Proposals for Policy Alternatives
Here, we post links to selected reports from experts, officials and activists. All offer recommendations for a new U.S. approach to the Americas, or describe examples of initiatives that merit U.S. support. We divide these alternative proposals in 6 categories:
- Regional Defense and Conflict Prevention: This section links to documents that highlight alternatives for inter-state peace and security. This includes topics like hemispheric, sub-regional or bilateral defense relations, preparation for common or transnational threats, arms control, cooperative security, confidence building, and other means of preventing international conflict.
- Drug Policy: This section links to documents that explore alternatives for limiting the regional drug trade. These include means of confronting the problem's socioeconomic, governance and law-enforcement roots, as well as ways to reduce negative effects like addiction, violence, organized crime and corruption.
- Citizen Security and Organized Crime: This section links to documents that provide non-military alternatives for confronting common crime, organized crime, gangs, and other factors of citizen security. These include community policing, judicial reform, education and poverty-alleviation, among other solutions.
- Governance and `Nation-Building`: This section links to documents that discuss alternatives for constructing a state presence in \"ungoverned spaces\": sparsely populated rural zones and urban slums that have little state presence. U.S. defense doctrine is coming to view such spaces as threats to U.S. national security due to the possibility that terrorists and transnational criminals may use them as staging areas. The reports and analyses here explore ways to build a functional state presence in ungoverned territory, balancing security and development needs while avoiding militarization.
- Human Rights and Ending Impunity: This section links to documents that discuss alternatives for defending human rights, preventing violations, and ensuring justice for abuses. These include documentation of abuses, accompaniment of threatened groups or individuals, judicial and other institutional reforms necessary to combat impunity, and transitional justice in post-conflict environments.
- Civil-Military Relations and Democracy: This section links to documents that explore the role of military forces in a healthy democracy. These include discussions of military subordination to civilian rule, appropriate civilian and military roles, civilian involvement in security policymaking and defense resource management, and transparency and citizen oversight of the security sector. This section also includes recommendations for overcoming political crises without violence or military intervention.
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Thursday, September 18, 2008
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Reforming Haiti's Security Sector
Latin America/Caribbean Report No.28
International Crisis Group
In this report, the International Crisis Group cites persisting crime in Haiti as a threat to the political process and argues that President Rene Preval must act quickly to conclude police and justice reform. This report outlines the problems currently facing Haiti and offers multiple police and justice reforms that should be implemented immediately for the successful stabilization of the country.