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Begin New Search Topic Security Political Geography South America Content Type Working Paper

1. Follow the money: connecting anti-money laundering systems to disrupt environmental crime in the Amazon

Author:
Melina Risso, Carolina Andrade Quevedo, Lycia Brasil, Vivian Calderoni, and Maria Fe Vallejo
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Igarapé Institute
Abstract:
Environmental crime became the world’s third most lucrative illicit economy after drug trafficking and smuggling, with estimates of $110 to $281 billion in annual profits. Between 2006 and 2016, environmental crimes grew at a rate of 5% to 7% per year, a pace two or three times faster than that of global GDP growth. Money laundering is part of the criminal machinery that plunders the Amazon Rainforest. The study “Follow the Money: connecting anti-money laundering systems to disrupt environmental crime in the amazon” reveals the need for systems, agencies, and institutions responsible for preventing money laundering to turn their attention to the connections between this illicit practice and environmental crimes. The Igarapé study shows that the money laundering cycle follows three stages before the laundered funds can enter the financial system: placement, layering, and integration. However, not all proceeds from criminal activity are directly laundered into the formal financial system. Thus, informal diversification constitutes the process of moving illegal flows into the informal economy. It is estimated that 30% of the money to be laundered is used to pay the operating expenses of illicit economies. Cash transactions, divided into small amounts and deposited by “money mules,” are used to finance the hiring of precarious labor, accommodations, food, security, transportation, health services, leisure, and machinery, for example. The remaining 70% of illicit proceeds are formally inserted into the financial system. The study also recalls that the World Bank estimated in 2019 that governments lose between 6 and 9 billion dollars in tax revenue each year due to illegal logging. Similarly, other environmental crimes such as illegal mining, especially of gold and diamonds, generate between 12 and 48 billion dollars in revenue. In 2018, Interpol’s Global Illicit Flows Atlas found that illegal logging accounted for a percentage between 15% and 30% of the global timber trade, calculated between 51 billion and 152 billion dollars per year. The illegal logging industry is responsible for up to 90% of deforestation of tropical forests in African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Combating illicit financial flows is a powerful tool for dismantling illegal economies. It becomes even more relevant when it is identified that illicit financial flows fuel an ecosystem of environmental crime composed of a convergence of environmental and non-environmental crimes, such as corruption, fraud, tax evasion, and others.
Topic:
Security, Environment, Financial Crimes, Money Laundering, and Illicit Financial Flows
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Amazon Basin

2. Drug Policy in Colombia: The Road to a Just Regulation

Author:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Commission On Drug Policy
Abstract:
The position paper “Drug Policy in Colombia – The Road to a Just Regulation" presents the dynamics which have maintained Colombia hostage as the longest running, and most evident examples, of failed prohibitionist drug policies. The position paper explores the context leading to the 2016 Peace Agreement, as well as the shifts in political power that resulted in uneven and unsuccessful implementation efforts of the Agreement. It puts forward recommendations to support effective and humane drug policy reforms that enhance peace, health, security and development in Colombia.
Topic:
Security, Development, Diplomacy, Treaties and Agreements, United Nations, Law Enforcement, Regulation, and Drugs
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America

3. Inventory of data on economic activity and deforestation in the Amazon Basin

Author:
Igarapé Institute
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Igarapé Institute
Abstract:
Multiple factors shape land change and land use patterns in the Amazon Basin.This note aims to identify data sources for two specific phenomena: changes in land cover and GHG emissions. It also considers key economic sectors that accelerate deforestation including livestock and agricultural development. To this end, the focus is on available data sources across three countries with an analysis of their geographic scope, depth of detail, and the frequency and periodicity with which they are reported.
Topic:
Security, Climate Change, Environment, Economy, Carbon Emissions, and Deforestation
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Amazon Basin

4. Both hard and soft corporate practices construct and secure industrial mining operations: The case of Colombia

Author:
Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
This DIIS Working Paper elaborates how local consent to a huge industrial mining complex, including a port and a 150 km railway built in the 1980’s on indigenous arid lands, were created. Showing how both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ security technologies were effective in preparing the complex, constructing the necessary infrastructure and securing the operation, the paper at the same time illustrates how corporate security practices have changed over time in the northern part of Colombia. The paper is based on extended ethnographic fieldwork in La Guajira, Colombia, carried out through 2018 and 2019 as well as historical written documents.
Topic:
Security, Environment, Oil, Poverty, Natural Resources, Non State Actors, Gas, Capitalism, Inequality, Economy, Conflict, Ethnography, Violence, Investment, Justice, Land Rights, and Minerals
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, and Latin America

5. Strategies for Including Women’s and LGBTI Groups in the Colombian Peace Process

Author:
José Francisco Alvarado Cóbar
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
In order to have a more nuanced understanding of inclusive peace processes, it is important to understand how civil society can connect to formal peace negotiations. The Colombian peace negotiation process is highly regarded as one of the most inclusive processes; involving civil society groups from diverse backgrounds, including both women’s and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/ transsexual and intersex (LGBTI) groups. But how do these groups leverage influence among the main conflict actors, and what specific challenges and opportunities do they face? This paper applies a conflict resolution and negotiation framework to assess the involvement of women’s and LGBTI groups in the most recent Colombian peace negotiation process. In doing so, the suggested framework provides a practical application of conflict resolution and negotiation strategies that can further complement discussions on inclusion of marginalized groups in other peace negotiation processes.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, Development, Gender Issues, Governance, Women, Negotiation, LGBT+, and Peace
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America

6. ‘Peace with a Woman’s Face’: Women, Social Media and the Colombian Peace Process

Author:
Alexis Henshaw
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Journal:
Contexto Internacional
Institution:
Institute of International Relations, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
Abstract:
The idea that men and women approach conflict resolution differently forms the back- bone of the international agenda on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and is supported by a growing body of scholarship in international relations. However, the role of women who represent insurgent groups in peace talks remains understudied, given the relatively rare appearance of such women in peace processes. The present study examines how men and women from the negotiating team of the Revolutionary Armed Forced of Colombia (FARC) engaged in public-facing discourse on Twitter leading up to a referendum on the peace accords in 2016. Using a mixed-methods ap- proach that includes computational analysis and a close reading of social media posts, I demonstrate that women in the FARC’s negotiating team were more successful social media users than their male counterparts and that they offered a distinct contribution to the discourse on peace, centring the relevance of gender and promoting issue linkages like the need to address LGBTI rights.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Gender Issues, Mass Media, Social Media, and Peace
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America

7. Shoutings, Scoldings, Talkings, and Whispers: Mothers’ Reponses to Armed Actors and Militarization in Two Caracas Barrios

Author:
Verónica Zubillaga and Rebecca Hanson
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
How do mothers deal with chronic violence and the constant presence of guns in their neighborhoods? How do they relate to the armed actors who inhabit their neighborhoods? How do they build situated meaning and discursive practices out of their experiences and relationships with armed actors? We compare the experience of women in two poor and working-class neighborhoods in Caracas. La Caracola, with a long history of civic organizations and drug trafficking, suffers regular, extortionate actions by the police. La Piedad has been ravaged by militarized police operations, which have produced a "warfare mode" among the members of organized criminal groups. Through this comparative ethnographic project we aim to show how, in the midst of state-sponsored depredation and with an overwhelming presence of guns in their lives, women use their traditional cultural roles as mothers to perform everyday forms of resistance vis-à-vis the different armed actors that impose their presence in the barrios. We focus on how women make and communicate meanings; engage in social networks with other women; and employ different discursive strategies as they deal with the armed actors. We foreground women’s experiences in two barrios, asking what material and historical conditions make these different experiences possible. In the mothers’ daily struggles, dramatic discursive actions—from more openly oppositional, such as shouting, scolding, and talking, to more hidden ones, such as, both “circulating gossip” and “captive gossip” to more helpless ones, such as whispering—are their main resources in the micropolitics of their neighborhoods.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, Gender Issues, Conflict, Violence, Peace, and Social Networks
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Venezuela

8. Security Forces’ Strategies of Resistance to Transitional Justice

Author:
Valerie Arnould
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
Security forces are key actors in transitional justice, with the ability to hamper or upend the process. While concerns have often centred on their possible violent responses to transitional justice, security forces are generally more likely to mobilise more discrete forms of resistance. Drawing on transitional justice experiences in Brazil, Chile, Sierra Leone and Uganda this policy brief identifies six types of resistance strategies used by security forces: threatening violence, obstructionism, de-legitimation, strategic cooperation, disengagement and appropriation. It also examines which contextual factors may influence which strategies the security forces are more likely to pursue.
Topic:
Security, International Cooperation, Violence, and Justice
Political Geography:
Uganda, Africa, Brazil, South America, Sierra Leone, and Chile

9. Terrorism in the Political Landscape of Post-peace Accord in Colombia / El terrorismo en el escenario del post-acuerdo en Colombia

Author:
Olmer Muñoz Sánchez, Julie Pontvianne, and Sebastián Álvarez Posada
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Security Studies Group (GESI) at the University of Granada
Abstract:
In Colombia, terrorism is not a new threat to national security. Terrorism historically has been closely linked to the existence of an internal armed conflict and to the evolution of the “method of action” (método de acción) carried out by its main and secondary actors (guerrilla fighters, drug traffickers, militiamen). This article aims to analyze the different types of terrorism that have existed in Colombia as well as the way they have affected security and, finally, present its evolution in the national political context, from the signing of the most recent peace accord to the present.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Terrorism, Treaties and Agreements, Negotiation, and Peace
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America

10. Assessing Gender Perspectives in Peace Processes with Application to the Cases of Colombia and Mindanao

Author:
José Francisco Alvarado Cóbar, Emma Bjertén-Günther, and Yeonju Jung
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
In order to make peace processes more inclusive, increased participation by women and other excluded groups has been emphasised for decades, as well as the need to adopt a gender perspective within peace processes. However, the discussion has tended to focus on counting women and treating women’s participation as synonymous with a gender perspective. Defining what a gender perspective is and how it could be applied throughout a peace process has remained largely unexplored. This paper seeks to address these lacunae by drawing on current frameworks, proposing a definition of a gender perspective in peace processes and introducing a way of operationalizing this definition. The suggested indicators are used to assess two recent peace processes: the Colombian peace process and the Mindanao peace process in the Philippines. This assessment provides a practical application of the conceptual framework and raises new questions about how the concept can be further measured and assessed.
Topic:
Security, Development, Gender Issues, Negotiation, and Peace
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America