This two phase project, over-sought by Dr. Andrea Oelsner, took place both in Rio de Janeiro (2013) and in London (2014). It discusses the security challenges and security organizational structures in Latin America with its main objectives being to renew the debate on the security concerns and configuration of the security parameters in this region, and to raise awareness among a European audience about these issues.
Latin America: New Security Configuration in a Strategic Emerging Region is a two-stage project with Dr Andrea Oelsner (University of Aberdeen) as the project’s principal investigator, and Dr Rut Diamint (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Argentina) and Dr Monica Herz (IRI, PUC-Rio, Brazil) as its co-investigators. The project was generously funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grants programme.
The first workshop took place in Rio de Janeiro in December 2013 and its main objectives were to renew and update the debate on the security interests and concerns of states in the Americas. The debate centred on the role of the emerging regional security integration for the future of South American regionalism. It concluded with five main policy recommendations, which could be summed up as follows: the absence of strategic dialogue between and among regional actors, the necessity of a conceptual debate, change in institutional dynamics with further institutionalisation of existing mechanisms, the essentiality of agreement on specific and concrete issues, and the shift towards more preventive defence policies.
Find the workshop programme and the report here.
The second and final stage of this project, which took place in London in September 2014, was open to the public and sought to raise awareness among a European audience of the configuration of the new security parameters in Latin America. The focus of the debate was on the region’s current multilateral organisations, and their impact on regional strategy. Additionally, the strategy towards the region of extra-regional actors was also discussed. Similar to the first workshop, policy recommendations were presented at the end of this conference. The five main points taken from the debate are: better policy coordination and resource allocation on intermestic level, improvement in inter-organisational dialogue guided by regional leaders, reinforcement of complementarity and specialisation of regional organizations, expansion of the procedural definition of democracy to a less limited one, and less adherence to the principles such as national autonomy and sovereignty to enhance organizations’ effectiveness and credibility.
Here are the links for both the workshop programme and the report.
Interveiw with one of the co-investigators Dr Rut Diamint to come soon