Jaremey McMullin | University of St Andrews (original) (raw)

Videos by Jaremey McMullin

An estimated 175,000 motorcycle taxi drivers operate across Liberia. Most of them are either form... more An estimated 175,000 motorcycle taxi drivers operate across Liberia. Most of them are either former child soldiers or conflict-affected youth who lost out on economic and educational opportunities because of the war. Best Man Corner profiles the young riders of one of Monrovia’s motorcycle taxi ranks, known colloquially as "parking stations". It explores how the ‘motorbike hustle’ is a means of survival but also a form of building peace.

Best Man Corner is one of five films that comprise a documentary short series, 'Liberia: Legacies of Peace.' The series, funded by the Scottish Funding Council's Global Challenges Research Fund, looks at the everyday challenges and opportunities of peacebuilding in post-war Liberia. It won the award for Best Documentary Short at MotoTematica, Rome's motorcycle film festival and was also an Official Selection at the Toronto Motorcycle Film Festival.

For more information, see: https://cpcs.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/research/liberia-legacies-of-peace/

Women peace activists gather at one of Liberia’s ‘Peace Huts’ for their weekly meeting. They refl... more Women peace activists gather at one of Liberia’s ‘Peace Huts’ for their weekly meeting. They reflect back on the famous 2003 Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace but remind the audience, and each other, that the work of peace and equality is not finished, instead demanding daily struggle, vigilance, and mutual support.

This documentary film explores the ongoing and diverse functions of the Peace Huts in Liberia, suggesting that the need for physical and social infrastructure of peace does not end with a peace agreement. The women interviewed narrate their efforts to transform different spaces in Liberia – the Peace Huts, the street, the home, and political meeting spaces. The Peace Hut activists also identify the continuities that link conflict violence to forms of post-conflict violence?

Peace Hut is one of five films that comprise a documentary short series, Liberia: Legacies of Peace, funded by the Scottish Funding Council's Global Challenges Research Fund.

17 views

Two veteran miners in western Liberia’s poorest county converse about the highs and lows of a lif... more Two veteran miners in western Liberia’s poorest county converse about the highs and lows of a lifetime spent searching for diamonds. Together, they reflect on the impact that civil war and post-war transition have had on their prospects.

We have seen a lot of films on the impact of diamond mining on war. But what about the impact of war on diamond miners?Scholars and practitioners increasingly understand that successful peacebuilding is dialogic and relational; yet rarely do we see storytelling and friendships in work on natural resource extraction during and after war.

The film narrates the arc of two lives spent in this unforgiving, volatile sector by showing two friends at home talking. I wanted to see what happens to assumptions about natural resources and war when we flip the direction of our gaze, centring individual miners' knowledge or—and experience in—the sector. Where war and its effects are important—but not the only—aspects afforded significance.

14 views

There are an estimated 175,000 motorcycle taxi drivers in Liberia… and only 10 of them are women.... more There are an estimated 175,000 motorcycle taxi drivers in Liberia… and only 10 of them are women. They call themselves the Pink Panthers All-Girls Motorcycle Club of Liberia. 'Pink Panther' tells KD’s story of life as a woman motorcyclist in a country and sector still dominated by men. The film looks at the successes and failures of international aid efforts to help women break into the motorcycle business. It explores the multiple and contradictory ways that gender identity and gender norms play out in post-war Liberia.

'Pink Panther' is one of five films that comprise a documentary short film series, 'Liberia: Legacies of Peace.' The series, funded by the Scottish Funding Council's Global Challenges Research Fund, looks at the everyday challenges and opportunities of peacebuilding in post-war Liberia.

For more information, see: https://cpcs.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/research/liberia-legacies-of-peace/

3 views

The Armed Forces of Liberia was disbanded in its entirety after the war because the incoming gove... more The Armed Forces of Liberia was disbanded in its entirety after the war because the incoming government suspected that AFL soldiers were too loyal to the ousted leader and war criminal, Charles Taylor. Demobilized en masse, the soldiers received $540 US dollars and were told to wait for further reintegration support. 540 visits the squatter settlement that hundreds of these demobilized soldiers built on a swamp in Monrovia which they named Peace Island. They describe the bitter disappointments of their experience with military downsizing and ask what should happen when international promises are broken.

540 is one of five films that comprise a documentary short series, Liberia: Legacies of Peace. The series, funded by the Scottish Funding Council's Global Challenges Research Fund, looks at the everyday challenges and opportunities of peacebuilding in post-war Liberia.

67 views

Silkies is documentary short film that I directed and produced about an unorthodox way to bring m... more Silkies is documentary short film that I directed and produced about an unorthodox way to bring military veterans together to prevent suicide. It profiles the work of Irreverent Warriors, who organize dozens of Silkies Hikes each year across the United States, where men and women gather wearing only their insanely short military-issue ‘silkies’ boxer briefs. They then hike 22 kilometers with 22 kilograms on their backs to remember and mourn the 22 veterans who kill themselves on average each day. More importantly, the film documents how the Hikers are aiming to do more than ‘raise awareness’ about suicide; it shows how the Hikes' atmosphere of camaraderie, humor, and vulnerability actively prevents veteran suicide.

'Silkies' is part of a multi-year project analysing the impact of veteran-led activism and activity in the United States funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.

10 views

Journal Articles by Jaremey McMullin

Review of International Studies, May 31, 2021

Ex-combatant youth originated the commercial motorcycling sector in Liberia and have played a dom... more Ex-combatant youth originated the commercial motorcycling sector in Liberia and have played a dominant role in its development. This article collates key insights narrated by one of Liberia's young ex-combatants-turned-commercial motorcyclists, Edwin Nyankoon, to build narrative accounts of peacebuilding around conceptualisation of youth livelihood, identity, and politics after war. The article contributes to diverse literatures on youth agency by emphasising the need for narrative and subject-led methodologies that anchor research questions and data analysis to research participants' own language and narrated experiences of post war. It applies insights about everyday peace to interpret hustling as bottom-up peacebuilding, in opposition to dominant top-down peacebuilding accounts of ex-combatants. These latter accounts largely fail to see youth actors as peacebuilding agents, constructing them instead as troublemakers and interpreting their livelihood activities in terms of criminality and threat. Additionally, it argues that hustling also constitutes a peacebuilding style. More than a coping strategy or an indicator of peace, hustling-as-peacebuilding-style is performative: relational, embodied, contradictory, and recognisable to its adherents as peace-promoting even if (and arguably because) outsiders construct it as peacenegating. This analysis problematises agency, social relations, gendered identity, and collective security as they relate to ex-combatant and conflict-affected youth during peace processes.

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International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2021

This article analyzes the multiple and contradictory functions of barracks nostalgia for a vetera... more This article analyzes the multiple and contradictory functions of barracks nostalgia for a veterans' organization in the United States (US), Irreverent Warriors, and for its principal activity, Silkies Hikes. These are day-long events across the US in which military veterans, both men and women, convene to hike in their underwear to prevent veteran suicide. The Hikes are more than exhibitionistic gatherings of nearly naked veterans; they are elaborate rituals where veterans expose and deploy their bodies to navigate and survive return from war. Drawing on feminist and queer theoretical insights, I develop a reparative case study of the Hikes to explore three arguments. First, militarized nudity can be more than, and other than, violation. Second, nurturing militarized masculinity might be experienced as necessary for some veterans' postwar adjustment. Third, nostalgic re-enactments are not either re-militarizing or de-militarizing; rather, Silkies Hikers are militarized subjects undergoing a de-militarization process that they experience as violent and traumatic, so they in turn seek out, or even demand, re-militarizationbut re-militarization re-cast as a counter-violent maneuver. Consequently, Silkies Hikes represent a critical opportunity to elaborate theories of militarized masculinity and foreground dilemmas involved in calling on endangered bodies to do the work of de-militarization. KEYWORDS Military veterans; postwar adjustment; veteran suicide; militarized masculinity; nudity Who is to say what a stuckness is and what an arsenal is and when they are the same? (Lauren Berlant, cited in Helms, Vishmidt, and Berlant 2010)

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Review of International Studies, Apr 1, 2013

Ex-combatant reintegration programmes are buttressed by a number of problematic assumptions about... more Ex-combatant reintegration programmes are buttressed by a number of problematic assumptions about ex-combatants themselves; namely, that ex-combatants should not receive long-term support because such assistance would amplify the threat they pose to security and exacerbate community resentment towards them. The article uses data collected from Liberia to demonstrate that such thinking stigmatises ex-combatants and works against the objective of reintegration: it disrupts integration into the everyday social, economic, and political life of the post-conflict state and aims instead to render ex-combatants separate from communities. Integration will remain elusive unless assumptions about ex-combatants as programme beneficiaries are challenged.

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Third World Quarterly, 2011

This article uses recent experience in Angola to demonstrate that young fighters were not adequat... more This article uses recent experience in Angola to demonstrate that young fighters were not adequately or effectively assisted after war ended in 2002. The government’s framework excluded children from accessing formal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes, and its subsequent attempts to target children have largely failed. More critically the case of Angola calls into question the broader effectiveness and appropriateness of child-centred DDR. First, such targeting is inappropriate to distinct post- conflict contexts and constructs a ‘template child’ asserted to be more vulnerable and deserving than adult ex-combatants, which does little to further the reintegration of either group, or the rights of the child in a conflict context. Second, child-centred reintegration efforts tend to deny children agency as actors in their own reintegration. Third, such efforts contribute to the normalisation of a much larger ideational and structural flaw of post-conflict peace building, wherein ‘success’ is construed as the reintegration of large numbers of beneficiaries back into the poverty and marginalisation that contributed to conflict in the first place.

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Civil Wars, Jan 14, 2009

The relationship between criminality and conflict subverts traditional assumptions about organise... more The relationship between criminality and conflict subverts traditional assumptions about organised crime. Consequently, analysis of the ‘criminal’ must be anchored to specific conflict contexts rather than to a universal typology of organised criminal groups. Organised crime and conflict are interdependent. In several conflict states, organised crime has exacerbated the level of violence and contributed to conflict’s intractability. Conflict, meanwhile, creates unique opportunities for criminality to flourish and amplifies the threat that criminal groups pose to security, development and governance. Unless the peculiar supply and demand dynamics of conflict are addressed by the peace process, law enforcement initiatives alone will fail.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

International Peacekeeping, 2004

Efforts to reintegrate combatants following Mozambique's civil war concentrated exclusively on av... more Efforts to reintegrate combatants following Mozambique's civil war concentrated exclusively on avoiding a return to violent conflict. Though conflict has not resumed, two challenges to long-term security remain: first, involvement among certain combatants in organized criminal activity; second, political instability from the continuing politicization of reintegration issues. Mozambique's reintegration programme, in aiming only to avoid a return to war, failed to address these two issues. This has hurt Mozambique and has repercussions for southern Africa and the international community.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Books by Jaremey McMullin

This book provides a critical analysis of the reintegration challenges facing ex-combatants. Base... more This book provides a critical analysis of the reintegration challenges facing ex-combatants. Based on extensive field research, it includes detailed case studies of ex-combatant reintegration in Namibia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Policy Reports by Jaremey McMullin

Policy briefing report prepared for the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Section, DP... more Policy briefing report prepared for the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Section, DPO/OROLSI, United Nations Department of Peace Operations. July 2020.

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A retrospective overview of successive DDR processes in Burundi, an impact assessment of program ... more A retrospective overview of successive DDR processes in Burundi, an impact assessment of program outcomes, and a strategic analysis of institutional partnerships. Commissioned by and submitted to the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Section, Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (OROLSI/DDR), United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. October 2011. 114pp.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Policy report commissioned by and prepared for the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration ... more Policy report commissioned by and prepared for the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Section, Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (OROLSI/DDR), United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. October 2009. 34pp.

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Papers by Jaremey McMullin

Conflict, Security & Development

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International Child Protection, 2022

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Child Soldiers: From Recruitment to Reintegration, 2011

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Review of International Studies, 2021

Ex-combatant youth originated the commercial motorcycling sector in Liberia and have played a dom... more Ex-combatant youth originated the commercial motorcycling sector in Liberia and have played a dominant role in its development. This article collates key insights narrated by one of Liberia's young ex-combatants-turned-commercial motorcyclists, Edwin Nyankoon, to build narrative accounts of peacebuilding around conceptualisation of youth livelihood, identity, and politics after war. The article contributes to diverse literatures on youth agency by emphasising the need for narrative and subject-led methodologies that anchor research questions and data analysis to research participants’ own language and narrated experiences of post war. It applies insights about everyday peace to interpret hustling as bottom-up peacebuilding, in opposition to dominant top-down peacebuilding accounts of ex-combatants. These latter accounts largely fail to see youth actors as peacebuilding agents, constructing them instead as troublemakers and interpreting their livelihood activities in terms of cri...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

An estimated 175,000 motorcycle taxi drivers operate across Liberia. Most of them are either form... more An estimated 175,000 motorcycle taxi drivers operate across Liberia. Most of them are either former child soldiers or conflict-affected youth who lost out on economic and educational opportunities because of the war. Best Man Corner profiles the young riders of one of Monrovia’s motorcycle taxi ranks, known colloquially as "parking stations". It explores how the ‘motorbike hustle’ is a means of survival but also a form of building peace.

Best Man Corner is one of five films that comprise a documentary short series, 'Liberia: Legacies of Peace.' The series, funded by the Scottish Funding Council's Global Challenges Research Fund, looks at the everyday challenges and opportunities of peacebuilding in post-war Liberia. It won the award for Best Documentary Short at MotoTematica, Rome's motorcycle film festival and was also an Official Selection at the Toronto Motorcycle Film Festival.

For more information, see: https://cpcs.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/research/liberia-legacies-of-peace/

Women peace activists gather at one of Liberia’s ‘Peace Huts’ for their weekly meeting. They refl... more Women peace activists gather at one of Liberia’s ‘Peace Huts’ for their weekly meeting. They reflect back on the famous 2003 Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace but remind the audience, and each other, that the work of peace and equality is not finished, instead demanding daily struggle, vigilance, and mutual support.

This documentary film explores the ongoing and diverse functions of the Peace Huts in Liberia, suggesting that the need for physical and social infrastructure of peace does not end with a peace agreement. The women interviewed narrate their efforts to transform different spaces in Liberia – the Peace Huts, the street, the home, and political meeting spaces. The Peace Hut activists also identify the continuities that link conflict violence to forms of post-conflict violence?

Peace Hut is one of five films that comprise a documentary short series, Liberia: Legacies of Peace, funded by the Scottish Funding Council's Global Challenges Research Fund.

17 views

Two veteran miners in western Liberia’s poorest county converse about the highs and lows of a lif... more Two veteran miners in western Liberia’s poorest county converse about the highs and lows of a lifetime spent searching for diamonds. Together, they reflect on the impact that civil war and post-war transition have had on their prospects.

We have seen a lot of films on the impact of diamond mining on war. But what about the impact of war on diamond miners?Scholars and practitioners increasingly understand that successful peacebuilding is dialogic and relational; yet rarely do we see storytelling and friendships in work on natural resource extraction during and after war.

The film narrates the arc of two lives spent in this unforgiving, volatile sector by showing two friends at home talking. I wanted to see what happens to assumptions about natural resources and war when we flip the direction of our gaze, centring individual miners' knowledge or—and experience in—the sector. Where war and its effects are important—but not the only—aspects afforded significance.

14 views

There are an estimated 175,000 motorcycle taxi drivers in Liberia… and only 10 of them are women.... more There are an estimated 175,000 motorcycle taxi drivers in Liberia… and only 10 of them are women. They call themselves the Pink Panthers All-Girls Motorcycle Club of Liberia. 'Pink Panther' tells KD’s story of life as a woman motorcyclist in a country and sector still dominated by men. The film looks at the successes and failures of international aid efforts to help women break into the motorcycle business. It explores the multiple and contradictory ways that gender identity and gender norms play out in post-war Liberia.

'Pink Panther' is one of five films that comprise a documentary short film series, 'Liberia: Legacies of Peace.' The series, funded by the Scottish Funding Council's Global Challenges Research Fund, looks at the everyday challenges and opportunities of peacebuilding in post-war Liberia.

For more information, see: https://cpcs.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/research/liberia-legacies-of-peace/

3 views

The Armed Forces of Liberia was disbanded in its entirety after the war because the incoming gove... more The Armed Forces of Liberia was disbanded in its entirety after the war because the incoming government suspected that AFL soldiers were too loyal to the ousted leader and war criminal, Charles Taylor. Demobilized en masse, the soldiers received $540 US dollars and were told to wait for further reintegration support. 540 visits the squatter settlement that hundreds of these demobilized soldiers built on a swamp in Monrovia which they named Peace Island. They describe the bitter disappointments of their experience with military downsizing and ask what should happen when international promises are broken.

540 is one of five films that comprise a documentary short series, Liberia: Legacies of Peace. The series, funded by the Scottish Funding Council's Global Challenges Research Fund, looks at the everyday challenges and opportunities of peacebuilding in post-war Liberia.

67 views

Silkies is documentary short film that I directed and produced about an unorthodox way to bring m... more Silkies is documentary short film that I directed and produced about an unorthodox way to bring military veterans together to prevent suicide. It profiles the work of Irreverent Warriors, who organize dozens of Silkies Hikes each year across the United States, where men and women gather wearing only their insanely short military-issue ‘silkies’ boxer briefs. They then hike 22 kilometers with 22 kilograms on their backs to remember and mourn the 22 veterans who kill themselves on average each day. More importantly, the film documents how the Hikers are aiming to do more than ‘raise awareness’ about suicide; it shows how the Hikes' atmosphere of camaraderie, humor, and vulnerability actively prevents veteran suicide.

'Silkies' is part of a multi-year project analysing the impact of veteran-led activism and activity in the United States funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.

10 views

Review of International Studies, May 31, 2021

Ex-combatant youth originated the commercial motorcycling sector in Liberia and have played a dom... more Ex-combatant youth originated the commercial motorcycling sector in Liberia and have played a dominant role in its development. This article collates key insights narrated by one of Liberia's young ex-combatants-turned-commercial motorcyclists, Edwin Nyankoon, to build narrative accounts of peacebuilding around conceptualisation of youth livelihood, identity, and politics after war. The article contributes to diverse literatures on youth agency by emphasising the need for narrative and subject-led methodologies that anchor research questions and data analysis to research participants' own language and narrated experiences of post war. It applies insights about everyday peace to interpret hustling as bottom-up peacebuilding, in opposition to dominant top-down peacebuilding accounts of ex-combatants. These latter accounts largely fail to see youth actors as peacebuilding agents, constructing them instead as troublemakers and interpreting their livelihood activities in terms of criminality and threat. Additionally, it argues that hustling also constitutes a peacebuilding style. More than a coping strategy or an indicator of peace, hustling-as-peacebuilding-style is performative: relational, embodied, contradictory, and recognisable to its adherents as peace-promoting even if (and arguably because) outsiders construct it as peacenegating. This analysis problematises agency, social relations, gendered identity, and collective security as they relate to ex-combatant and conflict-affected youth during peace processes.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2021

This article analyzes the multiple and contradictory functions of barracks nostalgia for a vetera... more This article analyzes the multiple and contradictory functions of barracks nostalgia for a veterans' organization in the United States (US), Irreverent Warriors, and for its principal activity, Silkies Hikes. These are day-long events across the US in which military veterans, both men and women, convene to hike in their underwear to prevent veteran suicide. The Hikes are more than exhibitionistic gatherings of nearly naked veterans; they are elaborate rituals where veterans expose and deploy their bodies to navigate and survive return from war. Drawing on feminist and queer theoretical insights, I develop a reparative case study of the Hikes to explore three arguments. First, militarized nudity can be more than, and other than, violation. Second, nurturing militarized masculinity might be experienced as necessary for some veterans' postwar adjustment. Third, nostalgic re-enactments are not either re-militarizing or de-militarizing; rather, Silkies Hikers are militarized subjects undergoing a de-militarization process that they experience as violent and traumatic, so they in turn seek out, or even demand, re-militarizationbut re-militarization re-cast as a counter-violent maneuver. Consequently, Silkies Hikes represent a critical opportunity to elaborate theories of militarized masculinity and foreground dilemmas involved in calling on endangered bodies to do the work of de-militarization. KEYWORDS Military veterans; postwar adjustment; veteran suicide; militarized masculinity; nudity Who is to say what a stuckness is and what an arsenal is and when they are the same? (Lauren Berlant, cited in Helms, Vishmidt, and Berlant 2010)

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Review of International Studies, Apr 1, 2013

Ex-combatant reintegration programmes are buttressed by a number of problematic assumptions about... more Ex-combatant reintegration programmes are buttressed by a number of problematic assumptions about ex-combatants themselves; namely, that ex-combatants should not receive long-term support because such assistance would amplify the threat they pose to security and exacerbate community resentment towards them. The article uses data collected from Liberia to demonstrate that such thinking stigmatises ex-combatants and works against the objective of reintegration: it disrupts integration into the everyday social, economic, and political life of the post-conflict state and aims instead to render ex-combatants separate from communities. Integration will remain elusive unless assumptions about ex-combatants as programme beneficiaries are challenged.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Third World Quarterly, 2011

This article uses recent experience in Angola to demonstrate that young fighters were not adequat... more This article uses recent experience in Angola to demonstrate that young fighters were not adequately or effectively assisted after war ended in 2002. The government’s framework excluded children from accessing formal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes, and its subsequent attempts to target children have largely failed. More critically the case of Angola calls into question the broader effectiveness and appropriateness of child-centred DDR. First, such targeting is inappropriate to distinct post- conflict contexts and constructs a ‘template child’ asserted to be more vulnerable and deserving than adult ex-combatants, which does little to further the reintegration of either group, or the rights of the child in a conflict context. Second, child-centred reintegration efforts tend to deny children agency as actors in their own reintegration. Third, such efforts contribute to the normalisation of a much larger ideational and structural flaw of post-conflict peace building, wherein ‘success’ is construed as the reintegration of large numbers of beneficiaries back into the poverty and marginalisation that contributed to conflict in the first place.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Civil Wars, Jan 14, 2009

The relationship between criminality and conflict subverts traditional assumptions about organise... more The relationship between criminality and conflict subverts traditional assumptions about organised crime. Consequently, analysis of the ‘criminal’ must be anchored to specific conflict contexts rather than to a universal typology of organised criminal groups. Organised crime and conflict are interdependent. In several conflict states, organised crime has exacerbated the level of violence and contributed to conflict’s intractability. Conflict, meanwhile, creates unique opportunities for criminality to flourish and amplifies the threat that criminal groups pose to security, development and governance. Unless the peculiar supply and demand dynamics of conflict are addressed by the peace process, law enforcement initiatives alone will fail.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

International Peacekeeping, 2004

Efforts to reintegrate combatants following Mozambique's civil war concentrated exclusively on av... more Efforts to reintegrate combatants following Mozambique's civil war concentrated exclusively on avoiding a return to violent conflict. Though conflict has not resumed, two challenges to long-term security remain: first, involvement among certain combatants in organized criminal activity; second, political instability from the continuing politicization of reintegration issues. Mozambique's reintegration programme, in aiming only to avoid a return to war, failed to address these two issues. This has hurt Mozambique and has repercussions for southern Africa and the international community.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

This book provides a critical analysis of the reintegration challenges facing ex-combatants. Base... more This book provides a critical analysis of the reintegration challenges facing ex-combatants. Based on extensive field research, it includes detailed case studies of ex-combatant reintegration in Namibia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Policy briefing report prepared for the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Section, DP... more Policy briefing report prepared for the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Section, DPO/OROLSI, United Nations Department of Peace Operations. July 2020.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

A retrospective overview of successive DDR processes in Burundi, an impact assessment of program ... more A retrospective overview of successive DDR processes in Burundi, an impact assessment of program outcomes, and a strategic analysis of institutional partnerships. Commissioned by and submitted to the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Section, Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (OROLSI/DDR), United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. October 2011. 114pp.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Policy report commissioned by and prepared for the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration ... more Policy report commissioned by and prepared for the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Section, Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (OROLSI/DDR), United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. October 2009. 34pp.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Conflict, Security & Development

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

International Child Protection, 2022

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Child Soldiers: From Recruitment to Reintegration, 2011

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Review of International Studies, 2021

Ex-combatant youth originated the commercial motorcycling sector in Liberia and have played a dom... more Ex-combatant youth originated the commercial motorcycling sector in Liberia and have played a dominant role in its development. This article collates key insights narrated by one of Liberia's young ex-combatants-turned-commercial motorcyclists, Edwin Nyankoon, to build narrative accounts of peacebuilding around conceptualisation of youth livelihood, identity, and politics after war. The article contributes to diverse literatures on youth agency by emphasising the need for narrative and subject-led methodologies that anchor research questions and data analysis to research participants’ own language and narrated experiences of post war. It applies insights about everyday peace to interpret hustling as bottom-up peacebuilding, in opposition to dominant top-down peacebuilding accounts of ex-combatants. These latter accounts largely fail to see youth actors as peacebuilding agents, constructing them instead as troublemakers and interpreting their livelihood activities in terms of cri...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Third World Quarterly, 2011

This article uses recent experience in Angola to demonstrate that young fighters were not adequat... more This article uses recent experience in Angola to demonstrate that young fighters were not adequately or effectively assisted after war ended in 2002. The government's framework excluded children from accessing formal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes, and its subsequent attempts to target children have largely failed. More critically the case of Angola calls into question the broader effectiveness and appropriateness of child-centred DDR. First, such targeting is inappropriate to distinct post-conflict contexts and constructs a 'template child' asserted to be more vulnerable and deserving than adult ex-combatants, which does little to further the reintegration of either group, or the rights of the child in a conflict context. Second, child-centred reintegration efforts tend to deny children agency as actors in their own reintegration. Third, such efforts contribute to the normalisation of a much larger ideational and structural flaw of post-conflict peace building, wherein 'success' is construed as the reintegration of large numbers of beneficiaries back into the poverty and marginalisation that contributed to conflict in the first place.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

International Peacekeeping, 2004

... But, they also believe in the value of organizing around interests that they share ... aggres... more ... But, they also believe in the value of organizing around interests that they share ... aggressively enforcing the rule of law and cracking down on organized criminal activity requires ... with cooperating with the country's Police Command to protect civilian inhabitants against crime and ...

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Civil Wars, 2009

The relationship between criminality and conflict subverts traditional assumptions about organise... more The relationship between criminality and conflict subverts traditional assumptions about organised crime. Consequently, analysis of the ‘criminal’ must be anchored to specific conflict contexts rather than to a universal typology of organised criminal groups. Organised crime and conflict are interdependent. In several conflict states, organised crime has exacerbated the level of violence and contributed to conflict's intractability. Conflict, meanwhile, creates unique opportunities for criminality to flourish and amplifies the threat that criminal groups pose to security, development and governance. Unless the peculiar supply and demand dynamics of conflict are addressed by the peace process, law enforcement initiatives alone will fail.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2021

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