• woodrow wilson center
  • ecsp

New Security Beat

Subscribe:
  • mail-to
  • Who We Are
  • Topics
    • Population
    • Environment
    • Security
    • Health
    • Development
  • Columns
    • China Environment Forum
    • Choke Point
    • Dot-Mom
    • Navigating the Poles
    • New Security Broadcast
    • Reading Radar
  • Multimedia
    • Water Stories (Podcast Series)
    • Backdraft (Podcast Series)
    • Tracking the Energy Titans (Interactive)
  • Films
    • Water, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Animated Short)
    • Paving the Way (Ethiopia)
    • Broken Landscape (India)
    • Scaling the Mountain (Nepal)
    • Healthy People, Healthy Environment (Tanzania)
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Contact Us

NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Friday Podcasts

    Jack Goldstone: Preventing Violence in the Sahel Starts With More Inclusive Governance

    June 5, 2015 By Carley Chavara
    goldstone_small

    “The Sahel faces huge problems,” says Jack Goldstone, Virginia E. and John T. Hazel professor of public policy at George Mason University and Wilson Center global fellow, in this week’s podcast. “It is facing massive population growth. It is facing environmental decay. It has a history of violent conflict.”

    “The Sahel faces huge problems,” says Jack Goldstone, Virginia E. and John T. Hazel professor of public policy at George Mason University and Wilson Center global fellow, in this week’s podcast. “It is facing massive population growth. It is facing environmental decay. It has a history of violent conflict.”

    In the coming decades, Africa will have the only growing working age population in the world, says Goldstone. “The education, the socialization, the stability of young people in this region of the world is going to be, I think, the dominant issue for conflicts in the years ahead.”

    As governments struggle to meet the needs of growing populations, young people and marginalized groups have become vulnerable to recruitment by extremists. In states already experiencing conflict or displacement, youth populations can be an even greater source of frustration as their potential is capped by limited livelihood options and their schooling is often cut short.

    “If people come to trust the state and public institutions, they have less need to work through private networks”

    Effective governance can overcome these challenges through investments in education and health that allow fertility rates to decline and empower young people, giving them productive pathways to integrate with society. “As young people grow up feeling more in control of their own destinies,” Goldstone says, “they are more likely to turn to constructive group activities and less likely to be drawn to deviant or extremist movements out of anger and frustration.”

    Goldstone says education, health, and security policies must be viewed as part of a holistic process. Improving secondary education requires many steps, including raising incomes so families can afford it, investing in tertiary schools to train teachers, and creating administrations that can secure and coordinate school supplies. Conflict undermines development as women and children are unable to attend health clinics and school for fear of violence. Likewise, displaced children “do not get the same educational progress that children do who grow up in their own home.”

    “Population growth, education, and security are all deeply intertwined,” says Goldstone. “The cycle of stopping conflict requires a combination of investment not only in education and contraception but also in building governments that are inclusive, effective, and legitimate.”

    “If people come to trust the state and public institutions, they have less need to work through private networks to get around the state or to protect their group at the expense of others.”

    Jack Goldstone spoke at the Wilson Center on May 12.

    Friday podcasts are also available for download from iTunes.

    Topics: Africa, conflict, democracy and governance, demography, development, economics, education, environment, family planning, featured, foreign policy, Friday Podcasts, global health, livelihoods, population, poverty, security, youth

Join the Conversation

  • RSS
  • subscribe
  • facebook
  • G+
  • twitter
  • iTunes
  • podomatic
  • youtube
Tweets by NewSecurityBeat

Trending Stories

  • unfccclogo1
  • Pop at COP: Population and Family Planning at the UN Climate Negotiations

Featured Media

Backdraft Podcast

play Backdraft
Podcasts

More »

What You're Saying

  • 49890944808_c7d6dfef74_c Why Feminism Is Good for Your Health
    Melinda Cadwallader: "Feminism materializes through investment in human capital and caregiving sectors of the economy...
  • 49890944808_c7d6dfef74_c Why Feminism Is Good for Your Health
    Melinda Cadwallader: People who refuse to acknowledge patriarchy are often the ones who benefit from it. So please, say...
  • Water desalination pipes A Tale of Two Coastlines: Desalination in China and California
    Dr S Sundaramoorthy: It is all fine as theory. What about the energy cost? Arabian Gulf has the money from its own oil....

Related Stories

No related stories.

  • woodrow
  • ecsp
  • RSS Feed
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Wilson Center
  • Contact Us
  • Print Friendly Page

© Copyright 2007-2023. Environmental Change and Security Program.

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. All rights reserved.

Developed by Vico Rock Media

Environmental Change and Security Program

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center

  • One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
  • 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
  • Washington, DC 20004-3027

T 202-691-4000