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BICC Annual Report 2012

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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.

In the words of Peter J. Croll, Director of BICC, “BICC has identified six program areas in reply to some of the challenges facing peace and security in the 21st century.” The Annual Report 2012 presents selected projects in these areas.

For example, the program area of Arms—Global trends, exports and control: BICC began drafting country portraits on security, arms and development in states receiving German arms exports as far back as in 2002. The current Annual Report presents the latest results with regard to the Asian states of India, Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines. An update of the Global Militarization Index (GMI) 2012 shows the relative size and importance of a state’s military apparatus in relation to its society as a whole. A project report describes South Sudan’s efforts to improve the storage and control of small arms in the security sector.

In his preface to BICC’s Annual Report, Ambassador Rolf Nikel, Federal Government Commissioner for Arms Control and Disarmament, German Foreign Office, writes, “The control of small arms and light weapons—an area in which BICC commands particular expertise—is a textbook example of preventive security policy.”

The program area “Security—Stakeholders, systems, threats” includes a study on private security providers in East Timor, Liberia and Peru as well as a report on projects dealing with demobilization and reintegration in South Sudan. The article on the “Political economy of security: Commercialization, arms industry and control of migration” addresses the thematic overlaps between “Arms” and “Security” and the program area of “Migration, conflicts and security”.

Under the program area of “Resources and conflict”, the Annual Report presents a project on the local effects of oil production in Melut County, South Sudan and a study on small-scale gold mining in Peru and the DR Congo.

“There will be major changes in the landscape of military bases in Germany” is the view put forward in an interview with representatives of the Ministry for Economic Affairs, Energy, Building, Housing and Transport of the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia and a BICC expert. This topic comes under the program area of “Base conversion”.

The modular information portal on war and peace, sicherheitspolitik.bpb.de, which BICC has developed in association with the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) is presented as an example of the program area of “Data and GIS (Geographic Information System)”.

“With its six program areas, BICC intends to encourage greater overlaps and synergies in its fields of research, advisory services and capacity development,” says Peter J. Croll. Security and the transformation of conflicts can only be achieved by simultaneously promoting peace and development. This normative approach is also included in the general concept of ‘conversion’, which is devoted to reducing and transforming military stockpiles, military processes and capacities. “BICC has actively developed this concept over the last eighteen years,” says Croll, summing up.

With the Annual Report 2012, BICC is taking yet a further step towards the public dissimination of its research and work outcomes. The Annual Report and all following publications are presented as Open Content by Creative Commons and can thus be put onto other websites.

BICC was founded as an independent, non-profit organization in 1994 with support from the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), which continues to provide the Center with funding.

INFORMATION:
SUSANNE HEINKE
HEAD OF PUBLIC RELATIONS
Phone.: +49 228/911 96-44 / -0
E-Mail: pr@bicc.de