Issue 26: July-August 2003

New books from UNU Press

The orthodox definition of international security puts human displacement and refugees at the periphery.

Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability and the State, however, demonstrates that human displacement can be both a cause and a consequence of conflict within and among societies. As such, the management of refugee movements and the protection of displaced people should be an integral part of security policy and conflict management.

Refugees and forcibly displaced people can also represent the starkest example of a tension between human security where the primary focus is the individual and communities and more conventional models of national security tied to the sovereign state and military defence of territory. 

This book, edited by Edward Newman and Joanne van Selm, explores this tension as it relates to refugees and forced displacement and demonstrates how many of these challenges have been exacerbated by the war on terror since September 11, 2001.

Addressing the nexus between security concerns and migratory flows, Refugees and Forced Displacement argues for a reappraisal of the legal, political, normative, institutional and conceptual frameworks through which the international community addresses refugees and displacement.

Edward Newman is an academic officer in the Peace and Governance Programme of UN University. Joanne van Selm is a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute and a lecturer in political science at the University of Amsterdam.

HOW TO ORDER

In the 1990s, while the Soviet Union disintegrated, Russia maintained its longstanding obligations and strategic interests. Although no longer lawfully constituted to intervene directly in the conflicts that erupted in Georgia, Moldova and Tajikistan, Russian forces nevertheless influenced the conduct of the conflict and, more overtly, the peace process that followed.

Regional Peacekeepers: The Paradox of Russian Peacekeeping investigates the Russian military presence in former Soviet territory to determine whether these forces are genuine peacekeepers or a post-imperial presence preserving strategic interests.

The volume, edited by John Mackinlay and Peter Cross, includes first-hand accounts of the CIS peacekeeping efforts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Moldova, and Tajikistan. These are juxtaposed with contemporary assessments of Russian peacekeeping efforts, alongside NATO forces, as well as in Chechnya.

The authors conclude that although the Russian strategic intent may have been hegemonic, in real terms the manifestation of the "peacekeepers" on the ground is now benign and probably not militarily capable of furthering Russian strategic aims.

John Mackinlay lectures at the War Studies Department, Kings College, London, and Peter Cross is project coordinator at Saferworld, a London-based foreign affairs think-tank.

HOW TO ORDER

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