Volume 23, Issue 3-4, November - December 2024, Page 264-276.

The gendered implications of COVID-19, in particular in terms of gender-based violence and the gendered division of care work, have secured some prominence, and ignited discussion about prospects for a ‘feminist recovery’. In international law terms, feminist calls for a response to the pandemic have privileged the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), conditioned—I argue—by two decades of the pursuit of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda through the UNSC. The deficiencies of the UNSC response, as characterised by the (...) Resolution 2532 adopted to address the pandemic, manifest yet again the identified deficiencies of the WPS agenda at the UNSC, namely fragmentation, securitisation, efficacy and legitimacy. What Resolution 2532 does bring, however, is new clarity about the underlying reasons for the repeated and enduring nature of these deficiencies at the UNSC. Specifically, the COVID-19 ‘crisis’ is powerful in exposing the deficiencies of the crisis framework in which the UNSC operates. My reflections draw on insights from Hilary Charlesworth’s seminal contribution ‘International Law: A Discipline of Crisis’ to argue that, instead of conceding the ‘crisis’ framework to the pandemic by prioritising the UNSC, a ‘feminist recovery’ must instead follow Charlesworth’s exhortation to refocus on an international law of the everyday. (shrink)

This article takes the failure to grasp fully the paradigmatic case of European security after the Cold War as an example of how International Relations (IR) would benefit from reformulating not only its empirical research questions but also several of its central conceptual building blocks with the aid of Bourdieusian sociology. The separation between theory and practice and the overemphasis on military power and state actors blind IR from seeing the power struggles that reshaped European security. Instead, a Bourdieusian (...) reformulation adds new types of agency, focuses on the social production of forms of power, and stresses the processual rather than the substantive character of social reality. (shrink)

The use of private military force by states has been a long-standing phenomena in the history of warfare. Armies of mercenaries, privateering and recruitment of foreign nationals into armed forces have been common during the Middle Ages and later on. However, with the invention of effective firearms and artillery, standing regular armies, conscription and other developments that resulted in the essential rise of costs of war, the role of private military entrepreneurs diminished. By the end of XIXth century the state (...) became almost the only subject that was able to wage a full-scale war. Nevertheless, already in the middle of the XXth century mercenarism has been reborn in Africa’s colonial and post-colonial wars. The end of the XXth century and the beginning of the XXI century witnesses an enormous rise of private security and military companies (PSMC) that are hired to perform different functions related to use of force not only by states, but also by other clients such as international organisations, transnational corporations, etc. A PSMC may be defined as a profit-seeking private enterprise, which is established according to the national law of the state and which is providing, on the basis of a contract, services directly or indirectly connected with the use of military force or its institutions whether in time of armed conflict or peace, notwithstanding how such company describes itself. International humanitarian law has no specific regulation of PSMC. Nevertheless, it would be erroneous to state that the activity of PSMC is not regulated, because international humanitarian law in any case, in one or another way, is applicable to the personnel of PSMC if it is engaged in armed conflict of either international or non-international character. (shrink)

The book offers insights on whether international law can shape the politics of the Security Council and, conversely, the extent to which the latter contribute to the development of international law. By providing a systematic analysis of the quantity and quality of international legal instruments referred to in the text of resolutions, the book reconstructs patterns of the Security Council's behavioural regularities and assesses them against the provisions of the United Nations Charter, which establishes its mandate. The (...) analysis is divided into three periods - the origins and Cold War period, post-Cold War period and the twenty-first century - and assesses the resolutions passed in each period by thematic category. The book argues that while international law plays an important role in shaping the politics of the Security Council, the Council's resolutions do not contribute significantly to the development of international law. (shrink)

Despite offering some protection for refugees, realpolitik in international affairs ensures that the paradigm of human security remains aspirational rather than practical. This paper begins by providing a brief snapshot of the current global refugee crisis, encompassing multiple local crises in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. It next details the international community’s response to these crises, highlighting the punitive policies used by the Australian government and the European Union to impede the asylum process. Lastly, the (...) paper will assess whether the framework of human security can support the right to asylum, a right that is enshrined in international law. Following a brief introduction to the concept of human security, the paper will explore its strengths and limitations, examining whether it offers a complementary source of protection to the right to asylum in the face of eroding refugee rights. I argue that human security is a useful but imperfect framework for protecting refugee rights. (shrink)

Present era can be categorized due to its speed of changes. Pakistani society got affected by worst kind of terrorism and extremism in last fifteen years. The root causes of prevailing security environment in Pakistan are multifaceted, complex and are derived from structural, as well as micro-level conditions. Objective of this research is to highlight the gaps in security doctrine of Pakistan. Both qualitative and quantitative methodology in the format of Knowledge Attitude and Practice is selected. Primary question of this (...) research was to find the gaps in national internal security policy of Pakistan. This primary question is further sub divided into ten sub questions. Implementation modalities and the impediments of National Internal Security Policy 2014 are also discussed. This research finds out that national internal security policy 2014 was a vibrant document and right step in the domain of policy formulation but demanded non-pragmatic results from security operators. Majority of its drawbacks are removed in in its later version of 2018-23. Survey and questionnaire based analysis is also made part of this article along with recommendations as submitted by respondents. (shrink)

Security is one of the basic values in the life of an individual, society, nation, country, and also at the international level. However, modern security is composed of efficient utilization of the potential within diplomacy and strength, a balanced relationship between soft and hard power. This text aims at presenting an overview of security concepts included in the selected philosophical and social models. This involves bringing closer specific theories and practical actions based on them. Nowadays, this can be seen (...) at the level of relations between military and diplomatic solutions in various conflicts that took place at the turn of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Pt. 1 Traditional and Critical Theory 1 Promise: Toward a Critical Theory of Society 9 2 Impasse: Emancipatory Politics After Auschwitz 29 3 Redemption: Renewing the Critical Project 53 Pt. 2 Traditional and Critical Security Studies 4 Theory: Reconceptualizing Security 93 5 Technology: Reconceptualizing Strategy 125 6 Emancipation: Reconceptualizing Practice 145 Epilogue 165 Bibliography 169 Index 187 About the Book 191.

This book analyses some of the key problems explored in Paul Virilio's theorising on war and security.Virilio is one of the most challenging and provocative critics of technology, war and globalisation. While many commentators focus on the new possibilities for mobility and communication in an interconnected world, Virilio is interested in the role that technology and security play in the shaping of our bodies and how we come to see the world -- what he terms the 'logistics of perception'. Security, (...) Technology and Global Politics explores Virilio's work in this area, with each chapter using examples from popular culture -- from video games and on-line graphic novels, to films from around the world - as a starting point from which the author goes on to develop a critical engagement with Virilio's work. One of the key themes that emerge from this analysis is the importance of the idea of 'disappearance' -- the aesthetics of disappearance or the politics of disappearance. The book argues that the politics of disappearance provides a disturbing and insightful introduction to the key questions posed by politics of security in the twenty-first century.This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, political theory, sociology, political geography, cultural studies and IR in general. (shrink)

In this critique of security studies, with insights into the thinking of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Levinas and Arendt, Michael Dillon contributes to the rethinking of some of the fundamentals of international politics developing what might be called a political philosophy of continental thought. Drawing on the work of Martin Heidegger, Politics of Security establishes the relationship between Heidegger's readical hermeneutical phenomenology and politics and the fundamental link between politics, the tragic and the ethical. It breaks new ground by providing (...) an etymology of security, tracing the word back to the Greek asphaleia, and a unique political reading of Oedipus Rex. Michael Dillon traces the roots of desire for security to the metaphysical desire for certitude, and points out that our way of seeking that security is embedded in 20th century technology, thus resulting in a global crisis. Politics of Security will be invaluable to both political theorists and philosophers, and to anyone concerned with international relations, continental philosophy or the work of Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Over 60% of all epidemics have a zoonotic origin, that is, they result from the transmission of infectious diseases from animals to humans. The spill-over of diseases often happens because humans exploit and use animals. In this article, I outline the four most common interfaces that favour the emergence and spread of zoonotic infectious diseases: wildlife hunting, small-scale farming, industrialised farming practices and live animal markets. I analyse which practices serve human food security – and thus have a non-trivial purpose (...) – and which predominantly have an economic purpose or serve as a symbol of wealth. I conclude that many practices that increase the risk for zoonotic infectious disease outbreaks actually do not contribute to the survival and food security of humans. I make two arguments in turn. First, I argue that in cases where the consumption and use of animal products does not contribute to the food security of a population, then this population has a duty to abstain from them, since they impose a grave and avoidable risk to themselves as well as to innocent third-parties. However, some communities must sometimes rely on practices that increase the risk of emergence and transmission of zoonotic infectious diseases, because they have no healthy alternatives. That is, the food security of the local population depends on the consumption and use of risky animal products. The second argument I advance is that, in such scenarios, the international community has a duty to provide the communities concerned with alternative food options, as well as economic and educational opportunities and technologies, in order to reduce the spill-over risk of infectious diseases. Given that abstention from such practices contributes signifcantly to the public good and benefits the international community, the latter has a corresponding duty to provide local communities which abandon such practices with alternatives. (shrink)

In an increasingly interconnected global community, severe disasters or disease outbreaks in one country or region may rapidly impact global health security. As seen during the responses to the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, local response capacities can be rapidly overwhelmed and international assistance may be necessary to support the affected region to respond and recover and to protect other countries from the spread of disease. For (...) example, President Obama stated on September 16, 2014, that “if the [Ebola] outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected, with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us…. [T]his…is not just a threat to regional security — it’s a potential threat to global security if these countries break down…. And that’s why…I directed my team to make this a national security priority.”. (shrink)

Abstract The rapidly growing presence of private military and security contractors (PMSCs) in armed conflict and post-conflict situations in the last decade brought corresponding incidents of serious misconduct by PMSC personnel. The two most infamous events?one involving the firm formerly known as Blackwater and the other involving Titan and CACI?engendered scrutiny of available mechanisms for criminal and civil accountability of the individuals whose misconduct caused the harm. Along a parallel track, scholars and policymakers began examining the responsibility of states and (...) international organizations for the harm that occurred. Both approaches have primarily focused on post-conduct accountability?of the individuals who caused the harm, of the state in which the harm occurred, or of the state or organization that hired the PMSC whose personnel caused the harm. Less attention, however, has been paid to the idea of pre-conduct accountability for PMSCs and their personnel. A broad understanding of ?accountability for? PMSCs and their personnel encompasses not only responsibility for harm caused by conduct, but responsibility for hiring, hosting, and monitoring these entities, as well as responsibility to the victims of the harm. This article provides a comprehensive approach for analyzing the existing international legal regime, and whether and to what extent the legal regime provides ?accountability for? PMSCs and their personnel. It does so by proposing a practical construct of three phases based on PMSC operations?Contracting, In-the-Field, and Post-Conduct?with which to assess the various bodies of international law. (shrink)

The United Nations is the world's most extensive international organization whose primary task is to create a new international security framework, the maintenance of international peace and security. United Nations not only to retain the World Health Organization, International Labour Organization, International Court of Justice and other international cooperation organizations, to promote throughout the world from Euro-centric changes to the global system, but also provides a world political center stage, but it has not succeeded (...) in expectations of its founders to establish the international security framework and the security of each country to obtain a new world order. The end of the Cold War can finally restore the UN's ability to successfully perform the duties assigned to it by the Charter, or whether the disappearance of confrontation between the superpowers but exposed the establishment of a global structure of international security barrier deep, although it seems after the were more likely, but will wait and see. The United Nations is the most general international organization in the world at present, the primary mission of which is to establish a new international security framework in order to maintain international peace and security. The UN not only preserved international cooperation organs like the World Health Organization , the International Labour Organization, and the International Court of Justice, and facilitated the transformation of the world from a Eurocentric to a global system; but also provided a focus for world politics. But it has not succeeded in creating an international security framework conceived by its fathers and a new world order from which every state gains a security shield. It remains to be seen whether the end of the Cold War will eventually restore the capacity of the UN to fulfil the role set in its Charter; or whether, as scents more likely, the disappearance of superpower confrontation will only reveal deeper systematic obstacles of the creation of an effective global structure of international security. (shrink)

How do we know when we are investing wisely in security? Answering this question requires investigating what things are worth securing (and why); what threatens them; how best to protect them; and how to think about it. Is it possible to protect them? How best go about protecting them? What trade-offs are involved in allocating resources to security problems? This book responds to these questions by stripping down our preconceptions and rebuilding an understanding of security from the ground up on (...) the basis of a common-sense ontology and an explicit theory of value. It argues for a clear distinction between objective and subjective security threats, a non-anthropocentric understanding of security, and a particular hierarchy of security referents, looking closely at four in particular-the ecosphere, the state, culture, and individual human beings. The analysis will be of interest not only to students and scholars of International Relations, but also to practitioners. David A. Welch is University Research Chair and Professor of Political Science at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo. His previous books include Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge University Press, 1993), which won the 1994 Edgar S. Furniss Award for an Outstanding Contribution to National Security Studies, and Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change (2005), which was the inaugural winner of the International Studies Association International Security Studies Section Best Book Award. He is currently co-editor of the Cambridge University Press journal, International Theory. (shrink)

Security is a selective project that is typically understood, produced and expressed in terms of differentiation and exclusion; it is rarely for all. This is notably so in post-conflict cities, where the principal political weapons are coercion and intimidation, and territoriality is a significant facet of security’s physical dimension and exclusionary tendencies. Cities such as Baghdad and Basra are divided into ethnic or sectarian areas, and security’s referent object is an identity or group. Friction exists between the multiple perspectives and (...) interests concerned, and it is probably not possible to develop city-wide security, or, indeed, a comprehensive understanding that integrates state, factional and personal security. International efforts to use a reformed public police to rebalance the provision of security more equitably are accordingly unrealistic. (shrink)

Many governmental policies are justified by the need to protect national security. But the concept of security is often underspecified in this context. If nothing else, security involves freedom from (significant) risks of harm. But should we expand our conception of security to include other elements? This paper argues that, in answering this question, we need to consider the role that security plays in politics. It defends a conception of security that locates its value primarily in the protection of the (...) autonomy of individuals. While this explains why various risks of harm should be viewed as set-backs to security, other sorts of threats will also be included. Finally, it considers the implications of this account for questions of security policy. It is claimed that international cooperation on security matters, far from the optional policies they are often viewed as, may in fact be necessary for states to be legitimate. (shrink)

Introduction -- The serenity of the wise man -- The seventh day of history -- The guarantor-state -- Biosecurity -- Conclusion -- Appendix -- Index.

The principle of the responsibility to protect (RtoP) conceives of a broad set of measures that can be employed in preventing and responding to atrocity crimes. Nevertheless, the UN Security Council remains an important part of the implementation architecture, given what the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty referred to as its authoritative position in international society as the “linchpin of order and stability.” As part of the roundtable “The Responsibility to Protect in a Changing World Order: (...) Twenty Years since Its Inception,” this review of the Council's role in fulfilling its responsibility to protect advances two somewhat contrasting arguments about the original ICISS report. First, it suggests that the commissioners may have underestimated the Council's potential contribution, by concentrating on the authorization of coercive means to address crises of human protection. Over the past two decades, the Security Council has not only employed various diplomatic, political, and humanitarian measures to address atrocity crimes but also adjusted the purposes and practices of peace operations to advance protection goals and more subtly shaped discourses and expectations about state responsibilities for protection. However, I also argue that the willingness of the ICISS to identify potential alternatives to the Security Council when its members are paralyzed appears in retrospect to have been both bold and forward looking, in light of the Council's failures to act in a timely and decisive manner to protect amid crises and the contemporary realities of geopolitical rivalry. The article concludes by suggesting that future efforts to protect populations from atrocity crimes should focus not only on the herculean task of trying to change the behavior of P5 members of the Council but also on encouraging a new institutional balance between the Security Council and other intergovernmental bodies. (shrink)

In this note I examine a case of teleological reasoning in international law and find it to be the fallacy of affirming the consequent.I then show that and how the basis of this fallacy is a manipulation (or juxtaposition) of ?necessary? and ?sufficient? conditions.I conclude by giving reasons for thinking that this kind of reasoning is a regular feature of international law.

The emotional state of war-affected populations has become a central concern for international policy-makers in the last decade. Growing interest in war trauma is influenced by contemporary Anglo-American emotionology, or emotional norms, which tends to pathologize ordinary responses to distress, including anger related to survival strategies. The article critically analyses the ascendancy of a therapeutic security paradigm in international politics, which seeks to explain the prevailing political, economic and social conditions in terms of cycles of emotional dysfunctionalism. The (...) article contends that international therapeutic governance pathologizes waraffected populations as emotionally dysfunctional and problematizes their right to self-government, leading to extensive external intervention. However, international therapeutic governance may be detrimental to postwar recovery as well legitimizing a denial of self-government. (shrink)

. The author analyses the concept of legal security from its historical evolution to its main structural aspects. In the first part he argues that legal security is a historical and cultural concept of the modern world. He considers a series of factors which lead from the general concept of security generated by an ideological monism and the social rigidity characterizing the Middle Ages to the concept of legal security protected by the legal monism of the modern state, where legal (...) security, understood as formal or procedural justice, has become a principle inspiring the entire legal system. Then he considers legal security in the social state as the expression of the relationship between man and his social needs. In the second part the author makes a structural analysis of the concept of legal security in a modern legal order, identifying the different spheres in which it can be found: state,—focusing on procedural guarantees as limits to power—, law—considering the internal functioning of the legal system—, society—stressing the effects of the action of the social state on the idea of legal security. (shrink)

The article aims to analyse the motivation and perception of security among the members of pro-defence organisations in Poland. The multidimensionality of threats and challenges in the area of national and international security necessitates the use of all forces and means. This also applies to using the potential, interest, and involvement of specific people within the state security system. In the case of Poland, a large role is played by numerous pro-defence organisations with many members, including young people. In (...) the last few years, a large number of events with a direct impact on the sense of national and international security have occurred. This article attempts to perform a comparative analysis by considering the perspectives in 2018 and in 2022, which are based on an original survey of a selected group of respondents. (shrink)

Knowing who benefits financially from a securities trade is necessary for the detection, prosecution and deterrence of illegal securities trading. Foreign jurisdictions with banking or securities secrecy laws are frequently used as a platform for illegal activity to frustrate law enforcement. This paper considers the extent to which Canadian law gives effect to so-called foreign blocking legislation. We conclude that while Canadian law does not generally give effect to foreign blocking legislation, it imposes only limited requirements on market intermediaries to (...) collect beneficial ownership information. Regulators are therefore left with the option of obtaining assistance from their foreign counterparts. (shrink)

What does the open-carried gun tell us about the contemporary political structure of whiteness, and how do such objects operate to reinforce this structure? To work through these questions, this article brings together political theories of racialized democracy and political theoretical analyses of gun-rights debates with insights from interdisciplinary scholarship on guns to generate a political theoretical account of the relationship between guns and white democracy. To do so, we analyze two open-carry spectacles: recurring Second Amendment protests featuring the prominent (...) display of open-carried weapons, and open-carrying protestors in Michigan demonstrating against stay-at-home orders in response to COVID-19 in 2020. Our analysis of these two cases illuminates our central arguments about guns and white democracy. We argue that guns operate to politically align white bodies amid the ongoing constitution of political whiteness: open-carried firearms work to reinforce and reproduce white democracy. We further claim that the force of open-carried guns in sustaining white democracy works through two linked dynamics: first, guns extend, generate, and secure the wages of whiteness; second, they protect and assert white dominion. Taken together, these dynamics explain how guns uphold white democracy, but also illuminate, we argue, the contingency of that political power. It is that contingency which suggests that the open-carried firearm might also help contest it in turn, a point illustrated by turning to scholarship on the relation of firearms to the civil rights movement. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the national and international policies aiming at dealing with the extremely complex and various issue of security. «Taking security seriously» means to analyse in depth the many shades of this concern: from the immigration processes, until the reconsideration of the urban spaces, looking at the Mediterranean and the European specificities. This kind of reflections can be useful in a perspective of preventing security, engaging institutions.__.

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 543-545, July 2012.

Do hard law international organizations use jurisprudence differently than soft law ones? Precedent can be asset or an encumbrance to international organizations and their members, depending on their aims and on the policy area. Linking current decisions to previously-agreed ones helps to increase cohesion, facilitate consensus among members, and borrow authority – benefits that might be more necessary for some organizations than for others. To compare whether the features of norm-producing organizations correlate with their preference for jurisprudence, we (...) compare two organs from the United Nations system: the Security Council, which produces binding decisions, and the General Assembly, which delivers soft law resolutions. We explore the citation networks formed by the approximately 20,400 resolutions adopted by each organ between 1946 and 2019 to test their differences with regards to the dynamics of citation formation, concentration of citations, and timing. Descriptive results reveal the main periods of jurisprudential activity by the Security Council and the General Assembly, but find no sizeable difference in their overall rate of precedent usage. We apply the Citation Exponential Random Graph Model (cERGM) to test for network determinants of citations and find additional similarities on transitivity and homophily, but also variations regarding preferential attachment. (shrink)