It is small-scale providers that sell water to urban poor communities in Metro Manila. The quality may be substandard, supply irregular, and prices higher than those purchasing water directly from private concessionaires. The threat of physical violence in cases like Alan and his competitors, or financial losses for communities as they spend substantial portions of their incomes on water are significant aspects. In urban settlements in Metro Manila, Cathy, Michael, and Alan and his competitors may be referred to as ‘syndicates’. Unlike cooperatives, which are endorsed by Maynilad and Manila Water—private concessionaires responsible for water provision, and the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (mwss), the government institution responsible for oversight—syndicates are deemed to operate illegally.

Although privatisation in Metro Manila has resulted in increased access to piped connections and reduced pilferage, the urban poor pay more for low-quality water and access it through small-scale providers including cooperatives and syndicates. While forming cooperatives can represent efforts of urban poor communities to claim legality, the selling of water to neighbours or offering protections for pilfering by local providers illustrates everyday illegality. Governing logics of the postcolonial state and concessionaires shape these Janus-faced survival practices of urban poor communities.

Recent trends reveal a significant increase in the use of violence to generate profit as illustrated during the sanitary crisis. The Economies of Violence, understood as the actions or behaviors leading to a financial benefit to the detriment of another person, organization, or institution, are therefore detrimental to better apprehend as a concept and phenomenon. Hence, addressing this violence requires an examination of the multiple forms it may take in all fields of the economy and their evolution across time and space. Through the identification of actors in the Economies of Violence, this piece shows that legal and illegal spheres interact and overlap. Manifestations of violence in the legitimate economic system may take insidious forms, thus further complicating the task for those who seek to combat it. The report ultimately argues that the economic system is inherently generating and sustaining Economies of Violence, underlining the need for academics and decision-makers to apprehend these phenomena outside the legal-illegal opposition.

Do water crises have the potential to contribute to social and political unrest in cities, especially in the Global South? To address this question, this paper draws on 60 interviews, 8 focus group discussions and a survey of 800 urban poor households in Metro Manila. Analysis suggests that access to water for these households is rife with vulnerability. In other words, scarcity is not natural as much as produced through economic and political decisions. These pre-existing entitlements determine the scale of suffering during times of water crises. In 2019, as the entire population of Metro Manila experienced a water crisis, urban poor households suffered disproportionately. While people coped individually by altering their behavior, discontent was palpable among communities, highlighting that individual grievances were at the cusp of entering the social realm. This analysis is supported by discussions in political ecology, contentious politics, and governance and informality in cities in the Global South.

As more people move to cities, they do so at a time when concerns of resource scarcity, especially of water, abound. By 2050, at least 6 out of 10 people will be living in cities (UN-ESA 2014), increasing the demand for water by 50-70 percent (Lundqvist, Appasamy & Nelliyat 2003). Although these concerns are not new, they have gained an urgency in a time of environmental stresses and water crises; one fourth of cities in the world already face water shortages (McDonald et al. 2014). For some cities in the Global South where criminal and political violence and service provision through multiple players shapes daily experiences, these questions become doubly important. How will depleting water interact with dynamics of governance and politics? Will it lead to political instability, or worse, conflict?

Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 for safe, sufficient, and available water has always been important. Compounding challenges—from climate change and increasing migration within and across borders to COVID-19 and its multiple variants—makes achieving the human right to water more urgent. But what is often missed in discussions related to water access is that what determines access to safe and sufficient water is about more than gaps in governance or lack of funding—it is intertwined with entrenched inequality in societies, including the planning of urban spaces.

The interactions between crime and terror have primarily been framed as constituting a nexus or continuum, implying that the two are discrete phenomena. Isolated from wider social, economic, and political contexts in which these activities come together, such a conceptualization results in a reified understanding of the two.

This paper explores the global dynamics of the drug trade in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and analyzes the interface of regional actors with key players and networks outside the region.

The interactions between crime and terror have primarily been framed as constituting a nexus or continuum, implying that the two are discrete phenomena. Isolated from wider social, economic, and political contexts in which these activities come together, such a conceptualization results in a reified understanding of the two.

Crime and terror groups are key non-state actors in Karachi and employ crime and violence to achieve political and economic gains. They have a different relationship with the state than crime groups in Italy where the state has more resources to share with the crime groups. Instead, much more complex relationships exist between the state and the non-state actors in this difficult environment where crime and terror groups have become a part of diffuse governance of the city, including provision of housing and water.

The future of violent conflict is urban – because the future of humanity is urban. If we want to prevent future violent conflict, we must prevent violent urban conflict. This paper starts with an overview of urbanization trends and what is known about how these relate to risks of large-scale violence, identifying factors relating to demography, horizontal inequality.

Who influences decisions that crucially affect the public—from the distribution of precious water or energy resources to health care to the regulation of exotic and potentially risky financial instruments? What factors shape whose say matters and who gets what?

As more people move to cities, they do so at a time when concerns of resource scarcity, especially of water, abound. By 2050, at least 6 out of 10 people will be living in cities (UN-ESA 2014), increasing the demand for water by 50-70 percent (Lundqvist, Appasamy & Nelliyat 2003). Although these concerns are not new, they have gained an urgency in a time of environmental stresses and water crises; one fourth of cities in the world already face water shortages (McDonald et al. 2014).

The Security Transition Plan in Afghanistan is a high-risk political game. Decreasing the presence of foreign troops is not just a military strategy; it signifies a concomitant reduction in international commitment to Afghanistan after 2014. This development could spell disaster for Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics policy, which relies heavily on international donors for military infrastructure and financial resources.

Cape Town is running dry. But thanks to its sophisticated water management efforts, the city may ride out the crisis. However, other cities that lack these capacities are less likely to survive Day Zero. Especially in developing countries, where urban water services are often provided by informal or illegal actors, running out of water could have dangerous ripple effects for peace and security.

As migration, urbanization, and climate change transform the world, cities lie in the crosshairs—most of the world’s population will become urban. Based on the framework of “fragile cities”, scenarios of violent political instability seem imminent in cities in developing countries. While concerns of whether cities absorb disturbances introduced by these sea changes or experience instability are well founded, the “fragile city” lens falls short to the task of making sense of dynamic challenges.

On November 23, 2018, the Chinese consulate in Karachi came under attack by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA). Soon after, the attack was framed within the narrative of the separatist insurgency in Balochistan and external players sabotaging the prospects of Chinese investment through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).