Political Geography: Africa / Topic: Civil War

Publication Date:: 04-2004
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: International Crisis Group
Abstract:: For nearly eighteen years the insurgency of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, has produced great suffering in Northern Uganda, including some 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland recently termed the situation among the worst humanitarian disasters in the world. In February 2004, in one of the most horrific atrocities since the conflict began, the LRA massacred approximately 200 civilians, revealing serious deficiencies in the government's capacity to defend the population and defeat the insurgency. The conflict seriously blemishes the record of President Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM), which has otherwise brought relative stability to the country. The international community has leverage and at least strong humanitarian reasons to urge a more politically oriented strategy to resolve the conflict.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Civil War, and Human Rights
Political Geography:: Uganda and Africa

Publication Date:: 03-2004
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: International Crisis Group
Abstract:: Sudan, where prospects for peace had looked so promising for much of 2003, has become a potential horror story in 2004. The rapid onset of war in its western region of Darfur has created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises -- thousands dead and some 830,000 uprooted from homes. Meanwhile, the IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority for Development) peace talks in Naivasha, Kenya between the government and the insurgent Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLA) threaten to deadlock. It is urgent that these talks succeed and that, simultaneously, a parallel process begins to address both the humanitarian and political crises in Darfur.
Topic:: Civil War, Human Rights, and United Nations
Political Geography:: Kenya, Africa, and Sudan

Author:: Robert I. Rotberg
Publication Date:: 04-2003
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:: The inhabitants of tropical Africa in 2003 demand higher levels of performance from their governments than they could, or dared to do, in the 1970s and 1980s, a decade or two after independence from colonial rule. Nowadays they suffer despots reluctantly, as in Zimbabwe, deny them unconstitutional third terms, as in Malawi and Zambia (but not in Togo), gleefully vote for more promising rulers, as in Ghana and Kenya, or insist al- most everywhere on improved governing and government.
Topic:: Civil War, Environment, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:: Kenya, Africa, Zambia, and Ghana

Publication Date:: 10-2002
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: International Crisis Group
Abstract:: Despite the rising humanitarian costs of the crisis in Zimbabwe, the international community remains deeply divided about its response, allowing President Mugabe to believe that he can exploit the policy fissure between – broadly – the West and Africa. The foreign media's emphasis on the plight of white commercial farmers plays into the regime's liberation rhetoric, reinforcing the erroneous but widespread belief in Africa that the West is concerned about Zimbabwe only because white property interests have been harmed. What is happening in Zimbabwe and the lack of a continental response have damaged perceptions of Africa in the wider international community, weakening in the process the promising but still embryonic New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the African Union (AU).
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Civil War, International Cooperation, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:: Africa and Zimbabwe

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