Putting the Canal on the map: Panamanian agenda-setting and the 1973 Security Council meetings

In the early 1970s, Panama’s negotiations with the United States over the status of the Panama Canal ground to a standstill. General Omar Torrijos had rejected treaties left unratified by previous governments only to receive a less generous offer from the Nixon administration. Realizing that the talks were being ignored in Washington, the Panamanian government worked to internationalize the previously bilateral issue, creating and exploiting a high-profile forum: Extraordinary meetings of the UN Security Council in March 1973 held in Panama City. In those meetings, Panama isolated the United States in order to raise the issue’s profile and amplify the costs of leaving the matter unsettled. Using underutilized Panamanian sources, this article examines that meeting, the succeeding progress, and the effect of this early stage on the final negotiations several years later. The case also illustrates how, during the unsettled international environment of the 1970s, a small state utilized international organizations to obtain attention and support for its most important cause.

Surveillance, Security and Sporting Mega Events: Toward a Research Agenda on the Organisation of Security Networks

Surveillance and security at sports mega events have been the subject of considerable scholarly attention. Events such as the Olympic Games and Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cups have become occasions of almost unparalleled economic, political and social significance. In the lead up to the London 2012 Olympic Games, scholars have examined issues such as the ‘security legacies’ of sports mega events, the infrastructures and technologies used in an attempt to secure these events, and the planning mentalities underpinning the staggering ‘security spectacle’ of these globally televised events. This paper deals with the subject of how surveillance and security practices at sports mega events are organised. It uses the emerging paradigm of ‘security networks’ to call attention to some important issues involving the entire ‘security assemblage’ that accompanies these mega events. The paper presents five levels of analysis—structural, cultural, policy, technological and relational—to examine these practices and documents several key areas for further research on sports mega events.

Any changes? The future agenda of Sweden's security policy. OSW Commentary No. 126, 28.01.2014

Sweden’s annual security and defence conference, which this year focused on the future of the country’s security policy, was held in Sälen on 12-14 January. It was attended by almost all the leaders of Sweden’s ruling and opposition parties. The discussions have revealed whether and how the mindset of the Swedish elite has changed following the heated debates on defence issues in 2013. The opposition parties (Social Democrats, the Green Party, and the Left Party), which are likely to form a coalition government after the election to the Swedish parliament in September 2014, were given the opportunity to present their own priorities. The discussions have brought to the surface conflicting perceptions within the political elite concerning the threats and challenges to Swedish security, and divergent positions on the future direction of the country’s security and defence policy. It is highly likely that, due to a coalition compromise, the current course of Sweden’s security policy (namely, a policy of non-alignment along with close co-operation with NATO) will be maintained following the parliamentary election, albeit with new “leftist” influences (a greater involvement in the United Nations). Big changes that could lead to a significant strengthening of Sweden’s defence capabilities, or a decision on NATO membership, are not likely. Paradoxically, polls suggest that in the long run a more radical change in Stockholm’s security policy may be shaped by a gradual, bottom-up evolution of public opinion on the issue.

The EU Counter-Terrorism Policy Responses to the Attacks in Paris: Towards an EU Security and Liberty Agenda. CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 81/February 2015

This paper examines the main EU-level initiatives that have been put forward in the weeks following the attacks in Paris in January 2015, which will be discussed in the informal European Council meeting of 12 February 2015. It argues that a majority of these proposals predated the Paris shootings and had until that point proved contentious as regards their efficacy, legitimacy and lawfulness. The paper finds that EU counterterrorism responses raise two fundamental challenges: A first challenge is posed to the freedom of movement, Schengen and EU citizenship. Priority is being given to the expanded use of large-scale surveillance and systematic monitoring of all travellers including EU citizens, which stands in contravention of Schengen and the free movement principle. A second challenge concerns EU democratic rule of law. Current pressures calling for the adoption of measures such as the EU Passenger Name Record challenge the scrutiny roles held by the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the EU on counterterrorism measures in a post-Lisbon Treaty setting. The paper proposes that the EU adopts a new European Agenda on Security and Liberty based on an EU security (criminal justice-led) cooperation model that is firmly anchored in current EU legal principles and rule of law standards. This model would call for ‘less is more’ concerning the use, processing and retention of data by police and intelligence communities. Instead, it would pursue better and more accurate use of data meeting the quality standards of evidence in criminal judicial proceedings.

The Global Strategy – reinvigorating the EU’s multilateral agenda?. Security Policy Brief No. 69, March 2016

The EU’s effective multilateralism doctrine is hardly a defining characteristic of the international system of today. While established multilateral structures are far from reflective of the realities of the twenty-first century, multilateral practices remain dominant in most parts of the world. Multilateralism, however, carries a different meaning to different actors. Emerging powers have become increasingly assertive in promoting their own multilateral approach and now set the pace in international affairs. The EU remains, nonetheless, well-placed to respond to this challenge through a revision of its multilateral agenda.

Towards authorisation models for secure information sharing : a survey and research agenda

This article presents a survey of authorisation models and considers their ‘fitness-for-purpose’ in facilitating information sharing. Network-supported information sharing is an important technical capability that underpins collaboration in support of dynamic and unpredictable activities such as emergency response, national security, infrastructure protection, supply chain integration and emerging business models based on the concept of a ‘virtual organisation’. The article argues that present authorisation models are inflexible and poorly scalable in such dynamic environments due to their assumption that the future needs of the system can be predicted, which in turn justifies the use of persistent authorisation policies. The article outlines the motivation and requirement for a new flexible authorisation model that addresses the needs of information sharing. It proposes that a flexible and scalable authorisation model must allow an explicit specification of the objectives of the system and access decisions must be made based on a late trade-off analysis between these explicit objectives. A research agenda for the proposed Objective-based Access Control concept is presented.

Design LED innovation to rejuvenate local food systems and healthy communities : an emerging research agenda

Food Sovereignty (food freedom) is about empowering people to develop their own local food system. Food Sovereignty challenges designers to enable people to innovate the local food system, rather than having a food system which is dictated by corporate interests and failed business ethics. Communities are realising the potential for design to assist in the innovation process, and add strategic value to potentially localise the food system. Design Led Innovation (DLI) offers a strategic framework to address large-scale cultural, systemic and economic changes. The DLI approach empowers communities to take organised action to achieve a healthy, prosperous and happy way of life. DLI can assist with business models in the business world and it is evident this approach can assist with creating social change too. This paper presents on an emerging research agenda aimed to assist designer’s focus from individuals and systems to communities and urban problems. This paper also presents the research proposition that DLI and service design coupled with social entrepreneurial ventures such as local food projects and creative community inventions, have the potential to enable social innovation for healthy and happy communities.

Responsibility to protect and women, peace and security : aligning the protection agendas

In Responsibility to Protect and Women, Peace and Security: Aligning the Protection Agendas, editors Davies, Nwokora, Stamnes and Teitt address the intersections of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle and the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. Widespread or systematic sexual or gender-based violence is a war crime, a crime against humanity and an act of genocide, all of which are clearly addressed in the R2P principle. The protection of those at risk of widespread sexual violence is therefore not only relative to the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, but a fundamental sovereign obligation for all states as part of their commitment to R2P. Contributions from policy-makers and academics consider both the merits and the utility of aligning the protection agendas of R2P and WPS. Ultimately, a number of actionable recommendations are made concerning a unification of the agendas to best support the global empowerment of women and prevention of mass atrocities.

What contribution can International Relations make to the evolving global health agenda?

This article presents two approaches that have dominated International Relations in their approach to the international politics of health. The statist approach, which is primarily security-focused, seeks to link health initiatives to a foreign or defence policy remit. The globalist approach, in contrast, seeks to advance health not because of its intrinsic security value but because it advances the well-being and rights of individuals. This article charts the evolution of these approaches and demonstrates why both have the potential to shape our understanding of the evolving global health agenda. It examines how the statist and globalist perspectives have helped shape contemporary initiatives in global health governance and suggests that there is evidence of an emerging convergence between the two perspectives. This convergence is particularly clear in the articulation of a number of UN initiatives in this area—especially the One World, One Health Strategic Framework and the Oslo Ministerial Declaration (2007) which inspired the first UN General Assembly resolution on global health and foreign policy in 2009 and the UN Secretary-General's note ‘Global health and foreign policy: strategic opportunities and challenges'. What remains to be seen is whether this convergence will deliver on securing states’ interest long enough to promote the interests of the individuals who require global efforts to deliver local health improvements.

Book reviews : "Biosecurity interventions: global health and security in question"

International Relations’ engagement with global health governance has proliferated in the last decade. There are a number of excellent works that seek to understand how the relationship between politics and health shapes and informs people’s lives and governments’ policies. However, the overt securitization of health by the IR field has, Biosecurity interventions argues, remained relatively unproblematized...

Women, peace and security as an ASEAN priority

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat and its member states have repeatedly professed their commitment to the protection and advancement of women’s economic and human rights. Such commitments have included the Declaration on the Advancement of Women in ASEAN in 1988, the ASEAN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 2004, and the ASEAN Declaration of Human Rights in 2012, as well as the establishment of the ASEAN Committee on Women in 2002 and the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Women and Children in 2009. However, none of these regional commitments or institutions expressly take up the core concern of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda set out in United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1325 in 2000. ASEAN has no 1325 regional action plan and amongst the ASEAN membership, the Philippines is the only state that has adopted a 1325 National Action Plan (NAP). We explore the possible reasons for lack of ASEAN institutional engagement with 1325, outline the case for regional engagement, and suggest specific roles for ASEAN Secretariat, donor governments and individual member states to commit to UNSCR 1325 as a regional priority.

Food security in welfare capitalism: Comparing social entitlements to food in Australia and Norway

The concept of food security is often anchored in popular understandings of the challenge to produce and supply enough food. However, decades of policies for intensive agriculture have not alleviated hunger and malnutrition, with an absence of food security featuring in both economically developing and developed nations. Despite perceptions that the economic growth in advanced, capitalist societies will ensure freedom from hunger, this is not universal across so-called ‘wealthy nations’. To explore the dynamics of food security in economically developed countries, this paper considers institutional approaches to domestic food security primarily through responses to poverty and welfare entitlements, and, secondarily, through food relief. Through the lens of social entitlements to food and their formation under various expressions of welfare capitalism, we highlight how the specific institutional settings of two economically developed nations, Australia and Norway, respond to uncertain or insufficient access to food. Whilst Norway's political agenda on agricultural support, food pricing regulation and universal social security support offers a robust, although indirect, safety net in ensuring entitlements to food, Australia's neoliberal trajectory means that approaches to food security are ad hoc and rely on a combination of self-help, charitable and market responses. Despite its extensive food production Australia appears less capable of ensuring food security for all its inhabitants compared to the highly import-dependent Norway.

Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan "On Protection of Mental Health in the Population of Uzbekistan"

The law provides rights for PWD for easy access of public goods, including education, social security, medical treatment, occupational and social rehabilitation and establishes an extent of responsibility of the government and its bodies for the creation of favourable conditions for the social adaptation of PWDs in market environment conditions.

The Art of Adaptation : A study on the Europeanization of Finland's foreign and security policy

This study examines how Finnish foreign and security policy has been influenced by the European Union and its Common Foreign and Security Policy. It points to a growing interplay and misfit between the external expectations originating from the European level and the domestic expectations and traditional ways-of-doing-things. It is concluded that the deepening European integration in the sphere of foreign, security and defence policy has played a significant role in a number of transformations in the Finnish policies since 1995. New, more European, meanings have been attached to the key concepts of Finnish foreign and security policy. Neutrality and traditional peacekeeping have been replaced by a minimalist reading of military non-alignment and participation in crisis management operations and EU battle groups. Traditional small state identity has been recast more and more as small member stateness . At the same time Finland has entered an era of post-consensus in national foreign and security policy. A key theoretical argument in the background of the study is that collective understandings attached to European policies, when not resonating well with domestic understandings, cause adaptation pressures on domestic-level processes and may lead to changes in the way interests and identities are constructed. This means that Europeanization is principally seen as identity reconstruction. Consequently, the theoretical framework of the study builds on the Europeanization research literature and constructivist IR theory on state identity. Foreign and security policy is defined as the practice in which state identity is reproduced, and the key foreign and security policy concepts are seen as the vehicles of identity production. It is concluded that for Finland, participation in the EU s foreign, security and defence policies represents not only a tool for responding to the changes in the international security environment but also a new means of self-identification. Concerning the Finnish attempts of projecting national interests on the European security policy agenda, it is concluded that they mainly relate to the compatibility of the potential development of EU s defence dimension with the Finnish military non-alignment. Although neutrality was cast aside in the official security policy when Finland joined the EU, the analysis shows that its impact has continued in the domestic political debate and in the mind-set of the decision-makers. The primary research material includes official Finnish foreign and security policy documentation and the related parliamentary debates from 1994 to 2007. This study serves also as a comprehensive empirical overview on Finland s reactions and contributions to the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy.

How much land-based greenhouse gas mitigation can be achieved without compromising food security and environmental goals?

Feeding 9-10billion people by 2050 and preventing dangerous climate change are two of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Both challenges must be met while reducing the impact of land management on ecosystem services that deliver vital goods and services, and support human health and well-being. Few studies to date have considered the interactions between these challenges. In this study we briefly outline the challenges, review the supply- and demand-side climate mitigation potential available in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use AFOLU sector and options for delivering food security. We briefly outline some of the synergies and trade-offs afforded by mitigation practices, before presenting an assessment of the mitigation potential possible in the AFOLU sector under possible future scenarios in which demand-side measures codeliver to aid food security. We conclude that while supply-side mitigation measures, such as changes in land management, might either enhance or negatively impact food security, demand-side mitigation measures, such as reduced waste or demand for livestock products, should benefit both food security and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. Demand-side measures offer a greater potential (1.5-15.6Gt CO2-eq. yr(-1)) in meeting both challenges than do supply-side measures (1.5-4.3Gt CO2-eq. yr(-1) at carbon prices between 20 and 100US$ tCO(2)-eq. yr(-1)), but given the enormity of challenges, all options need to be considered. Supply-side measures should be implemented immediately, focussing on those that allow the production of more agricultural product per unit of input. For demand-side measures, given the difficulties in their implementation and lag in their effectiveness, policy should be introduced quickly, and should aim to codeliver to other policy agenda, such as improving environmental quality or improving dietary health. These problems facing humanity in the 21st Century are extremely challenging, and policy that addresses multiple objectives is required now more than ever.