No description available.

This thesis examines the implications of the operation of the Armed Forces (Jammu & Kashmir) Special Powers Act 1990 (“Act”) on Kashmir from human rights perspective. It draws a comparison between the Act and the existing penal legislations in India. It proposes that the Act should be repealed and actions of the armed forces should be governed by the already existing penal legislations. It suggests amendment of similar state and central legislations conferring immunity to the armed forces. The precondition of approval of the Central Government for instituting a legal proceeding should be removed. It proposes constitution of special grievance cells at district levels to adjudicate cases against the armed forces before being referred to the higher courts. The thesis urges the Indian Government to approach the issue of Kashmir following principles of Ahimsa (“non–violence”) and Satyagraha (“insistence on truth”) adopted by Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian independence struggle.

This thesis examines the spillover effects of armed conflicts on trade in neighboring countries. The empirical results, obtained by using a rich dataset on trade and conflict for 168 countries during the 1950-2011 period, and thus including the onset of the Arab Spring, show that conflict disrupts the trade of neighboring countries, even though they are not directly involved in any conflict. These spillovers are strongest one year after the onset of the conflict, thus suggesting that the negative effects of regional war on trade are lagged rather than contemporaneous, while they also increase the more violent the conflict is. When conflict in secondary neighbors, defined as countries that are not directly contiguous yet closer than 250km to any country in the trading-pair, is introduced the results are unclear as a majority of the estimates are insignificant and not robust to different model specifications.

The military conflicts of the early 21st century have seen the introduction and rise of a new military technology: the armed drone. With the United States acting as the driving force behind this technological advancement, the U.S Air Force and intelligence agency CIA have madedrones their weapon of choice for pursuing suspected terrorists and insurgents in various remotelocations. American military leaders and policy makers assert that the armed drone’s high levelof accuracy make it the best available weapons platform for this task. However, new researchshows that the use of drones may result in more civilian casualties than previously thought, andmay in fact be more fallible than conventional aircraft in this respect. This paper examines this discrepancy between rhetoric and practice, and attempts to find potential causes for this in the development and early use of the first armed drone, the MQ-1 Predator. The paper cites statements from President Barack Obama and CIA director John Brennan and contrasts them with a recent research report on drone-caused civilian casualties, as well as examples of drone strikes where the wrong targets were struck. The analysis of the development and early use of the Predator Drone draws comparisons to Donald Mackenzie’s account of the development of accuracy for cold-war-era intercontinental ballistic missiles, applying the science and technology-concepts he uses to the case of the armed drone. The paper concludes with the argument that the accuracy of the early armed drones is fundamentally misunderstood or overestimated by U.S leaders, and that there are circumstances in the development-history of the system that may have contributed to this inconsistency.

Syftet med denna studie är att analysera och diskutera genus inom Försvarsmakten.   FN-resolution 1325 (2000) vilken är antagen av Sverige, handlar bland annat om kvinnors och flickors särskilda utsatthet vid väpnade konflikter. Resolutionen lyfter med anledning av denna utsatthet, som ett sätt att råda bot på kvinnors utsatthet vikten av att öka jämställdheten mellan män och kvinnor.  Ett sätt är att föra in jämställdhets­perspektiv i statliga myndigheter och resolutionen uppmanar medlemsländerna däribland Sverige att agera främjande inom en rad områden. Arbetet med jämställdhet är ett prioriterat område av den svenska regeringen och omfattar uppdrag och regleringar för hur myndigheterna ska uppnå de uppsatta jämställdhetsmålen.   Vi kan argumentera för att Försvarsmakten är en drivande aktör när det handlar om att arbeta för lika rättigheter för män och kvinnor, samt i arbetet med att utveckla genusperspektiv på institutionell nivå. Denna uppsats problematiserar hur jämställdhet och genus fungerar i den vardagliga praktiken. Studien grundar sig på teorier som bygger på social konstruktionism och refererar bland andra till Burr (2004). Burr menar att genus är något som förändras över tid och konstrueras i samspel mellan människor där diskurser har en central roll. Enligt Burr är diskurser meningsskapande och ett sätt att representera oss själva och i en social praktik, det är något som konstrueras genom vad vi säger, känner, önskar och vad vi faktiskt gör.   Vad gäller jämställdhet på organisationsnivå (Kanter, 1993), exempelvis mellan olika grupper och på interaktionsnivå (West och Zimmerman, 1987) d.v.s. i det mellanmänskliga samspelet, så kan vi med vår studie samtidigt hävda att genusperspektiv i den svenska Försvarsmakten släpar efter. Vi har funnit att de anställda, särskilt kvinnor i Försvarsmakten, utvecklar olika strategier för att överleva eller för att accepteras i den faktiska genusregimen (Acker, 2006, Connell, 2009). Denna praktik kan vara problematisk för både män och kvinnor. Att anmäla missförhållanden relaterat till genus kan vara problematiskt eller t.o.m. försummas.   Datainsamlingen är baserad på både skriftliga policytexter som uttrycks av Försvarsmakten, men även på intervjuer utförda med både kvinnor och män, militärer och civila. Intervjuerna och texterna har dekonstruerats och analyserats diskursivt. Mot bakgrund av vår studie argumenterar vi att olika diskurser kan påverka hur genus uttrycks i samspelet mellan människor och för hur genus konstrueras i de dagliga praktikerna. Denna studie är kritisk, men även positiv till Försvarsmakten relaterat till myndighetens arbete för att uppnå jämställdhet mellan män och kvinnor.

This study argues that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan survived the years between the signing of the Baghdad Pact in 1955 and the outbreak of the June 1967 war due primarily to the cohesion of its National Security Establishment (NSE), a ruling coalition of security and foreign policy professionals from the monarchy, the political elite, and the military. By examining the national security policymaking process in Jordan between 1955 and 1967, this study shows that NSE members often disagreed over the means of protecting Jordanian national security, but agreed on the ultimate end of security policy: the preservation of the Hashemite monarchy and the protection of the territorial integrity of Jordan. This thesis examines in detail the foreign and domestic challenges to Jordanian national security during the kingdom's most turbulent period. The thesis makes extensive use of primary sources from the British, American, and Jordanian archives, Arabic and English language memoirs, and interviews with surviving Jordanian decisionmakers. In addition, the study builds on the work of previous scholars by making use of the published literature on Jordan. The first three chapters are organised thematically, while the remaining chapters are organised chronologically.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-127). / vi, 127 leaves, bound 29 cm

This research set out to determine whether computer-aided engineering tools could be used to validate land-vehicle material during the Defence acquisition cycle. / Thesis (MEngineering)--University of South Australia, 2008.

This thesis makes the case for eliminating the distinction between types of armed conflict under international humanitarian law (IHL). Currently, IHL makes the distinction between international and non-international armed conflicts. International armed conflicts are regulated by more treaties than their non-international counterparts. Furthermore, the regulation of international armed conflicts is also considerably more comprehensive than that offered for participants in and victims of non-international armed conflicts. This bifurcation of the law was logical at the time the Geneva Conventions of 1949 were drafted and adopted, as the majority of armed conflicts prior to that point had been international in character. However, in the years following the adoption of the Conventions, there has been a proliferation of non-international armed conflicts, which presents challenges to a body of law that has few tools to adequately address such occurrences. The adoption of the Additional Protocols in 1977 went some way to addressing the legal lacunae that existed, but significant gaps still remain. Mindful this history, this thesis tracks the growth and evolution of the laws of armed conflict in the modern era, since the first document of the laws of war produced for the American Civil War. In doing so, this thesis demonstrates how the law of armed conflict has become increasingly harmonised in its application, with more rules of IHL being generally applicable in all instances of armed conflict, regardless of characterisation. This thesis then makes the argument that the time has come for the final step to be taken, the elimination of the distinction between types of armed conflict, and the complete harmonisation of the laws of war. Focusing specifically on the issue of combatants and POWs in armed conflicts, this thesis draws on considerable legal precedent, legal theory, and policy arguments to make the case that it is time for the law relating to the regulation of armed conflicts to be more uniformly applied.