Conflict Assessment and Peacebuilding Planning: Toward a Participatory Approach to Human Security
Achieving human security requires strategic peacebuilding; and too often, critical steps in this sequence are missing, or conducted by different groups of people without coordination. The Conflict Assessment and Peacebuilding Handbook aims to improve the effectiveness of peacebuilding by better linking practical conflict assessment exercises to self-assessment, theories of change, designing and planning, and monitoring and evaluation of peacebuilding efforts. Recognizing that many groups skimp on assessment fearing an analysis paralysis, or design programs based on untested assumptions, this approach provides basic as well as advanced tools to improve peacebuilding practice. This concise and lucid handbook tackles the problem of too much data by suggesting ways to sort, categorize and prioritize data to make it useful. Through its synthesis of a wide range of conceptual frameworks into a convenient and logical framework useful for practitioners such as NGOs developing projects, journalists wanting to write conflict-sensitive stories, or government/military agencies designing large scale efforts, the Conflict Assessment and Peacebuilding Handbook is an essential scholarly and practical tool for the study and implementation of peacebuilding efforts.
At war with social theory: Instrumental and communicative action in US military doctrine during the War on Terror
As US counterinsurgency campaigns draw to a close, doctrine for asymmetric warfare written during the War on Terror has come under heavy criticism. While many have argued that this shift to ‘winning hearts and minds’ is evidence that the United States is taking humanitarianism and nation-building seriously, others argue that a wide gap exists between US counterinsurgency doctrine and the protection of civilians afflicted by conflict. In this article, I show that the latter is true by comparing theories of instrumental and communicative action to US doctrine for operational design, stability operations, and counterinsurgency. I argue that these texts treat the people as an object to be manipulated for the achievement of pre-determined self-interested strategic goals rather than members of a community that jointly designs operations to fulfill shared objectives. However, US doctrine does contain communicative elements that, if prioritized, would better support humanitarian and state-building objectives otherwise subordinated in the War on Terror.
Exposure to violence in incarcerated youth from the city of São Paulo.
OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to determine the extent of exposure to community violence among delinquent Brazilian youth in the 12-month period prior to their incarceration and to identify factors associated with this exposure.


METHOD
With an oversampling of girls, a cross-section of youth under 18 years of age from juvenile detention units in the city of São Paulo, Brazil completed a structured interview. Key items related to exposure to violence (witnessed and experienced) were drawn from the Social and Health Assessment questionnaire to cover the 12-month period prior to incarceration.


RESULTS
Participants (n = 325, 89% boys) reported high rates of exposure to violence with largely similar levels for boys and girls. Being threatened with physical harm, being beaten or mugged and/or shot at were the most common forms of violence experienced. After controlling for demographic and family variables, the fact of having peers involved in risk behavior, easy access to guns and previous involvement with the justice system were associated with witnessed violence; whereas having slept on the street was the only variable associated with experienced violence.


CONCLUSION
This group of youth was exposed to high levels of violence and other adverse experiences. Future research should examine the effectiveness of strategies aimed at reducing the exposure to violence of high-risk youth.