Suchergebnisse

Drug trafficking has become the new threat to the economic and political stability of the West Africa sub-region; by virtue of its new toga as the new transit hub for drug trafficking. 80% and 13% of seizures in cocaine transshipment annually of 60-250 tons to Europe and globally respectively, passes the West African maritime borderlands/coast. The informal economy based on drugs has replaces over $400 million contribution to the region's GDP from fishing. The impacts of drug trafficking had had a long negative toll on the institutions of the states and state-building infrastructure in the region. Besides, intrastate conflicts, drug money and activities had exacerbated state failure in the region; notably in Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Guinea, etc. The West African Coast Initiative is making crawling impacts. Although, still in its pilot phase, it had enhanced coordination of intelligence in the region on drug trafficking and organized crime. However, it is still short of fundamentally addressing obvious policy gap, due to its lack of clear focus; plus, being only operational in just five West African states. This paper identified absence of comprehensive maritime coordination policy against drug trafficking in West Africa as the bane of the surge. Therefore, a tripartite approach, based on state, regional and global levels policy restructuring in the region is required.

The gender-based violence in recent times has become an integral part of the on-going Boko Haram Insurgency in North-East Nigeria. Since the full-scale declaration of combat between the Nigerian state and the insurgent group, the asymmetrical tactics of the group have been evolving, based on its capabilities. The recent spike in the targeted raid and attack on female schools, markets, and female institutions purposely for abduction and kidnapping of women and girls indicated this assertion. Due to the depletion of its fighters and loss of territories, there is a surge in mass deployment of 'women and young girls' as material instruments of warfare: fighters, suicide bombers, human shields, bargaining tools, sex slaves, informants, and so on. This article appraises the gender push-pull factors responsible, motivation behind the current behavior, and proffers some policy guidance.

Mass media have been a critical weapon of warfare since the cold war, and even more recently, the powerful intrusion of the new media: transformed the landscape in terms of reach and influence. Its role can be both constructive and deconstructive. The Rwanda genocide, armed violence in Nigeria and Kenya, and Balkan wars has questioned its roles, powers and ethical responsibilities in violent conflict circumstances. In these cases the mass media played a poisonous role. Although establishing a causal relationship between mass media and framing of opinion, emotion and beliefs that steams violent conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa is neither linear nor clear. However, this paper underscores mass media's compelling influence on how perception in fragile armed conflict environment of Africa is developed. It is not only used as an effective propaganda machine for promoting regime defense, building resistant movement, but also transforming the political actor's parochial interest into people's interest.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms (board size, board independence, separation of chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) roles and external auditor type) on accounting conservatism in Egypt.Design/methodology/approachArchival data relating to CG and accounting conservatism are collected and analysed using multivariate regression techniques.FindingsThe findings indicate that board independence is positively associated with accounting conservatism. By contrast, board size and auditor type are negatively associated with accounting conservatism, while separating the chairperson and CEO roles has no significant relationship with accounting conservatism.Originality/valueTo the best of the author's knowledge, this is one of the first empirical attempts at providing evidence on the relationship between CG and accounting conservatism in Egypt.

AbstractManuscript TypeEmpiricalResearch Question/IssueThis paper investigates the relationship between corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, consequently, examines whether CG can positively moderate the association between corporate financial performance (CFP) and CSR.Research Findings/InsightsUsing a sample of large listed corporations from 2002 to 2009, we find that, on average, better‐governed corporations tend to pursue a more socially responsible agenda through increased CSR practices. We also find that a combination of CSR and CG practices has a stronger positive effect on CFP than CSR alone, implying that CG positively influences the CFP‐CSR relationship. Our results are robust to controlling for different types of endogeneities, as well as alternative CFP, CG and CSR proxies.Theoretical/Academic ImplicationsThe paper generally contributes to the literature on CG, CSR, and CFP. Specifically, we make two main new contributions to the extant literature by drawing on new insights from an overarching neo‐institutional framework. First, we show why and how better‐governed corporations are more likely to pursue a more socially responsible agenda. Second, we provide evidence on why and how CG might strengthen the link between CFP and CSR.Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsOur findings have important implications for corporate regulators and policy‐makers. Since our evidence suggests that better‐governed corporations are more likely to be more socially responsible with a consequential positive effect on CFP, it provides corporate regulators, managers and policy‐makers with a new impetus to develop a more explicit agenda of jointly pursuing CG and CSR reforms, instead of merely considering CSR as a peripheral component of CG or as an independent corporate activity.