According to polling firm Gallup’s recently released Global Law and Order 2015 report, those countries are all among the top ten where people have the highest sense of personal security and the best experiences with law enforcement and crime.
As important as a sense of safety and law and order is for someone’s personal well-being, it also has broad societal implications in other ways. This Friday, Harvard Law’s Law & International Development Society will be exploring one of those aspects: development. Panels including representatives from the World Bank and USAID, among other institutions, will be discussing business development in post-conflict areas and the dilemmas humanitarian actors face in high conflict areas.
The resulting discussions may help offer some insight into the significance of attitudes like those captured by Gallup. The idea that a secure environment is an important part of building up a country’s economy may seem intuitive, but there are many unanswered questions. Is there room for post-conflict states to utilize businesses’ tendency to see risk as opportunity? Do security-side actors have a role to play in delivering development aid, or would such involvement place humanitarian actors at risk through a perceived loss of their impartiality? If a country seeking to improve its residents’ well-being has limited resources, what proportion of those resources should it devote to which sectors? Issues like these and others may be explored at the symposium, which will take place on Friday, October 16, from 12-7 PM in the Ames Courtroom at Harvard Law School’s Austin Hall. A full schedule of events and list of speakers can be found here.