Search

Begin New Search Content Type Working Paper

2291. African Integration: Resetting the AU-REC Relationship – Policy Options Beyond the Kagame Reform

Author:
Raheemat Momodu
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
This policy brief explores the relationship between the African Union (AU) and African Regional Economic Communities (RECs), particularly the challenges of coordination, division of roles, and shared responsibilities that are important in facilitating greater synergy within this relationship for accelerated continental integration. These challenges are particularly of note given the current attempt to reform the African Union. Although the proposed reform suggests a clear division of labor between the AU and RECs, member states, and other continental institutions, more inclusive consultation and planning are required to strengthen the application of the principle of subsidiarity and shared responsibility in the project of African integration.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation, Integration, African Union, and African Regional Economic Communities
Political Geography:
Africa

2292. Memory, Reconciliation, and Peacebuilding in Post-Civil War Nigeria

Author:
Godwin Onuoha
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
This paper critically explores the nature of post-civil war peace in Nigeria since the end of the Nigeria-Biafra War in 1970. The context of this study is the recent emergence of neo-Biafran groups calling for the secession of the Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria from the federation, almost five decades af- ter secessionist Biafra was defeated and reabsorbed into Nigeria under the banner of national unity. Nigeria’s post-civil war nation-state peacebuilding project was framed around reconciliation, rehabilitation, and reconstruc- tion policies which shaped the nature of national citizenship, the “peace dividend,” and reintegration of the Igbo into a united Federal Republic of Nigeria. The failure of these policies has inevitably fueled lingering post- war memories. The construction of individual and collective memories of the war is intertwined with relations of power, inclusion, and exclusion. Ul- timately, while attempts at post-war reconciliation and national unity ap- peared to have eased opposing memories of the war in the public realm, group memories of “hurt,” “injustice,” and “marginalization” still flourished in the private realm—which consisted of kinship and family networks, town unions, and ethnic groups. Part of the focus of this paper is to examine the onnections between such ill feelings and the emergence of neo-Biafran groups within the country and in the diaspora that are evoking memories of, and nurturing the quest for, a “new” Biafra. As the mobilization efforts of the neo-Biafra groups gain increasing attention in Southeastern Nigeria, the problematic nature of Nigeria’s post-conflict peace, which has not com- pletely eliminated the risk of a relapse into conflict since 1970, is brought to the fore.
Topic:
Civil War, Diplomacy, Nationalism, Citizenship, Memory, Peace, and Reconciliation
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

2293. Ethnic Minorities and Land Conflicts in Southwestern Nigeria

Author:
Jeremiah O Arowosegbe
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
One central aspect of the national question within the discourse on Nigeria concerns the conflicts and disputes historically driven by struggles over land-based resources. Examples of such conflicts include that of Ife- Modakeke in Osun State, the Jukun-Chamba conflict in the Takum Local Government Area of Taraba State, the Tiv-Jukun conflict in Benue and Plateau States, and the Umuleri-Aguleri war of attrition over Otuocha land in Anambra State. Drawing on primary data generated from focus group discussions and oral interviews between October 2009 and March 2015 across locations with pronounced incidents of land-based conflicts in Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, and Oyo States in southwestern Nigeria, this work examines the impact of economic considerations on ethnically motivated conflicts in the country over land from 1999 to 2015. It examines land conflicts in southwestern Nigeria—which have been occurring since the 1980s and stubbornly resurfaced in recent times—as a major economic and sociopolitical problem at the national and state levels. This study examines the following questions: How has land been connected with some of the historical conflicts across Nigeria? How has the character of the state in Nigeria affected the management of ethnically motivated land conflicts? What does this case study suggest in terms of the resolution of land-based conflicts across the country? This study argues that colonialism—through its policies and programs as well as the administrative structures and political systems put in place by the colonial state—not only changed the material conditions of populations across Nigeria by forcefully integrating them into the colonial and later global capitalist system (by compelling them to participate in colonial economic activities largely dominated by profit motive, thereby negating the autonomous development of the emergent postcolonial state), but also radically altered the complexities and directions of the land question. Hence Okwudiba Nnoli’s assertion that colonial and postcolonial societies are characterized by struggles that do not originate in local changes in the prevailing systems of class relation and material production.
Topic:
Minorities, Ethnicity, Conflict, and Land
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

2294. "Leave No One to Tell the Tales": The Role of Pain and Recollection in Post-Conflict Reconciliation in Africa

Author:
Bukola Adeyemi Oyeniyi
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
Using testimonies of child soldiers and amputees from Sierra Leone, accounts from survivors of the Rwandan genocide, and recollections of survivors of rape and sexual violence from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), this essay explores the intersection between pain, its recollection, and post-conflict recovery in Africa. Between 1991 and 2002, unprecedented violence gripped Sierra Leone, leading to the death of an estimated 50,000 people. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) set up after the civil war reported that a rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), orchestrated “indiscriminate amputations, abduction of women and children, recruitment of children as combatants, rape and sexual slavery, cannibalism, gratuitous killings, and wanton destruction of villages and towns” against ethnic groups believed to be loyal to President Joseph Saidu Momoh and the All People’s Congress (APC), the party that had ruled Sierra Leone since 1968
Topic:
Children, Gender Based Violence, Conflict, and Sexual Violence
Political Geography:
Africa, Sierra Leone, and Democratic Republic of Congo

2295. Women and the African Peace and Security Architecture

Author:
Hussaina J. Abdullah
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
The African Union (AU) has adopted the issues of peace and security and gender equality as part of its social transformation agenda on the continent. Specifically, the organization aims to promote peace, security, and stability on the continent; protect human and peoples’ rights in accordance with the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other relevant human rights instruments; and promote sustainable development as well as the integration of African economies.1 The objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of how women’s rights in situations of armed conflict and post-conflict contexts have been mainstreamed into various mechanisms, structures, and instruments of the AU’s African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA). As part of this exercise, this study conducts a critical examination of the links between APSA’s goal of promoting peace and security and the AU’s Gender Equality Architecture’s (GEA) goal of promoting and protecting the rights of women on the continent.
Topic:
Security, Gender Issues, Human Rights, Regional Cooperation, and African Union
Political Geography:
Africa

2296. In Pursuit of Pragmatism: The Peace and Security Council of the African Union and Regional Peace Support Operations

Author:
Jide Martyns Okeke
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
The African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council (PSC) should prioritize pragmatic realism over idealist ambition in mandating and enhancing the operational effectiveness of future peace support operations (PSOs). By pragmatism, the PSC should realistically and routinely match resources with objectives, and understand the limits of PSOs as tools for conflict management. Acting on behalf of the AU, the PSC has become an important regional actor in mandating PSOs, especially high-intensity offensive operations where the United Nations (UN) is unable or unwilling to deploy. The deployment and operation of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) since 2007 is the most vivid example of a PSC-mandated mission that has clearly transcended the boundaries of a conventional peacekeeping mission. Various assessments of PSC-mandated missions have exposed critical challenges linked to funding gaps, difficulties in assembling and mobilizing peace intervention forces, issues relating to operational command and control, and the fact that the asymmetric nature of new security threats makes extended missions almost inevitable.1 There is urgent imperative that the conduct of protracted peace enforcement operations be based on one of two models. First, that in which the AU takes the lead with a predefined and dedicated source of flexible and predictable resourcing based on shared responsibility on the part of its member states and the international community (for example, Operation Democracy in Comoros). Alternatively, the AU could authorize a mission—without necessarily leading it—with the goal of providing legitimacy for an effective regional coalition to address the security threat at hand. Examples of this latter arrangement include the Regional Cooperation Initiative for the elimination of the Lord’s Resistance Army (RCI-LRA) and the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) against the Boko Haram insurgency in northeastern Nigeria and neighboring countries
Topic:
Security, Regional Cooperation, Peace, and African Union
Political Geography:
Africa

2297. State Responses to the Relapse into Insurgent Violence in Nigeria's Oil Region

Author:
Charles Ukeje
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
With its roots in decades of crude oil production and the attendant crises of mismanagement of oil revenues, the reemergence of armed groups1 in the Niger Delta region in early 2016 marked a return to the ‘business-as-usual’ insurgency that dominated the oil region since the 1990s. In February 2016, the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) claimed responsibility for attacking oil facilities owned by major international oil companies (IOCs). During the same period, the state-owned Nigeria National Petroleum Com- pany (NNPC) reportedly spent N4.023 billion to repair 293 pipeline breaks. These attacks disrupted oil production and forced the IOCs to declare a force majeure, reducing daily oil production from 2.2 million to between 1.6 and 1.7 per million barrels per day. These developments coincided with a na- tional fiscal crisis linked to dwindling global oil prices; from over $100/barrel to around $50/barrel. Without steady gas supplies, the already dire electricity situation nationwide was further compounded by a 2,500 megawatts drop in power generation.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Oil, Non State Actors, and Violence
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

2298. Revisiting the Dismissal of the UNMISS Force Commander in South Sudan

Author:
Charles Ukeje and Kizito Sabala
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
This policy briefing note examines the implications of the altercation between the United Nations (UN) and Kenya following the dismissal of the Force Commander of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), Lieutenant General Johnson Ondieki, a Kenyan citizen. An Independent Special Investigation established by the UN blamed poor leadership and judgment for the attacks on Terrain camp—a UN facility in Juba, the capital of South Sudan—in July 2016, which led to several deaths. Although the UN promptly requested that Kenya appoint a replacement, the country considered the dismissal of its citizen unnecessarily punitive and refused.
Topic:
United Nations, Leadership, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Africa, Sudan, and South Sudan

2299. Teaching Peacebuilding in African Universities: Bridging the Gap between the Field and the Classroom

Author:
Isaac Olawale Albert
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
While conflict is a normal, healthy part of all communities, teaching people how to deal with conflict without resorting to violence by helping them to use new approaches to overcome barriers can be effective in bringing about progressive change.1 Educating for peace is crucial due to the normalization of violence and its influence on well-being. As a human right, students must learn about a healthy life, for everyone can be sustained without violence as a response to conflict. In peace education lessons about the sources of and responses to conflict, students analyze current problems and how they can be avoided, as well as responsibly managed. They need a vision of a peaceful future as a foundation for peacemaking and skills for constructing it.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Human Rights, Peacekeeping, and Academia
Political Geography:
Africa

2300. The Resurgence of Petro-Conflict in Post-Amnesty Niger Delta, Nigeria: Rethinking Conflict Trajectories and Reforms

Author:
Elias Courson
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
Since the late 1990s, the oil-endowed Niger Delta region has become an almost ungovernable space. From 1999, there has been a turn to militancy, which escalated with the emergence of the Movement for 1 the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in 2005/6. Although the government was initially slow to react to the unfolding trajectory of violent conflict in the region, there was a period of relative peace in the wake of the 2009 amnesty deal, which was somewhat disrupted in February 2016 by the emergence of a new militant group, the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA).2 Apart from the NDA, a plethora of little-known militant groups emerged in the Niger Delta between February and November 2016. Their attacks brought the oil industry and by extension, the nation’s economy to a state of near collapse. The government lost about $7 billion (N2.1 trillion) due to the activities of insurgent groups and oil pipeline vandals in the Niger Delta. Some estimates suggest that these disturbances brought down oil production from 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd), to barely 1 million bpd. The NDA’s strategic return to the oil creeks to mount sting operations on Nigeria’s petro-economy when global oil prices had fallen drastically (from a peak of $115 per barrel in mid-2014 to less than $40 per barrel in early 2016), exacerbated the country’s financial woes and contributed towards the national economic recession.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Oil, Global Recession, and Militias
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria