Dr Gizelis has been researching the role of women in peacekeeping and in violent conflict more generally. She has recently conducted field research in Liberia. The article in Science examines the possible relationship between gender inequality and violent conflict.

For more information, please see:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6083/839.summary

For the whole series on Human Conflict see:

http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/conflict/index.xhtml

Professor Todd Landman, Director of the IDCR

© 2012 Todd Landman all rights reserved.

As part of Universities Week last week, the IDCR launched its innovative ‘Olympic Dream’ web resource with a lecture at the University of Essex and good coverage in the BBC. The resource provides a set of interactive maps and other tools to visualise data on the countries sending athletes to London2012. In depth analysis showed that countries with higher levels of human development tend to win more medals. Human development is combined measure of wealth, health, and education in a society. In light of these findings, it is enlightening to cast our gaze on the socio-economic conditions surrounding the development of the Olympic Site itself.

Bidding to host: Security and Finance

London won the bid to host the Olympics in 2005, one day before the 7 July terrorist attacks and three years before the financial crisis. These events have thus tied the 2012 Olympics to security and finance. The history of Olympic hosting has been one of an increase in expenditure on the event as a whole and on security in particular. For external consumption, a hosting bid includes provision of full facilities for the games, comprehensive security, and a menu of associated attractions that celebrate the ‘nation’ of the host city. For internal consumption, bids promise urban regeneration (the paradigm case is Barcelona), better infrastructure, new housing, and a ‘legacy’ of tangible benefits for the local community and the nation as a whole.

This summer the combination of the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations have already yielded a dramatic influx of tourists and increased attention to London, while the events themselves will bring millions to our shores. One indicator has been the ascendancy of London as the number one city destination for tourists in the world, according to on-line ratings compiled by TripAdvisor. It is estimated that the two events will create an artificial blip in the overall economic position of the UK as it struggles during a double dip recession, according to some members of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee. These events of course are joined by Wimbledon 2012, making this one of the busiest summers for a very long time.

Calling at Stratford

As you ride the train into London on the Greater Anglia service from Colchester, where the University of Essex is based, you see the looming development at Stratford, with the tower for the flame, the stadium, and of course, the brand new Westfield shopping mall. The Westfield Shopping Centre is larger than the Bluewater development near Dartford and contains the UK’s first ‘super casino’. Westfield opened in late 2011 with a footfall of 250,000 on the first day of operations, has a total of 238 stores, and is the Official Shopping Centre of London 2012. Up to 70% of all attendees of the Olympics will pass through the shopping centre en route to the different competitions.

Alongside the Olympic site is the local London borough of Newham. According to official figures, Newham has 243, 891 residents (although there is a large additional ‘hidden’ population living informally in the borough), 91, 821 households and is one of the most culturally diverse and youthful populations in the UK. The borough is 39% white, 38% Asian, 20% black, 1.6% Chinese and 2.6% from other groups. Thirty-four per cent of all people between the ages of 16 and 74 have no qualifications and the unemployment rate sits at 6.7% which is below the national average of 8.3%, which masks other indicators of deprivation.

For example, 39.2% of children live in poverty (compared to 29.2% for London), the benefits claimant rate has vacillated between just over 24% to just under 22% between 2000 and 2010 (London levels are 16% and 14% respectively), and 37% of pupils are eligible for free school meals as opposed to 26% for all of London. Overall, Newham rates as the second most socially deprived borough in the whole of the UK.

There are between 30 and 35 recorded violent criminal events per 1000 people in Newham (there are between 22 and 26 per 1000 for all of London). The recorded serious acquisitive crime rate is 42.3 per 1000 people in Newham and 25.23 in London, while actual bodily crime rates are 11.2 for Newham and 7.76 for London.

In addition to the development of the Olympic site and the Westfield Shopping Centre, this summer will also see the opening of the Pleasure Gardens development at Pontoon Dock in the famous docklands area of East London. The site promises events celebrating the cultural diversity of Britain, concerts, food and drink, all on a riverside setting near the Millennium Dome and London City Airport.

Click to expand image

Healing the Gash

Newham is thus ‘sandwiched’ between the Olympic Site and Westfield developments to the North and the Pleasure Gardens development to the South (see the map). It is also telling that the marathon will not finish in the Olympic stadium, as the organisers wanted to avoid the route going through particular parts of East London. The popular ‘discursive construction’ of the development has been ‘healing the gash’, where the inward investment of £9.325 billion (although projections suggest it may rise to £11 billion) would bring new life to the East of London and the legacy would be new housing, the Olympic Park facilities for future mega-events, and an improvement in infrastructure. Overall expenditure includes £553 million for security, which is a mix of state security forces (police and military) and private security services (G4S), as well as the possible deployment of up to six batteries of surface to air missile sites in residential areas around the Olympic site. [See the Home Office report here]

As London 2012 approaches, it is clear that a sizeable investment brings with it many tangible and intangible benefits to London and the UK. The gash was known for industry relating to the noxious trade of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and the development of the brownfield site is a welcome change for the area. The nature of the investment and the related distortions that they may produce, however, do not bring long term benefits to Newham, which has been bracketed out of the investment in ways that are analogous to other urban mega-projects and the spatial exercise of power and privilege (see, Flyvbjerg, Landman and Schram’s new book Real Social Science). The case of Newham also raises fundamental questions about the nature of democracy in the UK and how publicly-financed projects interact with private capital, culture and security in ways that often do not bring benefit where it is most needed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17908290

Press Release

© 2012 University of Essex all rights reserved.

Why do some countries always seem to strike Olympic gold, while others trail behind in the medals table? Is it down to their Olympian spirit, or their competitive edge? Not entirely, according to research by the Institute for Democracy and Conflict Resolution (IDCR) at the University of Essex.

Research by the institute has shown the countries which do best in the games are likely to be wealthier, with higher levels of literacy and higher life expectancy. Although these are certainly not the only factors at work, there is a significant correlation between a country’s position on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI)[i] and its position on the medals table.[ii]

In 2008 the USA, with a high score of 0.9 on the HDI, was the top performer in the games with a total of 110 medals, while poor countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, close to the bottom of the HDI with a score of  0.24, went home without any medals at all.

Professor Todd Landman, Director of the IDCR, believes spectators at the games will be watching a display not just of human skill, strength and agility, but also of the conditions under which many of the Olympic athletes have grown up and trained.

“As we celebrate the wonder of the Olympics this year, it is important to reflect on the politics and economics that shape the games, as well as the many challenging obstacles that this year’s dedicated athletes have had to overcome to take part,” he says. “The financial crisis, the fallout of the Arab Spring and the continued rise of the BRIC countries will certainly be at the forefront of our minds this summer. The Olympic Dream is a small window into the complex world of today.”

IDCR has been working with a partner, The Mackman Group[iii], to create a series of interactive web-based ‘Olympic Dream’ maps (CLICK HERE for ACCESS), which allow users to see the relationships between Olympic success and deeper social or economic conditions.

Using data on economic development, political conditions and medal totals from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, users can look at global maps, create descriptive charts and analyse relationships between different indicators.

While the correlation between medals and wealth is positive and statistically significant, the overall relationship is not perfect and some countries buck the trend – for instance, Ethiopia is 157^th on the HDI, with an index of 0.33, but was 29^th on the 2008 medals table with seven medals. And while Norway is at the top of the HDI, with a score of 0.94, it was 21^st on the 2008 scoreboard, with 10 medals.

Many of the big winners on the medals table are countries with large populations, like China and the USA. But even after population size has been taken into account, the relationship between development and medal totals is a significant one.

The research will be launched on Tuesday May 1 as part of British Universitite Week, which has an Olympic theme this year.

[ii] The correlations, (1 is a perfect correlation and 0 is no correlation), are as follows:

Medals and Development    .41

Medals and GDP:  .37

Medals and population size:       .35

[iii] The Mackman Group is an award-winning research, marketing, PR and design company based in Sudbury, on the Essex/Suffolk border.

Ecocide and Restorative Justice

Liz Rivers, Mediator, Leadership Coach and Lawyer

© 2012 Liz Rivers all rights reserved. 

At the Nuremburg war crimes trial after the Second World War many of the defendants put forward the defence “I was only obeying the orders of my superiors” which became  known as the “Nuremburg Defence”.  The tribunal decided that this was not a valid defence to war crimes as there is a higher moral duty to disobey orders which would lead to the commission of a war crime.  Most of the defendants went on to be convicted and punished.

Modern company law enshrines the obligation of companies to maximise shareholder return.  There are laws that restrict the means by which this can be achieved, such as health and safety.  However, without a law of Ecocide there is no ultimate restriction on companies pursuing shareholder return by taking unacceptable risks with ecosystems and the people who depend upon them.  We have made serving the so-called “free market” synonymous with the greater good and made the market our highest authority.  At what point will shareholder return cease to be a justification for widespread social and environmental damage?  At what point will it become a Nuremburg defence?

This question was put to the test in September 2011 at the Ecocide mock trial in the Supreme Court.  Two fictional CEOs of oil companies were tried and convicted of the crime of Ecocide arising from oil extraction from tar sands in Canada – maximising profit was not deemed an acceptable defence for their activities.  In March 2012 their sentencing took place.

Courtroom dramas

We are very familiar with the courtroom drama in popular culture – The Merchant of Venice, To Kill a Mockingbird, Rumpole – the genre has entertained people over centuries.  The suspense of hearing legal argument, heartfelt pleas to the jury and waiting for it to return its verdict has kept us gripped and entertained.  If the defendant is convicted they are sent to prison and that is usually the last we hear of them.

The Law of Ecocide

One of the tenets of the law of Ecocide is that it is designed to be preventative – to change attitudes and behaviour so that ecocide does not happen, rather than simply punishing the perpetrators after the event.  So simply sending the CEOs to prison would be of limited benefit.  For this reason Polly Higgins came up with the idea of using Restorative Justice as part of the sentencing process for Ecocide convictions.

Restorative Justice

Restorative Justice has been used in the criminal justice system for many years but does not have much mainstream visibility. It involves bringing together the perpetrator of a crime with its victim(s).  The participants have a dialogue in which four questions are addressed:

• What happened?
• Who has been affected by what happened?
• What needs to happen to put things right?
• Who is going to take responsibility?

The outcome is often a commitment on the part of the perpetrator to take specific  steps to make good the damage which has been caused, which can then be taken into account by the judge when sentencing.  It also brings home to the perpetrator the impact of their actions and is far more effective at changing mindsets and behaviour than simply locking people up.  The victim(s) are also more satisfied as they have a voice in the process rather than being excluded as happens in the conventional criminal justice system.

Open source campaigning

One of the principles of the Eradicating Ecocide campaign is that it is “open source” and not owned by those working full time on the campaign.  They are willing to “beta test” their ideas in the public domain, in order to see how they run in practice and “debug” and improve the proposals.  The mock trial was an example of this (the jury were independently recruited and the campaign had no control over what verdict they would return) and the sentencing process has been a further example.  The whole process was live streamed on the internet for anyone in the world to watch. 

The process involved a collaboration between the Eradicating Ecocide campaign, The Hamilton Group, the Institute for Democracy and Conflict Resolution at Essex University, human rights lawyer Mike Mansfield QC plus Restorative Justice expert Lawrence Kershen QC. It was witnessed by an audience on the day plus a wider audience viewing the process live online.

What happened in the Restorative Justice process?

Both defendants from the original trial, Robin Bannerman and John Tench, were given the opportunity to take part in the process. Robin Bannerman agreed and John Tench declined.  Also present in the process were:

• Oil Company Chief Sustainability Officer
• Pension Fund representative (representing shareholders)
• Spokesperson for the birds damaged by the ecocide
• Spokesperson for future generations
• Spokesperson for wider humanity
• Spokesperson for the Earth
• Representative of the indigenous people living in the area affected

The dialogue, skilfully facilitated by Lawrence Kershen, was an intense and dramatically gripping process to watch.  I was particularly struck by the contribution from Gerald Amos representing the indigenous First Nations people of Northern British Columbia.  His account of the detrimental impact of industrial activity on the way of life of his people and the land clearly had a profound effect on Robin Bannerman. He described tokenistic consultation processes his people had been subjected to where their views and concerns were blatantly disregarded and expressed himself with a palpable dignity that spoke volumes.

At times the exchanges were angry and intense and the discussion polarised into two positions:

• oil extraction from tar sands is unacceptably destructive and cannot be justified therefore must be stopped immediately, whatever the consequences
• oil extraction is simply meeting the energy needs of society, which everyone around the circle partakes in, therefore Robin Bannerman is being scapegoated for all the ills of capitalism and industrialisation

As the dialogue progressed, human connections formed between different members of the circle and attitudes started to shift.  Also, as the focus of the questions shifted from the past to the future, ideas as to how the harm could be made good began to emerge. Robin Bannerman reported that all activity had been suspended on the site following his conviction.  A number of innovative solutions were proposed including:

• appointing to the board a non-executive director with responsibility for sustainability, to be selected by sustainability organisation Forum for the Future
• funding a university chair to research the law of Ecocide
• setting up a working group including Robin Bannerman and Gerald Amos to decide on the future of the tar sands. 

When the judge heard the outcomes of the Restorative Justice process he took this into account in his sentencing and deferred Robin Bannerman’s sentencing for 6 months to give him time to put the actions into practice.  John Tench, who declined to participate, was sentenced to four years in prison.

What did we learn?

• The experiment proved that there is real potential for using Restorative Justice in conjunction with Ecocide.  It enables dialogue, understanding, healing and creativity to emerge.  It is about making whole again rather than reinforcing separation and fragmentation through punishment of perpetrators and exclusion from the process of victims.
• It showed that it is possible to give voice to diverse and other-than-human elements of the system e.g. birds, wider humanity, future generations and the Earth itself in a meaningful way.

The process also showed ways in which both the Restorative Justice model and the proposed law of Ecocide need to be modified in order to be truly effective.

Restorative Justice 

• As the focus of the dialogue shifted to the future, a voice that seemed to be missing from the circle was that of a positive vision for the future where humanity can meet its energy needs without causing undue destruction to people and planet.  An advocate for alternative forms of energy and the pathways to achieve these would be useful.
• Government were not represented in the circle, and they are clearly a key element in the wider system as the creator of the policy and regulatory framework which licences the extraction activity.  An underlying theme in the dialogue was “who holds the power?”  The humanity/Earth participants within the circle saw Robin Bannerman/the oil company as holding the power to prevent Ecocide and were seeking to hold him to account. His response was that they were simply acting within the confines of a permitted regulatory framework, therefore it is government who should ultimately be held accountable and be lobbied for change.  Having government in the circle would make it easier to determine where power and accountability ultimately lie.

Adding these two elements would go beyond the classic Restorative Justice model and draw in principles from Stakeholder Dialogue, which is an approach where stakeholders are brought together to create solutions to complex public policy issues, using dialogue techniques.  It may be that a hybrid model drawing on elements of both Restorative Justice and Stakeholder Dialogue is what is needed to fully support the implementation of the law of Ecocide.

Ecocide

• The process very clearly illustrated that it is not enough simply to prosecute and convict individual directors of Ecocide – the company needs to be a defendant too.  The power of the Restorative Justice process in relation to Ecocide is in creating actions that the perpetrator will take to make good the harm.  In most situations these need to be carried out by the company.  If only the directors as individuals are prosecuted then there is a risk that the company could simply terminate their employment and avoid all future responsibility to make good the harm.  Therefore the company as a separate legal entity needs to be a defendant and be accountable too.

It was only through the willingness of the campaign to “beta test” the use of Restorative Justice that these points became apparent.

Old paradigm “Newtonian” justice is about dissecting and analysing the different parts of a system, and punishing/removing the rogue elements.  We are now transitioning to the realm of “quantum” justice, where the starting point is the whole system and exploring what needs to be done to restore the integrity of the whole.  The combination of Ecocide and Restorative Justice is groundbreaking and innovative, where the power of each is amplified by its synergy with the other.

It may seem harsh to liken a corporate CEO to a Nazi war criminal, and of course a crucial distinction between war crimes and the law of Ecocide is that with the former it is necessary to show intention to cause harm, whereas with Ecocide it is enough to show that Ecocide happened as a consequence of the defendant’s actions.  At the moment environmental destruction is seen as an unfortunate side effect of industrial activity and the pursuit of profit, yet the rules of the game powerfully  incentivise the latter and do little to deter causing damage. CEOs are rewarded for obeying the orders of the market. The Restorative Justice process brings home these impacts very powerfully to both the minds and hearts of decision makers and gives a voice to the victims in boardrooms around the world.  With the implementation of the law of Ecocide supported by Restorative Justice it will become much harder to say “I was only obeying orders”.

Liz Rivers is a mediator, leadership coach and former commercial litigation lawyer with global law firm Eversheds.  She speaks and writes on the subject of Earth Rights and Wild Law and is one of the authors of “Exploring Wild Law: the philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence”.

The training included sessions on stylised facts about democracy, development, and human rights in the world; definitions and models of democracy; measuring democracy; institutional design and democratic performance; and assessing the quality of democracy.  The assessment framework was published in 2008 and was co-authored by David Beetham, Stuart Weir, Todd Landman,  and Edzia Carvalho.

IDEA staff have come from all over the world for 5 days of activities in Stockholm. In particular, the IDCR team was keen to meet with the IDEA Nepal office, which has been working on the new constitution for post-conflict Nepal. The IDCR and The Mountain Trust, a Cambridge-based NGO working on projects in Nepal will send an intern from the Department of Government at the University of Essex this summer to work in the IDEA office.

Other staff have come from South Africa, South Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Australia, and Kenya.

Filippo Ballarin, IDCR Intern

©2012 Filippo Ballarin

When he left Somalia in the fall of 2009, Faisal was just a teenager of 17. His two sisters had already left the previous summer for the United States. He was living with his mother and his younger brother in Mogadishu. Faisal’s father was a police officer in the city, but he died 3 years before during one of the many Al-Shabaab attacks; shot in the head. His family was luckier than others possessing a bazaar in the centre, heritage of a wealthier past. Faisal’s grandfather was a merchant and a very well-known and respected man. Since Faisal was born in 1992, many things changed in his family life and in the whole country. First, all their possessions were taken by the militias. Second, all the older males of the family died and his friends and relatives began to emigrate. He is now living in Norway as a Norwegian citizen after his refugee status has been granted.

When I first interviewed him after his arrival in Norway, Faisal told me:

“When you are a teenager in Somalia, you have two choices: run from the militias or join then, I chose the first.”

It’s not easy to understand what the situation in Somalia is: every now and then, the central government seems to gain momentum until Al-Shabaab counter attacks send its troops back in a constant struggle that reaches this year 20 years of fighting. Even though in this last period the Somali-Ethiopian joint forces are slowly gaining ground and control of the country, violence is still widespread from the Capital to the little villages. Services are for the most absent and there are not any stable institutions or infrastructure. Only now Mogadishu is slowly coming back to normal but it still does not feel like a stable situation.

When you decide to emigrate from Somalia, you first have to know the “right people”: through underground channels, you must reach powerful men who are part of what seems to be a big international refugee market. Faisal paid $12,000 and had to walk from Mogadishu to a Kenyan village for 8 months before he was able to fly to Europe.

“I was lucky” he told me, “many people died through the travel, or they were caught by Al-Shabaab.”

They have to travel in small groups of completely stranger people, walking in the night and rationing the scarce food they have with them; if you are a woman, it’s rare you can make the travel without being raped. In case you don’t have enough money to pay the fees, you must take the longer path: 2400 miles from Somalia to Libya walking through the Sahara desert and crossing the Mediterranean Sea; violence, torture, starvation and death are all common experiences for people who made it to Europe.

“I arrived in Kenya, and here they gave me a Norwegian passport of another Somali guy who had previously got there and was looking similar to me. We don’t get to decide where we go, they just give us the first opportunity that there is and you cannot say no.”

“They put you in the plane, you arrive at your destination and then they explain you what to do once you’re there.”

The travel is only the first step for who wants to obtain the refugee status: once in Norway, you are assembled in a camp outside Oslo were you are held for a couple of months. There you have to pass through 3 interviews to confirm your identity, your story and if you have the right requirements.

Despite the effort by the Somali government, many parts of the country are still under the control of armed militias. Since the fall of the government in 1992, with the famous battle of Mogadishu, Somalia has lived in a constant climate of warfare. With the withdrawal of Americans and UN troops in the middle 1990s, the population was left alone in what soon become famous to be the perfect example of ‘failed state’. While different clans and warlords took control of their areas, the population started to move away from fighting zones entering neighboring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia.

Later efforts by the International community led to some external help with the UNOSOM I-II mission and the most recent AMISOM mission, but these missions were not really able to change the conditions of the population. After a dramatic draught in the summer which saw 1,000,000 people die and many more suffer for lack of food and water, the UN Secretary Ban-Ki Moon announced in the first visit to Mogadishu by a UN high official since the 1990s that the UN mission headquarters was soon going to be transferred in the city.

While the general stability of the country seems to improve every day, the scars of 20 years of civil war will be more difficult to heal.

“When I was a kid, me and my friends were used to hide in the city in order to avoid the militias raid that would have took us to make us become one of their soldiers,” Faisal told me during one of his refugee acceptance interviews, clearly still shocked by the memories. Somalia lost most of its working force by war or migration, but the future might be brighter than what it seems.

“If the country will finally find peace, most of the Somali people I’ve met in my travel, will surely go back: after all Somalia is our home,” Faisal told me last time I saw him.

The academic panel comprised presentations from Professor Steffen Boehm from the Essex Business School, Professor Sheldon Leader from the School of Law, Professor Hugh Ward from the Department of Government, and Dr Netta Weinstein from the Department of Psychology. Professor Boehm examined the comparative trends in carbon emissions data by region and country. Professor Leader argued that the structure of large multinational corporations allows for limited liability for environmental damage, but that new initiatives in project finance are beginning to look at ways of building in protections for the environment for some large scale extractive projects. Professor Ward presented a comparative analysis of political regimes and emissions data to show that liberal democracies may not be the best political system for the protection of the environment. Finally, Netta Weinstein shared a range of survey and experimental data on the individual benefits that can be derived through inceased interaction with nature.

The second session featured internationally renowned photographer Garth Lenz, who presented an extended version of his TED talk on the Tar Sands development in Canada. The audience was show remarkable photos of the arboreal forests in Canada and the scale of the current destruction of the area owing to the extraction of ‘dirty oil’ from the Tar Sands. The ensuing roundtable discussion included Dr Damien Short from the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, Michael Mansfield QC, and Dr Karen Hulme from the School of Law at the University of Essex.

The full press release can be found here:

Post sentencing press release final

In a complementary event, the newly founded Essex Sustainability Institute will be hosting an Ecocultures event on 17-18 April 2012, which examines a variety of different ways in which groups and communities at the local level respond to and work within the new confines of environmental change.

The aim of the Ecocultures programme is to synthesise the best current understanding of what it means to be a ‘sustainable community’, how sustainable communities maintain social-ecological resilience, and how we can transfer lessons from these communities to improve ‘mainstream’ policy and practice.

More details can be found here:

http://www.ecocultures.org/2012/03/ecocultures-2012-2/