eSeminar - Organized Crime, Corruption & Peacebuilding

ABOUT THE EVENT

The impact of organized crime and corruption on peacebuilding processes is a subject of increasing international concern. As organized crime has become globalized, it has come to effect a wide range of activities, including the maintenance of peace and security. In some negotiated transitions, the influence of organized crime on stability, governance, and development is a reality that the international community must contend with during conflict resolution and peacebuilding efforts. Structural contexts of war, peace, and insecurity transform and set moral terrains for identity formation, livelihood strategies, and codes for moral agency. In places like Columbia, Myanmar, and Afghanistan, labour-intensive illicit economies (drug cultivation, illicit mining or logging) have sustained the livelihoods of many impoverished communities who possess no viable alternatives. Likewise, in countries such as El Salvador and Honduras, entering the “criminal economy” can be the only means of survival. Peacebuilding efforts dealing with organized crime and corruption must be calibrated to the local socio-economic context that originally enabled this criminal activity. As much remains to be understood about the relationship between organized crime, corruption and peacebuilding, it is important to explore how international organizations and key stakeholders can intervene to help eliminate, or reduce the impact of, criminal agendas. This will be the central question addressed at the seventh instalment of the Centre for Security Governance’s eSeminar series on “Contemporary Debates on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding”, presented in collaboration with the Balsillie School of International Affairs and Wilfrid Laurier University’s Department of Global Studies.

PANELISTS

- Geoff Burt is the Executive Director of the Centre for Security Governance (CSG).

- Dr Sasha Jesperson, Director of the Centre for the Study of Modern Slavery at St Mary’s University Twickenham.

- John de Boer, Managing Director of SecDev Group.