Search

Begin New Search Topic Peace Studies Political Geography Africa

11. How Perks for Delegates Can Influence Peace Process Outcomes

Author:
Thomas Kwasi Tieku
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
This paper examines the impacts that luxurious perks for delegates, such as paid daily allowances, have on peace talks. Drawing on the Burundian peace processes held in Arusha in Tanzania and the Seventh Round of the Inter-Sudanese Peace Talks held in Abuja in Nigeria, shows that perks can unintentionally prolong peace talks. For some of the delegates, staying free of charge in five-star hotels and receiving the equivalent of five months' pay in one week of per diems made continued talks more attractive than achieving peace. The generous incentives seduced the conflicting parties away from whatever interest they might have had in actually reaching an agreement, encouraged delegates to create procedural barriers where none had previously existed, and promoted fragmentation among the rebel groups at the negotiating table. Though the paper uses contemporary African case studies to illustrate the argument, this issue transcends the African continent, as perks are a long-established diplomatic practice. To deal effectively with the unintended problems they create requires fundamental cultural and attitudinal changes in most international organizations.
Topic:
Corruption, Diplomacy, International Organization, Peace Studies, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Africa, Tanzania, and Nigeria

12. Unfinished Business: A Framework for Peace in the Great Lakes

Author:
Rigobert Minani Bihuzo
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Landmark peace agreements signed in 2002 by 11 African governments and various nonstate armed groups were meant to end 7 years of war that had ravaged Africa's Great Lakes region. A decade later, instability, tightly intertwined with regional geopolitics, persists. Recurring conflict has killed tens of thousands, mostly civilians, and displaced millions of others. The extended instability has also led to a collapse of basic social services and economic activity in parts of the DRC, resulting in manifold more deaths due to malnutrition, lack of access to basic healthcare, and scarce livelihood opportunities.Amid this breakdown, barbaric forms of violence have emerged. During one 4-day period in the summer of 2011, nearly 400 women, men, and children were raped by militia fighters. Since 1996, there have reportedly been more than 200,000 rapes, which are mostly attributed to armed militias.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Ethnic Conflict, Peace Studies, Political Economy, Treaties and Agreements, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa

13. Religion and Peacebuilding: Reflections on Current Challenges and Future Prospects

Author:
Susan Hayward
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
The field of religious peacebuilding has begun to move closer to the mainstream of conflict resolution practice and theory. The 2011 unrest in the Middle East and North Africa—the Arab Spring—reflects ongoing challenges and opportunities for the field. American and European nongovernmental organizations, agencies in the U.S. government, academia, and international organizations—sectors that once held religious issues at a distance or understood religion mainly as a driver of violence—increasingly engage religious communities and institutions as partners in creating peace. Meanwhile, religious organizations that have been involved in creating peace for decades, if not longer, increasingly have institutionalized and professionalized their work, suggesting ways that religious and secular organizations could coordinate their efforts more closely. The U.S. Institute of Peace's own programs on religion reflect the development of the wider field, having moved from research and analysis to on-the-ground programming to foster interfaith dialogue in the Balkans, Nigeria, Israel-Palestine, and Sudan. In addition, it has trained religious actors in conflict management in Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Colombia and developed peace curricula based on Islamic principles for religious and secular schools in Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and elsewhere. As the U.S. field of religious peacebuilding continues to develop, challenges include integrating further with secular peacebuilding efforts, engaging women and youth and addressing their priorities, working more effectively with non-Abrahamic religious traditions, and improving evaluation, both to show how religious peacebuilding can reduce and resolve conflict and to strengthen the field's ability to do so.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Islam, Peace Studies, Religion, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Europe, and Arabia

14. Rethinking Nigeria's Indigene-Settler Conflicts

Author:
Aaron Sayne
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Many of Nigeria's worst conflicts pit the recognized original inhabitants, or indigenes, of a particular place against supposedly later settlers. These conflicts may be growing deadlier and more numerous with time. State and local governments have free rein to pick who is an indigene. Abuse of the label can foster deep socioeconomic inequalities, given that indigenes enjoy preferential access to land, schools, development spending, and public jobs. These inequalities feed into violence, although righting inequality may not be sufficient to end violence in every case. The indigene-settler distinction is also explosive because it reinforces and is reinforced by other identity-based divides in Nigeria. These differences in ethnicity, language, religion, and culture can be longstanding and deeply felt, but how they factor into violence is again not well understood. Poor law enforcement responses also help entrench violence between indigenes and settlers. Official complicity and indifference make prosecutions rare. Destructive conduct by the Nigerian security forces itself often becomes a structural cause of violence. Serious thought about how to prevent or resolve indigene-settler violence has barely started in Nigeria. Addressing inequality between indigenes and settlers calls for serious, microlevel analysis of local economic dysfunctions and opportunities, along with real official commitment to make and enforce better policies. More holistic understandings of justice are also needed. The worst hot spots will need a wide menu of well-planned interventions. Options include securitization, criminal prosecution, mediation and dialogue, truth commissions, victim compensation programs, public health and trauma assistance, public institutional reforms, education, and communications work. In some cases, building sustainable peace could take a generation or more.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Political Violence, Crime, Ethnic Conflict, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

15. METTRE EN OEUVRE L'ARCHITECTURE DE PAIX ET DE SECURITE (I) : L'AFRIQUE CENTRALE

Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Malgré plus d'une décennie d'efforts de la Communauté économique des Etats d'Afrique centrale (CEEAC) pour concrétiser l'architecture de paix et de sécurité, la coopération politique et sécuritaire en Afrique centrale est à la recherche d'un second souffle. Désignée par l'Union africaine (UA) pour traduire en actes dans la sous-région le projet continental de paix et de sécurité, la CEEAC a franchi le stade de la simple signature des traités et protocoles mais elle peine à structurer et appliquer une véritable politique régionale de paix et de sécurité. Afin d'éviter l'enlisement de ce projet, les Etats d'Afrique centrale doivent se réinvestir dans la CEEAC, la réformer et fixer des priorités de sécurité claires et précises. De leur côté, les partenaires extérieurs doivent coordonner leur appui en fonction des besoins, de la capacité d'absorption et des objectifs de la CEEAC.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Security, Peace Studies, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Africa

16. Arms Flows to Sub-Saharan Africa

Author:
Siemon T. Wezeman, Pieter D. Wezeman, and Lucie béraud-Sudreau
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
Concerns regarding arms transfers to sub-Saharan Africa are widespread and have motivated worldwide efforts to control arms flows. Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) accounted for 1.5 per cent of the volume of world imports of major arms in 2006–10. Although this is low by global standards, with little indigenous arms-production capacity in the region, most countries are fully dependent on arms imports.
Topic:
Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, International Cooperation, Peace Studies, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
Africa

17. Making Peace When Disaster Strikes: Sri Lanka, Aceh and the 2004 Tsunami

Author:
Howard B. Schaffer
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:
On the day after Christmas 2004, a powerful 9.0 magnitude earthquake under the Indian Ocean off of northern Sumatra sent massive waves crashing against the coastlines of countries as far away as Kenya and Madagascar. This tsunami killed or left missing some 226,000 people and displaced an estimated 1.7 million more in fourteen Asian and African countries.1 Damage to property—infrastructure, residences, government buildings, and commercial establishments—was enormous. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and the Maldives were the most seriously affected. Dramatically filmed on the cameras and cell phones of local inhabitants and the many western tourists caught up in the catastrophe, the tsunami attracted instant and extensive worldwide attention and sympathetic response. Foreign governments, international agencies, and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) alike quickly undertook what became a global effort to assist local authorities to rescue and rehabilitate the victims and begin rebuilding the extensive stricken areas.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Humanitarian Aid, Peace Studies, Poverty, Natural Disasters, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, India, Asia, and Sri Lanka

18. Dilemmas of Regional Peacemaking: The Dynamics of the AU's Response to Darfur

Author:
A. Sarjoh Bah
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
The African Union's (AU) peacemaking efforts in Darfur exposed the limits of implementing its ambitious peace and security agenda, and the absence of an effective international system to support regional peacemaking efforts. This paper contends that the AU's efforts brought to the fore three critical issues: first, the gap between the AU's mandate to intervene in situations involving war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide as provided for in its founding charter, the Constitutive Act, and its capacity to do so; second, the absence of an international system to support regional peacemaking, especially when it involves deploying complex multidimensional peace operations; finally, it brought into sharper focus the inherent tensions and contradictions surrounding existing norms and emerging concepts such as sovereignty, the responsibility to protect (R2P) and internationalized justice through the International Criminal Court (ICC). The paper focuses on the AU's two pronged strategy in Darfur: Political and Military/peacekeeping.
Topic:
Security, Genocide, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Africa

19. A Field Based Review of the Peacebuilding Commission in Burundi

Author:
Shepard Forman, Rahul Chandran, and Gigja Sorensen
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
Burundi was placed on the Peacebuilding Commission's (PBC) agenda in June 2006, as the peacekeeping mission (ONUB) was drawing down and the Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Burundi (BINUB) was starting up.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Africa and Burundi

20. Congo : Pas de stabilité au Kivu malgré le rapprochement avec le Rwanda

Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Le plan de résolution du conf lit au Kivu consistant à pri-vilégier la solution militaire s'avère être un échec. Deux années après le début du rapprochement entre le président Congolais Joseph Kabila et son homologue rwandais Paul Kagame, les soldats gouvernementaux sont encore aux prises avec des miliciens pour le contrôle des terres et des zones minières. Bien qu'aucune des deux parties n'ait réellement les capacités de pr endre un ascendant définitif, elles ont toutes deux les ressources suffisantes pour prolonger la lutte. Dans le même temps, les civils subissent des violences extrêmes et la situation humanitaire se dété-riore. Les tensions ethniques se sont aggravées à l'annonce des plans de rapatriement de dizaines de milliers de réfu-giés congolais qui ont fui au Rwanda durant les années 1990. Le Conseil de Sécurité des Nations Unies a observé la situation se dégrader à l'est du Congo sans s'opposer aux décisions de Kagame et Kabila.
Topic:
Civil War, Diplomacy, Economics, Peace Studies, Treaties and Agreements, War, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo