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Transnational Organized Crime and Fragile States
Rolando Ochoa
OECD Development Cooperation Working Papers , 2012
This paper analyses the impact of TOC on conflict and fragility. It focuses on the dynamics of TOC and its relationship to fragile and conflict-affected states, as well as on policy responses and potential entry points for new initiatives that may help tackle this problem. It is organised as follows. In Chapter 2 we define what is meant by transnational organised crime, addressing key developments in how and why TOC has evolved over the last 10 years. We also examine the influences and incentives that encourage the spread of TOC into fragile states. Chapter 3 examines the impact of TOC on conflict and fragility, while Chapter 4 explores policy responses to date using examples from around the world. Chapter 5 seeks to identify possible policy entry points to reduce the impact of TOC on fragile and conflict-affected states. Chapter 6 uses three case studies – El Salvador, Kenya and Tajikistan – to illustrate the main facets and dynamics of TOC in different geo-political contexts. Finally, Chapter 7 offers conclusions and possible areas for new research.
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Transnational organised crime and national and international security: A global assessment
Phil Williams
1997
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Consequences of Transnational Organized Crime on International System: An Introduction
Carlos Murillo-Zamora
Among the non-state actors that have gained greater prominence during the so-called post-Cold War are found those who preform illicit actions, and are thus not recognized by states as legitimate entities. This is not surprising given that states have historically denied legitimacy to insurgent groups, despite having political support from the society. Actually it is understandable that states refuse such recognition, with or without legitimacy, because it would recognize the inability to control sectors operating outside the law in their territory. However, at the beginning of XXI century the influence and effects of these entities on governments and states acquired significant levels, for which the situation cannot be ignored. In fact, it is even more evident in the case of transnational organized crime (TOC) groups, since they have political interests and objectives additional to those of their own criminal acts. Then the question is how the groups of transnational organized crime, like international non-state actors, influence and modify the international system through its main actors: states?
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‘Failed states and international order: constructing a post-Westphalian World’, Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 30, no. 3, 2009.
Edward Newman
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How Illicit Networks Impact Sovereignty
John P. Sullivan
Convergence: Illicit Networks and National Security in the Age of Globalization, 2013
This chapter examines the reconfiguration of power within states as the are challenged by illicit transnational networks. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This chapter examines the problématique of illicit networks and transnational crime’s impact on sovereignty. Transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and gangs challenge states and sovereignty in a variety of ways. These include eroding state solvency through corruption, subtle co-option of state officials and institutions, direct assault on state functions and, in the worst case, state capture or failure under the threat of criminal challengers. Rarely do criminal enterprises totally supplant states; rather they change the nature of state functioning. This chapter looks at how gangs and TCOs influence state change at local, state, federal, and transnational levels. Specifically, this chapter looks at networked TCOs and transnational gangs in Mexico and Latin America (Colombia, Guatemala, and Brazil) to gauge the current and emerging threats to state functions. MAIN ARGUMENT State reconfiguration, including co-option, and the rise of criminal enclaves involves the establishment and proliferation of lawless or other-governed zones (including failed communities or failed zones) through corruption and the application of force by private non-state armies. “Criminal insurgency” is a mechanism for “battle for the parallel state” (dual sovereignty) and the potential rise of “narco-states” and “narco-networks.” The logic structure of criminal state-challengers facilitates the establishment of “neo-feudal” governance structures. The emergence of gangs and criminal cartels as “accidental insurgents” and/or “social bandits,” as well as the use of information operations, narcocultura, and instrumental violence to free themselves from state interference (aka sovereignty) is Central to this discussion. POLICY IMPLICATIONS The potential—or actuality—of gangs of criminal cartels emerging as new warmaking and potentially networked state-making entities. “Criminal insurgency” is a means of removing the criminal enterprise from the control of the state, enabling it to pursue its goals to dominate the illicit economy. Despite this economic agenda, a political agenda emerges. Gangs and TCOs become political actors influencing the reconfiguration of states requiring a strategy for addressing “criminal insurgency” and violent non-state actors.
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Netwar Geopolitics: Security, Failed States and Illicit Flows
Mike Bourne
The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 2011
Recent and emerging security policies and practices claim a mutual vulnerability that closely links human insecurity in failed states with the threat to powerful states from illicit flows. This article first examines this 'emerging orthodoxy' of transnational security issues that reinforces the securitisation of poverty and the poor. It then subjects this orthodoxy to theoretical and empirical critique. Theoretically it shows that this orthodoxy is formed as a 'geopolitical imagination' that associates and stabilises particular views of weak states and illicit flows in a 'netwar imagination' by reasserting and reconfiguring traditional assumptions of the spatiality and nature of threats. A final empirical section, focusing on drug production and nuclear smuggling, argues that those assumptions and their assemblage are a partial, incomplete and often self-referential reading of illicit flows.
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Book Review: Convergence: Illicit Networks and National Secuirty in the Age of Globalization
Robert J Bunker
2013
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ANARCHY AND SECURITY CHALLENGES: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Henry E Ushie
From the Roman era of conquest and domination of weaker territory through the first and second world war meddled with the hatching of capitalism and territorial acquisition for raw material and market, the days of chaos, lawlessness, greed was born on the pedestal of international organization for peace and conflict resolution. Though international organization such as the United Nations came to be in other to quell world lawlessness, it lacked the capability to infringe on the sovereignty of nation states. Nations with economic and political will have dominated such world organizations and thereby pushed to their way into the heart of weaker nation states with the objectives to enrich themselves, or get relevance around the world, make peace while installing government of their choice on ideological foundations.
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Operationalizing the Learning on Development and Organized Crime Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime series on Governance, Development and State Fragility
Jean-Luc Lemahieu
From the outset allow me to express my professional fascination of this vast topic of the link between development and organized crime (OC), having witnessed this phenomenon playing out in real terms as a practitioner in the field working for UNIDO, briefly UNDP and later on UNDCP/UNODC, serving in the Caribbean, South East Europe, Central Asia and South East Asia. And also to have the opportunity to express my frustration for the difficulty we face in translating theoretical concepts in operational or real terms largely due to the ‘tunnel visions’ in which we so comfortably function. (...) Allow me thus to start with seven premises before I finalize by submitting a few conclusions. And evidently ‘If you want to have a happy ending, that depends on when you stop your story’ (Orson Welles). 1- Un-intended consequences of well-intended aid. 2- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde rewritten by René Descartes. 3- The interplay between ‘vulnerability’ and ‘opportunity’. 4- Pragmatism and puritanism – embedded in the past but embracing the future. 5- The twilight zone: fluidity of ‘functionality of crime’. 6- Influence of the 2030 Agenda: Smart crime approaches fitting an aspirational agenda. 7- Principle of universalism – moving between legal and legitimate.
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Transnational Terrorism, Organized Crime and Peace-Building
Wolfgang Benedek
Transnational Terrorism, Organized Crime and Peace-Building, 2010
The human security approach, which will be described briefly below, can be usefully applied to the fight against terrorism and organized crime in postconflict situations. The concept's focus is on the security needs of the individual, who is the main victim of terrorism and organized crime, although terrorism also threatens the security of the state. Therefore, in addressing these threats not only state security but the security of citizens in particular needs to be given attention. The basic message of the human security approach is that people matter and that the focus has to be on their vulnerabilities, which can also mean that state structures, like the police and the judiciary, need to be strengthened-albeit with a view to securing human rights and ensuring democratic governance. The state has the primary function of protection, but the protection needs to be provided in such a way that the security of the citizens is in the foreground. Post-conflict situations are often characterized by weak states, which still need to consolidate themselves and to reform the police and the judiciary in order to make sure that these are operating in the interest of the citizens. The distinction between the two main pillars of human securityfreedom from fear and freedom from want-provides a useful methodological approach in order to analyse the vulnerabilities of citizens and the threats against them in post-conflict situations. For example, security sector reform is of crucial importance, because in postwar situations the security sector is often linked with organized crime and therefore rather a threat to citizens than a provider of protection. Generally, the state, by not providing adequate protection or by repressing (some) of its citizens, like critical civil society groups or media, violates its basic functions of providing human security for its people. 1.2 Scope and context of the human security approach If we take the seven target areas of human security distinguished by the 1994 UNDP Human Development Report (economic security, food security, 4 Human Security, Terrorism, and Organized Crime health security, environmental security, personal security, regional security, and political security 1) as a starting point and apply them to a post-conflict situation like the one in the Western Balkans, certain priority areas may be identified. They can usefully be divided between the two main pillars of human security: the freedom from fear and the freedom from want. During and immediately after conflicts the freedom from fear, the protection of the human person against violence and therefore its personal security, is in the foreground. Gradually, freedom from want, consisting of food security, health security, and economic security may gain in importance. Certainly, the two pillars are interlinked in practice, as there can be no economic security without personal security and vice versa. This raises the issue of the meaning of 'personal security', which can be understood as protection of people from physical violence, 2 but also has a wider meaning, namely protecting the human person against all violations of its civil and political rights. For example, if the police, the judiciary, or the administration of a state does not function properly, this creates a problem of personal security. If crime is not prevented and criminals are not held accountable, the state does not fulfil its basic functions. Post-conflict situations are often characterized by weak states, states that need to consolidate and to rebuild their state functions. The discussion on 'fragile states', which mainly is focused on the weaknesses of developing states, 3 is also of relevance in the post-conflict context. 4 This debate addresses the strengthening of the state in order to provide basic services for its people and protect them against threats-challenges similar to those that appear in post-conflict situations. With regard to the involvement of international actors, the OECD has developed Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and Situations. 5 Parallels may also
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