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Begin New Search Topic Ethnic Conflict Publication Year within 25 Years

91. Getting it Right from the Start: Priorities for Action in the New Republic of South Sudan

Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Amidst jubilant celebration in July 2011, the new Republic of South Sudan entered the international stage albeit as one of the least developed countries in the world. One in eight children die before their fifth birthday, the maternal mortality rate is one of the highest in the world and more than half the population lives below the poverty line. Against a backdrop of chronic under-development, the country is acutely vulnerable to recurring conflict and climatic shocks. More than 220,000 people were displaced last year due to conflict and more than 100,000 were affected by floods; and already this year, fighting in the disputed border areas, clashes between the Sudan People‟s Liberation Army (SPLA) and militia groups, disputes over land and cattle, and attacks by the Lord‟s Resistance Army, have forced nearly 300,000 people from their homes. The situation is exacerbated by a continuing influx of returnees, restricted movement across the northern border, high fuel prices and regional shortages in food stocks. South Sudan is a context that challenges normal development paradigms and fits awkwardly in the humanitarian relief–recovery–post-conflict development continuum. This complexity has not always been reflected in the strategies of either donors or implementing agencies.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Civil War, Ethnic Conflict, and Territorial Disputes
Political Geography:
Africa and South Sudan

92. Turkey: Ending the PKK Insurgency

Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
A surge in violence has dashed plans for a negotiated end to the 27-year-old Kurdistan Workers' Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) insurgency. Since Turkey's elections in mid-June, clashes have killed more than 110 people, country-wide ethnic friction has hardened opinion, and the government has started bombing PKK bases and talking about an imminent ground offensive in northern Iraq. The PKK must immediately end its new wave of terrorist and insurgent attacks, and the Turkish authorities must control the escalation with the aim to halt all violence. A hot war and militaristic tactics did not solve the Kurdish problem in the 1990s and will not now. A solution can only lie in advancing the constitutional, language and legal reforms of the past decade that have gone part way to giving Turkish Kurds equal rights. Given the recent violence, returning to a positive dynamic requires a substantial strategic leap of imagination from both sides. Neither should allow itself to be swept away by armed conflict that has already killed more than 30,000 since 1984.
Topic:
Political Violence, Democratization, Ethnic Conflict, and Insurgency
Political Geography:
Iraq, Central Asia, Turkey, and Kurdistan

93. President of the Republic of Kosovo, Atifete Jahjaga

Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Columbia University World Leaders Forum
Abstract:
In the World Leaders Forum address titled, Kosovo\'s Road Ahead, President Atifete Jahjaga discusses the current state of the Republic of Kosovo and the plans for its future. Co-sponsored by The Harriman Institute.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Development, Economics, Ethnic Conflict, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
Kosovo and Balkans

94. Bosnia: What Does Republika Srpska Want?

Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Republika Srpska's flirtation in June 2011 with a referendum is a reminder that Bosnia's smaller entity still threatens the stability of the country and the Western Balkans. It is highly unlikely that the RS will secede or that the Bosniaks will attempt to eliminate it, but if its Serb leaders continue driving every conflict with Sarajevo to the brink, as they have done repeatedly to date, they risk disaster. The agility of leaders and the population's patience need only fail once to ignite serious violence. Over the longer term, RS's determination to limit Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to little more than a coordinator between powerful entities may so shrivel the state that it sinks, taking RS with it. RS also suffers from its own internal problems, notably a culture of impunity for political and economic elites and a lingering odour of wartime atrocities. Its leadership, especially its president, Milorad Dodik, needs to compromise with Sarajevo on state building and implement urgent entity-level reforms.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Ethnic Conflict, and War
Political Geography:
Bosnia and Balkans

95. Disrupting the Supply Chain for Mass Atrocities

Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Human Rights First
Abstract:
Mass atrocities are organized crimes. Those who commit genocide and crimes against humanity depend on third parties for the goods and services—money, matériel, political support, and a host of other resources—that sustain large-scale violence against civilians. Third parties have supplied military aircraft used by the Sudan Armed Forces against civilians, refined gold and other minerals coming out of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and ensured a steady flow of arms into Rwanda. Governments seeking to prevent atrocities cannot afford a narrow and uncoordinated focus on the perpetrators of such violence. Rather, an effective strategy must include identifying and pressuring third-party enablers— individuals, commercial entities, and countries—in order to interrupt the supply chains that fuel mass violence against civilians.
Topic:
Political Violence, Crime, Ethnic Conflict, Genocide, Human Rights, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda

96. The Western Balkans and the EU: 'the hour of Europe'

Author:
Jacques Rupnik (ed)
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
Today, more than fifteen years after the end of the wars of Yugoslavia's dissolution, the 'Balkan question' remains more than ever a 'European question'. In the eyes of many Europeans in the 1990s, Bosnia was the symbol of a collective failure, while Kosovo later became a catalyst for an emerging Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). In the last decade, with the completion of the process of redrawing the map of the region, the overall thrust of the EU's Balkans policy has moved from an agenda dominated by security issues related to the war and its legacies to an agenda focused on the perspective of the Western Balkan states' accession to the European Union, to which there has been a formal political commitment on the part of all EU Member States since the Thessaloniki Summit in June 2003. The framework was set, the political elites in the region were – at least verbally – committed to making Europe a priority and everyone was supposedly familiar with the policy tools thanks to the previous wave of Eastern enlargement. With the region's most contentious issues apparently having been defused, the EU could move from stability through containment towards European integration.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Ethnic Conflict, Political Economy, Sectarian violence, and Self Determination
Political Geography:
Europe, Bosnia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, and Balkans

97. The Lord's Resistance Army and the Responsibility to Protect

Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
This brief seeks to clarify how the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) applies to the threat posed by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and examines the measures that should be taken by regional governments, the African Union (AU), donor governments and the UN Security Council in order to protect populations under threat.
Topic:
Political Violence, Ethnic Conflict, Human Rights, Armed Struggle, and Insurgency
Political Geography:
Africa and United Nations

98. Background Briefing: Highlights from the Opening of the 66th United Nations General Assembly

Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
Strong support for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing was clearly evident at the opening of the 66th United Nations (UN) General Assembly between 21 and 27 September 2011. From the Secretary-General's reference to R2P as a priority for his second term, to the re-affirmation of government support for the norm in opening statements and the holding of a Ministerial meeting on R2P, clear consensus exists about the critical importance of R2P. At a moment when some were anticipating a backlash in the aftermath of the Security Council authorized civilian protection operation in Libya, the opening of the General Assembly reaffirmed that the imperative today is for states to work together to operationalize R2P.
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict, Genocide, Government, Human Rights, Torture, United Nations, and War
Political Geography:
Libya

99. Prioritizing Protection from Mass Atrocities: Lessons from Burundi

Author:
Gregory Mthembu-Salter, Elana Berger, and Naomi Kikoler
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
Over the course of the past forty years, waves of interethnic conflict in Burundi have killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced over a million more. In 1993 the assassination of Melchior Ndadaye, the country's first Hutu president, by paratroopers from Burundi's Tutsi dominated armed forces, set off another round of violence with Hutu militias attacking Tutsi civilians and the armed forces retaliating by attacking Hutu communities. The situation ultimately devolved into a civil war that lasted for more than ten years.
Topic:
Ethnic Conflict, Genocide, Human Rights, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Africa and Burundi

100. One question, any answers? The EU's role in solving the Kurdish question in Turkey

Author:
Johanna Nykänen
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The Kurdish question in Turkey is one of the most pressing issues facing the EU in its near neighbourhood. It involves a rights-based dimension caused by the lack of cultural rights and freedoms for the Kurds, and a security dimension caused by the violent conflict between the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Turkish military. It has the potential to destabilise Turkey as well as its Kurdish-inhabited neighbours of Iran, Iraq and Syria, with ramifications for Turkey's EU membership negotiations and the EU 's foreign-policy goals in the region. The EU is also directly intertwined with the issue, not least because of its large and active Kurdish diaspora. As such, the EU has a major stake in finding a solution to the question.
Topic:
Security and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
Europe and Turkey