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Wadlow reviews Nation-Building: A Key Concept For Peaceful Conflict Transformation? edited by Jochen Hippler.

The years 2011 and 2012 were among the most deadly for journalists reporting from conflict situations worldwide. The numbers of assaults, arrests and attacks have been on a constant rise and portray a dramatic image of the journalistic profession. In light of the increasing threats in armed conflicts, being a war reporter has become an inherently dangerous task. Journalists are not only at risk of becoming so-called collateral damage during military operations, they are also increasingly targeted. Their role as a watchdog and witness to the horrors of war, in addition to the undeniable power of the word and image they spread, has made them popular targets. It is therefore essential that the international community re-evaluate journalists' de jure and de facto protections in armed conflicts to allow for better safeguards and consequently less casualties in the imminent future. This article examines the current protections afforded to journalists and aims at detecting proposals for enhanced safeguards that are most likely to effectively improve journalists' safety in the field. In this regard, this article will argue that the legal protections are in fact sufficient and hardly amendable and that therefore, a more practical, hands-on approach to implementation of those protections must be the focus of future actions. This goal can only be achieved by a comprehensive mission jointly pursued by governments, militaries, journalists, media, NGOs and society.

AbstractThis article sets the scene for the Special Issue 'Reaching for allies?' by setting out the research questions and structure of the Special Issue. Specifically, this introduction reviews the state of the art of dialectics interweaving International Relations and Area Studies. Specifically, it focuses on tracing the genealogy of these debates, identifying the actors engaged with them, as well as, mapping those sites where such transdisciplinary knowledge is produced and circulated. We also provide an assessment of the interaction between the two disciplinary traditions as scholarly disciplines by reviewing the field as it had developed in the last decade since 2013. In order to do so, we present data on the brokers of this dialogue by analysing top-ranked Journals across regions, dedicated Special Issues on the matter as well as main international conferences and participants. Overall, this article provides a threefold contribution: first, we provide an account of the globalization of knowledge production and circulation that has also increasingly decentred, valuing local peculiarities and epistemological traditions beyond the Western academia(s). Second, we assess and discuss how Western and non-Western academics have contoured concepts which demand and entail site-intensive techniques of enquiry, exposure to complexities on the grounds, ethnographic sensitivity, and, at the same time, comparative endeavours going beyond area specialisms. Third, by looking at international and regional policy-making milieus with attention to context-specificity, we believe critical policy-relevant implications can be discussed, specifically in relation to local ownership and bottom-up approaches.

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Contents: Introduction; Background of the Conflict in Cambodia; The Paris Agreement – a Roadmap for UNTAC; 'Mission Impossible?' - The Situation in Cambodia before UNTAC; Difficulties to evaluate Peacekeeping Operations; The Analysis of the Mission; The Involvement and Performance of the UN Headquarter; Success and Failure of UNTAC; Conclusions.

Anders reviews CONFLICT PREVENTION: THE UNTAPPED POTENTIAL OF THE BUSINESS SECTOR by Andreas Wenger and Daniel Mockli.

Since March 1971, the International Committee of the Red Cross had been watching the situation on the Indian sub-continent and had given particular attention to the development of its contacts with the Governments and Red Cross Societies of India and Pakistan with a view to carrying out its humanitarian mission for the benefit of the victims of events.

The paper reviews the theoretical formulations and the empirical tests of the proposition that external conflict increases internal cohesion. Literature from sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science is discussed. Though it is often assumed to be true and is easily illustrated, the empirical studies suggest that there are a number of intervening variables and that the hypothesis is not uniformly true. While hardly adequate, these empirical studies provide a subtler specification of the hypothesis, knowledge of which can lead researchers to structure their studies differently. Examples of this are provided and other areas of application are also discussed.