This book explores the traces of the passage of time on the protracted and intractable conflict of Western Sahara. The authors offer a multilevel analysis of recent developments from the global to the local scenes, including the collapse of the architecture of the UN-led conflict resolution process, the advent of the War on Terror to the the Sahara-Sahel area and the impact of the ‘Arab Spring’ and growing regional security instability. Special attention is devoted to changes in the Western Sahara territory annexed by Morocco and the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria. Morocco has adapted its governance and public policies to profound socio-demographic transformations in the territory under its control and has attempted to obtain international recognition for this annexation by proposing an Autonomy Plan. The Polisario Front and Sahrawi nationalists have shifted their strategy and pushed the centre of gravity of the conflict back inwards by focusing on pro-independence activism inside the disputed territory.

Fabled for more than three thousand years as fierce warrior-nomads and cameleers dominating the western Trans-Saharan caravan trade, today the Sahrawi are admired as soldier-statesmen and refugee-diplomats. This is a proud nomadic people uniquely championing human rights and international law for self-determination of their ancient heartlands: the western Sahara Desert in North Africa. Konstantina Isidoros provides a rich ethnographic portrait of this unique desert society's life in one of Earth's most extreme ecosystems. Her extensive anthropological research, conducted over nine years, illuminates an Arab-Berber Muslim society in which men wear full face veils and are matrifocused toward women, who are the property-holders of tent households forming powerful matrilocal coalitions. Isidoros offers new analytical insights on gender relations, strategic tribe-to-state symbiosis and the tactical formation of 'tent-cities'. The book sheds light on the indigenous principles of social organisation - the centrality of women, male veiling and milk-kinship - bringing positive feminist perspectives on how the Sahrawi have innovatively reconfigured their tribal nomadic pastoral society into globalising citizen-nomads constructing their nascent nation-state. This is essential reading for those interested in anthropology, politics, war and nationalism, gender relations, postcolonialism, international development, humanitarian regimes, refugee studies and the experience of nomadic communities.

To have a State, four distinct conditions must be met. First, there must be a community of people, and it matters not whether they belong to the same color, faith, or ethnicity. Second, there must be a geographical space, a settlement that this community of people calls a home. Third, there must be governing authority. And finally, the government must be sovereign – sovereign in the sense that it is self-governing and independent of any domestic or international body. Palestine, Taiwan, and Western Sahara have met all the forestated conditions -- except for broad international support and recognition and membership of the United Nations. However, this has not been the case with Palestine, Taiwan, and Western Sahara. This edited volume examines some of the endogenous and exogenous factors that have contributed to the ambiguous and contested nature of these political entities and argued that the undermined nature of these entities contributes to regional instability and global insecurity. And finally, the continued denial of statehood is a violation of their collective human rights.

Over the last decades, rivalries, bilateral disagreements, and distrust between Maghreb states have taken a toll on common political and security challenges, like the Western Sahara issue, the Libyan conflict, the destabilisation in the Sahel region and transnational clandestine flows. Moreover, the Maghreb is one of the least economically integrated regions in the world, and this leads to the region’s loss in growth, and the disheartening record of missed opportunities for stability and prosperity. This is the cost of the “non-Maghreb”.This Report aims to unpack the political and economic costs of the “non-Maghreb”, understand its historical genesis and geopolitical implications and, more broadly, what the future might hold for individual countries and the Maghreb as a divided, fractious but potentially coherent whole.

This new handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the theoretical and empirical aspects of state recognition in international politics. Although the recognition of states plays a central role in shaping global politics, it remains an under-researched and widely dispersed subject. Coherently and innovatively structured, the handbook brings together a group of international scholars who examine the most important theoretical and comparative perspectives on state recognition, including debates about pathways to secession and self-determination, the broad range of actors and strategies that shape the recognition of states and a significant number of contemporary case studies. The handbook is organised into four key sections: Theoretical and normative perspectives Pathways to independent statehood Actors, forms and the process of state recognition Case studies of contemporary state recognition This handbook will be of great interest to students of foreign policy, international relations, international law, comparative politics and area studies. Chapter 19 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This volume offers systematic research on regionalism in Africa and explores the role and impact of external partners on the dynamics, institutional design, and performance of regional integration projects. It acknowledges and elaborates the multilevel and multidimensional nature of regionalism, with its variety of cooperative institutions and policy areas, while closely considering uneven relationships to external actors in African regional organizations. The book’s two comprehensive mapping studies examine patterns of asymmetric inter-dependence between regionalism in Africa and external partners in Europe, with a focus on trade and donor funding, and highlight structural imbalances and (un)intended consequences. Five additional case studies provide in-depth analyses of a variety of African regional organizations, mainly with a focus on security regionalism, and elaborate how external partners influence and affect integration processes and projects. Although regionalism in Africa benefitted from external relations and partnerships with Europe, contributions in this volume question this positive impression, highlighting some of the major undermining factors and actors.

This collection explores organized crime and terror networks and the points at which they intersect. It analyses the close relationships between these criminalities, the prevalence and ambiguity of this nexus, the technological elements facilitating it, and the financial aspects embedded in this criminal partnership. Organized Crime and Terrorist Networks is the outcome of empirical research, seminars, workshops and interviews carried out by a multinational consortium of researchers within ‘TAKEDOWN’, a Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Commission. The consortium’s objective was to examine the perspectives, requirements and misgivings of front-line practitioners operating in the areas of organized crime and terrorism. The chapters collected in this volume are the outcome of such analytical efforts. The topics addressed include the role of Information and Communication Technology in contemporary criminal organizations, terrorism financing, online transnational criminality, identity crime, the crime-terror nexus and tackling the nexus at supranational level. This book offers a compelling contribution to scholarship on organized crime and terrorism, and considers possible directions for future research. It will be of much interest to students and researchers engaged in studies of criminology, criminal justice, crime control and prevention, organized crime, terrorism, political violence, and cybercrime.

The Colonial World: A History of European Empires, 1780s to the Present provides the most authoritative, in-depth overview on European imperialism available. It synthesizes recent developments in the study of European empires and provides new perspectives on European colonialism and the challenges to it. With a post-1800 focus and extensive background coverage tracing the subject to the early 1700s, the book charts the rise and eclipse of European empires. Robert Aldrich and Andreas Stucki integrate innovative approaches and findings from the 'new imperial history' and look at both the colonial era and the legacies it left behind for countries around the world after they gained independence. Dividing the text into three complementary sections, Aldrich and Stucki offer an original approach to the subject that allows you to explore: - Different eras of colonisation and decolonisation from early modern European colonialism to the present day - Overarching themes in colonial history, like 'land and sea', 'the body' and 'representations of colonialism' - A global range of snapshot colonial case studies, such as Peru (1780), India (1876), The South Pacific (1903), the Dutch East Indies (1938) and the Portuguese empire in Africa (1971) This is the essential text for anyone seeking to understand the nature and complexities of modern European imperialism and its aftermath.

Parliamentary diplomacy has provided a crucial, promising outlet in Taiwan’s challenging pursuit of its own interests in the international arena. This book assesses both the potentials and the constraints of parliamentary diplomacy for Taiwan. Through a comparative perspective, and using evidence from the relations of the Legislative Yuan in Taiwan with the US Congress and the European Parliament, the authors investigate the implementation of parliamentary diplomacy in Taiwan and its impact in Taiwan’s foreign policy. In their analysis, the authors draw vital lessons that will have important implications for other entities which have similar challenges and aspirations.

Zusammenfassung: The books aims to discuss and present an alternative epistemology of human rights, against the background of the globalization from below. The interdependent network of transnational networks, ranging from social movements, NGOs, and other groupings, questions the neoliberal paradigm and a particular set of human rights. This book wishes to transform this discourse on human rights and amplify the subaltern voices. The book also aims to highlight alternative practices of freedom that decenter human rights as a liberation discourse. Following Julia Suarez-Krabbe in "Race, Rights and Rebels", the authors aim to amend to practices of freedom that center different orders of knowledge on subjectivity and agency. The proposed book, first, situates the problem of representation of the marginalized voices in contemporary legal and political discourse. Second, it offers critiques in theory, and, third, followed by alternative practices that emanate from marginalized localities. In particular, this book wishes to reflect upon alternatives rooted in legal and non-legal responses to address human rights grievances. In the end, this book envisages, along the lines of Frantz Fanon, to vision the possibility of the human by a new concept, addressing the concerns in various ways: As Fanon argued for "a new start", "a new way of thinking", and for the creation of a "new man", it is pertinent to trigger a human rights project from the below