1. society
2. unrest and war

Civil Wars and Violent Peace:
How to Make Development Agendas a Tool for Human Security?*
-Draft VersionMauricio Uribe-López**
Abstract
Civil wars are not only the most extreme evidence of a polity’s failure but a devastating
source of human insecurity. However, not always the countries with such political
breakdown exhibit the highest levels of violence. There are countries whose violent
records reached concerning levels after peace agreements. Neither civil wars nor high
levels of societal violence are independent from the socioeconomic development of
each polity. Moreover, ending wars does not entail ending violence. The implementation
of peace strategies must take into account tackling horizontal inequalities as condition
to achieve sustainable peace. This paper argues that horizontal inequalities are related
to ethnicity and also a matter of disadvantages for peasants and poor urban inhabitants
living social and territorial segregation. By analyzing the set of characteristics of some
African and Latin American and Caribbean LAC countries, this essay highlights the
importance of strengthening key dimensions of statehood as a mandatory step to
successfully reduce horizontal and vertical inequalities. Those inequalities nurture
postwar and societal violence in places with no recent history of civil war. In order to
have the whole picture, studies should cross variables related to statehood and
horizontal inequalities. As a result of the exercise, customized peace strategies, security
programs and development agendas can make real contribution to peace efforts instead
of toolkits which often end up hampering the process of human security.
1. Introduction
Violence lies pervasively on human relationships. Whether it is refrained or unleashed,
potential or actual, it is always present, at least as a possibility or threat. When
appropriate rules are entrenched enough to adjudicate conflicts, the perspective of a
“poor, nasty, brutish and short life” becomes less frightening. However, rules are not
spontaneously crafted and do not operate in the vacuum. The social contract requires
social conditions, so that, the grade of inclusiveness of economic and social
development may act as a kind of environment in which the mutually binding rules can
govern the social relationships or lose its compelling strength.
*
Paper presented at the XXII World Congress of Political Science, Madrid, July 8 to 12, 2012, International Political
Science Association. Panel: New Trends in the Security and the Cooperation for Development Agendas.
**
PhD in Political Science. Assistant Professor at the Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Desarrollo
(Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Development), Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
Email: [email protected]. Webpage: http://muribe.uniandes.edu.co/
This paper deals with the problem of violence from a development studies perspective,
and more precisely, from a point of view to which inequality and violence are not
independent issues. Although, it can hardly be claimed an automatic and linear
relationship between them, it does not seem plausible simply to dismiss any kind of
connection. In fact, those connections are multiple as long as there are different grades
and types of inequalities and also different grades and types of violence. Furthermore,
ignoring or misunderstanding those multiple links can jeopardizes the effectiveness of
those efforts aimed at overcoming violence or building a sustainable peace.
The analysis here is restricted to just very few types of inequalities and violence. The
objective is to sketch some of those possible links through a classification of cases
according to their violence levels and a brief exploration of their development styles
characteristics. Those violence levels include the most extreme form of a polity’s failure:
civil war. Civil wars represent the deepest fracture of the social contract. Therefore, as
long as the responsibility to protect is divided, guaranteeing personal security becomes
uncertain. However, epidemic levels of violence i.e. societal violence, lead to the same
uncertainty. That is why overcoming high societal violence, ending civil wars, and
making post-conflict situations effectively peaceful, must be a top priority of
development agendas.
Despite its shortcomings, human security’s message has the advantage of providing a
normative framework to come up with policies, strategies and tools apt to achieve
sustainable personal security. If dramatic imbalances of a development style are not
appropriately addressed the sustainability of personal security is at stake. On the other
hand, if the modification of the status quo required to address those imbalances is not
carefully implemented, new threats to personal security can arise jeopardizing thereby
development achievements.
The paper is divided in four sections including this introduction. The second one
emphasizes the normative relevance of human security. The third section presents both
the criteria and the classification of countries according to the specific combination of
personal security threats resulting from the conflict situation (war, post-conflict or
absence of armed conflict) and the epidemic character of the rate of homicides. Rate of
homicides was chosen –among other reasons- because the risk of being killed
constitutes the most blatant source of personal insecurity. This section also examines
briefly the main characteristics in development styles terms of the groups of countries
formed by the classification. The fourth section presents some conclusions.
2. Human security as a normative yardstick for development strategies aimed to
overcoming violence and war.
2.1. The normative value of the human security concept
In 1994, the Human Development Report (HDR) launched the concept of human
security. This is a twin concept of the human development paradigm. While the latter
focuses on widening the range of people’s choices, the former “means that people can
exercise these choices safely and freely –and that they can be relatively confident that
the opportunities they have today are not totally lost tomorrow” (UNDP, 1994:23).
Quoting the speech of the US secretary of state at the conference of San Francisco in
1945, the report affirms that human security has two components: freedom from fear
and freedom from want. The report enunciated seven types of security associated with
those two components. Although there is not a sharp classification; economic, food,
environmental and health securities may be related to freedom from want whereas
community, political and personal security may be related to freedom from fear.
Given the shift proposed by the 1994 Human Development Report from security of the
state to security of every single person, the Cold War’s end provided a context which
allowed the human security concept to catch on so quickly. In fact, at Cold War’s end,
the anthropomorphic and selfish state envisioned by the realist approach of the
international relations had already been glaringly challenged. The 1973 economic
upheaval stepped up the globalization process which has largely contributed to make
even more blurred the boundaries of the Westphalian State. Actually, some point out
that the political roots of the Post-Westphalian world may be traced back to the Treaty
of Versailles (1919), the Briand-Kellog Treaty (1928) and to the Chapter VII of the
United Nations’ Charter (1945). In a Carl Schmitt’s vein, Giraldo (2009) argues that
those international rules did encroach upon the state’s sovereign right of deciding
between war and peace. Abdicating that right might have paved the way toward the
political postmodern era which constantly bewilders us.
According to Tara McCormack (2011) what really occurred was that during the Cold
War era, the development and security agendas were tightly intertwined but the
amounts of international aid to development fell once bipolarity disappeared.
McCormack suggests that the link between development and security that human
security exhibits at the discourse’s level does not exist in practice: “Human security
trumpeted the links between development and security at precisely the time when the
development of the Third World was no longer linked to the security of the political and
economic system of the developed world” (McCormack, 2011:249). This author
considers human security just as a label used both to justify interventionism in
developing countries, and to mask the lack of strategic direction in those interventions
as the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated.
McCormack’s analysis is very appealing. Yet, the value-based and cosmopolitan
discourse required by multilateralism -and by the very existence of international
organizations- is a Janus look-alike. It is two-faced. Interests and values have room in
international politics and they are linked to arenas of contestation at local, national and
global levels. Constituencies in major democracies might exert pressure upon their
governments in order to make them more attuned to the human values that both,
citizenry and governments claim to support not only domestically, but also globally.
Even after considering that “international politics use idealist value arguments in order
to justify realist politics” (Hellsten, 2009:81), ethical considerations themselves cannot
be altogether dismissed. They also may work not only for the great powers’ interests but
also for making them subject to public scrutiny and critical evaluation. The pervasive
hypocrisy present in the political usages of the human discourses is not reason to rule
out the intrinsic value of those discourses. In fact:
Ethical discourses can have great influence in national and international affairs… Crawford
shows how ethical discourses can gradually structure and restructure pre-analytical feelings and
analytical attention and how they can interact with and influence other factors –by the range of
comparisons that they make, by the categories and default cases that they introduce and defend,
by the ways they reconstitute conceptions of “interests” and perceptions of constraints (Gasper,
2007:5).
It is on those processes of restructuring feelings and reshaping interests’ conceptions
where the human security approach is worth taking into account. It has a great
normative and political value. First, as long as it remarks the ethical individualism
stance, it provides the same kind of yardstick that human needs, human rights and
human development discourses give us to evaluate, prescribe and design policies.
Thus, it rejects those alternatives or courses of action that are prone to impose suffering
to some for the invoked sake of the state. Second, it provides an argumentative
language required to make the public scrutiny and the accountability processes more
compelling and purposeful.
2.2. A way out of criticism related to the lack of precision: the personal
security category
Despite its suitability and its normative value in a postmodern era of blurred political
boundaries, the concept of human security has been subject to overt criticism regarding
its lack of precision. Because of its multidimensional perspective linked to different
aspects of the development agenda, the concept has been considered too ambiguous.
The idea of human security is the glue that holds together a jumbled coalition of “middle power”
states, development agencies, and NGOs- all of which seek to shift attention from resources
away from conventional security issues and toward goals that have traditionally fallen under the
rubric of international development… The term, in short, appears to be slippery by design.
Cultivated ambiguity renders human security an effective campaign slogan, but it also diminishes
the concept’s usefulness as a guide for academic research or policy making (Paris, 2001:88).
Roland Paris does not rule out the importance of human security in spite of his critical
remarks on it. He does not consider it as an empty rhetoric or “hot air”. In fact, he
recognizes significant accomplishments of the political campaign carried out under its
umbrella such as the signing of the land mines convention and the creation of the
International Criminal Court. What he bemoans, however, is the definitional vagueness
of the concept which has little to offer to “academics who might be interested in applying
the concept, or to policymakers who must prioritize among competing policy goals”
(Paris, 2001:102).
Although this kind of criticism on the concept coined in 1994 has undeniable relevance,
it has not been altogether fair to have overlooked that the Human Development Report
had identified clearly enough personal security as the sheer core of the human security
idea: “Perhaps no other aspect of human security is so vital for people as their security
from physical violence. In poor nations and rich, human live is increasingly threatened
by sudden, unpredictable violence” (UNDP, 1994:30). Among the main threats which
jeopardize personal security were mentioned: war, ethnic tension, and crime.
Highlighting personal security as the nuclear meaning of human security does not
necessarily lead to narrowing evaluation and prescription toward military or police
issues. In order to cope with the threats to personal security, it is necessary to promote
the development agenda that the other dimensions of human security implies. Personal
security is not sustainable in places in which there is starvation near conspicuous
wealth. Neither where some artful and deceptive leaders have the opportunity to exploit
the sense of injustice emanated from horizontal inequalities in order to trigger animosity
and hatred among different social, regional or ethnic groups.
Besides the relevance of critical military and police concerns, it is necessary to address
development challenges to protect people against dangers coming from societal
violence and civil wars. It is in this sense that development agendas are not a diversion
from the priority of protecting peoples’ lives. On the contrary, they are a complement of
emergency measures, and they are necessary to entrench what those measures
attempt to achieve.
Martin and Owen (2010) argue that human security has been losing his room in the UN
official discourse due to its conceptual stretching. However, Martin and Owen identify a
second generation of the idea emanating from the European Union. They consider it
more promising than the United Nations based approach. For them, the European
Union’s version of human security, whose clearest formulation can be found in the 2004
Barcelona Report, has the advantage of delimitating the concept to the “needs of people
in severe insecurity.” (Marlies Glaus and Mary Kaldor quoted by Martin and Owen,
2010:217).
Even though this precision could render a number of benefits in terms of reducing
ambiguity and habilitating operationalization, it is worth considering that in contexts of
war, post-war and, high societal violence, the conceptual overlapping between
development and security, at the discourse level of the human security concept, is more
a virtue than a drawback. To the extent that the sustainability of any personal security
achievement depends on the way in which critical development challenges are
managed, development agendas might be considered as a primary tool for human
security. Therefore, we could redefine human security as the reinforcing process
between development and security aimed to safeguard both personal security and the
stability of people’s choices enhancement. Given that there is not a teleological path to
development, and particularly to human development, human security’s idea keeps us
aware of the latent risk of going backward.
Now it is pertinent to ask: ¿How to make development agendas a tool for personal
security? ¿What kind of development agenda are we talking about? Certainly not of the
same kind the Rwandan or the Nicaraguan governments implemented at the behest of
the international financial institutions (IFI) in the aftermath of their wars (Paris, 2005).
Development agendas are aptly suited as a tool for human security in African and Latin
American and Caribbean Countries (hereafter LAC) to the extent they consider key
aspects related to horizontal inequalities and the polity soundness problem.
3. The development contexts of civil wars and violent peace: overview and types
of cases
3.1. Personal security threats and development styles
Civil wars and societal violence are two salient threats to personal security and they are
not independent from the development levels of the societies in which they take place.
Taking civil wars all over the world into account, it is very telling that 75.1% of the
countries which were undergoing a civil war in 2008 belong to “low” and “medium”
categories of the human development index (HDI). Actually, 64.5% of the countries
classified in the category of “low” human development were in civil war in 2008.1
When we look at societal violence all over the world, the landscape is also telling. The
higher the human development level, the lower the mean of the rate of homicides. Only
one country belonging to the “very high” category of the HDI shows a homicide rate
higher than the epidemic one:2 Barbados. Yet, it is important to notice that both
categories “high” and “medium” have broader variability than the “very high” and “low”
categories do (Table 1). It is worth pointing out that Africa and LAC, the two most
unequal regions of the world, exhibit the highest mean value of rate of homicides (Table
2). Despite of its enormous diversity, Asia has not only a much lower mean value of the
rate of homicides but also this indicator exhibits far lower variability.
What matters the most, however, are not the development levels themselves. Violence
and war are dynamic processes. Therefore, the dynamics of development must be
considered. Consequently, it is necessary to analyze the relationship between personal
security threats such as civil wars and societal violence under the light of the
development styles concept.
According to Aníbal Pinto a development style is the way in which a system organizes
and allocates human and material resources in order to solve questions related to what
to produce, to whom and how. “The propensities of the productive system to favoring
distinctly different social groups should be evaluated considering the dynamic of such a
process; it is a cumulative phenomenon which reinforces the tendencies toward higher
or lower grade of inequality” (Pinto, 2008:78). Thus, the grades and types of inequality
are salient traits of a particular development style. They are also critical to the
formulation and implementation of development agendas aimed to overcome personal
security’s threats.
James Fearon (2004) presents a type of civil wars that are difficult to end: the sons-ofthe-soil rebellions. These are wars where peripheral insurgencies fight against both
governmental armies and paramilitary forces. By and large, the insurgents belong to an
ethnic minority group whereas the military and paramilitary forces represent the ethnic
dominant group. This kind of conflicts usually involves feuds over natural resources or
land. Fearon’s analysis suggests that chances of looting natural resources or the
1
Those calculations are based on UNDP (2010).
Experts consider that a rate of homicides higher than 8 per every 100.000 inhabitants represents an epidemic one
which reflects deep societal fault lines (Kliksberg, 2008).
2
possibilities of trafficking illegal merchandises are intermediate mechanisms3 present on
the path which goes from certain characteristics related to development contexts (such
as low income per capita) to the protraction of civil wars.
Drawing on the mechanisms involved in the sons-of-the-soil rebellions dynamics, it is
possible to identify at least three units of analysis relevant for the exploration of the
relationships between civil wars and development styles: rural periphery contexts,
horizontal inequalities and the role and characteristics of the state. Identifying units of
analysis suitable for the exploration of the relationships between development styles
and societal violence is at least as challenging as in the civil wars’ case.
Nonetheless, as long as high levels of societal violence reflect critical failures of the
state capacity to enforce the rule of law4 (O’Donnell, 1998), and they are also a
symptom of deep fault lines within a society (Bourguignon, 1999), it might be useful to
adapt the units of analysis mentioned above to violent cases different from civil wars.
Identifying, inductively, some development style characteristics present in different
types of cases, may give some clues for further exploration variables’ configurations
specific to each type of cases. Here there is just a preliminary look at several salient
features.
Table 1
Rates of Homicides by Human Development Index Levels
Mean
Standard deviation
Minimum
Maximum
Low
15.24
9.87
0.4
38
Medium
High
Very High
12.64
10.40
1.62
16.85
13.30
1.86
0
1
0.30
82.1
52.1
11.30
Source: Own calculation based on UNODC Homicide Statistics and
UNDP Human Development Report
The homicides rates correspond to the latest year available between 2004 and 2010.
3
In a nutshell, a mechanism describes the process by which one variable affects another one i.e. how X produces Y
(Gerring, 2010).
4
Even though the “rule of law” is a disputative term, O’Donnell (1998:7,8) asserts its minimal meaning: “…
whatever law there is, it is fairly applied by the relevant state institutions, including but not exclusively the
judiciary. By ‘fairly’ I mean that the administrative application or judicial adjudication of legal rules is consistent
across equivalent cases, is made without taking into consideration the class, status or power differentials of the
participants in such processes, and applies procedures which are pre-established and knowable.”
Table 2
Rates of Homicides by Continents
N
53
Minimum
1.10
Maximum
56.90
Mean
16.3943
Std.
Deviation
11.39468
Asia
51
.50
15.20
3.4922
2.99992
Europa
43
.00
11.20
2.3930
2.53465
LAC*
43
3.70
82.10
21.5674
17.51127
2
1.80
5.00
3.4000
2.26274
14
.00
13.00
3.3714
3.92398
Africa
North America
Oceania
Source: Own calculation based on UNODC Homicide Statistics
*LAC means Latin America and the Caribbean
The homicides rates correspond to the latest year available between 2004 and 2010.
3.2. Classification of countries according to combinations of personal security
threats
In order to identify the different characteristics of the development styles present along
with specific personal security threats is necessary to parse each type of case. Table 3
shows the different types of cases resulting from combining armed conflict situations
and levels of societal violence.
Table 3
Definitions of Types of Cases
Type of cases
Peace
Peaceful Society
Peaceful Post-conflict
Societal Violence
Violent Peace
High Societal Violence
Violent Post-conflict
Highly Violent Post-Conflict
Definition
There was not a civil war between 1990 and 2010 and
the rate of homicides in 2010 is less than or equal to 8.
The war ended between 1990 and 2009 and the rate of
homicides in 2010 is less than or equal to 8.
There was not a civil war between 1990 and 2010 but the
rate of homicides in 2010 is greater than 8 but less than
16.
There was not a civil war between 1990 and 2010 but the
rate of homicides in 2010 is greater than or equal to 16.
The war ended between 1990 and 2009 but the rate of
homicides in 2010 is greater than or equal to 8 but less
than 16.
The war ended between 1990 and 2009 but the rate of
homicides in 2010 is greater than or equal to 16.
In 2010 the ongoing armed conflict had already reached
a value of cumulative intensity equal to 1 and the rate of
homicides in 2010 is less than or equal to 8.
In 2010 the ongoing armed conflict had already reached
Civil War
Armed Conflict and Societal Violence
a value of cumulative intensity equal to 1 and the rate of
homicides in 2010 is greater than 8 but less than 16.
In 2010 the ongoing armed conflict had already reached
Armed Conflict and High Societal a value of cumulative intensity equal to 1 and the rate of
Violence
homicides is greater than or equal to 16.
Own elaboration based on UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset
Armed Conflict and Peaceful Society
The classification has three main types of cases: Peace, Violent Peace and Civil War.
Another important type of cases is Post-Conflict. This one is in the intersection between
Peace and Violent Peace. The classification is somehow a 2010 snapshot. Even though
it considers both the cumulative intensity5 of the armed conflicts and post conflicts
whose preceding wars ended in 1990 or after (until 2010), the rates of homicides
correspond to the latest year available on UNODC’s datasets between 2004 and 2010.
Therefore, 2010 was chosen for two reasons: a) It is the last year available in the latest
version of the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset and it is also the latest year
available on the UNODC’s rate of homicides data sets; b) Unfortunately, just few African
countries are on the data series which trace rate of homicides over time. Indeed, those
data are scattered. That is why the rates of homicides values correspond to the latest
ones available between 2004 and 2010.6
Taking just the latest figure may miss valuable information about the variability of each
rate over time. Certainly crime rates –counting not only homicides but also robberies,
burglaries, thefts, frauds, etc. – change significantly over time, so that, “criminality is not
purely structural characteristic of society which changes very slowly with the process of
economic, social and cultural development” (Bourguignon, 1999: 2). However, looking
at the UNODC’s data series of homicides rates between 1995 and 2010, it is clear that
despite their variability over time, transitions from epidemic rates of homicides to no
epidemic ones -and vice versa- are not too frequent. Just 5.1% of the countries listed on
those UNODC’s data series shows a maximum and minimum values corresponding to
different epidemic levels of the rate of homicides.
The three greatest variance values on the series correspond to El Salvador, Honduras y
Colombia. However, their minimum values are still far away from being no epidemic.
Indeed, the ten LAC countries with the highest median values of their rates of homicides
between 1995 and 2010 are also the ten LAC countries whose rates of homicides were
the highest ones in 2010 (Table 4). Having made clear enough the reasons behind the
decision of taking 2010 as a baseline for the classification of countries, what follows is
the classification itself (Table 5).
5
Cumulative Intensity (CumInt) is an indicator used by UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Data Set. “This variable takes
into account the temporal dimension of the conflict. It is a dummy variable that codes whether the conflict since
the onset has exceeded 1,000 battle-related deaths. A conflict is coded as 0 as long as it has not over time resulted
in more than 1,000 battle-related deaths. Once a conflict reaches this threshold, it is coded as 1.” (UCDP/PRIO,
2011:9).
6
Therefore, not even for all the countries the rates of homicides correspond to 2010.
Table 4
Rates of Homicides, Median Values
Country
Median (1995-2010)
Country
Median (1995-2010)
El Salvador
64.7
Honduras
Colombia
58.2
El Salvador
Honduras
50.6
Jamaica
Jamaica
42.6
Venezuela
Venezuela
37.1
Belize
41.7
Guatemala
35.8
Guatemala
41.4
Belize
31.8
Colombia
33.4
Brazil
29.8
25.2
Saint Lucia
22.2
Saint Lucia
Dominican
Rep.
Dominican Republic
17.8
Brazil
Own elaboration based on UNODC Homicide Statistics
Peace
Violent Peace
82.1
66
52.1
49
24.9
22.7
Table 5
Classification of Countries by Types of Cases
Type of cases
Countries
Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Haiti, Libyan
Peaceful Society
Arab Jamahiriya, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia,
Uruguay.
Peaceful Post-conflict
None
Barbados, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana, Cape Verde,
Societal Violence
Comoros, Costa Rica, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana,
Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Paraguay,
Seychelles, Surinam, Swaziland, Togo, Zimbabwe.
Belize, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire,
High Societal Violence
Dominica, Dominican Rep., Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea,
Eritrea, Guinea, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Kenya,
Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Namibia, Panama, South
Africa, Tanzania, Venezuela, Zambia.
Liberia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Senegal, Sierra Leone.
Violent Post-conflict
Angola, Burundi, Congo, Dem. Rep. of Congo, El
Highly Violent Post-Conflict
Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau.
Armed Conflict and Peaceful Society
Algeria, Peru, Somalia
Armed Conflict and Societal Violence
Chad
Civil War
Armed Conflict and High Societal Colombia, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, Central African
Violence
Republic*
Own elaboration based on UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset and UNODC Homicide Statistics
*Although the latest version of the Uppsala Armed Conflicts Database does not include Central African Republic, it is
worth noticing that not only most of its neighbors have been at war (Sudan, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of
Congo), but also the country itself has experienced armed conflict . Indeed, in 2009 a new rebel group turned up: The
Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace CPJP. Uppsala Conflict Data Program (Date of retrieval: 2012/05/30)
UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia: www.ucdp.uu.se/database, Uppsala University.
There are some quite interesting results in Table 5. First of all, it draws attention the fact
that African countries which were the protagonists of the Arab Spring in 2011 looked
quite peaceful just one year before. Only Algeria registered in the Uppsala Armed
Conflict Database an armed conflict situation in 2010. Yet, in Algeria and also in
Morocco “even though there were reported deaths in connection to demonstrations they
were not as violent and did not produce as high death tolls as in Tunisia and Egypt”
(UCDP, 2011:6). However, the search for the latent causes and the triggers which
precipitated the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia as well as the short though notorious
Libyan civil war is beyond the analysis carried on in this paper.7
Second, it stunts the absence of countries in the Peaceful Post-Conflict category.
Finding that all of the post-conflict cases correspond to violent peace highlights the fact
that ending wars does not entail ending violence. It also remarks the necessity of
addressing the development challenges that accompany peace building efforts in order
to assure the transition from war to peace instead of to violent peace.
Third, there are many cases in the violent peace situation which did not suffer a civil
war, at least not since 1990. That makes clear that despite of being the most extreme
evidence of a polity’s failure, civil war is neither the only source of personal insecurity
nor necessarily always the most devastating one. Algeria and Peru for example, are
considered by the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Database as minor conflict cases in
2010.8 Nevertheless, their conflicts do not seem currently to have pervasive effects on
those countries.
Although peace in Peru might still be considered “an unfinished task” (Basombrío,
1999), violence emanated from conflict may be very limited. Somalia is a strange case.
It is the only one of all the armed conflicts whose UCDP/PRIO’s intensity indicator
equals two. In other words is the only “war” according to the UCDP/PRIO’s terminology
and yet, its most recent homicide rate available is 1.5 per 100.000 inhabitants in 2008. 9
Considering that a civil war usually articulates other manifestations of violence, so that
societal violence and war-directly-related violence may reinforce each other, it
astonishes the extremely low rate of homicides in a country whose war is intense and
whose state is considered the weakest one all over the world (Rice and Patrick, 2008).
Nonetheless, the very weakness of the Somali state casts a shadow over the reliability
of statistics coming from there.
Fourth, there are few remaining wars and Colombia is the only Latin American country
which despite to have reduced both the intensity of its war and its rate of homicides,
classifies as a case of armed conflict along with high societal violence. The long lasting
Colombian war has developed manifold connections between the civil war itself and
other forms of violence (PNUD, 2003). Perhaps that is why Colombia might seem to be
the archetype of the situations in which the reinforcing process between war and
societal violence takes place.
7
The most recent developments in Africa like the coup in Mali and the secession war that ensued, and the
independence of South Sudan, are also out of the scope of this paper.
8
UCDP/PRIO classifies armed conflicts according to its intensity in a given year, in two categories: 1. Minor:
between 25 and 999 battle-related deaths in a given year; 2. War: at least 1,000 battle-related deaths in a given
year (UCDP/PRIO, 2011:9).
9
The figure is provided by the World Health Organization and taken from UNODC.
3.3. Looking at some types of cases and some development styles’ features
As stated above, certain mechanisms embedded into various characteristics of the
development styles may fuel the main personal security threats. Also, it was asserted
that the grades and sorts of inequalities are defining characteristics of a development
style. Of course, inequalities themselves have their specific contexts. For example, one
could hardly say that inequality in a low income country such as Haiti has the same
social effects that it does in an upper middle income country such as Colombia.
Furthermore, the dangerousness of the approximately the same Gini coefficient is, by
no means, the same in Chile and Rwanda. Understanding the context, grades and
types of inequalities when analyzing the relationship between development styles and
personal security threats is then crucial. Considering just income vertical inequalities
measured by the Gini coefficient, peaceful societies tend to be placed along lower Gini
values than high societal violence cases, post-conflict situations and armed conflicts
(Figure 1). Nonetheless, it is still necessary a little closer look.
Figure 1
Gini and Types of Cases
Own elaboration based on World Development Indicators (WDI),
UCDP/PRIO and UNODC.
3.3.1. Peaceful societies
There are two opposite cases within this group: Haiti and Chile. Both of them are the
most unequal countries among peaceful societies considered here.10 Nonetheless, Haiti
is a low income country whose HDI is also low and its poverty high.11 Chile is an upper
middle income country whose HDI is high and its poverty low. 12 In fact, in the 2011
Human Development Report Chile occupies the first place on the HDI ranking for LAC
countries whereas Haiti is in the last place.13
In Chile’s case the chain that otherwise might lead from inequality to societal violence is
broken by the high level of the quality of life enjoyed by most Chileans and by the high
capacity of its state (Rice and Stewart, 2008). Even though income inequality is a
salient downside of the Chilean development style, the income gap between the richest
and the poorest segments of its population is not as wide as in Haiti. 14 Additionally, the
capacity of the Chilean state has been historically built since the very beginning of its
independent life (Centeno, 2002).
In Haiti’s case –although figures of homicides may be underestimated because of the
lack of state capacity - the chain that might lead from inequality to societal violence is
broken by mechanisms very different from those present in the Chilean example. Haiti
resembles a situation in which the burden of extreme poverty impairs violence. In fact,
sometimes poverty alleviation is considered a factor that could lead to violence (Pearce,
2010). To say it with Amartya Sen’s words:
Destitution can be accompanied not only by economic debility, but also by political helplessness.
A starving wretch can be too frail and too dejected to fight and battle, and even to protest and
holler. It is thus not surprising that often enough intense and widespread suffering and misery
have been accompanied by unusual peace and silence (Sen, 2006:143).
This also applies to Niger: one of the most egalitarian countries of this group but also
one of the poorest. The social landscape of this group includes countries quite
egalitarian but poor e.g. Niger, Egypt15 and Djibouti. Other countries are less egalitarian
but also far less poor and with much higher HDI like Argentina and Uruguay.
10
According to the latest data available on the World Development Indicators (Hereafter WDI), Haiti’s Gini
coefficient is 0.5921 and Chile’s Gini coefficient is 0.5206.
11
In 2001, 77% of its population had incomes below the national poverty line according to the WDI.
12
In 2009 15.1% of its population had incomes below the national poverty line according to the WDI.
13
In the2011 Human Development Report Chile and Argentina entered into the “very high” human development
category. Meanwhile, Haiti remained as the only country in the LAC region that belongs to the “low” human
development category.
14
Considering the latest WDI available, in 2009, in Chile, the richest 10% of the population earned 27.9 times more
than the poorest 10%. In 2001, this figure in Haiti was 72.2.
15
Even though the incidence of poverty in Egypt is not high (22% in 2008 according to WDI), it is a lower middle
income country and its HDI is “medium”.
3.3.2. High societal violence
This group is quite heterogeneous. There are extremely poor countries such as Lesotho
and paradoxical ones such as Equatorial Guinea whose oil revenues make it a high
income country, and yet 76.8% of its population is below the national poverty line.16
Perhaps the indicator most aptly suited to convey a clear image of Equatorial Guinea’s
development style is the number which results after subtracting the position a country
occupies on the ranking of HDI from the position it occupies on the income ranking. This
number provides an approximate idea of the degree in which a society transforms its
revenues into educational and health achievements. It is somehow a proxy of the social
bias of the development style. This figure in Equatorial Guinea’s case is a kind of mindboggling number: minus 91. Certainly, it is a regime that channels the wealth towards
Teodoro Obiang and his small clique. Instead of at least doling the governmental budget
out to some broader segments of the population in order to buy political and social
support, harsh repression is wielded.17
By contrast, there are in this group some praised democracies such as Brazil18 but with
highly unequal distribution of their incomes. However, both inequality and violence are
declining in Brazil: In 2001 the Gini coefficient was 0.639 and in 2009: 0.576.19 The rate
of homicides was 31.4 per 100.000 inhabitants in 2001 and it felt to 22.7 in 2009.20
Venezuela instead represents an intriguing case in which inequality has been declining
and violence soaring (Figure 2)
Figure 2
Homicides and Inequality in Venezuela
0.600
70.0
0.500
60.0
50.0
0.400
40.0
0.300
Gini
30.0
Homicides
0.200
0.100
Lineal (Homicides)
20.0
Lineal (Gini)
10.0
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2002
1999
0.0
1997
0.000
Own elaboration based on World Development Indicators (WDI) and UNODC
16
This figure corresponds to 2006 and is taken from WDI.
The Freedom House indicators of Political Rights and Civil Liberties have been 7 and sometimes 6 (the worst
scores of the scale) in Equatorial Guinea since 1973.
18
Freedom House has labeled Brazil as a “Free” country continuously since 2003. The other possibilities are
“Partially Free” and “Not Free”.
19
CEPALSTAT
20
UNODC
17
The contrast between Brazil and Venezuela would suggest that the possible effects of
reducing inequality on homicide trends may depends on the specific ways redistribution
is carried out and the specific features of the political and social context as a whole. It is
soon to anticipate the legacies of the Chávez’s “creation of an autonomous power
center in the name of Bolivarian democracy [which] actually de-democratized his
regime” (Tilly, 2007:173). Hitherto, one salient characteristic of the Venezuelan
development style is the deterioration of personal security. This result, however, cannot
lead to dismiss the relevance of fighting vertical inequality to build a safer development
style. What seems to be clear is that there are different paths towards redistribution of
income and wealth and each of them has to be weighted in terms of its effects on
personal security.
Mexico has seen drugs related violence soared, particularly between 2007 and 2010
when its rate of homicides per 100.000 inhabitants went from 8.1 to 21.5, overtaking the
figure of 1995: 18.4.21 Drug cartels might have been taking advantage of the increasing
rural poverty (from 57.4% in 2004 to 60.8 in 2010)22 and youth unemployment rate (from
6.5% in 2000 to 14.3% in 2010).23
Within the group there are clear cases of vertical inequalities like Honduras and
protuberant examples of horizontal inequalities like South Africa (Stewart, 2001).
Honduras seems to be the archetype of a high vertical inequality case with no
intermediate mechanisms inhibiting the violent effects that huge social gaps may
produce. Honduras is a poor country but not as poor as Haiti. It is a lower middle
income country and its HDI belongs to the “medium” quartile. However, its Gini
coefficient is the second among LAC countries after Haiti’s one.
Taking African and LAC countries together, the number of times that the income of the
richest 10% overtakes what the poorest 10% earns is at its most in Honduras: 98.6
times24. Honduras has not had to handle with the violent legacies of a civil war and yet,
it exhibits the highest rate of homicides among all countries considered in this paper:
82.1 homicides per 100.000 inhabitants in 2010. Both inequality and rate of homicides
soared between 2000 and 2010 beginning with already high values in 2000.25 If
Venezuela’s case may suggest that not all kinds of redistribution policies make societies
less violent, Honduras leaves very clear that harsh and increasing vertical inequality
within a weak state is an enormous danger. However, peasants are particularly
disadvantaged. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC) 78.8% of the rural population are poor. The distance from the mean
income of the rural poor to the rural poverty line value, i.e. the gap at rural poverty line is
45.3%.26
21
UNODC
WDI
23
CEPALSTAT
24
The figure corresponds to 2009, the latest one available in WDI.
25
According to UNODC, in 2000 the rate of homicides in Honduras was 51.1 per 100.000 inhabitants and in 2010
the figure was 82.1. According to WDI, although the Gini coefficient diminished in 2009, between 2001 and 2008
increased from 0.5438 to 0.6133.
26
CEPALSTAT figures correspond to 2007 and 2010 respectively.
22
3.3.3. Post-conflict situations
Perhaps in no other circumstances may inequality be most dangerous than in a polity
which has endured a violent split. A breakdown of the political amity that constitutes the
social glue of a nation is not always the immediate consequence of low social
development and inequality. Those were not the features in Libya’s case. Despite of its
authoritarian rule the Libyan development style does not seem to have prompted –a
prima facie- the bloodshed of 2011. But, once a war has started, it can hardly be
ignored that salient characteristics of the development style may fuel or inhibit the
protraction of any particular war.27
The absence of countries in the Peaceful Post-conflict category is quite eloquent. Some
forces unleashed by the war’s dynamics may survive and even get entrenched after
peace is signed.28 Sometimes -as Roland Paris (2005) makes it clear- the peace
processes themselves may have not contributed to curtailing those forces. Certainly,
development styles play a significant role.
All post-conflict cases correspond to low or lower middle income countries and not even
one of them has a high HDI. In fact, just four out of the 13 cases has a medium HDI. As
table 6 shows it, taking out Ethiopia and Nicaragua, when a country has a Gini
coefficient below 0.45, its population in poverty overtakes 50%.
Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala are the three LAC cases where civil wars ended
after piece processes in which were involved all of the armed actors. The
implementation of the neoliberal agenda in those countries made more difficult the
reintegration of former combatants because of the shrinking of social expenses and the
increasing unemployment (Nasi, 2007).
Nicaragua is a violent post-conflict society but not a highly violent one. The rate of male
youth unemployment reached 20.3% in 1993. However, in 2005 it had felt to 9.3%.29
Despite of having reduced rural income poverty this remains high: 67.9% in 2005.30 In
El Salvador –a highly violent post-conflict society- rural poverty has been diminishing
from 66.1% in 1991 to 46.5% in 200931 but the rate of male youth unemployment has
been constantly almost twice the total population’s rate. In 2010 it was 15.7%.32
Guatemala is the Latin American archetype of a civil war followed by a post-conflict
situation in which horizontal inequalities have played a protuberant role. When looking
at the places it loses after subtracting its HDI rank from its Gross National Income rank
27
In the Libyan case it has to be analyzed two possibilities: First, if the weakness of Libya as a nation had to do with
the fact that in Northern Africa this was the only country where the uprisings ended up in a civil war. Second, if it
was because of its previous development achievements that the war did end relatively soon.
28
Nevertheless, it is worth reminding that in a postmodern political era the language has changed to the extent
the neat distinctions of the modernity have become fuzzy. Therefore, nowadays peace processes have taken the
place of treatises of peace (Giraldo, 2009:67).
29
CEPALSTAT
30
WDI
31
WDI
32
CEPALSTAT
(table 6), it is clear that the post-conflict development style of the country lacks the
social bias required to build a sustainable peace. Its Gini (0.569 in 2006)33 is the fifth
highest one among LAC countries. Between 1998 and 2006 rural poverty went from
68% to 66.5%. However, between 2002 and 2006 rural poverty gap increased from 30.8
to 33.3%.34 A key failure in carrying out the promises made when peace was agreed is
that the land reform has not been tackled (Stewart, 2009:162).
After nine years of negotiations, 17 separate peace accords were signed. Two of them
were the Agreement on the Socio-Economic Aspects and the Agrarian Situation, and
the Agreement on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Unfortunately,
conservative forces headed a political campaign against the agreements, which were
rejected in a referendum in 1998 (Ibidem).
It is not surprising that a mining and oil economy like Angola classifies as a highly
violent post-conflict when looking at the loss of places once its HDI rank is subtracted
from its Gross National Income rank. Actually, UNITA (which became an opposition
political party) has not been the only armed insurgent group in Angola. There are
several armed factions which claim the secession of Cabinda, the region that “produces
around 60% of Angola’s oil revenues”35
Whether grievances related to inequality are at the roots of a civil war or not, once a
country begins to follow the civil war troubled road, forces towards even greater
inequalities are usually activated. It is not just a matter of cause-effect relationship.
Rather, it is a vicious circle as long as “violent conflict tends to raise inequality (and
inequality is one factor in a country’s vulnerability to conflict) and high inequalities
lowers the impact of growth on poverty reduction in the early years of post-conflict
reconstruction” (Addison and Brück, 2009:28).
33
WDI
CEPALSTAT
35
Uppsala Conflict Data Program (Date of retrieval: 2012/06/10) UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia:
www.ucdp.uu.se/database, Uppsala University
34
Table 6
Human Development, Poverty and Inequality in LAC and African Post-conflict Countries
Poverty
HDI
Income Level
Gini
Headcount
Gross National Income
Ratio (%)
per Capita Rank minus
(National
HDI Rank
Poverty Line)
Angola
Low
Lower Middle Income
0.5864
..
-38
Burundi
Low
Low Income
0.3327
66.9
0
Congo
Medium
Lower Middle Income
0.4732
50.1
-6
Dem. Rep. of Congo
Low
Low Income
0.4443
71.3
-1
El Salvador
Medium
Lower Middle Income
0.4833
37.8
-4
Ethiopia
Low
Low Income
0.2983
38.9
0
Guatemala
Medium
Lower Middle Income
0.5589
51
-14
Guinea-Bissau
Low
Low Income
0.3552
64.7
-3
Liberia
Low
Low Income
0.3816
63.8
5
Mozambique
Low
Low Income
0.4566
54.7
-9
Nicaragua
Medium
Lower Middle Income
0.4047
46.2
10
Senegal
Low
Lower Middle Income
0.3919
50.8
-2
Sierra Leone
Low
Low Income
0.4252
66.4
Own elaboration based on UNDP Human Development Report and World Development Indicators.
0
3.3.4. Armed conflicts
There were nine internal armed conflicts in 2010. In the category of Armed Conflicts and
Peaceful Societies are two minor conflicts: Peru and Algeria. Both of them are upper
middle income countries and their HDI is high. Peruvian Gini was at its greatest value in
2002: 0.5564. It diminished to 0.4814 in 2010. In 2001 income poverty reached 54.8%
of the population. It felt to 31.3% in 2010. Algeria has had a long lasting civil war which
began in 1991between the government and the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA).
Another armed actor is Al Qaeda in Maghreb. The rate of youth male unemployment in
Algeria is dramatically high (42.8%).36 That situation certainly contributes to satisfying
actors’ recruitments requirements.
Chad is a very poor country in which an unstable neighborhood has paved the way to
new episodes of war after peace agreements. Somalia is the weakest state of the world.
Its elites are strongly averse to the state. The elites are old leaders of local clans,
warlords and those who provide merchandises to them, real property owners and some
businessmen of Mogadishu who have gained some degree of autonomy from the
warlords. Even though those businessmen would enjoy much more benefits from a rule
of law and from peace, they chose to turn down every attempt of building a state. They
are averse to the uncertain effects a state building process could have on their profits.
Therefore, they would rather operate within a suboptimal but familiar environment
(Menkhaus, 2003:415).
36
WDI
In Rwanda, the “uneasy coexistence between guilty majorities and fearful minorities
(Mamdani, 2001:208) has shaped the armed conflict and high societal violence the
country is currently enduring. Rwanda represents the quintessence of how dangerous
horizontal inequalities can become. However, as Mamdani explains Tutsi and Hutu
identities are political identities rather than cultural o market based ones. “Political
identities are the consequence of how power is organized” (Ibidem, 22).
Therefore, a broader nation based identity seems necessary to be built in order to break
the chain of retaliations and fears which impair a sustainable peace. A development
agenda aimed to overcome economic inequalities is a major piece of that process of
nation-building. Those inequalities soared when the economic slump started in the late
1980s mainly because of the decline in coffee world prices. They were exacerbated by
both the civil war, the genocide in 1994 and by the structural economic adjustment
signed by the Juvenal Habyarimana’s government, the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank.
[S]pecific elements of the structural adjustment program did apparently contribute to the
impoverishment of many Rwandans in the early 1990: Higher fees for health and education, for
example, added to the already heavy burdens of Rwanda’s poor, while a freeze in public wages
combined with successive currency devaluations, decreased the real income of many middleclass Rwandans. Whether these conditions increased the willingness of ordinary Rwandans to
participate in mass murder remains a matter of debate, but it does appear that the economic
crisis placed additional stress on social and political fabric of the country in the lead-up to
genocide (Paris, 2005:77).
In Central African Republic the Gini coefficient went from 0.435 in 2003 to 0.563 in 2008
and rural poverty reached 64.9% in 2008. Sudan is now two countries and there are
signals of the transformation of a civil war into an interstate war.37 Uganda has been
involved in the conflicts of its neighbors and its own conflicts have been prompted by
political manipulations of ethnic and regional inequalities.
Currently in northern Uganda, whose Langi and Acholi elites once ruled the country, it
remains the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army which has operated also in Sudan,
Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic. In Uganda, the dichotomy
between political domination and social and economic differences may have fueled
violent conflicts. “There are significant, persistent horizontal inequalities in Uganda in
economic and social dimensions. Average incomes are broadly twice as much in the
South and Center and social services substantially better” (Stewart, 2001). However,
northerners and westerners kept political power until the southerner Yuweri Museveni
seized the government. By and large, inequality has increased: In 1996 the income held
by the richest 10% of the population was 9.4 times larger than the income held by the
poorest 10%. In 2009 this figure was 15.3.38
Colombia exhibits the longest civil war among LAC and African countries. It represents
the only upper middle income country out of the Armed Conflict and High Societal
37
“South Sudan Reports Air Attacks by Sudan”, New York Times, April 23, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/world/africa/south-sudan-accuses-khartoum-of-air-attacks.html?_r=3&hp
38
WDI
Violence cases. The richest 10% of the Colombian population receives 51.07 times
more income than the poorest 10%,39 the greatest difference among all upper middle
income countries in LAC and Africa. Colombia Gini coefficient (0.559 in 2010) 40 is the
third highest one among upper middle income countries in LAC and Africa after South
Africa and Seychelles:41
Even though its war is not an ethnic42 or religious one, there is –additional to the huge
vertical inequality- a kind of horizontal inequality expressed in terms of an anti-peasant
bias of the Colombian development style. This bias has been shaped by the historic
successive defeats of the peasant population (Uribe-López, 2011). A few figures
illustrate briefly that bias: According to the ECLAC,43 in 2009, 64.3% of the rural
population was below the poverty line.44 This is the highest incidence of rural poverty
among the upper middle income countries of Latin America. The rural poverty gap in
2009 was 31.9% just behind the gaps in Honduras and Paraguay among Latin
American countries only (excluding Caribbean ones).
4. Conclusions
Human security concept is useful as a normative criterion as long as it remarks a
person-centered approach to security and development issues. It also offers a
framework for designing and implementing development agendas aimed at giving
support to the sustainability of personal security. Human security idea keeps agents of
development changes aware of the latent risks behind each attempt of modifying the
status quo. It avoids ignoring the vulnerability of every development achievement.
Taking human security in mind when policies, strategies and specific tools are designed
may contribute to prevent the presence of unintended consequences of development
agendas’ implementation.
The exercise of sorting the different combinations of conflict situations and societal
violence’s levels presented in this paper may shed light over whether or not it can be
said that certain features of the development styles are linked to certain types of conflict
and violence situations. At least, it can help to guide a further exploration and carrying
out specific case studies.
It seems clear enough that effects of inequality on social cohesion may not be the same
in an extremely poor country and in an upper middle income country. However, other
contextual characteristics and trajectories in every case must be taken into account.
The specific configuration of variables in each type of cases should be identified.
39
WDI
WDI
41
Seychelles only has 87.000 inhabitants according to the figure in 2009 registered by The Maddison Project
Website of Angus Maddison, http://www.ggdc.net/MADDISON/ [Accessed 18 November 2010]
42
However ethnicity is not altogether absent in the dynamic of the Colombian war. In fact, it has played an
important role in the Pacific region where thousands of black peasants have been forced out of their territories.
43
CEPALSTAT information updated June 6 2011.
44
The figures available on the latest version of the WDI are different but also high: 54.3% in 2009 and 50.35% in
2010.
40
Not all poor and unequal societies have had to handle a civil war situation or have
suffered from high levels of societal violence. Certain development and political features
as huge vertical or horizontal inequalities, social segregation, youth male
unemployment, ruthless authoritarianism, weakness of the state and so on, may be just
part of the “chemical” merge of ingredients that may act as necessary conditions for
high violence and war. In fact, civil wars and high societal violence are quite scarce
among the most developed and egalitarian countries. Identifying sufficient conditions for
high violence and civil war seems still a tough task.
History matters and those countries which have not experienced a civil war for a long
time and do not recorded a bloody background tend to remain peaceful. Violence in the
past configures certain vulnerability to violence in the present or even in the future.
Having had a pervasive civil war in a recent past may be a good predictor of both the
risk of a renewed civil war in the future or high societal violence in the conflict’s
aftermath. The absence of countries in the Peaceful Post-Conflict category supports this
affirmation.
Even though, horizontal inequalities seem to be more relevant in war and post-conflict
situations whereas vertical inequalities may be more apparent in high societal violence
cases, the exercise carried out on this paper suggests that both may be overlapped and
reinforce each other. Sometimes, behind huge vertical inequalities lays a systematic
bias of the development style against a population group which is not necessarily an
ethnic or a religious one. Poor peasants and segregated youth are two salient
examples.
Moreover, the overlapping between vertical and horizontal inequalities is not necessarily
exclusive to Armed Conflict and High Societal Violence situations or to Post-Conflict and
High Societal ones. Cases of societal violence in which vertical inequalities are
conspicuous may have certain manifestations of horizontal inequalities embedded. In
some LAC countries different from Guatemala (to mention only one prominent example
of horizontal inequalities in the region) that may not be obvious but it is not certainly
absent.
Most countries different from some of the peaceful ones (Argentina, Chile, Cuba,
Uruguay) are at different degrees weak states. The archetype of a Latin American (and
African) state is that one in which, contrary to the European path of state-building, the
state preceded the entrenchment of the nation (Centeno, 2002). Thus, to say that
strengthening the state is what is required to promote development and security is not
enough. Actually, it seems a tautology.
The key dimension of the statehood required to implement development agendas which
enable human security is to promote a broad sense of belonging to the nation. States
are endogenous to societies, though they may shape each other (Migdal, 2001), so that,
a mutually binding social contract cannot be exogenously imposed. Development
agendas should fight inequalities that nurture the threats to personal security by
contributing to the building of a sound polity. That means –as Paris (2005) makes it
clear- institutionalization before liberalization.
There are not, however, specific recipes. Contexts must be taking into account. In any
case, cooperation for development cannot ignore the importance of nation-building. It is
necessary to encourage the mutual recognition within different segments of the
citizenry. “Without any shared, common idea of the good of the nation and without any
shared national identity, the smaller internal groups with their own set of values tend to
conflict again and again, both with each other and with the state” (Hellsten, 2009:90).
Africa and LAC are the two most unequal regions of the world. Thus, the promotion of
those shared national identities is inextricably linked to the implementation of
redistributive agendas which can manage appropriately the tensions that modifying the
status quo may unleash.
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UCDP, 2011, Arabian Spring 2010-2011,
http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/program_overview/ [Accessed 13 February 2012]
UCDP/PRIO, 2011, Armed Conflict Dataset Codebook. Version 4-2011.
United Nations Development Programme UNDP, 1994, Human Development Report
1994: New Dimensions of Human Security, Oxford University Press.
United Nations Development Programme UNDP, 2010, Human Development Report
2010: The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development, Palgrave.
Statistical Databases
Angus Maddison Project Website
http://www.ggdc.net/MADDISON/
[Accessed 18 November 2010]
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ECLAC:
CEPALSTAT
http://websie.eclac.cl/sisgen/ConsultaIntegrada.asp
[Accessed repeatedly between March and May 2012]
Freedom House:
Country status and ratings overview, FIW 1973-2011
http://www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world
[Accessed 27 February 2012]
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNODC:
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.html
[Accessed 4 March 2012]
Uppsala Conflict Data Program UCDP:
UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset v.4 2011, 1946-2010.
http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/datasets/ucdp_prio_armed_conflict_dataset/
[Accessed 13 February 2012]
World Bank:
World Development Indicators (WDI)
http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators
[Accessed repeatedly between March and May 2012]