Predictors of Positive Development in Emerging Adulthood

This article responds to recent calls for a focus on successful development in young people and examination of its developmental precursors, in order to identify potentially modifiable targets for interventions. The current study examined child and adolescent precursors of positive functioning in emerging adulthood, including individual characteristics, relationship factors, and connections to the community, using a multidimensional positive development measure at 19–20 years. The sample consisted of 511 males and 647 females who were participants in the Australian Temperament Project, a population based longitudinal study that has followed young people’s psychosocial adjustment from infancy to early adulthood. Higher levels of positive development in emerging adulthood were associated with stronger family and peer relationships, better adjustment to the school setting, higher family socioeconomic status, and better emotional control. Some significant gender differences were observed, with emotional control, family relationships, and community orientation all being stronger predictors of males’ than of females’ positive development. The findings provide possible targets for child and adolescent interventions to promote positive development in early adulthood.     

Manfred Elfstrom,Workers and Change in China: Resistance,Repression, Responsiveness

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

A case for integrated development: pathways to improve child well-being

Economic strengthening interventions may increase income, assets, and food security. Donors and implementers see the potential for improvements in child well-being. This article presents lessons learnt from the implementation of two economic strengthening interventions. It finds missed opportunities with regard to child nutrition, and recommends: (1) integrating economic strengthening interventions with complementary development activities; (2) deep formative assessment to inform programme design; and (3) the use of community-based feedback loops. Development practitioners, funders, policymakers, and researchers must take every opportunity to improve the lives of children as young as possible to build healthy families, communities, and nations.     

Responsibility to Protect: Emerging Rules on Humanitarian Intervention?

This article discusses different forms of military force under or linked to the principle of the responsibility to protect (R2P) in relation to international law, with particular emphasis on humanitarian intervention. It contributes to the ongoing debate by analysing and separating the lawful forms of military force falling under Pillars II and III of the R2P from unlawful claims and extensive interpretations of R2P. Apart from the already existing legal right of the Security Council to authorise humanitarian interventions, it is argued that there are no ongoing legal customary developments of similar rights or obligations for other actors to intervene in another state (without consent) to protect populations by military force against grave crimes under the principle of R2P. The argumentation is based on a series of case studies of humanitarian interventions by the Security Council, regional organisations and “coalitions of willing states”. The article also includes legal analysis on the Uniting for Peace Procedure and the prior treaty-based consented rights to intervention under the African Union Act and the 1999 ECOWAS Protocol on the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention.     

Can spirits play a role in peace and reconciliation projects? Perspectives on traditional reconciliation in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

There is a long history of spirit-oriented systems of reconciliation and healing in Zimbabwe. However, under white rule, this work was marginalised and driven underground. In Zimbabwe today, diverse views on reconciliation, reparation, justice and national healing are producing rich but frequently conflicted initiatives around ‘traditional’ and ‘community’ reconciliation. The article considers contradictions and pressures facing the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission and different approaches to ‘spirit-led’ trauma healing work from three grassroots organisations: Heal Zimbabwe; Tree of Life; and the Centre for Conflict Management and Transformation. It indicates how religious, cultural and political affiliations influence participants’ openness to traditional and spirit-led forms of reconciliation; and how this, in turn, constrains how perpetrators, victims and reparation are defined by those working in this field. Rather than identifying specific practices as ‘authentic’ traditions, the article suggests that a continuity of community/cultural approaches can inform contemporary national healing initiatives in Zimbabwe.