In 2019, Dr. Annette Idler wrote Borderland Battles: Violence, Crime, and Governance at the Edges of Colombia’s War (Oxford University Press, 2019). Based on her extensive research on this issue, her book reveals why the Colombian-Venezuelan borderlands are enabling crucial, but largely unacknowledged interactions between Venezuela’s devastating crisis and ongoing political violence in Colombia. Failure to tackle the issues at the border could have serious long-term implications for stability in the region, which makes long-term plans for sustainable peace and security across and along the border an urgent necessity. In this Growth Lab podcast, Research Assistant Ana Grisanti interviews Annette, who discusses how the so-called border effect has facilitated violence, undermined trust relationships, attracted numerous violent non-state groups, and obscured the nuanced realities of multiple insecurities.
Interview recorded on Dec. 4, 2019.
To purchase Borderland Battles: Violence, Crime, and Governance at the Edges of Colombia's War: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/borderland-battles-9780190849153?lang=en&cc=us#
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About the Annette Idler: Annette Idler is Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She is also the Director of Studies at the Changing Character of War Centre, Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College, and at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. She is Principal Investigator of The Changing Character of Conflict Platform and of the CONPEACE Programme at Oxford. Annette Idler has conducted extensive fieldwork in war-torn and crisis-affected borderlands, including in and on Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Myanmar, and Kenya (on Somalia) analysing people-centred security dynamics.