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221. The Costs of War in Somalia

Author:
Catherine Besteman
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
Abstract:
Although the United States has not formally declared war in Somalia and the US Congress has not formally approved US military engagements in Somalia, US intervention in Somalia has rapidly expanded under the Trump Administration. US airstrikes against the Somali terrorist group known as Al-Shabaab have skyrocketed, from between 15 and 21 drone strikes and other covert operations in Somalia during the period from 2007-2014 to a record high of 46 strikes in 2018 alone, which killed 326 people, to an astonishing 24 strikes in just the first two months of 2019, killing at least 252 people. Recent reports suggest other entities, such as the CIA, are also carrying out an unknown number of additional airstrikes, and the US currently has about 500 troops, mostly Special Operations, stationed in Somalia. According to a recent investigation by Amnesty International and a subsequent review by AFRICOM, the United States Africa Command, some of the US airstrikes have killed civilians. Tens of thousands of Somalis have fled areas targeted by air strikes, crowding into miserable displaced persons camps outside Mogadishu. Civilians who have lost family members or been injured by strikes have no recourse, and there is no accountability for those carrying out the strikes. In short, without a formal declaration or any particular acknowledgement or interest from the US Congress, a war is being waged in Somalia.
Topic:
War, Military Intervention, and Al-Shabaab
Political Geography:
Africa, North America, Somalia, and United States of America

222. Where We Fight: US Counterterror War Locations 2017-2018

Author:
Stephanie Savell
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
Abstract:
This new map shows for the first time that the United States is now combating terrorism in 40 percent of the world’s nations.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Counter-terrorism, and War on Terror
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

223. Women’s Education and Professionalism in Post-Conflict Liberia

Author:
Tanya Ansahta Garnett and Kari Øygard
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University
Abstract:
Liberia presents a unique case study in the constant evolution of gender roles in post-conflict African States. Seizing upon the social transformation of the post-conflict environment, Liberian women built upon their peacebuilding roles in an attempt to leverage their newly expanded presence in the public sphere into broader professional and political representation. Though women’s renewed civic engagement and the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf seemed to solidify women’s gains, Liberia remains a largely patriarchal society where women continue to be defined through an essentialist perspective – as wives, mothers, and peacemakers. Instead of fighting against this perception and the patriarchal status quo, women have largely played into this, understanding that it is an entry point by which they can justify their space in the decision-making process. Playing into this essentialism has been fruitful for several women’s peacebuilding organizations in the reconstruction era and has afforded them access to financing from international organizations eager to support their own simplified notions of gender mainstreaming. However, the inability of this approach to meaningfully shift the status quo is apparent when analyzing the struggles that professional women continue to face even as they attain an education and attempt to enter political life. This paper argues that while the essentialist approach to increasing women’s representation may appear to be an effective strategy initially, it continues to limit meaningful change in gender equality in the long-run. This paper concludes by making recommendations for policymakers and international organizations interested in furthering women’s political representation and participation in more meaningful and sustainable ways.
Topic:
Education, Gender Issues, Women, Inequality, and Peace
Political Geography:
Africa and Liberia

224. Investing in ethical education to solve Burundi’s domestic governance

Author:
Gervais Rufyikiri
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Since the 1960s, the period of independence of Burundi, the situation of human rights has remained worrying. The UN Human Rights Office in Burundi, established in 1995, at the height of the 1993 bloody civil war, has assisted the Government in order to protect and promote the human rights, until it shut down on February 28, 2019. The assistance provided by the Office was impactful mainly through the harmonization of national legislation with international human rights standards and the creation of institutions focused on the protection and defence of human rights. The closure of the Office is one manifestation of the embarrassment in which Burundian top leaders find themselves after neutral UN experts have reported serious human rights violations committed by state institutions that may constitute crimes against humanity. The short-term solution could result from a combination of increased pressure and diplomatic actions to negotiate with the government of Burundi the reinstatement of the UN Human Rights Office. Such actions could also help to mitigate the symptoms of poor governance, particularly with regard to human rights. For the long-term, a robust mechanism addressing the root cause of ineffective or bad governance is the right way towards a lasting solution. In this regard, we suggest a smart training program specifically addressing issues of leadership ethics within all levels and categories of the leaders, sustained by coaching and mentoring activities.
Topic:
Human Rights, Governance, Ethics, and Domestic Policy
Political Geography:
Africa, United Nations, and Burundi

225. Nigeria's Elections Do Not a Democracy Make

Author:
John Campbell
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassador's Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
Nigeria is the giant of Africa. Depending on the price of oil, it has sub-Saharan Africa’s largest economy, and UN agencies estimate that its population will reach 450 million by mid-century, displacing the United States as the third most populous country in the world. Nigeria is active diplomatically in international fora such as the UN and the World Trade Organization, and the scope of its diplomatic representation is comparable to that of the United States. Nigeria’s bilateral relations with the United States have been close and productive on African issues of mutual concern. With Nollywood—Africa’s largest film industry—and numerous artists and intellectuals of world stature, Nigeria has considerable soft power in Africa. Hence, the success or failure of its democracy influences the continent as a whole. For such reasons and more, Nigeria’s democratic trajectory and overall stability are in the national interest of the United States. A bargain between the Nigerian military and civilian elites resulted in the restoration of civilian governance in 1999 after a generation of military rule. With their resumption, elections have become important to the competing and cooperating elites (now including senior military officers) who run Nigeria. Elections reaffirm their government’s legitimacy in their own eyes, that of other Nigerians who vote and foreign governments. However, what Nigeria’s elections have in form, they lack in democratic substance. By and large, the nation’s elections are not about Nigerians making a choice among candidates. Instead, these elections are more often a contest between elite networks. Nigerian society is still largely organized by patron and client relationships, and voters cast their ballots as their patrons direct. Extreme poverty—which is on the rise in Nigeria—also provides a bevy of people willing to vote the way someone tells them in exchange for cash; truly independent voters are rare. Elites also present elections to Nigeria’s international partners as evidence that the country is becoming a modern democracy, opening for them the possibility of a personal role on the larger world stage. Hence, national elections have been held regularly every four years, in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2019. The logistical quality of Nigerian elections has been generally poor. The elections of 1999 were so bad that President Jimmy Carter, an election observer, left the country rather than be seen to endorse them. The worst ever were those of 2007, when I was the U.S. Ambassador, with chaos, violence and wholesale rigging. But those elections resulted in the country’s first genuinely civilian president since the end of military rule, Umaru Yar’Adua. (His predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo, though the country’s first nominally civilian leader, had governed in the style of a military head of state.) The subsequent elections of 2011 were characterized by exceptionally high levels of violence. In their aftermath, domestic and international pressure resulted in the introduction of some reforms in election procedures.
Topic:
Military Affairs, Authoritarianism, Elections, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Africa, Nigeria, and Sub-Saharan Africa

226. Zimbabwe's Elections and Political Change in Southern Africa

Author:
Michelle D. Gavin
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassador's Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
One needn’t have a preference among the 23 candidates who contested for the presidency of Zimbabwe last summer to find the overall result of the elections deeply disappointing. What had been billed as a chance to turn the page on Zimbabwe’s international isolation, economic collapse and politics of fear instead exposed continued political violence, the unwillingness of the powers that be in the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) to create a genuinely level playing field for political competition and elites’ overall contempt for average citizens. But while all of this makes it tempting to write off hopes for meaningful change in Zimbabwe, it is possible that the country is only at the beginning of a long and slow transition—the same process of reimagining the underpinnings of the state that is underway in many of its southern African neighbors.
Topic:
Elections, Democracy, Violence, and Transition
Political Geography:
Africa, Zimbabwe, and Southern Africa

227. Late to the Party: Russia’s Return to Africa

Author:
Paul Stronski
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
After a decades-long absence, Russia is once again appearing on the African continent. The Kremlin’s return to Africa, which has generated considerable media, governmental, and civil society attention, draws on a variety of tools and capabilities. Worrying patterns of stepped-up Russian activity are stirring concerns that a new wave of great-power competition in Africa is now upon us. U.S. policymakers frequently stress the need to counter Russian malign influence on the continent. On a visit to Angola in early 2019, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan said that “Russia often utilizes coercive, corrupt, and covert means to attempt to influence sovereign states, including their security and economic partnerships.”1 Advocates for a more forceful Western policy response point to high-visibility Russian military and security cooperation in the Central African Republic and the wide-ranging travels of Russian political consultants and disinformation specialists as confirmation that Russia, like China, represents a major challenge in Africa. Yet is that really the case? Are Russian inroads and capabilities meaningful or somewhat negligible? Hard information is difficult to come by, but any honest accounting of Russian successes will invariably point to a mere handful of client states with limited strategic significance that are isolated from the West and garner little attention from the international community. It remains unclear whether Russia’s investments in Africa over the past decade are paying off in terms of creating a real power base in Africa, let alone putting it on a footing that will expand its influence in the years to come. Nevertheless, Russia increasingly looks to Africa as a region where it can project power and influence. President Vladimir Putin will welcome leaders from across the continent to Sochi in late October for the first Africa-Russia summit, a clear indication of the symbolic importance that Africa holds for the Kremlin right now.2 It is clear that Russian inroads there would be far more limited but for the power vacuums created by a lack of Western policy focus on Africa in recent years. That state of affairs gives Russia (and other outside powers) an opportunity to curry favor with the continent’s elites and populations. More than anything else, it is opportunism that propels Russia’s relatively low-cost and low-risk strategies to try to enhance its clout and unnerve the West in Africa, just as in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Topic:
International Affairs, Power Politics, Democracy, Geopolitics, and Peace
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, North America, and United States of America

228. Nuclear Enrichment: Russia’s Ill-Fated Influence Campaign in South Africa

Author:
Andrew Weiss and Eugene Rumer
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Amid the widespread attention the Kremlin’s recent inroads in Africa have attracted, there has been surprisingly little discussion of South Africa, a country which, for nearly a decade, unquestionably represented Russia’s biggest foreign policy success story on the continent. As relations soared during the ill-starred presidency of Jacob Zuma (2009–2018), the Kremlin sought to wrest a geopolitically significant state out of the West’s orbit and to create a partnership that could serve as a springboard for expanded influence elsewhere in Africa. Moscow’s strategy was multifaceted, capitalizing on well-established close ties with Zuma, a former African National Congress senior intelligence official with extensive Soviet bloc connections. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials pursued a series of initiatives, such as the inclusion of South Africa in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) grouping and the launch of ambitious forms of cooperation between state-backed energy interests primarily in the nuclear sector. Yet relations were undermined by the Kremlin’s propensity to overreach, to lean too heavily on the legacy of Cold War–era relationships forged with leaders of national liberation movements, and to take advantage of cultures of corruption. The controversy arising from a massive $76 billion nuclear power plant construction deal triggered strong pushback and legal challenges from South Africa’s institutional checks and balances, civil society groups, and independent media. Key parts of the Russian national security establishment view civil nuclear power exports as an important tool for projecting influence overseas while creating revenue streams for sustaining intellectual and technical capabilities and vital programs inside Russia itself. Yet such cooperation is often a two-edged sword. On the one hand, costly projects such as the one pushed by Zuma typically make little economic sense for the purchasing country, spurring uncomfortable questions about who stands to benefit. On the other hand, heavily subsidized projects pursued mainly for geopolitical reasons risk saddling Russia’s nuclear power monopoly Rosatom with burdens it can ill afford. Ongoing investigations of high-level corruption during the period of so-called state capture under Zuma shed remarkable light on how the Kremlin operates in Africa and other parts of the world. In retrospect, the sustainability of Moscow’s embrace of South Africa was highly questionable due to its paltry tool kit. Russian involvement in the South African economy is miniscule compared to that of other trading partners such as the EU, China, the United States, India, and the UK, accounting for a mere 0.4 percent of South Africa’s foreign trade. While the Soviet Union was an important patron during the anti-apartheid struggle, modern-day Russia offers little in the way of practical assistance for helping South Africa deal with its deep-set economic and societal challenges.
Topic:
Energy Policy, National Security, Geopolitics, and Nuclear Waste
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, and South Africa

229. The SDGs and Gender: The Case of Indigenous and Local Women's Traditional Knowledge

Author:
Ghazaleh Jerban
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
The gender aspects of traditional knowledge (TK) protection highlight the important link between intellectual property rights, TK, women and sustainable development. Indigenous and local women’s TK is not only distinct and relevant, but also crucial for accomplishing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. National governments and international organizations dealing with TK should pay attention to gender aspects of the issue. Policies and initiatives that ignore gender aspects of TK can have serious implications for the survival and development of Indigenous and local communities and TK itself as a dynamic and living body of knowledge. The economic significance of TK and its trade value make it an enabler of sustainable development and women’s economic empowerment, especially in light of the World Trade Organization’s recent Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment.
Topic:
Gender Issues, World Trade Organization, Sustainable Development Goals, Local, and Indigenous
Political Geography:
Africa, West Africa, and Global Focus

230. Meaningfully Engaging Youth in the Governance of the Global Refugee System

Author:
Bushra Ebadi
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Young people aged 15 to 35 comprise one-third of the world’s population, yet they are largely absent from decision-making fora and, as such, unaccounted for in policy making, programming and laws. The disenfranchisement of displaced youth is a particular problem, because it further marginalizes young people who have already experienced persecution and been forcibly displaced. This paper aims to demonstrate the importance of including displaced youth in governance and decision making, to identify key barriers to engagement that displaced youth face, and to highlight effective strategies for engaging youth. Comprehensive financial, legal, social and governance reforms are needed in order to facilitate and support the meaningful engagement of youth in the refugee and IDP systems. Without these reforms and partnerships between youth and other diverse stakeholders, it will be difficult to achieve sustainable solutions for forcibly displaced populations and the communities that host them.
Topic:
Migration, Refugee Issues, Displacement, Youth Movement, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Asia, South America, North America, and Global Focus