Prevention of conflicts in youth environment

The article is devoted to the problem of conflict prevention in the youth environment, which is one of the most relevant in the context of modern socio-cultural conditions. The article reveals the role of the organizer of work with youth in organizing the prevention of various conflicts in the youth environment, discusses some methods, techniques and techniques for preventing conflicts, as well as techniques for getting out of conflict situations. The content of the article is based on a theoretical analysis of domestic and foreign literature on psychology, sociology and pedagogy in the field of conflict prevention and management in the youth environment, the formation of conflictological competence of young people. The proposed materials can be used in the process of teaching students in the direction of training Organization of work with youth, levels of higher education - bachelor's, master's degree in the process of mastering the relevant disciplines, in particular, the discipline "Social problems of youth", "Prevention of conflicts in the youth environment", " Psychological and pedagogical foundations of work with youth ”

African experiences and alternativity in International Relations theorizing about security

Deconstructing International Relations (IR) episteme acknowledges its generation of power imbalances in security knowledge that relegate African experiences to the margins of global politics. Central to this process of relegation is a pervasive ‘methodological whiteness’, which, while eliding coloniality and racism, projects white experience as a universal perspective. Accompanying this Eurocentric bias has been the intrusive projection of the Weberian state as the most effective site for security governance and conflict prevention on a continent with states that are characterized by a hybridity of political orders, which deviate substantially from the ideal-type state that they seek to mimic. Not only has this resulted in disastrous policies in many parts of Africa, but critical questions arise as to the relevance of conventional IR and security studies as neutral sites for dispassionate knowledge production and policy-making on African security, thereby necessitating alternative perspectives. This article reflects on the ways in which IR and security studies have been responsible, in part, for the production of a racialized mode of security knowledge generation that obfuscates the security policies and experiences of people in African locales. It draws on insights from post-colonial discourses and the episteme of alternativity to explore how the study of events and processes in Africa in a theoretically conscious manner could advance IR scholarship as a whole. It contends that incorporating African experiences as they manifest through hybrid security orders can broaden the empirical base for IR theorizing about security since they offer another perspective outside the conventional western assumptions and experiences.

UN preventive diplomacy as a toll for preventive conflict situations

Problem setting. The specifics of the development of countries in the modern world are the strengthening of integration processes, the destruction of interstate and interregional barriers, coordination and joint efforts in solving global problems, creating a system of collective security, which caused significant changes in the concept of international security, interaction between countries, their cooperation. Such transformations have also affected the peacekeeping activities of the United Nations, which require it to step up its initiative, find new mechanisms and forms of conflict prevention that would correspond to current trends in the development of states and the specifics of conflict. Analysis of recent researches and publications. Mechanisms of preventive diplomacy are considered by many scientists, both domestic and foreign. Among domestic scientists, special attention is paid to this problem by I. Blyshchenko, M. Matsyakh, O. Gogosha, V. Makarov, I. Komirenko, D. Gorovtsov, A. Melkin, and S. Melnik. Regarding foreign scientists, we should pay attention to the works of such researchers as: G. Nicholson, M. Jensa, W. Latifi, J. Opio, W. Zartman, F. Mancini, A. Williams. It is worth paying attention to the publications of the UN Secretaries General: K. Annan, B. Boutros-Ghali. They detail the key functions of the United Nations, which is a key player in preventive diplomacy. Target of research. The purpose of the article is to define the concept of preventive diplomacy, the range of its subjects, the role in ensuring international and national security. Much attention is paid to the analysis of the activities of preventive diplomacy, which should actively cooperate with each other to effectively prevent conflicts. The authors try to summarize the experience of preventive diplomacy in the field of international and national security, and the obstacles that arise in the modern world in the implementation of its means. Article’s main body. The phrase “preventive diplomacy” came into use by the United Nations during the Cold War. In the late 1950s, UN Secretary-General Dаg Hammarskjöld used the phrase not as a method of preventing potential conflicts, but as a means of preventing conflicts. Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s 1992 Agenda for Peace states that diplomatic measures are best used to reduce tensions before they escalate into conflict and, if they do erupt, to contain the conflict quickly and resolving the controversies that caused it. Preventive diplomacy refers to actions aimed at preventing disputes between the parties, escalating existing disputes into conflicts and limiting the spread of the latter in the event of their occurrence. This definition provides an understanding of the objectives of preventive diplomacy, which the UN has associated with a range of actions, such as facilitation, mediation, conciliation, litigation and arbitration. The main areas of preventive diplomacy are: confidence-building measures, fact-finding, early warning, preventive deployment, and the creation of demilitarized zones. Subjective diplomacy actors such as the UN, the UN Secretary-General as its direct representative, regional bodies, national initiatives, humanitarian organizations and development agencies are widely considered. Conclusions and prospects for the development. The article summarizes the definition of the main problems of modern preventive diplomacy, which negatively affect the implementation of basic means of conflict prevention, confirms the effectiveness of preventive diplomacy in comparison with other instruments for maintaining peace and security in the world.

Legal instability in cyberspace and OSCE’s mitigation role

After the international legal community widely endorsed the application of international law to cyberspace, many open questions remain on the concrete interpretation of existing rights and obligations to the cyber realm. In pursuit of its mandate to promote human rights and conflict prevention, the OSCE can play a major role to support operationalization of international law and application of existing principles to cyberspace. This paper examines some key steps in the aftermath of the creation of norms of behavior, and transparency and confidence-building measures. After a brief analysis of the normcreation process, this piece identifies several pressing cybersecurity challenges on the international landscape, and offers suggestions for consolidating the voluntary non-binding norms States agreed upon. Using lessons learned from other domains, the analysis will focus on mechanisms of building further stability and transparency in cyberspace, in particular by reference to the due diligence principle and States’ human rights obligations.

Lessons in Atrocity Prevention: A Closer Look at Guinea

This article identifies the most significant atrocity risk factors and their indicators in accordance with the UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes and provides a taxonomy of measures, taken by a variety of external and internal stakeholders, in different combinations, which reduced the risk of atrocity crimes reoccurring after the 2009 stadium massacre in Conakry, Guinea. On the 28th of September 2009, 157 protesters were killed, at least 1200 were injured, and over 100 women were raped by security forces in a stadium in Conakry. The UN’s Commission of Inquiry (coi) concluded that these crimes committed by the security forces amounted to crimes against humanity. The efforts to halt further violence and prevent the commission of crimes post-2009 stadium massacre were varied and encompassed regional and international preventive diplomacy. The coordination of a coherent political strategy among international, regional and sub-regional actors in the Guinean context contributed towards the perceived success in preventing further atrocities in Guinea, post-2009 massacre. Importantly, Guinea is not a typical example in terms of atrocity and conflict prevention, due to a unique regional and global dynamics that allowed for a rapid and rather coherent response to the September 2009 stadium massacre.

CONFLICTS IN THE PROCESS OF ADAPTATION AMONG FRESHMEN IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

The purpose of the study is to identify the level of conflict during the adaptation period and to determine possible factors of increased conflict among first-year undergraduate students. For two years, the authors conducted a survey in Moscow universities. Adaptation for students is related to an increase in anxiety, changes in responsibility for their actions. With the online start of the first year freshmen studied in their familiar environment, thus the adaptation process smoothed out, the conflict level decreased. The relevance of conflict prevention during the adaptation period becomes important when introducing a change in specialty after the second year and working out individual learning paths.

Arming for conflict, arming for peace? How small arms imports affect intrastate conflict risk

Although a prevalent technology of conflict, the impact of small arms imports on the risk of intrastate conflict outbreak has not been examined so far. This article argues that small arms not only enhance general military capabilities, but also contribute to state capacities necessary for conflict prevention. These two mechanisms are incorporated in a formal model of power shifts. The derived hypotheses are tested on 146 countries for the period 1993–2014. Using split-population and penalized fixed-effects logit models as innovative estimation methods for rare-events data, small arms imports are found to have no or even a risk-reducing impact.