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Next Generation Nuclear Security Summit - April 12-13, 2010
Minimizing Threat Convergence Risks in East Africa and the Horn of Africa, Grossman-Vermaas, Huber, and Kapitanskaya

Rita Grossman-Vermaas is a Senior Associate and Director of the Center for the Study of Threat Convergence at The Fund for Peace, and Alexandra Kapitanskaya is a Research Associate at the Center.  Konrad Huber is an independent consultant who specializes in international security.  Their report examines the potential for security challenges in East Africa and the Horn of Africa to enable illicit trafficking in, or the possible use of, nuclear or radiological materials and offers key findings and recommendations to mitigate those challenges. 

"East Africa and the Horn of Africa constitute vast, heterogeneous sub-regions of Africa that have often been beset by instability. Strong cultural, historical, and political divides within the area generally make it difficult to speak of a cohesive “region.” Fragmentation is evident in the multitude of partially overlapping sub-regional inter-governmental organizations that countries have constructed, such as the East African Community, The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), and Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), to cite just some examples. Sizeable swaths of the region, including in border areas, are remote and often lack any state presence or control. Most international borders exist only in name, particularly for pastoralist communities who regularly transit international boundaries with their livestock or link up with other communities with whom they often share the same ethnic origin, language, and culture, and with whom they trade freely. For instance, the 868 km border between Ethiopia and Kenya has only one legal crossing point in Moyale (see Map 1). To complicate matters, cross-border wars are frequent in the broader region, and certain countries have been subject to violent internal divisions for decades..."
 

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Grossman-Vermaas_Minimizing_Threat_Convergence_Risks_May10.pdf2.07 MB