Conflict and Human Security

The Institute of Social Studies is Europe’s longest-established centre of higher education and research in development studies. Post-graduate teaching programmes range from six-week diploma courses to the PhD programme. Research at ISS is fundamental in the sense of laying a scientific basis for the formulation of appropriate development policies. The academic work of ISS is disseminated in the form of books, journal articles, teaching texts, monographs and working papers. The Working Paper series provides a forum for work in progress which seeks to elicit comments and generate discussion. The series includes academic research by staff, PhD participants and visiting fellows, and award-winning research papers by graduate students. Working Papers are available in electronic format at www.iss.nl/workingpapers.

It is a common misconception even in academic circles that global environmental protection emerged in the last decade of the 20th century, especially in terms of international law. This paper proves however, that due to the dominance of the Cold War International Relations framework, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was in fact a treaty designated to reduce the environmental harm caused by nuclear testing. The reasons behind the misconceptions are just as intriguing as the implications for a re-examined timeline of environmental history.

The revolution which saw the seizure of White ‘owned’ land by the landless Black Zimbabweans has generated unparalleled debates both in and outside Zimbabwe. Neo-colonialists, neo-conservatives and neo- liberals alike have labeled the land revolution as barbaric, destructive, violent and racial. These images, though misleading have been popularised by pro-Western media and have managed to attract sympathy for the former White farmers and at the same time it has managed to demonise the land revolution. This article advances the thesis that these half-baked, ahistorical, propagandistic and racist images have been crafted deliberately to trivialise an agenda which sought to redress the past socio-economic injustices. Secondly, the article argues that White farmers were not innocent bystanders as portrayed by the images, but were in complicit in the whole conflict. Finally, the article concludes that the violence which characterised the revolution was not because Blacks are violent by n...

This study seeks to comprehend the utility of sanctions in theglobal era with the background that albeit the widely publicised negative resultant effects of sanctions, the usage of sanctions as a foreign policy tool continues to increase.This paper interrogates how globalisation and sanctions are persistently impacting on each other; howthe objectives of these two variables are diametrically opposed whereby the former seeks to unify states while the latter seeks to isolate actors. On one hand, globalization has rendered sanctions ineffective by giving the sanctioned states alternative trading partners. On the other hand, the global village renders it easy for sanctions to be inevitably applied as the inter-connectedness and inter-linkages allow for states to be vulnerable. This paper also critiques how economic powerhouses strategically extend support to sanctioned states and its effect on the effectiveness of sanctions. This article concludes that globalisation has rendered the impact of sanctions questionable and futile.