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The consequences of successful public health interventions for social violence and conflict are largely unknown. This paper closes this gap by evaluating the effect of a major health intervention – the successful expansion of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic – in Africa. To identify the effect, we combine exogenous variation in the scope for treatment and global variation in drug prices. We find that the ART expansion significantly reduced the number of violent events in African countries and sub-national regions. The effect pertains to social violence and unrest, not civil war. The evidence also shows that the effect is not explained by general improvements in economic prosperity, but related to health improvements, greater approval of government policy, and increased trust in political institutions. Results of a counterfactual simulation reveal the largest potential gains in countries with intermediate HIV prevalence where disease control has been given relatively low priority.

Labor conflicts in China can be classified into three types: those over legal rights, over interests, and over the pre-reform entitlements. They have relatively distinguishable bases, claims, framing, and patterns of interaction with the government. The typological classification is useful for understanding the developmental trajectory of labor conflict in China.

So-called "climate migration", i. e. human mobility following prolonged drought periods, floods, or other climate-related environmental changes, has been singled out as an important factor connecting climate change effects and (violent) conflict. However, the existing studies on this relationship do not offer a clear picture. Nevertheless, Syria has evolved into a "show case study" for this assumed linear causality: A "century drought" and ensuing internal migration are seen as an untold prequel of the Syrian uprising. This alarmist, determinist, and simplifying image is questioned and reviewed in order to answer the following questions: Was the Syrian drought related to or caused by climate change? Which role, if any, did it play for internal migration in pre-revolutionary Syria? What do we know about "drought migrants" and their role in the Syrian uprising? The article summarizes available research and adds to it by way of interviews with Syrian refugees.

This collection offers a selection of papers originally presented at the 2014 European Association for American Studies (EAAS) conference held in The Hague and hosted by the Netherlands American Studies Association (NASA). Comprised of sixteen essays written by scholars from across Europe, the United States, and Canada, the volume addresses multiple aspects of war, conflict, and justice from historical, cultural, political, and literary perspectives. Topics include explorations of the ability of literary texts to ameliorate the visceral trauma that haunts survivors of 9/11; analyses of the rhetoric of war, both past and present; the cultural and ethical conflicts generated by the post-9/11 War on Terror; confrontational responses to historical acts of violence against Native Americans; issues of social justice as encoded in the U.S. legal system; and studies of urban spaces as sites of injustice as well as their potential as sites for the redistribution of power and resources.

The language of war has a recognised and intimate relationship with the abuse of a core set of civil and political rights. Detention without trial, arbitrary arrest, disappearance, torture and the like soon result once a political authority decides to describe a conflict in which it is involved as 'war'. National or regime security takes centre stage, security ideologies play a stronger role, and the means employed push at the boundaries of the acceptable. This close association between conflict and human-rights abuse, if no other reason, should make us pause before we too readily resort to the language of war. The Cold War and the current 'global war on terror' - to use the US term - are no exceptions to this general finding. Disappearance, torture and extra-judicial killings have been features of both. The struggle against terrorism has generated a sense of impunity for actions that threaten many different groups. (Survival / SWP)

The dichotomy between the central city and its suburbs is more pronounced than the more traditional conflict between rural and urban areas. Central cities contain the con centrations of the poor in the metropolitan area because of the lack of low income housing outside the city. The basic conflict arises from the contention for resources between the "have" suburban communities and the "have-not" central cities. Unless the suburbs are opened up to lower income residents, central cities will become even more impoverished. Conflict arises as suburbs fight to maintain the housing status quo, as cities fight to prevent expressways from destroying additional housing and tax base and to attain greater emphasis on adequate transportation, as heavy reliance on the property tax leads central city and suburb to compete for the same industry. In general, voluntary intergovernmental groups have not been responsive to central city needs in the metro politan area. What is required is a basic change in the system which separates resources from need and provides both greater fiscal equity and a metropolitan-wide sharing of the burden of social problems.

This book concentrates on gender issues in military and civil strife, and examines the effects of armed conflict on women's lives and the appalling situation of many women refugees and displaced. Women are not passive victims, and it shows how they are in the forefront for peace, security, and equitable gender relations.