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21. Pathway to National Dialogue in Sudan

Author:
Jon Temin and Princeton N. Lyman, Ph.D.
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Sudan urgently needs to embark on a national dialogue and reform process that is led by Sudanese and supported by the international community. The process should be broadly inclusive, involving elements of the current regime, Islamists, and all armed and unarmed opposition groups. Any meaningful process will be lengthy, likely requiring years to complete. If a genuine, inclusive process is underway, elections in 2015 may need to be delayed. The African Union High-Level Implementation Panel has a critical role to play in advocating for and guiding such a process.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Cooperation, Foreign Aid, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
Africa and Sudan

22. The Diversity of Truth Commissions and Commissions of Inquiry

Author:
Evelyne Schmid
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Over the past several decades, dozens of countries have established truth commissions and other bodies to investigate mass atrocities or systematic human rights abuse. Lessons learned from past truth-finding processes are invaluable to help address the legacies of human rights violations in countries transitioning to democratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa and elsewhere. Truth commissions aim to uncover and acknowledge abuses from the past by recognizing the suffering of victims and making recommendations to prevent a recurrence of violence in the future. When convening authorities establish a truth commission, they need to select a process to choose the commission's membership, decide on the subject matter and a deadline for the work it will do as well as its legal powers, its duration and the extent to which its work is public. USIP has established a Truth Commissions Digital Collection (http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-digital-collection) that provides summaries and vital statistics of 41 past commissions from 35 countries, along with copies of most of their legal charters and final reports. Each commission has a dedicated page along with information on subsequent developments, such as reforms, prosecutions and reparations to victims. The Truth Commissions Digital Collection is a resource for researchers and implementers seeking to learn and apply lessons from the past to make current “truth processes” more effective.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Genocide, Human Rights, Human Welfare, and Torture
Political Geography:
Africa and Middle East

23. Learning from Sudan's 2011 Referendum

Author:
Jon Temin and Lawerence Woocher
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Numerous predictions asserted that the referendum on the secession of southern Sudan would lead to renewed civil war. Despite ongoing violence in many parts of Sudan and South Sudan, the referendum process was largely peaceful. This unanticipated result may prove a relatively rare instance of documented success in conflict prevention. Warnings of impending violence came from many sources. They were timely but tended to be vague. Whether they were overly dire because of faulty assumptions about the conflict dynamics deserves scrutiny. Two prominent narratives explain why the referendum process was peaceful: one that emphasizes domestic factors and another that focuses on international intervention by Africans and westerners. It is highly likely that both contain important explanations for the peaceful referendum. People in Sudan and South Sudan tend to emphasize the domestic narrative; members of the international community tend to focus on international engagement. Several lessons for global conflict prevention can be drawn from the Sudan referendum experience: Preventing conflict in what seems like dire circumstances is possible. Coordinated outside actions should support local conflict-mitigating dynamics. Technical actions, such as election or referendum logistics, can have a significant positive impact on political processes. International actors need to be receptive to taking preventive action. Focusing on successes, as well as failures, is critical.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Ethnic Conflict, Territorial Disputes, and Self Determination
Political Geography:
Africa, Sudan, and South Sudan

24. What Is Boko Haram?

Author:
Andrew Walker
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Boko Haram is an Islamic sect that believes politics in northern Nigeria has been seized by a group of corrupt, false Muslims. It wants to wage a war against them, and the Federal Republic of Nigeria generally, to create a “pure” Islamic state ruled by sharia law. Since August 2011 Boko Haram has planted bombs almost weekly in public or in churches in Nigeria's northeast. The group has also broadened its targets to include setting fire to schools. In March 2012, some twelve public schools in Maiduguri were burned down during the night, and as many as 10,000 pupils were forced out of education. Boko Haram is not in the same global jihadist bracket as Algeria's al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or Somalia's al Shabab. Despite its successful attack on the UN compound in Abuja in August 2011, Boko Haram is not bent on attacking Western interests. There have been no further attacks on international interests since that time. Following the failed rescue of hostages Chris McManus and Franco Lamolinara in north¬eastern Nigeria in March 2012, President Goodluck Jonathan played up the connections between the group and international terrorism. However, links between Boko Haram and the kidnappers are questionable. It is difficult to see how there can be meaningful dialogue between the government and the group. The group's cell-like structure is open for factions and splits, and there would be no guarantee that someone speaking for the group is speaking for all of the members. Tactics employed by government security agencies against Boko Haram have been consis-tently brutal and counterproductive. Their reliance on extrajudicial execution as a tactic in “dealing” with any problem in Nigeria not only created Boko Haram as it is known today, but also sustains it and gives it fuel to expand. The group will continue to attack softer targets in the northeast rather than international targets inside or outside Nigeria. It is also likely to become increasingly involved in the Jos crisis, where it will attack Christian indigenes of the north and try to push them out. Such a move would further threaten to destabilize the country's stability and unity.Now that the group has expanded beyond a small number of mosques, radical reforms in policing strategy are necessary if there is to be any progress in countering the group. Wide¬spread radical reform of the police is also long overdue throughout Nigeria. As a first step, jailing a number of police officers responsible for ordering human rights abuses might go some way to removing a key objection of the group.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Islam, Religion, United Nations, Armed Struggle, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Africa, Algeria, Nigeria, and Somalia

25. 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

26. 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

27. Diversity, Unity, and Nation Building in South Sudan

Author:
Jok Madut Jok
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
The government of South Sudan and its development partners appear to be heavily focused on state building and less so on nation building: the question of how to turn the young state into a nation in which all South Sudanese can see themselves represented.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Ethnic Conflict, Fragile/Failed State, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa

28. Analyzing Post-Conflict Justice and Islamic Law

Author:
Whitney Parker, Scott Worden, Shani Ross, and Sahar Azar
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Post-conflict justice mechanisms such as truth commissions, war crimes tribunals and reparations programs have emerged as a fundamental building block of durable peace settlements in Latin America, Africa and Asia. They are relatively rare, however, in Muslim countries recovering from conflict-despite the fact that social and criminal justice is a fundamental principle of Islamic law.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Crime, Islam, War, Law Enforcement, and Law
Political Geography:
Africa, Asia, Arabia, and Latin America

29. Oil and State Building in South Sudan

Author:
Jill Shankleman
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Oil started being produced in Sudan in the 1990s and has become the mainstay of the economies of the north and south. Most, but not all, of the oilfields are in South Sudan, but the export pipelines, Red Sea export terminal, and refineries are in the north. Agreement to share control over oil resources and revenues was a central part of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, but up to the eve of South Sudan's secession, north and south had not resolved how to divide the industry or its revenues. The Republic of South Sudan starts independence facing huge challenges in using its oil wealth to jump-start development in the country, where over 50 percent of its people live below the poverty line and over 80 percent are illiterate. Without new investment to increase output, or successful exploration that finds additional resources, South Sudan faces declining oil production from 2015-too little time under any circumstances to diversify the economy and develop alternative sources of government revenue. As the most oil-dependent state in the world, the government of South Sudan faces the certainty that its income will fluctuate from year to year with global oil prices, a circumstance known to make sound macroeconomic management difficult. The Government of South Sudan (GoSS) should have three priorities for the oil sector. First, in the short term, it should focus on developing a detailed understanding of what it now owns and what the long-term prospects are for its oil industry. Second, it needs to maximize revenues from the existing industry. Third, it must make the best use of its revenues for development. Information on the potential for, and barriers to, increasing production and incentivizing new exploration is essential to developing a realistic oil industry strategy. This requires a technical and economic reserves evaluation study and disclosure of data by the oil companies-to which the new government will be entitled as a partner in production sharing contracts. To overcome the problem of revenue fluctuations, the government should explore working with donors to use aid to help moderate variations in government income and consider the possibility of oil-backed loans, that is, obtaining immediate funds for infrastructure to be paid with future oil production. To secure new oil investment, South Sudan needs to overcome the toxic reputation of Sudan's oil industry by committing immediately to joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the international program for oil sector transparency, and allow its industry's environmental and human rights performance to be audited against current international standards, developing a remediation program as needed. The government also should be ready to consider offering incentive terms to good-quality oil companies to secure their investment in enhanced oil recovery and exploration. Most important of all, as violent conflict has emerged in some of the oil areas in the months preceding independence, South Sudan and the international community must ensure security for oil workers and installations so that the new state gets the oil income it depends on.
Topic:
Civil War, Oil, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa and South Sudan

30. Political Trends in the African Great Lakes Region

Author:
Judith Vorrath
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Despite recent elections in Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda and upcoming elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Great Lakes region shows worrying trends toward electoral authoritarianism and political fragmentation, with new divisions that intensify the potential for confrontation. A shrinking political space and a tight grip on the state by the ruling elites and their parties are signs of authoritarianism in the region—a cause of concern since armed conflict in all four countries has been strongly linked to a history of exclusion under autocratic regimes. New divisions beyond previous alignments in armed conflicts also have occurred and already led to serious confrontations, flight, and at times violence. An increasing political fragmentation has become visible, and splits embroil intraparty conflicts in the political landscape instead of resolving them. The two trends—electoral authoritarianism and political fragmentation—are mutually reinforcing within and across the countries of the region and risk jeopardizing economic and social progress in Uganda and Rwanda as well as an emerging vibrant civil society in Burundi and the DRC. In light of the history of conflict and autocratic regimes in the region, these trends have to be a serious concern for local and international actors. The preference for stable leadership, economic performance, and security considerations regardless of political conduct has been a fatal miscalculation before in the Great Lakes region. Rather, acting early and using pressure constructively, the international community should do what it can to support a more open and less fragmented political sphere in the Great Lakes countries.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, Political Economy, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
Uganda, Africa, and Burundi