Peace Program Research Articles

The Solidification of US Government's Hostile Policy Towards North Korea from the Perspective of North Korean Nuclear Issue

The key to solve the North Korean nuclear issue is the United States, but the United States never gives North Korea enough credit. The United States policy framework on the North Korean nuclear issue formulated by the last three governments has shown a clear hostility. In the military field, the United States and South Korea have held regular military exercises for several years on the grounds of self-defence; in the economic field, they have imposed sanctions against the North Korean in various fields and imposed strong unilateral sanctions, maliciously attacking the North Korean economy; in the diplomatic field, on the one hand, they have emphasized international cooperation, on the other hand, it transferred the responsibility of the North Korean nuclear issue to China. The lack of attention to North Korean nuclear issue has made it difficult for the United States to build a new peace and dialogue program; the United States has not played a leading role in guiding North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. The solidification of the hostile policy made the normalization of the U.S.-North Korea relations a long way off as well as slowed down the negotiations of the North Korean Nuclear Issue directly.

The Art and Science of Urban Gun Violence Reduction: Evidence from the Advance Peace Program in Sacramento, California

Urban gun violence is a critical human health and social justice issue. Strategies to reduce urban gun violence are increasingly being taken out of the domain of police and into community-based programs. One such community-driven gun violence reduction program analyzed here is called Advance Peace. Advance Peace (AP) uses street outreach workers as violence interrupters and adult mentors to support the decision making and life chances of those at the center of urban gun violence. We reported on the impact Advance Peace had on gun violence and program participants in the City of Sacramento, California, from 2018–2019. Using an interrupted time series model, we attributed a gun violence reduction of 18% city wide and up to 29% in one of the AP target neighborhoods from the intervention. We also found that of the 50 participants in the Advance Peace Sacramento program 98% were alive, 90% did not have a new gun charge or arrest, 84% reported an improved outlook on life, all received cognitive behavioral therapy, and 98% reported that their AP outreach worker was one of the most important adults in their life. Advance Peace is a viable community-driven, urban gun violence, and healing-focused program.

Local Participation at Stake: Between Emancipatory Goals and Co-Option Strategies. The Case of Territorially Focused Development Programs in Colombia

Objective/Context: We examine how participatory peacebuilding projects create emancipatory outcomes by investigating the implementation of Territorially Focused Development Programs (Programas de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial, PDETs), one of the centerpieces of the Colombian peace process. We define “emancipatory outcomes” as allocations of decision-making power (e.g., control over budgets, project priorities) and/or material benefits (e.g., new infrastructure, public goods) to marginalized groups in society. Methodology: The article is based on a combination of ethnographic peace research and semi-structured interviews with key government and civil actors involved in the design and implementation of the PDETs both at the national and local levels. We focus on the PDET of the department of Chocó, where both authors conducted ethnographic work during the design and implementation of the peace program between January 2018 and March 2020. Conclusions: We argue that the emancipatory outcomes of a participatory project are never fixed in advance: the degree to which such projects serve bottom-up, emancipatory goals rather than top-down state expansion are contingent on the outcomes of contestation and cooperation processes between actors within and outside the state. Originality: Critical scholarship tends to understand participatory peacebuilding programs as top-down programs to co-opt grassroots actors and expand the reach of the state rather than emancipatory projects that create real shifts in existing political settlements. Our contribution lies in the study of the dynamics of these peace processes to identify the potential spaces they open for emancipatory goals.

Діяльність вишеградської групи в розрізі українсько-польських відносин у військовій сфері на сучасному етапі

Проаналізовано форми, методи та діяльність членів Вишеградської групи щодо перспектив співпраці з Україною в розрізі українсько-польських відносин у військовій сфері. Досліджено вплив членів Вишеградської групи на перспективи інтеграції України у Північноатлантичний альянс (далі – НАТО) та Європейський Союз (далі – ЄС).

Fulfilling of nuclear safeguards requirements for nuclear facilities at the nuclear materials authority and its role in completing the nuclear infrastructure in Egypt

The object of research is applying the requirements of nuclear safeguards to the processing and mining facilities through which the Nuclear Materials Authority (NMA). One of the most problematic places is the NMA carries out its related nuclear activities as the body responsible for managing and operating those facilities, which must have a prominent role in imposing physical protection on these materials to protect them. During use, storage, or internal transportation, NMA should take all security and legal measures and precautions to prevent Nuclear materials from any seizure and its recovery in the event of any seizure. In the course of the research it is shown that the implementation of these requirements requires obtaining the necessary license to practice these activities, and that these activities are subject to the control of the Nuclear and Radiation Control Authority, by establishing a system for the safety and security of this nuclear equipment and materials. So that the system covers all equipment, tools, tasks, supplies, equipment, and materials present in any of the Authority’s projects and sectors Scientific. As a result of the research we have reached the importance of applying nuclear safeguards to nuclear facilities in completing the nuclear infrastructure in Egypt and completing the construction of the Egyptian peaceful nuclear program considering international standards issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In the future, the proposed approach is In the future, the proposed approach is to establish a general framework for the application of nuclear safeguards procedures to the processing and mining facilities of the NMA. These safeguards are applied as a basis for completing the nuclear legislative infrastructure, the safety of Nuclear Facilities and fulfilling the requirements of IAEA. This is done by establishing a specialized unit that includes many engineers, geologists and chemists to collect all engineering and technological data, information, designs, and drawings for all nuclear and radiological facilities, activities, and practices existing at the authority under the safety standards written about equipment, tools, devices, supplies, and tasks.

The Limited Scope of the Democratic Peace: What We Are Missing

AbstractThe democratic peace program arguably constitutes one of the most successful empirical research programs in the discipline. Its main empirical finding motivated extensive theorizing (e.g., challengers, as well as distinct theoretical enterprises), sparked further debate about how to conceptualize and operationalize democracy, and shifted the foreign policy discourse, particularly in the United States. Lost in these successes, however, is a critical unanswered question: how much interstate peace can the democratic peace potentially explain? We explore these limits (i.e., scope, or empirical coverage) in this study. We first identify the peaceful dyadic relationships—namely those that never go to war across long historical periods. We next classify these dyads as democratic (i.e., both members are democracies) or nondemocratic. The empirical analysis then examines this democracy–peace relationship across three time periods, three distinct samples (which address potential false positives), two definitions of “peace,” and two thresholds for democracy. Regardless of how we approach the data, only 4–26 percent of all peaceful dyads qualify as “democratic.” Because we control for the obvious trivial explanation (insufficient capabilities due to distance), some other (set of) factor(s) must account for the majority of interstate peace. We close with a discussion about where future research might search for these factors, as well as the larger policy implications of the study.

Building the Casaccia gamma field. Nuclear energy, Cold War and the transnational circulation of scientific knowledge in Italy (1955-1960)

The article will focus on the mutagenesis programme in agriculture implemented by the Italian Atomic Energy Commission, starting from 1955, through the establishment of a specific technological and experimental system: the so-called "gamma field", a piece of agricultural land with a radioisotope of Cobalt-60 at the centre. The Cobalt-60 would emit constant radiation, which would bombard the specimens planted in concentric circles around the source, inducing genetic mutations. The Italian gamma field went into operation in January 1960 at the Casaccia Laboratory, about twenty miles north of Rome, with a radiation device made available by the US Government for the Atoms for Peace programme This article will analyse, first of all, how the American experimental model of mutation breeding was translated into the Italian context, becoming instrumental for the establishment of plant genetics within the local academic system; secondly, it will describe how the sociotechnical imaginary embodied by the gamma field was part and parcel of this process of disciplinebuilding and scientific demarcation.

SILICON CARBIDE NEUTRON DETECTOR PROTOTYPE TESTING AT THE JSI TRIGA REACTOR FOR ENHANCED BORDER AND PORTS SECURITY

In 2016, the “E-SiCure” project (standing for “Engineering Silicon Carbide for Border and Port Security”), funded by the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme was launched. The main objective is to combine theoretical, experimental and applied research towards the development of radiation-hard SiC-based detectors of special nuclear materials (SNM), with the end goal to enhance border and port security barriers. Prototype neutron detectors, configured as 4H-SiC-based Schottky barrier diodes, were developed for the detection of secondary charged particles (tritons, alphas and lithium atoms) which are the result of thermal neutron reactions on 10B and 6LiF layers above the surface of the 4H-SiC diodes. We designed a stand-alone prototype detection system, consisting of a preamplifier, shaping amplifier and a multichannel analyser operated by a laptop computer, for testing of neutron detector prototypes at the Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI) TRIGA reactor using a broad beam of reactor neutrons. The reverse bias for the detector diode and the power to electronic system were provided by a standalone battery-powered voltage source. The detector functionality was established through measurements using an 241Am alpha particle source. Two dedicated experimental campaigns were performed at the JSI TRIGA reactor. The registered pulse height spectra from the detectors, using both 10B and 6LiF neutron converting layers, clearly demonstrated the neutron detection abilities of the SiC detector prototypes. The computed neutron detection sensitivity of the single prototype detectors demonstrates that scaling SiC detectors into larger arrays, of dimensions relevant for border and port radiation detectors, could enable neutron sensitivity levels matching gas-based detector technology.

Gandhi, Non-violence and Culture of Peace: Reflection on Africa

Philosophically, Gandhi’s ideas of non-violence, satyaagraha or peace and harmony, have been instrumental in creating a conducive environment for establishing peace and a culture of peace in many parts of globe. There is a thread running throughout Gandhi’s teaching and practice of non-violence, in particular culture of peace programmes and their successful adoption in many parts of Africa particularly due to Gandhi’s first experiments of non-violence in South Africa. The paper attempts to bring out analysis of Gandhi’s influence on UNESCO’s culture of peace and non-violence programmes and its experiments in various parts of Africa.

Making ‘the Heads of the Proposals’: The King, the Army, the Levellers, and the Roads to Putney

Abstract This article offers a comprehensive account of the drafting of ‘the Heads of the Proposals’, the peace plan framed by the New Model Army in July 1647. Using overlooked manuscript sources, including newly uncovered papers of Commissary General Henry Ireton, the article reconstructs the complex process of negotiation, revision, and bargaining through which the Heads of the Proposals emerged. It charts the influence of King Charles I on the peace programme, and offers new insight into the monarch’s response to the Proposals. However, the article also demonstrates that army leaders invited radical London activists to Reading to participate in framing the Proposals. These activists sought, with limited success, to bring the Heads into conformity with their own vision for the polity, but quickly revolted when they recognised the degree to which the king’s input and interests were reflected in the developing programme. The resulting tensions ensured that even before the Heads of the Proposals were completed and published in August 1647, the plan provoked serious controversy among the army’s supporters, helping to undermine its prospects. It is demonstrated that many of the political conflicts that shook the army and the ‘independent coalition’ later in 1647 grew out of these disagreements at Reading over the Heads of the Proposals. The article not only clarifies the reasons for the failure of the Heads, but provides new insight into the origins of the ‘Leveller’ agitation and the Putney Debates, including the famous ‘franchise debates’.

Polsko-ukraińska współpraca wojskowa po 1991 roku

When analyzing Polish-Ukrainian relations in the aspect of regional security, it is worth paying attention to military cooperation between the two states. This cooperation began when the bipolar system disappeared and Ukraine regained its independence. The article evaluates Polish-Ukrainian military cooperation in four chronological periods covering its beginnings, actions undertaken in the course of the participation of both countries in the Partnership for Peace program, cooperation from the moment of Poland’s accession to NATO to Russian aggression to Ukraine, as well as the period after 2014. The article discusses the factors influencing Polish-Ukrainian military cooperation after 1991, offers an assessment of its most important constituent elements and proposes a brief insight into its possible developments in this field in the near future.

Between pacification and dialogue: Critical lessons from Colombia’s territorial peace

Colombia's peace process prioritised conflict-torn geographies ostensibly suffering from historical state absence. We examine the origins and afterlives of this 'territorial' peace using discourse analysis, archival research and field interviews. The state-initiated agenda exceeded the objective of structuring negotiations with FARC guerrillas, pointing to the transformative potential of social dialogue. The negotiating parties co-sponsored participatory rural development forums, which attracted numerous collectives. These diverse actors' visionary proposals to address neglected claims and conflicts influenced the government's and FARC's respective discourses, ultimately informing the 2016 peace agreement. Yet, state priorities for peace centred on international legitimation and post-conflict infrastructure development to accelerate foreign investment in export-oriented mining, oil extraction, and agri-business. The beleaguered FARC challenged government's narratives while struggling to rebuild organisational legitimacy and prevent fragmentation. Subsequent disappointments with fraught territorial development plans, a new government's securitization of peace programmes, and continuing violence mar the post-agreement period. Prior contributors to participatory forums have joined contentious actions against neglectful austerity, extractivist maldevelopment and targeted assassinations. Thus, we argue that Colombia's international lessons may reside less in governmental pacification programmes - the potential of state-sponsored participatory dialogues notwithstanding - than in resilient (post-)conflict communities open to exercising their peace imagination while remaining mobilised against new-and-old violences. Furthermore, the territorial peace saga illustrates productive overlaps between critical peace geographies and socio-territorial analysis - especially the territorial restructuring induced by neoliberal economic policies, the violent multiple territorialities of differentiated state presence in geographical peripheries and pluriversal struggles against ontological occupation addressed herein.

Nuclear efforts of Iran under the shadow of US sanctions

Iran has started the Atom program for Peace which has already planned by the US for countries concerned in consuming atomic energy for non-violent devotions. Iran also decided to develop a nuclear program to generate electricity. In 1979 US and the west has temporary banned the project. The United States has applied these sanctions on Iran for various purposes. This includes weakening domestic support for the Islamic regime and, recently, imposing charges on Iran to continue its nuclear program. These sanctions have left Iran with local and foreign capital, and have isolated it economically and politically. However, the regime has survived and continues to challenge the international community. Iran has also made great strides in nuclear planning. This article aims to explain how the Iranian's survived despite international sanctions specially the US. It rebuilds the interaction between the contraction of sanctions by the UN Security Council, the United States and targeted regime strategies to promote the nuclear program and maintain cohesion within the choice.

Can Jobs Programs Build Peace?

Abstract In the last decade, well over $10 billion has been spent on employment programs designed to contribute to peace and stability. Despite the outlay, whether these programs perform, and how they do so, remain open questions. This study conducts three reviews to derive the status quo of knowledge. First, it draws on academic literature on the microfoundations of instability to distill testable theories of how employment programs could affect stability at the micro level. Second, it analyses academic and grey literature that directly evaluates the impacts of employment programs on peace-related outcomes. Third, it conducts a systematic review of program-based learning from over 400 interventions. This study finds good theoretical reasons to believe that employment programs could contribute to peace. However, only very limited evidence exists on overall impacts on peace or on the pathways underlying the theories of change. At the program level, the review finds strong evidence that contributions to peace and stability are often simply assumed to have occurred. This provides a major challenge for the justification of continued spending on jobs for peace programs. Instead, systematic and rigorous learning on the impacts of jobs for peace programs needs to be scaled up urgently.

Mediating anti-political peace in Abidjan: Radio, place and power

After a decade of conflict (1999–2011), peace-building in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, focused on the local as a primary site of reconciliation. In addition to being local, peace was anti-political, seeking to separate place from politics as autonomous realms of public life. Through the example of local radio peace programmes, this article offers a critical, ethnographic account of anti-political peace as a spatial process. It links local peace and its justifications to the operations of governmental power, emphasising continuities of anti-political mediation and political domination. Such a historicised perspective challenges the framing of anti-political peace as the opposite of politics-as-conflict: they have long been two sides of the same coin in Abidjan and, as a binary “choice,” prevent the search for more democratic alternatives. Simultaneously, I argue that anti-political peace it is best approached as a field of contest. An ethnographic approach acknowledges the widespread rejection of politics in the Ivoirian metropolis, while resisting the collapse of institutional and everyday perspectives into a self-reinforcing consensus. I show that radio producers and Abidjanais residents could not quite pin down the meaning of politics, as that which ought to be shunned. Rather than bypass these hesitations through normative or ontological reasoning, I suggest (following others) that we might treat politics' irreducible polysemy as a source of continued struggle.

Contesting forms of capital: using Bourdieu to theorise why obstacles to peace education exist in Colombia

ABSTRACT Critical peace education literature has focused attention on how programmes that promise to teach peace contribute to and contest existing power relations. However, using social theory to work out the relationship between peace education programmes and their context is only beginning. This paper uses a document review and interviews with experts to examine the expectations for peace education in Colombia and the challenges these programmes face. It finds there is a coherent set of demands that constitute peace education, which primarily focus on developing empathy and critical thinking. These aims face material restrictions of a lack of time and space in the curriculum, but also the problem of embedded competitive behaviour between pupils. Bourdieu’s toolkit of habitus, field and capital frames this obstacle as part of the struggle to determine what constitutes legitimate capital within a field. This framing has two benefits. It prevents the problem of competitive inter-pupil relations being located within the actions of individual teachers and students. It also allows for solutions that address the structural challenges facing peace education. This use of Bourdieu focuses attention on the systemic obstacles facing peace education and so helps move the literature away from problem-solving and individualised analysis.

Peace building through teacher leadership

ABSTRACT This case study examines the motivations of, and processes used by teacher leaders to establish a peace program at their middle school. These teacher leaders creatively engaged students in transforming school culture using empowering strategies to build positive peace among students, administrators, and teachers. Theories of peace education are used as a framework to facilitate analysis of the data, which was collected through qualitative methods including observations and in-depth interviews. This study contributes to understandings of how teacher leaders promote positive peace in K-12 schools and their communities.

0766 Safety And Tolerability Of Pitolisant In The Treatment Of Adult Patients With Narcolepsy: Final Analysis Of An Open-label, Expanded Access Program In The United States

Abstract Introduction Pitolisant Expanded Access Clinical Evaluation (PEACE) provided adult patients with narcolepsy access to treatment with pitolisant while it was an investigational medication in the United States. Methods Pitolisant was titrated to 35.6 mg/day (or the highest tolerable dose) over a 3-week period. Dose adjustments were permitted at the discretion of the treating physician based on patient response. Treating physicians followed their standard of care and were required to report adverse events (AEs). Demographic and baseline information for all enrolled patients, and safety results available through October 30, 2019, are reported here (presentation will include final data from the PEACE program). Results In all, 623 patients (67.9% female; 84.6% white; mean age, 40.0 years; narcolepsy type 1, 51.5%) were treated with pitolisant in the PEACE program. Nearly all patients (98.4%) had been previously treated with other narcolepsy medications (88.1% with ≥2 narcolepsy medications). Overall, 35.2% of patients discontinued from the program; 16.7% due to an AE and 12.2% for lack of effect. At Month 1, 97.3% of patients remained in the study, 88.2% at Month 3, 76.5% at Month 6, 66.9% at Month 9, and 55.0% at Month 12. In all, 256 (41.1%) patients experienced ≥1 AE; majority (52.5%) of these AEs occurred early in treatment (by Week 3). The most commonly reported AEs were headache (9.8% of AEs), nausea (6.6%), anxiety (5.6%), and insomnia (4.7%). Conclusion In the PEACE program, patient characteristics were generally reflective of the US narcolepsy patient population. The safety and tolerability profile of pitolisant was similar to that seen in the clinical development program, with no new safety signals identified. The program ceased enrollment in August 2019 after the US approval of pitolisant for the treatment of excessive daytime sleepiness in adult patients with narcolepsy. Support Harmony Biosciences, LLC.

Efficient Electrochemical Sensing Using Hybrid Boron-Doped Diamond/Graphene Nanowall Electrodes

Electrochemical sensors have attracted increasing interest due to their low cost, high sensitivity of detected analytes, and the possibility of sensor miniaturization, which allows for portable and field applications. These devices provide information about the system composition in real-time by combining a chemically selective layer with an electrochemical transducer. Thereby, the chemical energy of the specific interaction between the chemical substances and the sensor is converted into an analytically useful signal.Herein we demonstrate the electrochemical sensor based on boron-doped diamond/graphene nanowall electrodes (B:DGNW). A B:DGNW electrode is a hybrid electrode, which combines the extraordinary features of boron-doped diamond and a graphene nanowall on the same surface. B:DGNW is a sp2 -rich phase material with multilayered graphene walls oriented vertically to the substrate. Moreover, the presence of the boron-doped diamond phase enhances the electrochemical performance and kinetics of the electrode surface when compared with typical carbon nanowalls. The electrodes were fabricated in a one-step growth process using chemical vapor deposition without any additional modifications (thin films were grown on (100)-oriented silicon substrates).Two different sensing platforms will be presented: i) impedimetric biosensor for detection of pathogenic bacteria (e.g., Haemophilus influenzae), and ii) voltammetric sensor for determination of important nitroaromatic explosive compounds (2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), 2,4,6-trinitroanisole (TNA), 4,4',5,5'-tetranitro-1H,1'H-2,2'-biimidazole (TNBI)). The proposed B:DGNW electrodes were revealed to have a high electroactive area towards the voltammetric detection of various nitroaromatic compounds.The biosensor platform was obtained by B:DGNW surface functionalization firstly by electrografting of diazonium salt and secondly by the attachment of antibodies. The electrochemical biosensor shows high sensitivity and selectivity towards Haemophilus influenzae. The measurements were conducted in the presence of three non-target pathogens S. pyogenes, S. pneumoniae, and B. parapertussis. The proposed B:DGNW nonmodified carbon electrodes were revealed to have a high electroactive area towards the voltammetric determination of various nitroaromatic compounds, thus appearing to be an attractive nanocarbon surface for further applications. The B:DGNW electrode exhibits high sensing performance for TNT detection with linearity between 0.05 to 2 ppm and 4 to 15 ppm, and a limit of detection (LOD) of 73 ppb. The LOD for 2,4,6-trinitroanisole, in turn, is equal to 0.27 ppm, whereas the limit of detection of TNBI is equal to 0.52 ppm. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time B:DGNW has been used to detect the nitroaromatic compounds electrochemically [1].AcknowledgmentThis work was supported by the Science for Peace Programme of NATO [Grant no. G5147], Polish National Science Centre [2016/22/E/ST7/00102], and the National Centre for Science and Development [347324/12/NCBR/2017]. The DS funds of the Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications, and Informatics of the Gdansk University of Technology are also acknowledged.Reference:[1] A. Dettlaff et al., J. Hazard. Mater [In press]. Doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2019.121672.

The War on Terror as a Business: Lessons from Kenya and the Somalia Interventions

Abstract The documented evidence of the Kenyan military collaborating with the so-called forces of terror in Somalia to maintain their accumulation of approximately $400 million every year hardly made the international headlines as the leaders of Kenya have been rehabilitated into the ranks of those allied to US imperialism in waging a war on terror. There is an examination of the links between the US intelligence forces and the Kenyan cartels in keeping alive the terror threat in Somalia. Very few scholars have followed up on the revelations of the role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in funding those who matured into what is now called terror groups in Somalia through the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism. The challenge for scholars for peace will be to penetrate the US Africa Command shibboleths on ‘failed states’ in order to work for a program of peace and reconstruction in Africa. In the conclusion, the paper will argue that the withdrawal of the Kenyan troops from Somalia and demilitarization of security will be a concrete step to break up the cartels that are in the business of terror.