On 28 August 2012, BICC and the Verification Center of the German Armed Forces organized an experts’ meeting at the German Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City. With an estimated three million small arms and light weapons in circulation among the civilian population, both Sudan and South Sudan are struggling to control the proliferation of weapons.

BICC Annual Report 2012: Textbook examples of preventive security policy

The Annual Report of the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) will be presented in Bonn on 11 July 2012. This year’s selection of topics once again illustrates the relevance of the projects and research work of this internationally renowned think tank. Topics include German arms exports, the control of small arms, developments in South Sudan and Sudan, as well as the privatization of security and resource conflicts.

On Saturday, 9 July 2011, the six-year transitionary period of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement will come to an end: with the birth of the 54th state on the African continent. It is expected that the young republic of South Sudan will be quickly recognized and will become a member of the United Nations, the African Union and other international organizations.

Elvan Isikozlu, Ananda S. MillardThis brief presents the progress to date in developing a typology of wartime rape as a first step toward understanding the different consequences of this form of violence in war. This publication focuses solely on wartime rape perpetrated by armed groups against civilians, though this form of violence is perpetrated more widely by, and against, different actors during war. The wider perpetration of rape against other actors is not presented in this brief, but is nevertheless included in the Typology.

The Typology is a product of two phases

The 2010 peace and disarmament policy agenda is vast. In March, the United States and Russia agreed a START follow-up agreement. In April, a summit on nuclear security took place in Washington, followed by the 8th Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in New York in May. In Summer, UN conferences will deliberate small arms control and the international arms trade; in Autumn, NATO will approve a new strategic concept at its summit meeting. After eight years, Germany will once again submit an application for a

Synthèse des résultats de l'étude

Cette étude sur la prolifération des armes légères en RDC a été initialement lancée dans le cadre du Projet Reconstruction communautaire, Réintégration des Ex Combattants et Réduction des Armes Légères (ComRec), mené par le PNUD-RDC afin d'assister le gouvernement de la RDC dans le développement d'initiatives et la mise en oeuvre d'une stratégie pour la réduction de la disponibilité et de la circulation illicite des armes légères. Depuis lors, le projet ComRec a été remplacé par un programme pays signé entre le PNUD et le gouvernement de la RDC sur la

Côte d'Ivoire is at a decisive stage in its political history. Since 2002, the country has been ridden by violent conflict and political unrest. After nearly ten years, Côte d'Ivoire is expecting to hold presidential elections that may end a continued situation of 'neither peace nor war', following the end of armed fighting between the government and rebel forces at the end of 2004. The conflict has often been attributed to questions of identity, and the process of identification remains a sensitive and decisive factor with regard to fair elections and

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Summary

The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that raged from 1998 until 2002 has been decisively influenced by its war economy. Based on the exploitation of the abundant natural resources of the country, the war economy provided huge spoils to war elites and also resulted in a deep restructruring of Congolese society. Ever since the formal end of the war in December 2002, the situation in the DRC remains fragile: political transition is threatened by endemic violence in the eastern provinces and instability across the country, economic recovery

BICC (Bonn International Center for Conversion) will be 15 years old in 2009. It was founded in 1994 on the initiative of the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW).

With our Annual Report 2008/2009, we want to inform you about BICC's current activities in the fields of applied research, advisory services and training at the nexus between peace and development worldwide. Unfortunately, many of the hopes, which were placed in the term 'conversion' 15 years ago have not been realized. This is demonstrated in the data part of the Annual Report, which shows worldwide