Big Cities: Sources of and Approaches to Urban Insecurities in Fragile Contexts

This one-day meeting will bring together experts on urban insecurity to discuss the ways in which marginalization, crime, political grievance and non-state armed groups interact in the massive urban centres of the developing world, and particularly in fragile states. A variety of sessions will feature presentations, panel discussions and plenary debate on the epidemics of violent crime in certain Latin American cities, such as Caracas; the hybrid forms of organized violence in Karachi and Nairobi; the ways in which “solutions” to urban security problems are generated and marketed globally; the new approaches taken by policy-makers to extremely fragmented and violent urban environments; and the forms in which international donors may support and empower local communities in achieving better urban living conditions.