Disasters like droughts, earthquakes, floods, and storms are becoming more frequent and intense, among others due to climate change. Consequentially, both decision makers and scholars are increasingly concerned about the security implications of disasters. At the same time, the number of armed conflicts globally is on a historical height. However, as of yet, little is known on how disaster impacts the dynamics of such conflicts. In other words: How do conflict parties react if a disaster strikes a civil war zone?

Tobias Ide presents insights from his recent book on this question, drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from 31 civil wars in 21 countries. Among others, he finds that disasters open opportunities for rebel groups, that disasters can also facilitate conflict de-escalation and diplomacy, that situational (rather than structural) factors shape the responses of conflict parties, and that gender is a mediating variable between disasters and conflict dynamics.

About the Speaker

Tobias Ide is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Murdoch University Perth and a Specially Appointed Professor at Hiroshima University. Holding PhDs in Political Science and Earth Science, he has worked intensively on the intersections of climate change, the environment, peace, and conflict. Tobias has published over 60 journals articles since 2014, including in International Security, Journal of Peace Research, and Nature Climate Change. In 2023, he received the ISA Emerging Peace Studies Scholar Award and the International Science Prize for Peace and Ecology in the Anthropocene.

Recent publications:

Catastrophes, Confrontations, and Constraints: How Disasters Shape the Dynamics of Armed Conflicts. MIT Press (2023)

Rise or Recede? How Climate Disasters Affect Armed Conflict Intensity. International Security 47(4), 50-79 (2023).

The Future of Environmental Peace and Conflict Research. Environmental Politics 32 (6), 1077-1103 (2023).

Climate, Women, and Conflict. Global Studies Quarterly 3 (3), ksad039 (2023).

Climate Change and Australia's National Security. Australian Journal of International Affairs 77 (1), 26-44 (2023).

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Host
Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

How disparate humanitarian agents leverage AI tools to cultivate collaborative, anticipatory, and timely aid responses during conflicts.

This empirical study examines an overlooked yet deeply disconcerting dilemma facing humanitarian organizations operating in conflict zones. As complex conflicts evolve into new and numerous demands on humanitarian agents, they are often met with specialized, independent, organized efforts. But these well-meaning efforts often devolve into piecemeal, un-coordinative, post-hoc responses that are characterised by effort duplication, and even inadvertent violations of the 'leave no one behind' humanitarian principle. The elusive 'holy grail' in humanitarian work is to find a way to transform such uncoordinated and post-hoc efforts into an anticipatory, coordinative template of interpretation and action (i.e. collaborative praxis).

This multi-site digital ethnography examines one such transformative process - a Human AI (HAI) assemblage consisting of various human agents (NGOs, Transnational humanitarian agents, governments), and machine intelligences (NLP and predictive analytics tools) that collaboratively develop shared interpretation and anticipatory action trajectories for two ongoing humanitarian conflicts zone (Sudan and Gaza). This study finds that human and machine interactions here are distinguished by opposite mechanisms of sensemaking convergence (i.e. converging interpretations over 'temporal flow' of crises, agreements over institutional factors that exacerbate crisis, etc) and institutional divergence (i.e. Intentionally maintaining unique institutional subject positions, 'baking in' different normative understandings into models etc). The insights from our grounded, processual model contribute to literatures on AI coordination, Humanitarian organizations, and sensemaking analysis.

About the Speakers

Shivaang Sharma is a PhD candidate on Collective Intelligence Systems and Adjunct lecturer on Social Innovation at UCL School of Management, UK. He is currently working alongside a cluster of INGOs to monitor and respond to ongoing armed conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. He has 11 years of experience of working in conflict zones for organizations including UN-OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), IMMAP, WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). He is leading an initiative to build a collaborative community around the use of AI tools across humanitarian sectors.

Angela Aristidou specialises in strategy and entrepreneurship at University College London's School of Management and she is a Fellow (Faculty Affiliate) at Stanford University's Digital Economy Lab, in the Human-centred AI Centre. Angela is an international award-winning academic (among other: Fulbright; Stanford University's CASBS), she is solo grant-holder for a UK Research Innovation Future Leader Fellowship (approx. £1.7 UK million pounds; 2020-2028) and she currently leads a team of researchers examining digital innovations in the UK, USA, China and Canada. Angela is an expert in how private tech companies, governments and public sector organisations, nonprofits and communities collaborate to innovate for public good.

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Host
Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

"Constitutions include systems of checks and balances to distribute power between government branches and guarantee accountability mechanisms for higher public officials. They also create relief valves in times of political conflict. The Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 includes the classical impeachment process and what has been called "muerte cruzada" which allows the president to dissolve the National Assembly (the national legislative body) and call for new elections. The Assembly holds the same capacity but a limited version of it.

Politicians employed these mechanisms in 2022 and 2023. The Assembly tried to apply "muerte cruzada" against the president after the violent repression of protesting citizens in 2022 and initiated an impeachment process on corruption charges in 2023. President Lasso's response was the dissolution of the Assembly. By the end of 2023, Ecuadorians elected a new president and representatives.
Instead of enhancing power control and accountability, politicians are weaponizing the Ecuadorian Constitution against political rivals or to elude legal responsibility for corruption accounts. Amid the recent political conflict, the Constitutional Court was called to police the branches of state and the respect of the Constitution. Still, it could not stop the political and constitutional dispute that has put Ecuador in a severe economic and social crisis. Is the 2022 -2023 phenomena a sight of the future on how politicians will handle their conflicts? Or does the Constitution provide elements to prevent the abuse of the checks and balances mechanisms?"

David Cordero-Heredia, J.S.D. ’18 is an Associate Professor of Law, at Universidad Católica del Ecuador currently visiting Cornell University as Visiting Fellow of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program. He is a Visiting Professor at the Andean University Simón Bolívar (UASB).

Resiliencia desde América Latina y el Caribe:

​​Crisis, Resistance, and Adaptation

Confronted by the ongoing consequences of colonialism, mercantilism, and imperial extraction, and more recently by the failed promises of global liberal democracy and political revolution, Latin American and Caribbean communities have created variegated landscapes and movements of crisis, resistance, and adaptation. Actors across Latin America and the Caribbean continue to act creatively to envision, enact, and experiment with a panoply of solutions, resistance strategies, and pre-figurative alternatives. Throughout history, and through alternative practices of community and kinship, art and performance, climate justice, technology, and a myriad of other examples, the friction generated during social, cultural, and economic predicaments have fueled healing processes for reconstruction and rebirth.

This symposium creates more spaces to discuss these pivotal and continuing cycles of crisis and adaptation. Above all, narratives and histories of Latin American and Caribbean resilience underscore the significant global role that these regions have had protecting and advocating for the health and well-being of their communities and shared ecosphere in the afterglow of crises relating to our rapidly changing climate, economies, and politics, among others. Forms of resistance and adaptation, broadly construed, are denoted by the effort to transform fundamentally the material and ideological conditions of quotidian existence. In an effort to rethink through our current moment as connecting with our past and future, we invite the Cornell community to think through some of the most salient practices and theories that index forms of resistance and adaptation during times of crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Resiliencia desde América Latina y el Caribe:

Crisis, Resistencia y Adaptacion.

Frentes a las consecuencias actuales del colonialismo, el mercantilismo y la extracción imperial, y más recientemente a las promesas fallidas de una democracia liberal global y una revolución política, las comunidades latinoamericanas y caribeñas han creado paisajes y movimientos variados de crisis, resistencia y adaptación. Los actores de América Latina y el Caribe continúan trabajando creativamente para imaginar, implementar y experimentar con un abanico de soluciones, estrategias de resistencia y alternativas prefigurativas. A lo largo de la historia, y a través de prácticas alternativas de comunidad y solidaridad, arte y performance, justicia climática, tecnología y una infinidad de otros ejemplos, la fricción generada durante las dificultades sociales, culturales y económicas ha impulsado procesos de reconstrucción y renacimiento.

Este simposio crea más espacios para discutir estos ciclos fundamentales y continuos de crisis y adaptación. Las narrativas e historias de la resiliencia de América Latina y el Caribe subrayan el importante papel global que estas regiones han tenido en la protección y defensa de la salud y el bienestar de sus comunidades y la ecosfera compartida en el período posterior a las crisis relacionadas con el rápido cambio climático, económico, político, entre otros. Las formas de resistencia y adaptación, interpretadas en sentido amplio, se denotan por el esfuerzo por transformar fundamentalmente las condiciones materiales e ideológicas de la existencia cotidiana. En un esfuerzo por repensar nuestro momento actual como conexión con nuestro pasado y futuro, invitamos a la comunidad de Cornell a reflexionar sobre algunas de las prácticas y teorías más destacadas que demuestran formas de resistencia y adaptación durante tiempos de crisis en América Latina y el Caribe.

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Bohuslav Ečer and the Crime of Aggression

Finnemore and Sikkink’s 1998 ‘norm life cycle’ model has inspired a substantial literature investigating norms’ emergence and staying power. However, because their model hinges on Sunstein’s ‘tipping point’ theory, Adam Lerner, Associate Professor at UMass Lowell, argues it biases scholarship towards powerful actors with resources to spread norms, often overlooking the micro-foundations of norm entrepreneurship—intellectual work involved in reshaping ideas and communicating them to relevant audiences. To remedy this gap, the research team argues for a distinction within their model between norm entrepreneurs and norm popularizers and demonstrates how research into the former can promote a fruitful partnership between IR and work in the history of political thought (HPT) tracing inflection points in norms’ life cycles.

This presentation will illustrate this argument with multi-archival research (conducted in the US, UK, and Czechia) into Bohuslav Ečer, Czechoslovakia’s representative at the 1943-1948 UN War Crimes Commission. Though much of his memory has been lost to history due to both communist repression and the American bias of existing scholarship, the presentation will demonstrate Ečer was a pivotal norm entrepreneur with regards to the criminality of aggressive war. Drawing on previously uncited evidence, we show how Ečer’s ideas developed and spread, shaping US wartime policy and, ultimately, the foundational 1945 Nuremberg Charter. Appreciation of Ečer’s role both contributes to our understanding of a pivotal norm in international criminal law’s emergence and enriches our theoretical understanding of norms’ life cycles.

About the Speaker
Adam B. Lerner is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Bachelor of Liberal Arts Program at UMass Lowell. His research focuses on international political theory, and he is particularly interested in the legacy of mass violence in the international system and tools for global repair and reconciliation. His first book, From the Ashes of History: Collective Trauma and the Making of International Politics (OUP, 2022) received the Peter Katzenstein Book Award from Cornell, the Edgar S. Furniss Award from Ohio State, the ISA International Ethics Book Award, and was runner up for the ISA Theory Book Prize and the ECPR Hedley Bell Book Prize. His refereed articles have appeared in International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, Perspectives on Politics, International Affairs, International History Review, and International Theory, among other outlets. He received a BA from Cornell University and an MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Host
Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Co-sponsor
Institute for European Studies