAT UK) builds on the work of World Peace Foundation’s Compendium of Arms Trade Corruption, a collection of more than 40 cases of corruption in the arms trade and the broader military sector. It discusses both the ‘red flags’ – the warning signs that help citizens, NGOs, governments, and those companies seeking to avoid corruption to identify and avoid corruption risks – and the ‘Red Diamonds’, the underlying politics and economics of the arms trade that create situations where companies and governments actively choose corruption at a high level. |
| Introducing Transnational Conflict in Africa dataset By Allard Duursma, Noel Twagiramungu, Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe and Alex de Waal World Peace Foundation and the Conflict Research Programme at the London School of Economics August 27, 2019 This paper focuses on the methods utilized in the transnational conflict in Africa (TCA) dataset. The TCA dataset is built by combining, augmenting, and revising several existing datasets, each of which captures some elements of transnational conflict. We broadly define transnational conflict as armed conflict that extend or operate across national boundaries including interstate wars, external state support in interstate wars, low-intensity confrontations between states, external interventions in civil wars, and external support to rebels or coup-makers. |
| Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis By Alex de Waal August 1, 2019 This paper provides a succinct analysis of Sudan as a political marketplace. It assumes a working knowledge of the basic principles of the political marketplace framework (PMF). It does not offer a policy recommendation, but rather a framework for analyzing the Sudanese predicament so as to understand the implications of different courses of action. |
| A Role for Social Nutrition in Strengthening Accountability for Mass Starvation? By Susanne Jaspars June 24, 2019 This paper aims to stimulate discussion of the role of social or politically-oriented approaches to nutrition in situations of famine and crisis. More specifically, it examines whether there is a role for social nutrition in strengthening accountability for mass starvation. |
| Pax Africana or Middle East Security Alliance in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea? By Alex de Waal January 2019 This report examines the peace and security challenges facing the Horn of Africa in the context of assertive military and political engagement from the Arabian Peninsular. It provides a historical overview of the politics of the Red Sea and Middle Eastern policies towards north-east Africa, before turning to the current dynamic, driven by Saudi and Emirati military strategies for their war in Yemen, economic interests in agriculture, water and ports, and the repercussions of the rivalries between the Saudi-Emirati coalition and the Turkey-Qatar axis for the stability of the Horn. As the center of gravity for peace and security decision making for the Horn appears to be shifting from African multilateral institutions to Arab capitals, the paper asks how Africa can sustain the norms, principles and institutions of the Pax Africana? |
| The Prarie Fire that Burned Mogadishu: The Logic of Clan Formation in Somalia By Alex de Waal December 2018 This report presents analysis of the processes that led to the emergence of the Clan-based political-military-territorial units in the period 1987-92, describes the transformations of pastoralism and the resulting inter-communal armed conflicts and associated changes in the political significance of the lineage system and describes the manipulation of lineage politics by Siyaad Barre which culminated in the formation of Clans as political units for the purposes of capturing state power. |
| The Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War: Aerial bombardment and food war by Martha Mundy distributed by the World Peace Foundation October 9, 2018 This report provides comprehensive analysis of patterns of targeting civilian, agricultural and fishing sites by the Saudi Arabia-led oalition that is backing Yemeni President the internationally recognized government of Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi. |
| The Future of Ethiopia: Developmental State or Political Marketplace? By Alex de Waal August 20, 2018 Today’s changes in Ethiopia are rapid, confusing and disruptive. They promise openness and democratization, but also contain perils. This paper draws on two prisms through which to make sense of the situation: the ‘democratic developmental state’ as articulated by Meles Zenawi in a series of discussions with Alex de Waal between 1988 and 2012, and de Waal’s formulation of the ‘political marketplace.’ |
| Arms Trade Corruption and Political Finance By Xiaodon Liang and Sam Perlo-Freeman July 9, 2018 This occasional paper examines the link between political finance and corruption in the arms trade. It draws on the World Peace Foundation’s Compendium of Arms Trade Corruption, a collection of 29 cases of corruption in the arms trade and the broader military sector from around the world, each containing a standard set of summary information along with a narrative description. The arms trade has many features that make it highly susceptible to corruption. This paper makes the case that it also has four key features that tie it particularly closely to political competition and political finance. |
| Corruption in the Russian Defense Sector by Polina Beliakova and Sam Perlo-Freeman May 11, 2018 Today, Russia is the world’s fourth largest military spender and second largest arms exporter. Their arms industry is probably the third largest in the world, after the USA and China. The Russian arms industry, despite its current strength, must be viewed within the legacy of the USSR. The current Russian state inherited a significantly wounded, but still powerful system of arms production and export. However, along with an aging industrial infrastructure and global relations with importing countries, Russian leaders were endowed with an arms industry rife with corruption that pre-dated the fall of the USSR and metastasized in the chaotic years that followed. Today, corruption still constitutes a significant problem facing the Russian arms industry. This report discusses publicly available information on corruption in the Russian defense sector, especially the arms industry, identifying key cases of corruption that have become visible in recent years, in particular since 2008, when Russia’s current set of military reforms, and major rearmament drive, began. |
| Can we prosecute starvation? by Global Rights Compliance and World Peace Foundation May 7, 2018 Political choices have driven famine’s re-emergence in this century. Some famines derive from intentional political and military decisions, while others are allowed to develop because the most powerful actors have other priorities, such as security, that overrule an effective response. Can famine be prosecuted? This paper considers what law might apply to cases of famine, and what evidence would be required to pursue a legal case. |
| Corruption in the Indonesian arms business: tentative steps towards an end to impunity by Xiaodon Liang and Sam Perlo-Freeman December 13, 2017 This paper examines the problem of corruption in the military sector in Indonesia in the post-Suharto era, in particular in relation to arms procurement, and discusses the significance of recent tentative signs of greater efforts by the Indonesian civil and military authorities to address the problem. It illustrates three crucial points about democratization and corruption in the arms trade. |
| How big is the International Arms Trade? by Sam Perlo-Freeman (Revised and Updated July 2018) This paper attempts to produce a global estimate, or rather a range of estimates of the financial size of the international arms trade. It also explains problems with the data, including for some of the largest western arms exporters, from whom one might expect a greater level of transparency: most notably, the USA. |
| The Emerging Global Order, Multilateralism and Africa”, background paper for African Union Annual Mediators’ Retreat Alex de Waal October 3, 2017 What does the turmoil in the multilateral world order mean for peace and security in Africa? World Peace Foundation’s Alex de Waal argues that Africa, as a weak continent, has much to gain from multilateralism, and especially from its stronger more normative versions. |
| South Sudan 2017: A Political Marketplace Analysis by Alex de Waal February 5, 2017 This memorandum analyzes South Sudan since independence using the framework of the political marketplace, in order to provide a guide to understanding the trajectory of the current crisis and the steps needed to address it. It provides a succinct overview of the theory of the political marketplace and the ancillary concepts of moral populism and the negotiated sovereign entitlement to kill. |
| Research Briefings from the African Peace Missions project Summer 2016 To inform our report, African Politics, African Peace, the WPF supported research on a range of themes and cases, authored by area experts. The topics include: African peace and security norms and mechanisms, issues related to Peace Support Operations (mandates, doctrine, sexual exploitation and abuse, and atrocity prevention), conflict mediation, sanctions, and multiple case studies. Access the 23 research briefings and 20 case studies. |
| A Political Marketplace Analysis of South Sudan’s Peace By Alex de Waal March 24, 2016 South Sudan today is a collapsed political marketplace. The country’s political market was structured by competitive militarized clientelism for access to oil rents. Those oil rents have almost disappeared but the structure of competition is unchanged and the price of loyalty has not reduced to a level commensurate with the available political funding. The result is that political loyalty and services are rewarded with license to plunder. |
| To Intervene or Not To Intervene: An inside view of the AU’s decision-making on Article 4(h) and Burundi By Solomon Dersso February 2016 Perhaps the most significant outcome of the 26th summit of the African Union (AU) was the decision scrapping the plan to deploy troops to Burundi for human protection purposes. In December 2015 the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC), the continental body’s standing collective decision-making body on peace and security, announced a precedent-setting invocation of the AU’s Article 4(h) authorizing the deployment of a military mission to Burundi to quell violence related to disputed elections. |
| Assessing the Anti-Atrocity Toolbox by Bridget Conley-Zilkic, Saskia Brechenmacher and Aditya Sarkar February 2016 Beginning in the 2000s a new international consensus emerged regarding the need–both ethical and strategic–to prevent and halt genocide and mass atrocities. Armed with the insight that action need not be considered all or nothing, new energy was channeled into populating what became known as the “Anti-Atrocity toolbox,” that is, the set of discrete but universally applicable policy measures that could be implemented to effectively counter atrocities. |
| Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy: Implications for Humanitarian Response by Dyan Mazurana and Daniel Maxwell January 2016 The purpose of this policy brief is to outline the implications of Sweden’s overall feminist foreign policy for the people they strive to assist, Sweden’s own humanitarian policy operations, and more broadly the whole humanitarian community, with a focus on gender equality and strengthening the rights and empowerment of women and girls in humanitarian crises. |
| What Went Wrong?: The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front from Armed Opposition to State Governance A Personal Observation by Paulos Tesfagiorgis November 2015 This paper discusses how the Eritrea People’s Liberation Front evolved from a liberation front (1971-1991), into a highly successful organization with clear social and political agenda, and, ultimately, into an oppressive state where power is concentrated in the hands of the President and his close network. |
| Gender, Conflict and Peace by Dyan Mazurana and Keith Proctor October 2013 This paper provides a summary of key literature, frameworks and findings in five topic areas related to Gender, Conflict, and Peace, as well as proposes opportunities for further research. Some of the questions the Occasional Paper addresses include: How does a gender analysis inform our understanding of armed conflict and peace-making? What are the gendered dimensions of war, non-violent resistance, peace processes, and transitional justice? |
Reports
| African Peace Research This project charts an agenda for peace in Africa, focusing on how the African Union can implement its norms and use its instruments to prevent and resolve armed conflicts. It is an independent report of the World Peace Foundation, supported by the African Union. The report is the most extensive review of the African Union’s peace missions ever conducted. It is based on detailed case studies and cross-cutting research, and draws on consultations with leading experts, peacekeepers, and mediators. It covers African peace and security norms and mechanisms, including conflict prevention, conflict mediation, political missions and the spectrum of military peace operations. Click here for full details of this program. |
| Peace Missions in Africa: Constraints, Challenges and Opportunities |
| African Politics, African Peace, full report |
| African Peace Missions research briefings and case studies |
| Related journal articles: African Security Review, Volume 26, Issue 2, April/May 2017 International Peacekeeping, Volume 4, Issue 4, July 2017 |
Seminar Briefs
The WPF regularly hosts closed-door research seminars that bring together leading experts from around the world to share their research and engage in focused discussion with a small group of colleagues. The WPF seminar structure is intentionally different from academic conferences. Whereas most conferences are designed to communicate established research through presentation and some questions and answers, we aim to enable extended conversations amongst experts with the goal of generating new avenues of insight and query. We therefore structure the seminars over two days, invite a small number of expert participants, and allow for shorter formal presentations and longer periods of discussion. Additionally, presentations and proceedings of WPF seminars adhere to the Chatham House rule of non-attribution.
| Theorizing (Dis)Order: Governing in an Uncertain World March 2 – 3, 2017 Today’s globalized and securitized world is defined by instability,uncertainty, and turbulence. As the international community grapples with new threats, emanating from the transnational to the very local, scholars and policymakers continue to promote democratic institution building – guided by ideas of accountability, transparency, and institutional stability as solutions. And yet, the liberal state building project cannot explain why, nonetheless, disorder remains pervasive. To understand current trends in international and domestic relations, it is necessary to account for order and disorder. |
| Staying Safe in Armed Conflict September 22 – 23, 2016 For international humanitarian actors, the protection of civilians is too often seen as something done to passive recipients, rather than activities undertaken to reinforce the priorities of and engage with these populations as key actors in their own futures. Furthermore, there is very little scholarship that pays serious attention to the priorities and goals of people in crisis situations. Overlooked are the questions of how those at risk identify the most acute threats; how they seek to protect themselves from these risks; and the balance of which strategies and coping mechanisms produce outcomes that are beneficial, detrimental or a combination thereof. This in effect often means that there is little appreciation of affected people’s priorities and goals in situations of crises. Thus, a critical issue is whether humanitarian action, including protection practices in particular, addresses the reality of people’s primary concerns and experiences and, by extension, strengthens rather than undermines effective civilian self-protection initiatives. |
| Transforming Violent Masculinities February 17-19, 2016 From Rio de Janeiro to New Delhi, men perpetrate the majority of violent acts around the world. Yet the overwhelming majority of men are not violent, and even among those in high risk contexts, many actively resist violent mobilization. Masculinity represents a critical and under-examined factor for understanding pathways to participation and non-participation in violent activity. How do norms related to masculinities shape men’s involvement in violence? How do we build on drivers of non-violence and inclusion that already exist in individual men and broader communities? And what are the implications for policy and program development? |
| Corruption, Protest and Militancy June 25 – 27 , 2015 The seminar, ‘corruption, protest and militancy’ brought together twenty specialists academics and practitioners—all of whom had been concerned with issues of corruption, especially as it relates to conflict, popular protest and the emergence of militant political movements, for two days of discussion on a series of case studies and related cross-‐cutting issues. The seminar was an opportunity for a confidential and in‐depth reflection on these issues, in the wake of Sarah Chayes’s seminal book Thieves of State, published earlier this year, and the ongoing work of the Justice and Security Research Programme into the contending logics of the ‘political marketplace’ and ‘moral populism’ in Africa. |
| Water and Security in the 21st Century 4-6 March, 2015 Recent analyses of water and security have focused on the question of how water stresses could lead to conflicts between and within states. Water is a finite, scarce resource, essential to human life and well-being. With population growth, expanding economies, groundwater depletion and climate change, and the need to protect water ecologies, water is under stress—and it is feared, conflict may follow. The solution to this threat is envisaged as sub-national, national and international cooperation in the form of treaties and agreements for more equitable and efficient water management. An international group of experts on water and security assembled for a seminar at the World Peace Foundation—and found that what they held in common was a perspective that went beyond the binary of conflict versus cooperation. |
| Researching Sudan Peace Processes October 17, 2014 This seminar arose from the World Peace Foundation project of compiling an archive of documents relating to the peace processes in Sudan and South Sudan. The main objective of the seminar was to introduce the archive to scholars working on Sudan and South Sudan and on African peace processes. A second objective was to examine the challenges of researching Sudan, South Sudan, with particular reference to their peace processes, and to extend the analysis to research into African peace processes more generally. |
| The Militarized Political Marketplace: Challenges to Security Sector Governance August 19-20, 2014 The seminar aimed to bring together academics and practitioners working on the politics and policy of security sector governance (SSG) and reform (SSR). The use of the “governance” was intended to take the security sector conversation beyond “reform”, which has become a field principally focused on how western donors apply policy tools to countries that they identify as in a post-conflict transition. Instead, we shift our focus to the politics of the security sector. |
| “The Political Marketplace”: Developing a Framework for Addressing the Real Politics of Coercion and Corruption June 12 – 13, 2014 Existing models for peace-making, state-building and stabilization, which assume that “fragile states” can move, under international tutelage and sponsorship, towards capable and legitimate states, are wrong. Peace agreements that consist primarily in allocating rents to belligerents only reinforce the logic of a rent-based political marketplace. Indeed, international efforts to achieve stabilization and state-building by channeling effort and resources through governments are more often counterproductive than not. |
| Patterns of Violence in Somalia September 27 – 28, 2013 This seminar approached the crisis in Somalia not through the lens of immediate problems and policy prescriptions, but from a starting point concerned with political economy and historic patterns of violence, the societal impacts and accounts of violence, and comparative analysis of changing frameworks of governance and conflict associated with the end of the Cold War and the growth of global governance. By taking history, literature and political theory seriously, and seeing Somalia as an exemplar of wider patterns in the contestation over governmental power and resources, the seminar generated important insights into the country’s current predicament |
| How Mass Atrocities End Iraq May 14 – 15, 2013 This seminar on mass atrocities in Iraq was a significant departure from the recent series of programs and reports marking ten years of direct U.S. military engagement in Iraq. Placing violence within the country’s longer modern history, it explored the level, patterns, origins and endings of episodes of mass violence, especially mass atrocity against civilians. |
| Advocacy In Conflict February 28 & March 1, 2013 International (principally American) campaigns that advocate policies and actions in conflicts around the world have gained profile and impact in the last decade, most notably through new models that value mass mobilization of the American public, celebrity involvement, and marketing campaigns. The “advocacy in conflict”seminar addressed a discernible divergence between the goals, methods and impacts of these campaigns, and the requirements for resolving the political conflicts in the countries concerned and empowering the affected people. The recent case that has drawn most controversy is the KONY2012 video by the group Invisible Children, which sparked deep disquiet among Ugandans and specialists in the region. The KONY2012 case crystallized the deepening concern among humanitarians, human rights organizations and conflict resolution specialists over a series of campaigns in Africa and elsewhere. |
| New Wars, New Peace October 29-30, 2012 Over recent decades, the intensity and incidence of war—and indeed the very nature of organized violence—have been changing. On the basis that Mary Kaldor’s New and Old War (first published in 1999) provided a seminal explication of these transformations, this seminar used the opportunity of the third edition of her book (2012) to explore important aspects of contemporary conflicts from a security perspective. |
| Libya in the African Context November 16 & 17, 2012 In the flurry of assessments and debates about the 2011 war in Libya that overthrew the country’s longtime ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, there has been little scholarly or policy attention to Libya’s relationship with sub-Saharan Africa during and after the conflict. Convening area experts for a combination of public and closed-door discussions over two days, the World Peace Foundation aimed to reverse this neglect. |
| Seminar briefing not available: How Mass Atrocities End: November 17 & 18, 2011 New Wars, New Peace: January 12 & 13, 201 How Mass Atrocities End: March 22 & 23, 2012 Western & Non-Western Views on Conflict Resolution: April 20 & 21, 2012 Drug Trafficking and Organized International Crime: Re-framing the Debate: May 7 & 8, 2012 |
WPF Statements
| No New Prisons in Massachusetts July 20, 2021 WPF’s Bridget Conley submitted testimony to the Massachusetts’ legislature’s Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight, in support of a proposed bill that would place a 5-year moratorium on building new prisons in the state. |
| President Donald Trump is a Threat to World Peace February, 2017 In its 106 years of existence, the World Peace Foundation has committed to understanding and promoting peaceful relations among and within nations, as well as analyzing the causes of war. Today, based on our expertise and given the statements and actions of the current President of the United States, we are obliged to take a step without precedent, which is to name U.S. President Donald Trump as a major threat to global peace. |
| Our Statement on Ending Famine Famine is an age-old scourge that almost disappeared in our lifetime. On the basis of our relevant scholarly and professional expertise, we, members of the faculty, staff and students of Tufts University, make the following declaration about the grave public ill that is famine, and our responsibility, as a university, a nation, and members of the international community, to end famine once and for all. We invite you to join us in signing a statement on ending famine, which was drafted by a group of Tufts faculty members from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and the School of Arts and Sciences, Tufts University. |
| Peace, Justice & Equality The World Peace Foundation stands with the African American-led movement demanding equality and justice and denouncing police brutality. Throughout history, Black-led justice movements—some originating in the US, but also from within Africa and across the diaspora—have resisted oppression and injustice, and have inspired others to do the same. Today is no different. |
