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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 1:01 am
Time: 1:01 am
Results for urban areas (international)
2 results foundAuthor: Institute for Security Studies Title: Unban Violence and Humanitarian Challenges: Joint Report Summary: This second colloquium organised jointly by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) aimed to present the causes and humanitarian consequences of urban violence, as well as related trends and challenges for the European Union and humanitarian actors. Two case studies have been selected, focusing on different types of violence affecting urban environments. The first case study examines pilot projects to address humanitarian needs arising from organised crime and gang violence in megacities; the second is an analysis of the humanitarian challenges emerging from urban violence in the context of uprisings, referring specifically to the lessons learned from the protests in the Arab world. Urban violence represents numerous challenges for policy makers and humanitarian actors alike. Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities and it appears that urban centres will absorb almost all new population growth in the coming decades. It has therefore become increasingly important to understand the dynamics of violence in an urban setting. By bringing together experts, academics and representatives from various relief organisations, the ICRC and the EUISS hope to have contributed to the debate and spurred further interest in this increasingly important issue. The present publication includes summaries of both the presentations provided by the speakers and the discussions held during the colloquium. Details: Paris: Institute for Security Studies, 2012. 88p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 25, 2012 at: http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/Urban_violence_and_humanitarian_challenges.pdf Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://www.iss.europa.eu/uploads/media/Urban_violence_and_humanitarian_challenges.pdf Shelf Number: 125774 Keywords: Cities and CrimeGangsOrganized CrimeUrban Areas (International)ViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Williams, Naomi Title: 100 Promising Practices on Safer Cities: Collation of Urban Safety Practices Summary: As crime and violence becomes an even greater concern for residents in urban areas globally, two general approaches have been developed to address this scourge. On one hand, national governments have attempted to reinforce security through repression. These repressive measures include increasing police manpower, increasing the term of prison sentences, and applying repressive measures which are difficult to administer and at the same time questionable, e.g. "zero tolerance". Such measures can also include curfews for minors or the lowering of the age of legal responsibility. The second approach favours prevention in addition to repression. This can be undertaken in two ways. One way involves the centralisation of the fight against insecurity by making police officers the key players in the matter and subordinating the prevention' practitioners to them. The other tends to decentralise the fight through the delegation to the local authorities of the leadership through a partnership between civil associations in which the police can participate. It should be noted that in the two approaches, one often sees police reform applied in parallel to the implementation of preventive actions. While the repressive approach has the advantage of having immediate effects which can satisfy the short-term demands of public opinion and the needs for effectiveness of the political class, it is clearly evident, however, that the cost of repression is much higher than that of prevention and that prevention has a long term and broad range of effects on quality of life. A social call for safer cities and urban spaces is nowadays clearly voiced. Such a demand concerns directly all those who are responsible for urban development projects. Bearing this in mind, UN-Habitat has embarked on the progressive development of an urban safety approach that builds on a culture of prevention within a sustainable human settlement and more specifically a sustainable urban development agenda The development of this urban approach to crime and violence prevention reveals that the principles governing the layout, functionality and management of streets and urban spaces that determine quality of urban life are close to those that contribute to feelings of safety of urban users. That is why urban safety has become an accepted goal of urban development projects and has provided local authorities and urban stakeholders with a great opportunity to take advantage of the Safer Cities approach to change the face of cities for the better - to produce better quality of life for urban residents, to enhance values of citizenship and social cohesion and to create liveable urban environments. But equally, without documenting lessons from practice on the application of the prevention approach at the local level, there is an enormous risk that urban stakeholders continue to apply the prevention models of two decades ago that have achieved little impact due to their design and lack of systematization - consequently the scourge of crime and violence continues to perpetuate itself in those cities and communities and more segregated urban communities continue to be produced offering no social context or cohesion, no new hopes or possibilities for the most vulnerable groups in the society. There is plenty of evidence about the right and wrong ways to go about the prevention and reduction of urban crime and violence and there is a gathering consensus that the way forward is enhancing multi-dimensional, multi-stakeholder, integrated and holistic approaches to urban safety. Yet there is still not much debate and application of the principles of this approach to urban safety to address the problem of delivery of urban safety for all. The problem of delivery is multifaceted, however two key aspects can be underlined: the weak institutional capacity of local government in many countries often manifested by bad urban governance, planning and management practices; and the lack of political will to decentralize national security policies to the institutions of local government, often seeing local as the interface of the police station with local communities. Coupled with this, is the fact that in the face of rising crime and violence, many local authorities resort to short term quick win actions as opposed to long term social prevention measures which many suspect as more costly to plan and develop. In addition, planning authorities are not well enough informed about the multi-sectoral benefits which are associated with holistic approaches on the prevention of urban crime and enhancement of urban safety, to incorporate these more enlightened principles more robustly in their urban planning, urban management and urban governance principles, nor confident enough to work to actively implement this type of safety-conscious urban development. Accordingly, this report, which presents the case for urban safety, has been written with two audiences in mind - public authorities on the one hand and urban stakeholders on the other hand. The goal of this report is not to be prescriptive but rather to foster an understanding of how the safer cities model has evolved from practice and to provide a source of reference for the elaboration of UN Guidelines on Safer Cities. The 100 practices have been classified into 5 categories : - YOUTH SAFETY PRACTICES - GENDER SAFETY PRACTICES - URBAN DEVELOPMENT SAFETY PRACTICES - COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION SAFETY PRACTICES - POLICING & SECURITY SAFETY PRACTICES - GOVERNANCE SAFETY PRACTICES Details: s.l.:Global Network of Safer Cities, 2014. 214p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 11, 2015 at: http://efus.eu/files/2014/12/100-Promising-Practices-on-Safer-Cities-1-1.pdf Year: 2014 Country: International URL: http://efus.eu/files/2014/12/100-Promising-Practices-on-Safer-Cities-1-1.pdf Shelf Number: 134591 Keywords: CitiesCrime PreventionUrban Areas (International)Urban Crime |