Event Of Conflict Research Articles

Reducing the Costs of Automation Failure by Providing Voluntary Automation Checking Tools.

We investigated the extent to which a voluntary-use range and bearing line (RBL) tool improves return-to-manual performance when supervising high-degree conflict detection automation in simulated air traffic control. High-degree automation typically benefits routine performance and reduces workload, but can degrade return-to-manual performance if automation fails. We reasoned that providing a voluntary checking tool (RBL) would support automation failure detection, but also that automation induced complacency could extend to nonoptimal use of such tools. Participants were assigned to one of three conditions, where conflict detection was either performed: manually, with RBLs available to use (Manual + RBL), automatically with RBLs (Auto + RBL), or automatically without RBLs (Auto). Voluntary-use RBLs allowed participants to reliably check aircraft conflict status. Automation failed once. RBLs improved automation failure detection - with participants intervening faster and making fewer false alarms when provided RBLs compared to not (Auto + RBL vs Auto). However, a cost of high-degree automation remained, with participants slower to intervene to the automation failure than to an identical manual conflict event (Auto + RBL vs Manual + RBL). There was no difference in RBL engagement time between Auto + RBL and Manual + RBL conditions, suggesting participants noticed the conflict event at the same time. The cost of automation may have arisen from participants' reconciling which information to trust: the automation (which indicated no conflict and had been perfectly reliable prior to failing) or the RBL (which indicated a conflict). Providing a mechanism for checking the validity of high-degree automation may facilitate human supervision of automation.

Clashes and crowds: protests, riots, and other mass gathering events in North America 2021–2022

ObjectiveThis study aimed to provide an overview of the scope and challenges of historic events and help better prepare emergency healthcare services for future similar mass gathering events. Study designThis was a retrospective descriptive analysis of protest and conflict events in North America from 2021 to 2022. IntroductionRecent protests, riots, and other conflict events in North America have highlighted the increasing challenges hospital-based and prehospital healthcare providers face. This study provides a retrospective descriptive analysis of protest and conflict events in North America from 2021 to 2022, which may aid emergency healthcare services in understanding the scope and challenges of historic events and help better prepare for future similar mass gathering events. MethodsData collection was performed using a retrospective database search through the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) database. The ACLED database was searched using the internal database search functions for recorded events that occurred in North America from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022. Date, event type, event subtype, the country of incident, and fatality numbers were extracted. The results were exported into an Excel spreadsheet and analyzed independently by L.C., H.S., and R.H. ResultsThere were a total of 52,529 recorded events of political conflict in North America, with 30,269 events in 2021 and 29,260 in 2022. Political conflict events included protests (40,934, 68.8%), violence against civilians (11,532, 19.4%), strategic developments (2,819, 4.7%), battles (2,293, 3.9%), riots (1,909, 3.2%), and remote violence (42, 0.1%). Violence against civilians caused the highest fatalities (13,466, 82.6%), followed by battles (2,662, 16.3%), riots (111, 0.7%), strategic developments, remote violence, and protests (57, 6, and 3 respectively). ConclusionMexico and the United States accounted for most of the political conflicts in North America across 2021 and 2022. In Mexico, protests and violence against civilians were the most common types of conflict, with the latter accounting for the comparatively high fatality compared with the other countries. Battles in Mexico between cartels were the most deadly political conflicts recorded in North America.

Electoral Violence in Nigeria: Insights From Off-Cycle Subnational Elections

There is a popular assumption that off-cycle subnational elections should be better governed and more peaceful than general elections. This position is premised on the notion that limited geographical and demographical scope of such elections offers the national electoral body, security agencies and other key actors in electoral governance the opportunities to concentrate resources and energies in a given jurisdiction for maximum efficiencies. These have encouraged advocacy to unbundle the Electoral Management Body, namely the Independent National Electoral Commission by decentralising electoral governance. However, this assumption has not been subjected to adequate academic scrutiny. This study, therefore, examines comparatively, records of violence in off-cycle subnational elections conducted in Edo, Kogi and Ondo States between 2019 and 2020, and those of Nigeria’s 2019 general elections. The study is descriptive by design, with data largely extracted from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project and analysed using mixed method.

High-speed mobile networks and police repression during the COVID-19 pandemic: the case of Nigeria

PurposeGovernment repression against civilians while enforcing COVID-19 related lockdowns was widely reported in Africa. At the same time, many have claimed that high-speed (4G) mobile network proliferation provide an accountability mechanism that may constrain police abuses. This study focused on Nigeria to examine (1) the effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on police repression and (2) whether widespread high-speed mobile data networks constrain police repression.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Database (ACLED) and the Mobile Coverage Database, this study used difference-in-differences (DID) and triple difference (DDD) estimation on a sample of 423,925 observations (local government area-days) between January 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020 to estimate the causal effects of COVID-19 lockdowns and high-speed (4G) mobile data on police repression.FindingsLockdowns increased certain forms of police repression in areas with substantial high-speed (4G) mobile networks. Separate from the lockdowns, widespread 4G network increased police repression even without lockdowns.Research limitations/implicationsProliferation of high-speed mobile networks in Nigeria appears to facilitate, rather than constrain, police repression. It is possible that high-speed mobile data networks allow police to detect and repress citizen behaviors, rather than permitting citizens to correct repressive police behaviors.Originality/valueAlthough many studies have explored the COVID-19 pandemic and police behavior in Western countries, only a few have examined its effects in states with even more troubled policing institutions, including those in sub-Saharan Africa, using DID and DDD estimation.

Ethnic federalism, conflict, and displacement in Ethiopia’s Metekel Zone

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine conflict and displacement in one of Ethiopia’s conflict hotspot areas, namely Metekel. The authors examine if ethnic federalism has negatively contributed to these conflicts and if so how. By examining the conflict and displacement events between April 2018 when Ethiopia under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed started its latest political reform and August 2021 when data collection for this article ended, the authors argue that those conflict events are embedded into the nature of the federal system. The design of the federal system divides communities into ‘indigenous’ and ‘non-indigenous’, which creates a fertile ground for conflicts. Divergent political forces manipulate such divisions in society. Such internal factor for conflict is also manipulated by inter-state insurgencies and regional power players. Taming the conflict in Metekel or the country at large may require taming the political system itself because it is based on divisive and exploitative ethnic federalism that fosters conflict among ethnic groups. To develop this article, we collected data through desk reviews and interviews between April 2018 and August 2021.

Discovering the mesoscale for chains of conflict.

Conflicts, like many social processes, are related events that span multiple scales in time, from the instantaneous to multi-year development, and in space, from one neighborhood to continents. Yet, there is little systematic work on connecting the multiple scales, formal treatment of causality between events, and measures of uncertainty for how events are related to one another. We develop a method for extracting causally related chains of events that addresses these limitations with armed conflict. Our method explicitly accounts for an adjustable spatial and temporal scale of interaction for clustering individual events from a detailed data set, the Armed Conflict Event & Location Data Project. With it, we discover a mesoscale ranging from a week to a few months and tens to hundreds of kilometers, where long-range correlations and nontrivial dynamics relating conflict events emerge. Importantly, clusters in the mesoscale, while extracted from conflict statistics, are identifiable with mechanism cited in field studies. We leverage our technique to identify zones of causal interaction around conflict hotspots that naturally incorporate uncertainties. Thus, we show how a systematic, data-driven, and scalable procedure extracts social objects for study, providing a scope for scrutinizing and predicting conflict and other processes.

Expanding the Coverage of Conflict Event Datasets: Three Proofs of Concept

ABSTRACT Many contemporary studies on political violence/social unrest rely on conflict event datasets derived primarily from major international/national news reports. Yet, a large body of research identifies systematic patterns of ‘missingness’ in these data, calling into question statistical results drawn from them. In this project, we explore three specific opportunities for additional data collection to help recover systematically excluded events and to potentially assist in addressing resulting bias. We find that all three approaches result in additional and often systematically different material than that reported in news-based datasets, and we reflect on the advantages and drawbacks of these approaches.

War in Rhodesia (1965-1979): fight against terrorists or civil conflict?

The article is devoted to the study of the war between the Rhodesian government and the black rebels from 1965 to 1979. The relevance of the work is due to the lack of fundamental research on these events in modern Russian historiography. The object of the study is the armed conflict in the territory of the Rhodesia, which took place in 1965-1979. The subject of the study is the activities of the rebel organizations that opposed the white government of the country. The author studied in detail the main events of the war in Rhodesia. Also, the work defines the role of external influence on the parties to the conflict under consideration, special attention is paid to the study of terrorist acts that were committed by members of rebel organizations. Based on the study, it can be concluded that the war in Rhodesia (1965-1979) was a civil conflict, while also being a local conflict within the global confrontation between capitalist and socialist countries. At the same time, the actions of the rebel organizations were by no means just a struggle for independence, but were accompanied by bloody terrorist acts against the civilian population.The scientific novelty of the article lies in the study of the main events of the military conflict, as well as in the study of the methods of fighting the rebels against the government of Rhodesia. The author's special contribution to the study of the topic is a detailed description of the terrorist acts in Rhodesia that were committed by members of the rebel organizations.

Flight Test Analysis of UTM Conflict Detection Based on a Network Remote ID Using a Random Forest Algorithm

In an area where unmanned aerial system (UAS) traffic is high, a conflict detection system is one of the important components for the safety of UAS operations. A novel UAS traffic management (UTM) monitoring application was developed, including a conflict detection system using the inverted teardrop area detection based on real-time flight data transmitted from the network remote identification (Remote ID) modules. This research aimed to analyze the performance of the UTM-monitoring application based on flight test data using statistical and machine learning approaches. The flight tests were conducted using several types of small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) controlled by a human pilot using a Taiwan cellular communication network in suburban and rural areas. Two types of scenarios that involved a stationary, on-the-ground intruder and a flying intruder were used to simulate a conflict event. Besides the statistical method calculating the mean and standard deviation, the random forest algorithm, including regressor and classifier modules, was used to analyze the flight parameters and timing parameters of the flight tests. The result indicates that the processing time of the UTM application was the most significant parameter to the conflict warning parameter, besides the relative distance and height between UAVs. In addition, the latency time was higher for the flight in the rural area than the suburban area and also higher for data transmitted from the flying position than the ground position. The findings of our study can be used as a reference for aviation authorities and other stakeholders in the development of future UTM systems.

Firms amid conflict: Performance, production inputs, and market competition

We study the effect of conflict on firms’ economic performance and the underlying mechanisms. We develop a simple theoretical framework in which conflict reduces a firm’s output, induces input substitution, and increases firms’ exit. In our empirical analysis, we combine an original dataset of Libyan firms and geolocalized data on conflict events during the Second Libyan Civil War to show that, in line with the predictions of the model, conflict reduces a firm’s revenues and increases exit, relatively more for firms intensive in foreign inputs. We also document that, conditional on survival, the negative effect of conflict on revenues is non-linear, with its marginal effect decreasing as conflict intensity increases. Two mechanisms drive this result: the heterogeneous conflict-induced reduction in the availability of production inputs and the weaker market competition due to the conflict-induced decrease in the number of a firm’s competitors.

Fish to fight: Does catching more fish increase conflicts in Indonesia?

To what extent do marine-based economic activities influence the onset of violent conflict? Despite ongoing debate over several decades around the relationship between natural resources and violent conflict, little of the relevant research has addressed the marine environment. Based on satellite data in Indonesia, this paper exploited geographical variations in ocean productivity to provide new evidence on the relationship between fisheries and violent conflict. Using a search-by-radius approach, we compiled a sample of 757 cells to represent spatial interactions and spillovers between land-based conflicts and catch landings on the sea. We found that both industrial and non-industrial catches exhibit a statistically significant positive influence on the occurrence of conflict events. Additionally, increased illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) catches are more likely than legal catches to cause violent conflict. An increase in fish catches in Indonesian waters fuels conflict of every kind, among which protests and riots are most sensitive to fisheries while fighting and terrorism are least sensitive. Overall, these empirical findings support the hypothesis that increased competition for common-pool resources contributes to the onset of violent conflict.

Agent Based Modeling of the Spread of Social Unrest Using Infectious Disease Models

Prior research suggests that the timing and location of social unrest may be influenced by similar unrest activities in another nearby region, potentially causing a spread of unrest activities across space and time. In this paper, we model the spread of social unrest across time and space using a novel approach, grounded in agent-based modeling (ABM) . In it, regions (geographic polygons) are represented as agents that transition from one state to another based on changes in their environment. Our approach involves (1) creating a vector for each region/agent based on socio-demographic, infrastructural, economic, geographic, and environmental (SIEGE) factors, (2) formulating a neighborhood distance function to identify an agent's neighbors based on geospatial distance and SIEGE proximity, (3) designing transition probability equations based on two distinct compartmental models—i.e., the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) and the Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible (SIS) models, and (4) building a ground truth for evaluating the simulations. We use ABM to determine the individualized probabilities of each region/agent to transition from one state to another. The models are tested using the districts of three states in India as agents at a monthly scale for 2016-2019. For ground truth of unrest events, we use the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) dataset. Our findings include that (1) the transition probability equations are viable, (2) the agent-based modeling of the spread of social unrest is feasible while treating regions as agents (Brier's score < 0.25 for two out of three regions), and (3) the SIS model performs comparatively better than the SIR model.

Особливості професійного праворозуміння

Abstract. The relevance of the mentioned issues lies in the analysis of the approaches to the interpretation of legal understanding as a key category of jurisprudence available in the legal doctrine. The nature of professional legal understanding as its separate level (type) is revealed. The peculiarities of the professional legal understanding of practicing lawyers in various legal families of today are outlined. It was determined that the dynamics of changes in the life of modern society, its increasing individualization and globalization are reflected in the radical transformation of legal reality, affect the entire legal toolkit and professional training of lawyers. In the context of such changes, the issue of professional legal understanding as a praxeological basis of practical legal activity acquires a new vision. The problem of professional legal understanding is extremely important and complex, as it is not reduced to simple knowledge of national and international law and the use of this knowledge in the process of solving specific legal cases. Legal activity requires a combination of abstract and concrete, highlighting the legal aspect of any problem under consideration, generalization and classification of various legally significant phenomena, events and facts. It was concluded that the semantic characteristics of law and the profession of a lawyer are always connected with the possibilities of preventing the occurrence of conflict situations, and in the event of conflicts, achieving their optimal resolution. Just as the purpose of law from its inception in ancient society to the present day is to ensure the integrity of human existence from the clan or tribe in ancient society to the family and the state in modern life. If the scientific-theoretical understanding of law involves the achievement of systematization, orderliness, and certainty of legal norms, then professional understanding of law focuses on its individualized forms, which involve the active, creative influence of legal practitioners, etc. The formation, functioning and development of professional legal understanding are significantly influenced not only, or even sometimes not so rational, as irrational moments (aspects) inherent in the individual creativity of subjects of practical legal activity. Within the understanding of the essence of law is the primary source of the problem of legal science as a whole. Throughout the centuries-old history of the genesis of law, scientific interest in it does not fade away, but, on the contrary, is constantly growing.

Armed conflict exposure and mental health: examining the role of imperceptible violence

ABSTRACT Armed conflict exposure is associated with multiple mental health problems. However, more needs to be known about the differential effects of particular modalities of armed conflict violence and war methods on mental health. This study a) examined the modalities of violence employed in the Colombian armed conflict and b) assessed their association with mental health problems in armed conflict survivors. Using armed conflict data from the Colombian Armed Conflict Events Information System, we identified three violence modalities: armed confrontations, indiscriminate attacks, and selective violence. Descriptive statistics showed that selective violence generated most (86%) of the 333,219 victims of the Colombian armed conflict between 1996 and 2016. A subsample of armed conflict survivors (n = 551) from the 2015 Colombian Mental Health Survey was used to assess the association of each modality of violence with depression and anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and substance abuse. Adjusted Odds Ratios (aOR) (p < .05, 95% CI) showed that survivors of selective violence crimes such as forced disappearance of loved ones, kidnapping, sexual violence, and massacres were at increased risk of experiencing Common Mental Health Disorders, PTSD symptoms, and hazardous drinking. Identifying those at elevated risk for developing mental health problems and substance misuse among survivors of armed conflict may help to use limited resources more effectively.

The Balance Between Benefits and Harms: An Applied Study on Some Financial Transactions Related to the Corona Pandemic

The research examines the balancing between benefits and harms, and its applications to some financial transactions related to the Corona pandemic. This is achieved by explaining the reality of the benefits and harms, and the rules of weighting between them in the event of conflict, and then addressing some of their applications related to the Corona pandemic in the field of financial transactions, such as monopoly, pricing, closing markets, and how the benefits and harms are balanced in judging them. The research adopted the descriptive and analytical method, presenting scientific material and jurisprudential applications, in addition to defining and analyzing them. Among the most prominent findings of the research is the importance of careful consideration and balanced jurisprudence between benefits and harms when judging the calamities of the Corona pandemic, especially those related to financial transactions.&#x0D; &#x0D;

From (Moral) Status (of the Frozen Embryo) to (Relational) Contract and Back Again to (Relational Moral) Status

The existing hundreds of thousands of unused frozen embryos, coupled with the skyrocketing rate of divorce, raise numerous moral, legal, social, and religious dilemmas. Among the most daunting problems are the moral and legal status of the frozen embryo; what should its fate be in the event of conflicts between the progenitors?; and whether contractual regulation of frozen embryos is valid andenforceable. This Article applies relational ethics, drawing on, inter alia, the relational contract to resolve such intertwined dilemmas. Applying this theory, this Article will challenge the conventional dichotomous conceptualization of the frozen embryo as either a person or a nonperson. This Article will discuss why the legal and moral status of the frozen embryo should be determined as a derivative of the desired or undesired relationship between the progenitors, articulated in a mandatory disposition agreement. The progenitor who is interested in using the frozen embryo and bringing the child into the world defines it as a person, whereas the progenitor who opposes its usage determines its status as a nonperson – an object. Consequently, this Article argues that in the event of an explicit disposition agreement, the contract should govern whether the frozen embryo will be used, discarded, adopted and/or earmarked for research. The relational contract provides adequate contractual devices to address any problems arising from changed circumstances or changes of heart. In those cases where there is no explicit disposition agreement, or when the explicit agreement does not stipulate what should be done with the embryos under special or unanticipated circumstances, the party interested in using the embryo should prevail. The recalcitrant progenitor, who is not interested in using the embryo and becoming a parent, should not be subject to a legal determination of parental status and its attendant responsibilities.

Tolstoy’s Philosophy of Non-Violence: A Discourse

The title of this paper is Tolstoy’s Philosophy of Non-violence: A Discourse and the major thesis projected in this research is the idea that the actualization of peace, as demonstrated in Tolstoy’s philosophy of non-violence, requires the adoption of a revolutionary approach which has the potential of terminating the vicious circle of violence. Conflict is evidently an inevitable social phenomenon. Consequently, every event of conflict avails us of an opportunity to convert a seemingly destructive occurrence into a constructive outcome. This constructive conversion of conflict is what Tolstoy sought to achieve. This approach to conflict does not only ensure the sustenance of peace but it promotes harmonious social coexistence and entrenches the culture of non-violence. The benefits of non-violence cannot however be overemphasized and every pragmatic method for achieving peace should be studied. This constitutes the rationale behind this paper’s investigation of Tolstoy’s methodology of non-violence. Though most pundits would be aversed to the Tolstoyian method as impracticable, but Tolstoy was inspired by the example of Christ in the Bible and he believed that a passionate commitment to the Biblical teachings of Christ requires that Christians must imitate the examples of Christ.&#x0D; The paper utilizes the method of analysis to expose the conflict resolution formula of non-resistance to evil which is the intellectual ferment from which Tolstoy draws inspiration for his philosophy of non-violence. The major problem of this work is to expose the conflict resolution method espoused by Tolsoy and the central objective of the paper is to showcase the method of active passivism; borne out of the law of love, as an instrument of conquering violence in contradistinction to fascism which is based on the law of force and can only generate an unending spiral of violence. Whereas Tolstoy’s approach is contradictory to fascism in the sense that it absolutely negates the use of coercion and oppression, his non-violent non-resistance to evil is however a contrary to the non-violent resistance principle adopted by most freedom fighters like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jnr. Tolstoy’s idea, critically assessed, may be appraised as containing the recipe for the multiplication of social evil; an outcome which Tolstoy vehemently aimed at averting and banishing through his modus operandi.

Expressway Rear-End Conflict Pattern Classification and Modeling

The study of expressway rear-end conflicts is of great significance to analyze driving behaviors and improve traffic safety. However, research on the classification and modeling of conflict patterns is still lacking. This study aimed to explore conflict patterns and their relationship with influencing factors. The conflict data used in this study was extracted from a trajectory data set that collected 3 h of data during a morning peak hour on an expressway in Shanghai, China. An improved k-means algorithm, which can automatically obtain the optimal number of clusters, was used to classify the conflict events into six conflict patterns. The conflict patterns were interpreted from five aspects: risk level, speed of risk-changing, risk-avoidance response, risk-avoidance attitude, and risk-avoidance action. Furthermore, a multivariate Poisson-lognormal (MVPLN) model considering spatial–temporal correlation was applied. The relationship between the independent variables and the number of each conflict pattern within the spatial–temporal unit was obtained. The root mean square error of the MVPLN model was 0.81. Compared with univariate Poisson model, univariate negative binomial model, and univariate Poisson-lognormal model, the MVPLN model improved by 73.8%, 81.3%, and 29.6% in accuracy respectively. The results of this study can classify expressway rear-end conflict patterns and obtain the number of each conflict pattern within spatial–temporal units using available traffic data.

Toward the remote monitoring of armed conflicts.

The war in Ukraine has pushed the role of satellite imagery in armed conflicts into the spotlight. For a long time, satellite images were primarily used for military and intelligence purposes, but today they permeate every aspect of armed conflicts. Their importance in influencing the course of armed conflicts will further grow as progress in deep learning makes automated analysis progressively possible. This article assesses the state of the research working toward the remote monitoring of armed conflicts and highlights opportunities to increase the positive societal impact of future research efforts. First, we map the existing literature, categorizing studies in terms of conflict events that are covered, conflict context and scope, techniques, and types of satellite imagery used to identify conflict events. Second, we discuss how these choices affect opportunities to develop applications for human rights, humanitarian, and peacekeeping actors. Third, we provide an outlook, assessing promising paths forward. While much focus has been on high spatial resolution imagery, we demonstrate why research on freely available satellite images with moderate spatial but high temporal resolution can lead to more scalable and transferable options. We argue that research on such images should be prioritized, as it will have a greater positive impact on society, and we discuss what types of applications may soon become feasible through such research. We call for concerted efforts to compile a large dataset of nonsensitive conflict events to accelerate research toward the remote monitoring of armed conflicts and for interdisciplinary collaboration to ensure conflict-sensitive monitoring solutions.

Making Room for the Solution: A Critical and Applied Phenomenology of Conflict Space

ABSTRACT This essay discusses the normative significance of the spatial dimension of conflict events. Drawing on qualitative interviews conducted with political actors – politicians, officials, and activists – and on Heidegger’s account of spatiality in Being and Time, I will argue that the experience of conflict space is co-constituted by the respective conflict participants, as well as the location where the conflict unfolds. Location and conflict parties’ (self-)understandings ‘open up’ a space that enables and constrains ways of seeing and acting. Yet, a purely transcendental phenomenology will remain oblivious to the quasi-transcendental, societal structures of power that shape a person’s conflict experience. To illuminate these facets of the phenomenon, phenomenology has to join forces with critical theory. Introducing Garland-Thomson’s feminist distinction of fit/misfit, I will illustrate how power shapes conflict space in manifold ways. The essay thereby fills a gap in the philosophical literature that rarely analyses political conflict as a phenomenon sui generis.