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1701. Chinese Aid to Africa: Filling the gaps that others left

Author:
Max Rebol
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:
Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:
Western observers sometimes shockingly reduce Chinese Aid to Africa to a way of securing access to natural resources. A closer look does not only reveal that China's disbursement of Aid to the continent is relatively unrelated to natural resources, but also that it fills exactly the areas that Western aid has increasingly neglected: Infrastructure, industrialization and manufacturing. Chinese and Western aid work but in many ways can be seen as complementing rather than competing. Western aid since the 1980s focuses almost exclusively on basic social needs, while China's Aid to Africa is more based on industrial cooperation. The tools, such as preferential loans, that China uses hereby are often similar to what has been successful when China was in the role of the Aid recipient. Aid should therefore not be seen as a philanthropic one way transfer, but part of a mutually beneficial strategy that uses policy to channel investment into areas in which they are needed most. There is a fine line between aid and business, but in its relations with Africa today, China is well aware that at home it was not aid that lifted 200 million people out of poverty.
Political Geography:
Africa and China

1702. Briefly Noted

Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
This section contains a round-up of recent notable books in the field of international affairs.
Topic:
Security and Development
Political Geography:
Africa, New York, and Europe

1703. Unwilling and Unable: The Failed Response to the Atrocities in Darfur

Author:
James Traub
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
Starting in mid-2003, the government of Sudan responded to an armed rebellion in the western state of Darfur with a massive campaign of killing and expulsion carried out both by regular army troops and by a proxy force known as the Janjaweed. United Nations (UN) sources estimate that this orchestrated effort led to the death of at least 300,000 people, while over two million were forcibly displaced. Extensive documentation by the UN, human-rights organizations and the media leaves no doubt that the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, and did so over a period of many years. Yet all attempts to stop the killing, whether by neighbors, regional organizations, Western states or the UN Security Council, proved ineffective. In 2005, states-including Sudan-unanimously agreed that they had a responsibility to protect populations from mass atrocities; but this abstract commitment has had little effect on the Sudanese government or on other UN member states who had made this pledge.
Topic:
Security, Political Violence, Genocide, Human Rights, United Nations, Armed Struggle, and Sectarian violence
Political Geography:
Africa

1704. The Responsibility to Protect and Kenya: Past Successes and Current Challenges

Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
The passing of the 4 August constitutional referendum in Kenya is a promising sign in the broader context of efforts to prevent atrocities and uphold the responsibility to protect (R2P). The peaceful referendum sharply contrasts with the wave of violence that erupted in the wake of the disputed December 2007 presidential election, when within hours of the announcement of the results violence broke out. Less than two months later 1,133 Kenyans had been murdered, unknown numbers raped, and over 500,000 forcibly driven from their homes. The perpetrators included individuals, militias and the police with victims often targeted on the basis of their ethnicity and corresponding perceived support for a particular presidential candidate.
Topic:
Political Violence and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

1705. Atrocities in Nigeria's Plateau State and the Responsibility to Protect

Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
On 7 March 2010, between 1 and 3 am, groups of armed men launched simultaneous attacks on the villages of Dogo Nahauwa, Zot, and Ratsat, in Du District of Jos South Local Government Area, Plateau state, Nigeria. Driven from their homes by the sound of gunfire, villagers were maimed and killed by machete wielding men who also set homes on fire, displacing the survivors.
Topic:
Political Violence, Human Rights, and Torture
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

1706. The International Response to 28 September 2009 Massacre in Guinea and the Responsibility to Protect

Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
On 28 September 2009, government forces opened fire on opposition supporters peacefully protesting in a stadium in Conakry, Guinea. Demonstrators had gathered to contest junta leader Captain Dadis Camara's reported intention to run in the January 2010 elections, and break his promise to cede power to civilian rule. Over 150 civilians were killed in attacks that Human Rights Watch reports were premeditated and that the United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded amounted to crimes against humanity. Over 1,200 people were injured, rape and sexual violence was widespread, and unknown numbers of protestors and political opponents were detained.
Topic:
Political Violence, Crime, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Africa and United Nations

1707. The Co-Evolution of the Washington Consensus and the Economic Development Discourse

Author:
Ravi Kanbur
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
The 1980s were a hell of a decade. They began with the reverberations of the second OPEC oil shock and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In between, we had the Reagan-Thatcher-Kohl economic policy era in North America and Europe, the Volcker interest rate shock, the Latin American debt crisis, economic collapse in Africa, the start of rapid growth in China and India, and on and on. Oh, and by the way, in 1989 John Williamson coined the term “Washington Consensus.”
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Europe, Washington, India, Latin America, and North America

1708. Response to Watts - 2

Author:
William G. Moseley
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
Let me start by noting what a pleasure and inspiring opportunity it is to be commenting on the scholarship of Michael Watts. When I embarked on my field research for my master's thesis in the West African nation of Mali in 1991, I carried three texts with me into the field. These books were Paul Richards' Indigenous Agricultural Revolution (1985), Piers Blaikie's Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries (1985), and Michael Watts' Silent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria (1983). While the books by Richards and Blaikie were fairly compact, Michael Watts' tome added considerable heft to my baggage (so I showed real commitment in lugging it along). At the time I was not familiar with geography as a field of study, but rather was a student of natural resources management. It was Richards, Blaikie, and Watts who brought me to geography, and in particular to an interdisciplinary subfield known as political ecology. Only later would I learn in my Ph.D. studies what a pivotal figure Michael Watts had been in my chosen discipline and subfield.
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

1709. The International Criminal Court in Africa: challenges and opportunities

Author:
Makau Mutua
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
Abstract:
Norway's five-year experience as the lead nation of the Provincial Reconstruction Team This policy paper is a practically-oriented comparative analysis of the work of the International Criminal Court in Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, and the Central African Republic, and the policy implications for its work for Norway, States Parties, civil society, and key states. The paper argues that all actors, including Norway, should more seriously engage these African states – and key stakeholders within them – to facilitate the work of the ICC to stem impunity. Without such support, the paper concludes, the ICC's objectives in Africa will not be realised.
Topic:
Crime, Genocide, Human Rights, International Law, and Law
Political Geography:
Uganda, Kenya, Africa, Sudan, and Norway

1710. Somalia: Line in the Sand--Identification of MYM Vulnerabilities

Author:
Eloy E. Cuevas and Madeleine Wells
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
The influence of Islam on governance and clan politics has both negatively and positively affected the people of Somalia. It has facilitated justifying the removal of national, regional, and grassroots or clan leadership, especially if socioeconomic conditions and quality of life standards have been degraded or the leadership failed to ensure the safety of the people. Additionally, charismatic clan leaders have leveraged the low level of education among the Somali population to incite leadership changes. On a positive note, enforcement of Islamic law (Sharia) has been a major factor in helping to stabilize the lawlessness that has gone unchecked throughout the ungoverned parts of Somalia. By establishing courts and increasing the appointment of judges, Islamic leaders have attempted to bring normalcy to people's daily lives, amid all the street-level battles, clan intra and interconnected struggles for leadership and influence, and the presence of foreign fighters on both sides of the conflict.
Topic:
Diplomacy, United Nations, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Africa