Brown Journal of World Affairs, The

A New Morocco? Amazigh Activism, Political Pluralism and Anti-Anti-Semitism

For all the initial optimism about the rise of democracy in the Middle East and North Africa, the recent uprisings in the region (often termed "the Arab Spring") have come to be characterized in the West as a threat. European observers present the war in Libya, the broader instability in the region, and the seemingly new and uncontrollable tide of refugees and migrants across the Mediterranean as veritable crises on Europe's southern frontier. Meanwhile, Western security officials fear that t...

Abdelkrim: Whose Hero Is He? The Politics of Contested Memory in Today's Morocco

One of the many, albeit less noticed, features of the uprisings which have cascaded back and forth across the Middle East and North Africa this past year has been the increasing salience of the Amazigh (Berber) factor. In Libya, the small and generally forgotten Amazigh community played an important role in the fighting against Muammar al-Qaddafi's forces. In Morocco, the constitutional reform undertaken by King Mohammed VI included the recognition of Tamazight, the Berber language spoken by ...

Building a Social Movement Against Corruption

Despite the risks and sacrifices undertaken by courageous citizens in many societies, as well as the efforts of countless activists and analysts, the track record of the contemporary anti-corruption movement is unimpressive. Examples of clear-cut, sustained reductions in corruption across full-scale national societies are few and far between. The problem has not been a lack of effort, insight, or commitment, nor is there any shortage of good ideas. Instead, the key issue has all too often bee...

Climate Change, Security, and Redistribution: How Can Political Dilemmas Linked to the Global Environment Be Solved?

Global environmental change -- particularly climate change -- raises important security concerns since it affects the world naturally, economically, and socially, while impinging heavily upon the relationships between developed and developing countries. These developments will have all kinds of difficult consequences, especially since they are linked to particular types of individual and social activities. Such behavioral dimensions are, in part, responsible for the negative evolutions in ter...

Climate-Induced Migration From Northern Africa to Europe: Security Challenges and Opportunities

Mass migration from Africa into Europe is identified as one of the many security threats associated with climate change. The scale of the issue is reflected in numerous intelligence assessments and policy documents, and remains the subject of scores of conferences, workshops, and papers. European Union security experts warn that climate-induced migration may increase conflict in transit and destination areas and that Europe must expect substantially increased migratory pressure. Some European...

Confronting the Eurozone Crisis

In an interview, Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, London, talked about confronting the Eurozone crisis. Essentially, this is a crisis in which there has been excessive lending across borders. So it has an important balance-of-payments element, and associated with the crisis are large losses of competitiveness in a number of countries, and excessive private and public borrowing. All that stopped and imploded. The way you respond to such crises -- which are simil...

Corruption and the Arab Spring

In an interview, Steven A. Cook, senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, talked about corruption and the Arab Spring. Cook certainly does not believe that the uprising in Egypt itself was sparked by corruption. The uprising was the result of the way in which former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt, the way in which coercion and force were used as a means of political control, and the demands of the people who rose up and declared that they would no longer be afraid of being m...

Corruption in the Wealthy World

Compared with third-world nations, the world's wealthy democracies have it easy. Governance, while hardly a trivial process, is usually relatively unproblematic. Public officials can anticipate what it will take to enter office and when and in what matter they are likely to depart; when holding office, they have trained civil servants to do their bidding; and when legislation is approved, there is some reasonable expectation that implementation will follow in due course. Citizens, for their p...

Corruption, Drug Trafficking, and Violence in Mexico

Corruption plays a central role in the drug trafficking and the related "war" that have violently scarred Mexico in recent years. Corruption facilitates the operation of Mexico's vast and powerful criminal-business enterprises while simultaneously debilitating the state's efforts to confront them. But corruption and the structural weaknesses characterizing Mexico's institutions of justice are hardly new. This brief essay first draws on recent events to describe the role of corruption in facil...

Dismantling Gaps and Myths: How Indigenous Political Actors Broke the Mold of Socioeconomic Development

For over two decades in Latin America, indigenous actors from diverse environments and political contexts have struggled for social, economic, and cultural rights and for control over the processes of social and economic development. The need to improve on existing socioeconomic development efforts for the greater benefit of indigenous groups is indisputable. Indigenous people are on average poorer and less well provisioned with basic services than other ethnocultural groups, and development ...

Editors' Foreword

[...]JeffCorntassel and Cheryl Bryce discuss sustainable contemporary indigenous practices that affirm principles of self-determination. [...]Graciela Chichilnisky and Urs Luterbacher construct an economic model to demonstrate that resource scarcity does not necessarily lead to conflict, but the absence of an institutional regulatory structure does.

Gains Versus Drains: Football Academies and the Export of Highly Skilled Football Labor

Over the last two decades, there has been a debate of increasingly acrimonious proportions on the consequences of what has come to be labeled as an "exodus" of Africa's finest football talent to Europe. This debate, played out in the game's corridors of power, in media circles, amongst academics, between politicians, and in both European and African courts, has often mirrored polemicizing around highly skilled African migration more generally. The emigration of the highly skilled from the Glo...

Negotiating Anti-Corruption Reforms in Post-Conflict Societies: The Case of Afghanistan

International and bilateral donors have poured large sums of money into post-conflict countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to hasten security, stabilize the peace, rebuild governance, and stimulate economic and social development. Often, a cross-cutting goal is to combat corruption, and major programs have been designed and implemented to promote anti-corruption reforms, but they have yielded few immediate results. Producing a measurable and visible impact on corruption levels can take time --...

Practicing Sustainable Self-Determination: Indigenous Approaches to Cultural Restoration and Revitalization

Today there are approximately 370 million indigenous people living in over 70 states throughout the world, constituting five percent of the global population. Eighty percent of all biodiversity on the planet thrives in the twenty-two percent of global territories home to indigenous peoples. Increasingly, researchers recognize that the same forces that threaten biodiversity also threaten indigenous peoples' longstanding relationships with their homelands and the health and well-being of native...

The Challenge of Indigenous Legal Systems: Beyond Paradigms of Recognition

Across Latin America, indigenous peoples have increasingly demanded that nation-states respect their culturally specific forms of governance and justice administration. Such demands form an essential part of their claims for autonomy and respect for their collective rights. As well as constituting a central aspect of indigenous peoples' identity, the existence of community-based systems of law reflects their lack of access to official justice systems, which systematically discriminate against...

The Global Response to Climate Change: Can the Security Council Assume a Lead Role?

The United Nations Security Council has held two debates on climate change. The first in April 2007 was an open debate about the relationship between energy, climate, and security under the chairmanship of the UK. The second debate was held in July 2011 under German leadership. Both debates revealed contrasting opinions as to whether climate change should be regarded as a security threat, and the Council did not pass a resolution on either occasion. Nevertheless, a statement issued by the Pre...

The Mother of All Conflicts

Watching the public debate and media coverage regarding climate change, one could get the impression that the world is not taking the climate threat seriously -- that the issue is stuck in a quagmire of uncertainty, political posturing, and competing national interests. But away from the public eye, professionals within the military and the security establishment who objectively analyze risks and threats are rapidly sharpening their focus. They recognize that climate change -- along with othe...

The Sport for Development and Peace Sector: An Analysis of Its Emergence, Key Institutions, and Social Possibilities

Since the late 1990s, people have witnessed the emergence and exponential growth of what has become known as the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector. SDP projects use sport as an interventionist tool to promote different types of social development and peaceful social relations across the world. While SDP projects are implemented in both the Global North and South, they tend to be sited in developing regions and in war-torn or post-conflict settings. This article draws on fieldwork a...

The Subject of Security in a Warming World

By now, people are accustomed to viewing the climate issue as a potential threat to peace and stability. In 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body that evaluates climate change science, and Al Gore for his documentary movie on climate change. In the same year, the UN Security Council hosted its first debate on climate change. In July 2011, it again considered the impact of climate change on international peac...

Voice in the Village: Indigenous Peoples Contest Globalization in Bolivia

The close of the twentieth century saw the unexpected rise of an indigenous peoples' rights movement in Latin America and worldwide, contesting 500 years of oppression and the emerging challenges of globalization. By the turn of the millennium, indigenous rights campaigns had gained a voice in local, national, and international political arenas. Yet the legacies of oppression and the pressures of globalization continue, and inclusion has translated only partially into empowerment. Bolivia pro...