Community Calibrations
Vol. 7 No. 1 | 2020 Edition
Fletcher Security Review (FSR): Thank you so much for speaking with us today, Ms. Conway. Could you start by describing your background and how your work in post-conflict and transition environments has informed your approach to development?
Carrie Conway (CC): I have worked in development for almost twenty years, but when I declared my focus, I had not originally thought “I definitely want to do conflict-related programming and work in conflict zones.” Given my trajectory though, I organically started to do that. I received my undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont, and at that point the only way to study international development was through their Agricultural Economics program. After finishing school, my first real introduction to the field was when I started working with Oxfam in Boston. At first it was a very administrative position, but then I was lucky and had the opportunity to go overseas as the program officer in Cambodia, which is where I would say I began my career.
At that point, I really wanted to work with an NGO — I had not even thought about working with USAID or a contractor — but in Cambodia I had the opportunity to work as a local American hire with USAID. After that I went to Clark University for graduate school, and after Clark I had a number of program management roles for USAID, all of which were in conflict zones. For example, I spent time working in Timor-Leste with Tetra Tech ARD, I spent time in Afghanistan, and I served as Chief of Party in Sudan for a conflict transition program. After being overseas I decided to return to the United States and began working with Chemonics, specifically supporting their Libya and Lebanon programs in the Office of Transition Initiatives...
This piece is offered in PDF format for easier reading. Download the PDF to read more.
Carrie Conway
Carrie Conway is the Director of Secure Communities and Human Capital at Resonance.
The Charter of the United Nations designates the Security Council (UNSC) as the primary body for maintaining international peace and security. The Security Council was designed to take the lead in determining when a threat exists and the appropriate global response. When exploring the future of security, one has to consider the future of the UNSC and the role it will play. Movements to reform the Security Council have come at somewhat regular intervals and there has been a concerted effort at reform for the past fifteen to twenty years. In recent years, consensus has formed around the idea that reform is necessary; however, agreement on the exact nature of that reform has proven more elusive. Although current reform plans claim they will increase the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Security Council, the longer-term consequences for peace and security are left vague or unexplored. While the exact impact of Security Council reform is difficult to predict because of so many competing plans, most of the proposals would at best lead to no significant gains in security and most run the risk of undermining current levels of peace and security.
The reasons given for reforming the Security Council revolve around improving legitimacy and implementation of resolutions. Improved implementation comes from increased international buy-in to Security Council plans. As more states take part in discussing and creating resolutions, they will be more apt to support the actions necessary to reach the Security Council’s goals. Broader and deeper participation should lead to better outcomes. Legitimacy, in this context, comes from increased international representation on the UNSC...
This piece is offered in PDF format for easier reading. Download the PDF to read more.
Dr. Daniel Morey
Dr. Daniel Morey is an Associate Professor of Political Science at The University of Kentucky.
Demographic cleavages are to the twenty-first century what class divisions were to the nineteenth century. Rarely can social scientists claim to be observing genuinely unprecedented phenomena. The world’s contemporary demographic developments, however, are without historical precedent:
-
women are consistently having fewer or no children than at any previous time in history
-
never have there been as many people on the planet
-
never before have more people resided in urban than in rural areas
-
never has the world’s population expanded as rapidly in as short a period of time (five billion people over the course of a century)
-
never have people lived longer and populations grown as old
-
never have there been more people of working age, and
-
never have as many children lived in the developing world.
Is it sheer coincidence that mature industrialized democracies have aging population structures and no longer go to war with one another while states with young populations that are growing rapidly tend to be disproportionately prone to violent conflict? In 2020, the median age in Africa is 19.7 years; in 2035 it is projected to be 22 years, roughly that of Europe 200 years ago, from which one can infer certain hypotheses about the prospects for political stability...
This piece is offered in PDF format for easier reading. Download the PDF to read more.
Dr. Christian Leuprecht
Dr. Christian Leuprecht is the Fulbright Research Chair in U.S.-Canada Relations at the School for Advanced International Studies, Class of 1965 Professor in Leadership at the Royal Military College of Canada, Director of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations at Queen’s University and Senior Fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute. His latest book is Public Security in Federal Polities (University of Toronto Press, 2019).