Crime and violence are regularly seen as being ripe for politicians to turn into campaign issues and win votes. This study argues, in contrast, that success on public security is not so automatic: human rights values constrain the use of security and the winning of votes on it. Even in Latin American countries, where voters' concerns about rampant crime and violence are among the highest in the world, considerations of human rights combine with low trust in security forces to restrict the viability of the issue in key ways. Examination of presidential campaigns in Colombia in 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2010 supports this claim. Success on security is a two-step process: invoking the issue and then gaining voter support on the topic. Usability depends on the absence of recent repression and the degree of organization of security threats. Then, winning votes on it depends on having a civilian background, a campaign that balances security with other issues, and messages of careful enforcement. These messages of careful enforcement promise targeted, deliberate use of security forces' enforcement activities in a way that pays attention to human rights, rather than promising unbridled enforcement, increased punishment, or programs of long-term prevention. This study therefore shows how candidates are forced to walk a fine line between promising to establish order and promising to protect basic rights and liberties. These findings are powerful, providing an understanding of public security in electoral campaigns that maintains a much closer fit with empirical reality than existing research. The results also provide a critique of the sociological school of vote choice and points to ways in which ownership of the issue of security may be leased away. Furthermore, because the results are driven by the spread of human rights values, the results demonstrate the importance of quick shifts in political culture as a factor that explains changes in political patterns. / text

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A decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuses over the past decade? The Human Security Report 2005 uncovers surprising trends in global conflict.

<p>The objective of the study was to conduct an internal validation on miniSTR systems and apply it to cases received from the South African Missing Persons Task Team (SAMPTT). This was prompted by the fact that miniSTR systems have been shown to out perform some of the commercial kits available in the time of the study and provide an alternative to mtDNA when analysing degraded DNA from skeletal remains and that the DNA extracted from skeletal remains received from the SAMPTT would be degraded due to the remains generally being fragmented or charred and buried for many years. The miniSTR loci chosen for validation comprised the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) thirteen core loci and were arranged into four triplexes and one uniplex.</p>

<p>This thesis falls within the category of historical studies that is concerned with a difficult legacy of South Africa̕s liberation struggle, namely the practice of necklacing that accompanied it. My interest in the practice is limited to its emergence and politicising as it relates to the ANC, the UDF and the apartheid state. The ANC and the UDF overwhelmingly understood the practice as resistance, yet ambivalently so. The question guiding this thesis therefore asks: how is necklacing written into the narrative of struggle history? Here I refer to its (re)representation, its (re)characterisation, its (re)articulation in a wider discursive war of propaganda strategies that was waged through the interplay of an apartheid state discourse and what I consider to be an official non-state discourse, that of the ANC and the UDF.</p>

Though the political unrest in African schools has been broadly viewed as arising from the power struggle between the state and the liberation forces, in rural areas the question of violence should also be looked into in the context of the emergence of conflicting views between Inkatha and the African National Congress (ANC). Political contradictions have emerged for various reasons. One of the reasons has been the desire to preserve the traditional political system, the tribal authority system. The liberation forces view the present forms of traditional political structures as parts of apartheid political organs, in that, since the introduction of the Bantu Authority system in the early 1950s and later on the formation of homeland governments in the early 1970s, they have been performing the functions assigned to them by the state. However, despite the reality that traditional political structures are functional to the state, they, at the same time, remain the authentic and legitimate political organs representing the aspirations of a significant fraction of rural communities. What needs to be taken seriously into consideration in analysing the rural political situation is the fact that the apartheid policy was ingeniously designed and predicated upon a tradition which was still held in esteem when it was subordinated by the colonising nations. This tradition was then enshrined in the apartheid programme, or, put differently, apartheid was camouflaged by it. Therefore it is a simplistic view to over emphasise the functional role of the traditional political system. The desire to preserve the present form of political system could be attributed either to the success of the policy of separate development or the fear for the annihilation of traditional structures in the new political dispensation or both. This study looks at the political dynamics and how it has precipitated violent confrontation among the oppressed people. It focuses on how schools in rural areas of KwaZulu have been affected. Principals were asked to express their views on their perceptions of violence. The conclusion drawn from respondents is that pupils are defiant because parents and teachers have been unable to fight for the rights of their children. For example they have been unable to provide them with adequate education. The author ends by recommending that parents and teachers should take up their rightful places in society. That is they should take upon themselves the responsibility of providing adequate education for the children. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, 1992.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

Resilience and post trauma responses often coexist, however, for the past decades, the trauma paradigm has served as the dominant explanatory framework for human suffering in post-conflict environments, while the resilience of individuals and communities affected by mass violence has not been given equal prominence. Consequently, mental health interventions in post-conflict zones often fail to respond to local realities and are ill equipped to foster local strengths. Drawing primarily from trauma, feminist and structural violence theories, this study strengthens understanding of adult resilience to traumatic exposure by examining the resilience of Quechua women in the aftermath of the political violence in Peru (1980-2000), and their endurance of racially and gender-targeted violence. The study uses a cross sectional survey to examine the resilience and posttraumatic responses of 151 Quechua women. Participants were recruited from an urban setting and three rural villages in Ayacucho, Peru. The study examines the associations between resilience, past exposure to violence, current life stress and post-trauma related symptoms as well as the individual and community factors associated with the resilience of Quechua women. In doing so, this study makes a unique contribution by simultaneously examining posttraumatic responses and resilience in a post-conflict society, an area with a dearth of research. Results indicate that resilience was not associated with overall posttraumatic stress related symptoms, but instead higher resilience was associated with lower level of avoidance symptoms and therefore with lesser likelihood of chronic symptoms. Findings also demonstrate that enhanced resilience was associated with women’s participation in civic associations, as well as being a returnee of mass displacement. Lower resilience was instead associated with lower levels of education, absence of income generated from a formal employment and the experience of sexual violence during the conflict. These results were triangulated with qualitative findings, which show that work, family, religion, and social participation are enhancing factors of resilience. The study highlights the courage and resilience of Quechua women despite persistent experiences of everyday violence. The importance to situate trauma and resilience within historical processes of oppression and social transformation as well as other implications for social work practice and research are discussed.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-184). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Flinders University, School of Political and International Studies. / Typescript bound. Includes bibliographical references: (leaves 221-238) Also available online.