Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria and the vicious cycle of internal insecurity

The phenomenon of the Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria has generated many security concerns. This article explores the implications of the Boko Haram insurgency in Northern Nigeria for internal security. The article, which relies on a study of secondary sources of data, reveals that the insurgency has spawned varied implications such as an international image crisis, huge economic losses, a health and humanitarian crisis, a huge burden on the security apparatuses, arms proliferation, and endangered national unity. It holds that the insurgency is essentially interlinked with a breakdown of the social contract manifested in opportunistic behavior, economic stagnation, and lack of functioning institutional mechanisms for policy conduct and conflict resolution. Owing to the security menace posed by the insurgency, the article recommends that the root causes of the insurgency should be tackled rather than relying on reactive measures that cannot guarantee enduring peace and internal security.     

Combining restorative justice and social justice: Prospects of child soldiering transitional justice

ABSTRACT

The most critical challenges faced by war-affected communities where children have allegedly perpetrated atrocities include: finding transitional justice practices that address the needs of former belligerent children and those of victims and their communities; and helping to reintegrate child soldiers into society and avoid returning to hostilities. This paper demonstrates that these challenges can be overcome by taking a holistic approach to child soldiering transitional justice, which assimilates restorative justice and social justice. Such an approach simultaneously addresses child soldiers’ criminal accountability and pursues their psychosocial wellbeing. The findings are based on a selective scholarship supported by fieldwork that was conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo between May and December 2014 in North Kivu province. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and survey questionnaires based on a randomised sample of 282 participants. These included self-demobilised child soldiers, members of war-affected communities, students/learners, educators, local traditional leaders, government officials, child protection lawyers and members of non-governmental organisations.     

创新社会治理体制对推动和谐社会建设的新意义

党的十八届三中全会提出“创新社会治理体制”的改革目标,对于在新形势下推动中国特色社会主义和谐社会建设,具有重要的创新意义。从理论发展完善上讲,创新社会治理体制是我国社会建设实现多元化民主治理理念的重大转变;从社会现实需要上讲,创新社会治理体制是抓住时机有效应对当前社会现实矛盾的有力推手;从制度体系建设上讲,创新社会治理体制是与社会主义市场经济体制配套协同的重大举措。     

基于SNA参数的网络舆论系统状态差分分析

近年来,互联网在我国快速发展,网络舆论起着越来越重要的作用,对国家安全和社会稳定产生了重大的冲击和影响。针对网络舆论系统的状态进行研究,借助SNA方法,提出了可作为序参量的一些特征参数。在此基础上,设计了基于时间序列的SNA参数差分算法,实现对网络舆论系统的状态进行观测与分析。同时,对一个真实网络舆论进行实验仿真,验证了这种方法。     

Witchcraft and African development

Impressive investment and growth figures and commercial write-ups enthusing about ‘Africa rising up’, ‘the continent of the future’, and so on, obscure the poverty, illiteracy, poor health and other hardships afflicting the vast majority of African people. Why has massive so-called development and technical ‘aid’ not created the expected dynamic, autonomous economic progress? A blind eye is delicately being turned to the decisive role of people – more specifically, the cultural element. Notwithstanding good intentions, outsiders seeking to promote development assume that black Africans think and act like they only need more education, training and finance in order to ‘catch up’. Outsiders easily forget that since time immemorial, Africans have developed and cherished worldviews and cultures of their own. While these are by no means immutable and do adapt to changing needs and outside influences, Africans refuse to cast off overnight the heritage that makes them the people they are. This paper examines the impact of witchcraft as an integral feature of traditional culture on African existence, notably community life, religion, politics, the law, and economic practice. It stresses the significance of traditional society's powerful egalitarian impulses as well as its profound conviction that all things – goods, wealth, well-being and life force – are in a strictly limited supply that cannot be increased, but can only be redistributed by force or through magical manipulation. While modern life gradually weakens the influence of witchcraft beliefs – in Europe these flourished well into the 18th century – the exasperation associated with Africa's headlong urbanisation actually bolsters these beliefs.     

Unemployed youth: ‘time bombs’ or engines for growth?

While popular narratives about success in South Africa focus on individual effort, accidents of birth continue to determine life prospects. Inequalities in early childhood development, health, and education narrow the range of possibilities that young people have available to them, and this impacts on their risk appetite, including, through the workings of the maturing brain, a propensity to violence, substance abuse, and unsafe sex. New technology offers young people an unprecedented ability to organise and network. This fact, combined with high levels of youth dissatisfaction, unemployment, and marginalisation, leads many to worry that the young are “ticking time bombs”. While there certainly are risks, great unused pools of youth labour also present an opportunity for engaging them in social advancement programmes. Structured youth service is a tried and tested policy option that, when implemented as part of an integrated youth development strategy, can enlist thousands of young people in devoting their considerable energies to leadership for the public good.     

Guns–butter tradeoff in contemporary China

This study offers an investigation of the relationship between defense and social spending in the People's Republic of China. In particular, three consecutive questions are answered here. Does a warfare–welfare tradeoff exist in China's budgetary allocation? Is it positive or negative? What is the causal direction involved? By applying a vector autoregression analysis for the period of 1952–2006, this study finds a unidirectional crowd-out effect going from defense to social spending.     

以军民融合式发展思想为指导完善文职人员制度

分析了非现役文职人员制度实行的时代背景、目前存在的主要问题以及解决对策,指出文职人员制度是我军顺应整体社会转型而实行的重大改革,是军民融合式发展思想的重要体现,完善的政策和军地双方的协调沟通,直接关系到这一改革的成败。     

《人民武装警察法》“社会安全事件”概念及特点分析

《中华人民共和国人民武装警察法》颁布之前,武警部队虽然已经担负着执行处置社会安全事件的任务,但对于社会安全事件的概念及其特点的分析较为模糊。2009年8月颁布的《人民武装警察法》第2章第7条,明确将社会安全事件纳入武警部队的任务范围。鉴于武警部队执行任务种类的多样性,有必要对这一概念的内涵、外延及其特点进行界定。     

论和谐社会视野下的青少年责任意识的培养

“构建社会主义和谐社会”是党现阶段的发展目标。广大青少年作为社会主义和谐社会事业的接班人,其责任意识状况如何,势必影响和谐社会的发展。责任是人社会性的本质规定,责任意识是现代文明社会公民的基本素质,是人的自我意识最深在的层次。根据和谐社会发展需要培养青少年的责任意识,是党和国家各项事业后继有人的重要保证。