Leni Wild Articles

As the cholera outbreak escalates, leaders and civil society around the
world are calling for change in Zimbabwe. But sadly, effective
international institutions, legal tools and processes for dealing with
gross human rights abuses committed (or tolerated) by a country’s own
government are few and far between.

On November 2nd I returned from a visit to rural Northern Uganda, a
region which has experienced more than two decades of war between
Ugandan government forces and a rebel group known as the Lord’s
Resistance Army. During this conflict, more than a million people were
displaced, and over 20,000 children abducted.

Stronger controls over international markets are currently high on the political agenda, in the UK and globally. In the midst of these discussions, we might reflect on the need for greater regulation in the field of security too.

In recent years the decision to invade Iraq, and the security consequences it has engendered, have dominated international policy discussions. Nevertheless, an underexamined development from Iraq and from other conflicts in the 21st century has been the rise of private security companies.

Progress readers may be familiar with, may have even seen, The Wire, HBO’s hard hitting and much hyped series about life in Baltimore which charts the collective failures of policing, legal and social structures to stop drug and gang cultures in some of the poorest American communities.