Global South to the Rescue: Emerging Humanitarian Superpowers and Globalizing Rescue Industries by Paul Amar

Author:Paul Amar [Amar, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General, Political Science, Globalization, Social Science, Disease & Health Issues
ISBN: 9780415577953
Google: UIPcSAAACAAJ
Goodreads: 13713083
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-15T09:38:37+00:00

Issues Affecting Knowledge and Practice

Contextual issues matter because they shape the ways in which policing knowledge is created, articulated, enacted, recognised, and understood. We may not know how ethnic, cultural, or religious conceptual frameworks and practices, or language communities, influence the categories or types of policing knowledge transmitted during policing missions; yet it seems reasonable to assume that there are major challenges to be overcome. At the same time, however, it seems reasonable to assume that educated officers with international experience are sufficiently aware of the distinctions—and of the practices of other countries—to compare knowledge and expertise even if the criteria they use for assessing and appreciating knowledge remains fundamental unchanged.

As far as the Nigeria Police are concerned, two main issues affect knowledge and practice as it relates to a globalising culture. The first is police reform, which shapes the police’s stated domestic standards and terminology. The last 10 years have seen the police subject to several internally driven reform projects, including, most recently, President Yar’adua’s Presidential Committee on Police Reform headed by Alhaji Yesufu, a retired inspector general of police. At the same time, donors support reform and/or improved policing. For example, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) funds community-policing projects while Canada, France, North Korea, and the US provide equipment and/or training; in June 2009, for example, the French National Police organised a two-day cyber crime training course for 20 officers (two months later, hackers attacked the police website recording the course). Inevitably, reform has been the subject of political manipulation. Thus the Yesufu Committee is widely seen as an attempt by the Yar’adua administration to gain legitimacy following international condemnation of the police’s role in the electoral fraud that characterised Yar’adua’s own election. In turn, politicisation compounds problems such as Nigeria’s high levels of violent crime, much of which expresses or exploits political, religious, ethnic, and societal tensions that are rooted in poverty, unemployment, and competition for land. Nigeria may be Africa’s biggest oil producer, but a globalising or internationalist culture means little to officers (let alone to other ranks) when petrol is imported and more than half the population live on less than US$1 a day.

The second—and subsidiary—issue affecting the police’s knowledge and practice of internationalist policing relates to its international record and the peacekeeping training officers and other ranks receive. The police have not had the presence of Nigeria’s military peacekeepers, which first deployed 50 years ago, but their role has increased since 2002. Also, they have made a number of moves towards accommodating the UN standards associated with a globalising culture. In 2007, for example, President Obasanjo invited Norway to train 250 Nigerian police for UN deployment. Norwegian officers provided a course that, in addition to including an overview of the UN’s history, organisation, and legal framework, introduced the elements commonly considered to facilitate a globalising culture. These included human rights law versus host nation law, standard operational procedures, cultural awareness, humanitarian assistance, negotiation and mediation, ethics, the UN’s policing standards and code of conduct, and the consequences of their violation (National Daily, 2008; Nigerian Tribune, 2008).

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