Civilian Participation Research Articles

Optimizing the third mission of higher education institutions by predicting teaching behavior

PurposeThis article aims at presenting the concept of the Brazilian university’s third mission and its relevance for predicting teaching behavior. To that end, this article presents a conceptual model of that third mission in Brazil and how its relationship with stakeholders was built.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual article. The authors analyze the third mission and the Brazilian educational model to suggest predicting teaching behavior as a possibility to optimize the third mission in higher education institutions.FindingsThe Brazilian third mission is related to civilian participation, John Dewey’s democratic education management, Paulo Freire’s transformative education, Triple-Helix and the knowledge ecology. This association enables insight into the relevance of the third mission and into the need for professors’ participation.Practical implicationsRevealing the factors of behavior prediction to perform the third mission is the first mission of the theory of planned behavior. Based on these data, the theory suggests interventions without changing teaching behavior. This possibility might increase the adherence of the professor to activities related to the third mission.Originality/valueThis article contributes to studies on the development of the third mission and to the sharing of a conceptual model that is partially different from the European model, thus promoting broader results for stakeholders. The indications made here can lead to empirical studies to further approximate the higher education institutions and the various sectors of society. Moreover, there is room for investigations that aim at a conceptual convergence at the international level for the third mission, as it happens for teaching and researching.

EXAMINING THE ROLE OF SOFT POWER IN TÜRKİYE AND INDIA’S RELATIONS WITH AFGHANISTAN

This article explores how the soft power of Türkiye and India has been playing significant roles in their relationship with Afghanistan in the post-9/11 incident. After the US-led invasion of the Taliban in 2001, Türkiye, which has no land border with Afghanistan, engaged as a NATO stakeholder for post-war peacebuilding in the country. Türkiye also pursued non-military engagement through humanitarian and cultural institutions and achieved the confidence of the Afghan people. On the other hand, a diverse-natured regime at the doorstep, as well as the bitter relationship with Pakistan, triggered India to approach Afghanistan closely. India utilised its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy through sheer civilian participation in delivering humanitarian aid and collaborating in educational and cultural fields, significantly strengthening its relationship with Afghanistan. However, the Taliban’s takeover of power has narrowed India’s engagement while Türkiye’s engagement has increased, though non-militarily, having significant impacts on both countries’ relationships with Afghanistan. This study, firstly, conceptualises the term ‘soft power.’ Secondly, it explains Türkiye’s historical relations with Afghanistan and the role of soft power after 9/11 to consolidate the relations. Thirdly, it explains India’s historical relations with Afghanistan and the role of soft power in expanding the relations after 9/11. Then, the article compares the roles of soft power by state and non-state actors of Türkiye with those of India in developing their relations with Afghanistan and the challenges and prospects that Türkiye and India may face in the future.

Decolonising the Civilian in Third World National Liberation Wars

Within international humanitarian law (IHL) the legal figure of the civilian is conceived as a passive victim of war in need of protection, while civilians who become actively involved in hostilities lose their protections. The distinction between civilians and combatants is accordingly a fundamental principle informing IHL and is considered a standard of civilisation and humane warfare. This paper interrogates what happens when this standard is applied to anticolonial wars, where entire civilian populations participated in self-emancipatory violence and actively blurred this distinction in order to advance their own liberation. Advancing a theory aimed at decolonising the legal figure of the civilian, I analyse the specific nature of anticolonial violence and the call of anticolonial thinkers to deliberately undermine the distinction between civilians and combatants. Building on the ethos of civilian participation articulated by different anticolonial thinkers and adopting a ‘revisionist’ approach, I argue that the passive conception of the civilian at the heart of the Geneva Conventions and the Additional Protocols faces the risk of outlawing anticolonial violence and its political ethos of liberation. Décoloniser la figure du civil dans les guerres de libération nationale du tiers monde

Technology and the Civilianization of Warfare

AbstractThe Russia-Ukraine war demonstrates the crucial role of technology in modern warfare. The use of digital networks, information infrastructure, space technology, and artificial intelligence has distinct military advantages, but raises challenges as well. This essay focuses on the way it exacerbates a rather familiar challenge: the “civilianization of warfare.” Today's high-technology warfare lowers the threshold for civilian participation in the war effort. A notable example is the widespread use of smartphone apps by Ukrainian civilians, who thereby help the armed forces defend against Russian aggression. Through the lenses of international humanitarian law, conventional just war theory, and revisionist just war theory, this essay evaluates the normative dimensions of such civilian participation. The analysis shows that civilians can lose their legal protections when they use these apps to directly participate in hostilities, and this loss of immunity can be justified by Michael Walzer's conventional just war theory. Revisionism, however, puts the justness of the war at the forefront, and so sheds doubt on the moral liability of Ukrainian civilians. Considering the broader implications, including the blurring combatant-civilian distinction, indicates that such civilianization of warfare should not be welcomed; the risks will often outweigh the benefits. At a minimum, states ought to exercise restraint in mobilizing civilians and inform them of the implications of their actions.

Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and International Humanitarian Law: Exploring the Scope and Limitations of Civilian Participation in the Russia-Ukraine War

Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and International Humanitarian Law: Exploring the Scope and Limitations of Civilian Participation in the Russia-Ukraine War

Empowering local response and community-based disaster mitigation through legislative policies: Lessons from the Kerala floods of 2018-19.

The present paper draws on a series of qualitative studies exploring civic response and community resilience post the 2018-19 floods in Kerala, India. Data were triangulated from multiple sources and -perspectives-community leaders and key informants, rescue and relief volunteers, and survivors. This viewpoint paper aims to highlight the critical role of local volunteerism in disaster mitigation and preparedness, the cost of gaps in emboldening community response, and to suggest actionable means of maximizing civilian potential through legislative policies. The local populace are the first responders at disaster sites and play a vital role in disaster mitigation. Knowledge about local geography, community, and readily accessible resources enables community members to respond efficiently, unlike state deployed disaster task forces who need to be scaffolded into these sites. Liaisons between the state and civilian responders are necessary for informed and time-e-fficient response. Insights gleaned from interviews with the participants offer several suggestions for streamlining administrative channels and structural reforms in governance. Community response can be emboldened by adopting policies that formalize civilian participation in the state's disaster mitigation systems. Decentralization of authority to local self-governance bodies and acknowledgment of local expertise is key to fostering disaster resilient communities. This paper argues that empowering local stakeholders through legislative reforms can bridge existing gaps between community-action focused research recommendations and policy in practice. It provides a framework and actionable measures toward actualizing the call for society-inclusive disaster risk reduction practices.

The Effect of New Technology on the Concept of “Direct Participation in Hostilities” in International Humanitarian Law

ABSTRACT
 This Research is about participation in hostilities particular civilian participation in international and non-international armed conflict. According to the International Humanitarian Law when civilians directly participate in hostilities, they loss their protection right. 
 Over recent decades, because of the continued advancement of technology, the nature of warfare has changed significantly, the current war fronts are something different from the earlier battle field. Modernization of the world differentiates the strategies of wars, methods of wars and planning of achieving the military benefits. Therefore, the earlier laws do not fit with the current war front.
 It is not true to say that only Direct Participation in Hostilities (DPH) can respond adequately to current forms of participation in conflicts because nowadays there are various types of participation in wars that may not fall within the concept of direct participation such as indirect participation in hostilities. Consequently, if applied the condition of direct participation to regard a person as combatant then what will be position of people who do not directly take part such as service men.
 To answer the research questions this academic paper will explains the notion of DPH. Also, this research focuses on the elements of the DPH and then the effect of new technology on the concept of DPH in International Humanitarian Law will be argued.

Understanding Civilian Participation and its Implications: A Case Study on the Inclusion of Syria's Civilian Population in the Context of Violence

Understanding Civilian Participation and its Implications: A Case Study on the Inclusion of Syria's Civilian Population in the Context of Violence

Gendered Blame: Narratives of Participation in Genocide

This article draws upon interviews with 74 Rwandans to analyze how they explain civilian participation in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Specifically, we assess how Rwandans describe why men and women perpetrated genocide. We find that respondents commonly attribute men’s participation in the genocide to structural, external factors, such as government orders. However, respondents regularly attribute women’s participation to jealousy and other factors tied to their personalities. We also assess how the attribution of blame may impact the treatment of formerly incarcerated individuals, suggesting that gendered views of the women who committed genocide may hinder their reentry and reintegration.

Does peacekeeping by civilians work? Reducing armed violence without armed force

AbstractSince the 1990s, United Nations (UN) peacekeepers have been engaged in multidimensional activities in conflict-affected countries. The existing literature, however, focuses predominantly on the effectiveness of military and police peacekeepers involving the threat of force, and does not shed light on the effectiveness of civilian peacekeepers despite the latter's crucial role in rebuilding local livelihoods and restoring state institutions. Civilian participation in peacekeeping increases both the benefits of peaceful life and the costs of combat. Further, civilian activities, by strengthening the rule of law and political accountability mechanism, contribute to encouraging both the rebels and government to disengage from further violence. Using the original dataset of financial resources for UN peacekeeping operations in the world, from 1988 to 2019, I test hypotheses regarding the impact of civilian expenditures on battle-related deaths. Regression analysis shows that spending on the civilian component in UN peacekeeping reduces battle-related deaths on the government side inflicted by insurgents.

'I have used up my entire youth in the bush': the Comités de Autodefensa during and after the Peruvian internal armed conflict.

Youngsters participate as combatants at the forefront of armed conflicts around the globe, be it as part of state forces, as members of rebel groups, or as drivers of armed civilian resistance. This contribution explores the social trajectories of (ex-)civil self-defense militia members in Peru who fought alongside the state forces to defeat the Maoist rebels of Shining Path in the 1980 and 1990s. On the one hand, by taking the Peruvian Comités de Autodefensa (CAD) as a somewhat atypical case-study, the article aims to enhance a more nuanced understanding of youth as drivers of and participants in civil war violence which transcends the victim-perpetrator dichotomy. On the other, by analyzing the social trajectories of CAD leaders and members from their youth until the present, it seeks to gain insight into ex-combatants’ claims for recognition, reparation and citizenship in the aftermath of armed conflict. The trajectories of the CAD members demonstrate how the morality of soldiering, steered by ideas about masculinity, militarism and patriotism, gets intertwined with structural societal conditions such as the lack of educational and economic perspectives for youngsters, and the state’s failure to provide protection and security against rebel group violence to those who might need it most. In the aftermath of the conflict, militia service and the corresponding macho warrior identity form a basis of demands for inclusion by an historically marginalized rural population group. The findings on the Peruvian self-defense committees presented in this article have several implications for research and policy in the fields of Transitional Justice and Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, and open both thematic and conceptual avenues for further research into civilian participation in armed conflicts around the globe.

Digital Transnational Dissidence and State Control: A Conceptual Reflection on the Practice and Limits of Digital Transnationalism

The historical practice of citizen participation in politics was confined to elections, yet in the digital era, increasing digitalisation in everyday life has opened windows of opportunities for alternative civilian participation in the political processes, oppositionary activities being foremost among them. Individual or collective opposition parties thus today also confidently carry out political activities against governmental politics through cyber and digital spaces, and thanks to digital advances, oppositionary political participation can no longer be confined to national borders. Hence, in forms of digital transnationalism and transnational dissidence, irrespective of the connection of the articulator to the target country, people around the world criticise governmental politics and shape public perceptions in one country from abroad. Nevertheless, governments, as well, make use of digital space in taking part in transnational practices in both shaping domestic and international public opinion and challenging overseas or domestic dissident digital transnationalism with an aim to increase its control over the narrative of its politics. This paper elaborates on this paradoxical relationship – the nexus of digital transnationalism, transnational opposition and state control. The paper examines how and why cyberspace turns into a domain for transnational political opposition and, in a related way, examines state endeavours to regulate and govern digital areas as a means of overseeing the digital transnationalism of (trans)local and transnational dissidence groups. Particularly with reference to the latter, the paper deliberates on the limits of digital transnationalism against state control.

Interview with Emily Crawford

Emily Crawford is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Law School, where she teaches and researches in international law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. She has published widely in the field of international humanitarian law, including three monographs (The Treatment of Combatants and Insurgents under the Law of Armed Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2010), Identifying the Enemy: Civilian Participation in Hostilities (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Non-Binding Norms in International Humanitarian Law (Oxford University Press, 2021)), and a textbook (International Humanitarian Law (with Alison Pert, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2020)). She is an associate of the Sydney Centre for International Law, and a co-editor of the Journal of International Humanitarian Studies.

Sowing the Seeds: Why do some armed groups socialise civilians more than others during civil war?

ABSTRACT What explains variation in the intensity with which armed groups seek to socialise civilians into their ideology? This paper seeks to expand the literature on rebel governance and ideology in war to consider the ideational interaction between armed groups and civilians. A paired comparison examines the Naxalite Rebellion in India (1967-72) and the Shining Path Insurgency in Peru (1980-1992), which exhibited puzzling variation in socialisation intensity despite holding similar ideologies. I argue this variation can be explained by differences in combatant socialisation, how groups value reading- and writing-based education, and whether groups understand civilian participation as crucial for achieving victory.

Mobilizing the Masses for Genocide

Do political elites use armed groups to foster civilian participation in genocidal violence? Are armed groups employed strategically? How do they mobilize civilians? I investigate these questions using data from the Rwandan Genocide. To establish causality, I exploit exogenous variation in armed groups’ transport costs induced by weather fluctuations: the shortest distance of each village to the main road interacted with rainfall along the dirt tracks between main road and village. I find (i) 1 additional armed-group member resulted in 7.3 more civilian perpetrators; (ii) armed-group leaders employed their men strategically; and (iii) armed groups invoked civilians’ obedience. (JEL D72, D74, O17, Q54)

Militia Counterinsurgency: Perspective on the Motivations of Civilian Joint Task Force Militia Participation in Northern Nigeria

Since the year 2013, Nigeria’s northeastern region epicenter of the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency waging war for the establishment of an Islamic State has witnessed mass participation of people in a civil militia group. The militia group colloquially describing itself Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) was formed to combat the Boko Haram rebellion. Perhaps, the participation of the CJTF in the combating activities was reportedly influential in reducing the Boko Haram hostilities in most communities. Prior to the CJTF, the counterinsurgency approaches of the Nigerian governments’ Special Joint Task Force and the Multinational Joint Task Force of the Member States of Lake Chad Basin Commission was faced with lackadaisical performances. Whereas the CJTF was reportedly successful, however, the interrupted participation of the people despite the attendant human and material cost has risen suspicion among the population and the critical literature about the groups’ true motivation. This article, therefore, investigated the motivations of the CJTF in northeastern Nigeria. The study was conducted through a qualitative approach designed in a case study. The data was collected from thirteen informants from three groups - CJTF, Community Leaders and State/Local Government authorities. The technique of data collection is in-depth interviews and non-participant observation. The finding revealed personal incentive factors of monetary/material gains, and the futuristic interest of employability drives peoples’ participation. To address the economic interests of the CJTF and as a panacea to prevent the manifestation of the security threats associated with the CJTF group, the study recommends for the establishment of charity centers to receive contributions from well to do citizens to ameliorate the economic needs of the participants. The government should also propound strong legal mechanisms to regulate the activities of the CJTF militia.

국가폭력인가 집단 간 폭력인가? - 인도네시아 1965~66년 학살에 대한 해석들

Our knowledge on the operations to exterminate the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) in Indonesia after October 1, 1965 is still inadequate. We We estimate the number of victims of massacres to be between 500,000 and 1,000,000. We know that there were differences of timing and character of violence across regions, which can be attributed to the different compositions of the regional military commands and different political landscapes of the regions, in spite of the similarities in the pattern of violence. While the military played a role in encouraging and coordinating violence, civilian youth groups willingly participated in the massacres. This paper introduces the accumulated knowledge on the massacres since 1965 up until now. It sheds light on the problems of interpretations over the violence of 1965~66 - whether it can be both state violence and communal violence, how we can interpret civilian participation in the killings, whether the violence also includes persecutions against Chinese - from a perspective that accommodates experiences of perpetrators and victims in the field.

국가폭력인가 집단 간 폭력인가? - 인도네시아 1965~66년 학살에 대한 해석들

Our knowledge on the operations to exterminate the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) in Indonesia after October 1, 1965 is still inadequate. We We estimate the number of victims of massacres to be between 500,000 and 1,000,000. We know that there were differences of timing and character of violence across regions, which can be attributed to the different compositions of the regional military commands and different political landscapes of the regions, in spite of the similarities in the pattern of violence. While the military played a role in encouraging and coordinating violence, civilian youth groups willingly participated in the massacres. This paper introduces the accumulated knowledge on the massacres since 1965 up until now. It sheds light on the problems of interpretations over the violence of 1965~66 - whether it can be both state violence and communal violence, how we can interpret civilian participation in the killings, whether the violence also includes persecutions against Chinese - from a perspective that accommodates experiences of perpetrators and victims in the field.

Designing and implementing a practical prehospital emergency trauma care curriculum for lay first responders in Guatemala

BackgroundInjury disproportionately affects low-income and middle-income countries, yet robust emergency medical services are often lacking to effectively address the prehospital injury burden. A half-day prehospital emergency trauma care curriculum was...

Public Perceptions of Private Space Initiatives: How Young Adults View the SpaceX Plan to Colonize Mars

Elon Musk has sought to position his private aerospace company, SpaceX, as the future of space exploration, even as the feasibility of its initiatives remains to be seen. Although the level of support for public space programs has been well established by previous research, we know less about how people perceive private space travel initiatives, particularly those—like the SpaceX Mars colonization proposal—that involve civilian participation. Today's young people are the first generation who may find themselves or their children deciding whether to leave Earth for another planet. In this study, we compare the case Musk is making for the SpaceX colonization plan to young adults' perceptions of that plan, using data gathered from 81 college students who participated in interviews and focus groups on this topic. We argue that the rhetoric of private space initiatives has the potential to create new visions of our spacefaring future, but also new points of resistance for the civilians needed to support these initiatives. Our analysis revealed doubts regarding feasibility, concerns related to cost, and an individualized sense of risk that outweighed more generalized benefits. We conclude with implications for those seeking public support for private space initiatives, as well as plans for tracking public sentiment regarding private space travel as it changes over time.