Referendum, Response and Consequences for Sudan. The Game between Juba and Khartoum
To examine the relationship between patient satisfaction and doctor performance, the authors observed 2,271 interactions between 292 doctors and their patients in this paper presents a game theory model of the strategic interaction between Khartoum and Juba leading up to the referendum on Sudan’s partition in 2011. The findings show that excessive militarization and brinksmanship is a rational response for both actors, neither of which can credibly commit to lower levels of military spending under the current status quo. This militarization is often at the expense of health and education expenditures, suggesting that the opportunity cost of militarization is foregone economic development. These credibility issues might be resolved by democratization, increased transparency, reduction of information asymmetries, and efforts to promote economic and political cooperation. The paper explores these devices, demonstrating how they can contribute to Pareto preferred outcomes in equilibrium. The authors characterize the military expenditure associated with the commitment problem experienced by both sides, estimate its costs from data for Sudan, and identify the opportunity cost of foregone development implied by continued, excessive, and unsustainable militarization.
Non-State Actors, Peacebuilding and Security Governance in West Africa: Beyond Commercialisation
Football and Post-War Reintegration: exploring the role of sport in DDR processes in Sierra Leone
What Makes Inter-organizational Collaboration in UN Peacebuilding Work? Results from an Organizational Analysis of the UN Community in Liberia
Efficiency versus Sovereignty: Delegation to the UN Secretariat in Peacekeeping
This article analyses why the UN’s members delegate resources to the UN Secretariat in the sensitive field of peacekeeping. It argues that the Secretariat can carry out planning and implementation functions more efficiently, but that the states remain wary of potential sovereignty loss. Through a mixed methods approach, this article provides evidence for such a functional logic of delegation, but shows that it only applies from the late-1990s on. The change in approach of states towards delegation can be explained by feedback from the dramatic failures of peacekeeping in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and Somalia.
Naval Peacekeeping and Piracy: Time for a Critical Turn in the Debate
Escaping Statebuilding: Resistance and Civil Society in the Democratic Republic of Congo
That statebuilding entails violence and dispossession, even in its contemporary form, is illustrated by the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The question this begs is not whether resistance exists but rather where and how it operates. Following James Scott, the article shows that resistance takes place as a quotidian strategy of mitigation, avoidance and escapism for which civil society acts as a platform. Highlighting civil society’s ambiguity and heterogeneity, the article conceives of it as a site of resistance and analyses three strategies that are channelled through it: the deployment of counter-discourses, the use of violence and the production of the social fabric.
The Fates of Rebels: Insurgencies in Uganda
What explains the range of nonvictorious outcomes experienced by rebel groups in civil wars? Varying combinations of two structural factors produce different types of rebel groups, whose organizational configurations predict their outcomes. These factors are the external resources provided by cross-border support networks found within regional state systems, and the status reversal grievances produced by the politics of fragmented authority in weak states. Insurgent types are then associated with a given level politico-military effectiveness and a corresponding fate. Eight Ugandan insurgencies illustrate variation in outcomes across groups within a context of contentious domestic and regional politics that controls for the state, regime, and time period.
Disarm, Demobilize and Reintegrate. Transforming combatants into citizens to consolidate peace
The Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration Program (MDRP) was created in Africa in the late 1990s. It closed down after 7 years leaving behind an unquestionable legacy of success.
Votes and Violence: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Nigeria
Elections are now common in low-income societies. However, they are frequently flawed. We investigate a Nigerian election marred by violence. We designed and conducted a nationwide field experiment based on anti-violence campaigning. The campaign appealed to collective action through electoral participation, and worked through town meetings, popular theatres and door-to-door distribution of materials. We find that the campaign decreased violence perceptions and increased empowerment to counteract violence. We observe a rise in voter turnout and infer that the intimidation was dissociated from incumbents. These effects are accompanied by a reduction in the intensity of actual violence, as measured by journalists.
Policing in South Africa: Replication and resistance to New Public Management reforms
This article is a study of the introduction of local financial management (LFM) to South African policing. Four forms of institutional theory are used to interpret and understand this comparative study. The conclusion of this article is that the deliberate attempt to replicate the English experience in South Africa failed because of the different ideologies and value-laden beliefs that underlay the need for change and the different dynamics of power of the interest groups that were represented in the organizational structure. The taken-for-granted organizational processes that supported the implementation of LFM in English police forces impeded implementation in South Africa.
A pluralistic model rather than a single institutional perspective is shown to be beneficial in understanding institutional impacts on organizations. In particular, different perspectives help in an understanding of how culturally derived norms of behaviour can be in tension with formal rules and how the formal structure must be adaptive to the environment and culture within which people cope with uncertainty by relying on established routines.
Does Africa need a Marshall plan?
Religious Peace-building in South Africa: From Potential to Practic
Building a Standing National Capacity for Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Kenya
Most conflicts today arise from intra-state rather than interstate tensions. Many developing countries are unable to manage intra-state conflicts effectively, mainly because of capacity constraints in their governance and oversight institutions, political manipulation and executive interference. The result is that public confidence in the institutions remains weak and there is greater resort to private and group justice. National development is thus deeply affected. In restoring public confidence in the state’s ability to manage inter-group and inter-community conflicts, many governments are establishing and institutionalising standing national capacities for conflict prevention and resolution as extensions of their national governance framework. This article is a critical review of the efforts to establish such capacities in Kenya.
When Peacebuilding Contradicts Statebuilding: Notes from the Arid Lands of Kenya
Local peace initiatives have been introduced in post-conflict settings in aid of statebuilding processes. However, contradictions in such efforts that undermine the state become apparent in a development context when government institutions are, generally, functioning. Peacebuilding initiatives in the arid lands of Kenya are a good example of this. While they have proved successful in resolving conflicts at the local level, they challenge the state structure in three ways. First, some of their features run counter to the official laws of Kenya and jeopardize the separation of powers. Second, they pose a dilemma, since their success and legitimacy are based on grassroots leadership and local concepts of justice. Both can be at odds with democratic decision-making, inclusiveness and gender equity. Third, they provide yet another tool for abuse by politicians and other local leaders. This reveals a dilemma: aspects of peacebuilding can actually undermine a statebuilding endeavour.
Understanding Civil War : Evidence and Analysis, Volume 1. Africa
The two volumes of Understanding Civil War build upon the World Bank’s prior research on conflict and violence, particularly on the work of Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, whose model of civil war onset has sparked much discussion on the relationship between conflict and development in what came to be known as the “greed” versus “grievance” debate. The authors systematically apply the Collier-Hoeffler model to 15 countries in 6 different regions of the world, using a comparative case study methodology to revise and expand upon economic models of civil war. (The countries selected are Burundi, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Sudan, Algeria, Mali, Senegal, Indonesia, Lebanon, Russian Federation, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and the Caucasus.) The book concludes that the “greed” versus “grievance” debate should be abandoned for a more complex model that considers greed and grievance as inextricably fused motives for civil war.
Understanding Civil War : Evidence and Analysis, Volume 2. Europe, Central Asia, and Other Regions
The two volumes of Understanding Civil War build upon the World Bank’s prior research on conflict and violence, particularly on the work of Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, whose model of civil war onset has sparked much discussion on the relationship between conflict and development in what came to be known as the “greed” versus “grievance” debate. The authors systematically apply the Collier-Hoeffler model to 15 countries in 6 different regions of the world, using a comparative case study methodology to revise and expand upon economic models of civil war. (The countries selected are Burundi, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Sudan, Algeria, Mali, Senegal, Indonesia, Lebanon, Russian Federation, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and the Caucasus.) The book concludes that the “greed” versus “grievance” debate should be abandoned for a more complex model that considers greed and grievance as inextricably fused motives for civil war.
Decolonization or National Liberation: Debating the End of British Colonial Rule in Africa
When discussing the end of British colonial rule in Africa, many historians have highlighted the role of postwar international relations and the impact of domestic imperial politics on decolonization and have failed to recognize the role of African nationalists. This article argues that such a viewpoint is flawed because it conceives of colonial policy makers as isolated and autonomous entities impervious to changes taking place in the colonies. The national liberation movements in Ghana, Central Africa, Kenya, and other regions of East Africa are explored in this article to illustrate the central role that colonial subjects played in the British decolonization of Africa. While dominant scholarship on the failures of the post-colonial state has made studies of decolonization and African nationalism less fashionable, it is becoming increasingly clear that our understanding of the nature and mechanics of the crises that beset the continent requires taking fresh stock of the record of European colonial rule in Africa. In this regard, the study of colonialism and decolonization in continues to be of critical relevance.
Gender, Representation and Power-Sharing in Post-Conflict Institutions
The article sketches the tension between power-sharing as a form of conflict resolution and the implementation of WPS norms in peace processes. It begins with an exploration of each process, before considering how the cases have broached the relationship between power-sharing and women’s representation.
Tailoring Training in Gender, Peace, Conflict and Development
Pirates, Fishermen and Peacebuilding: Options for Counter-Piracy Strategy in Somalia
The dominant approach to counter-piracy strategy off Somalia is astonishingly narrow-minded. Deterrence, surveillance and military operations do not provide sustainable or efficient solutions; better strategic alternatives must draw on the lessons of 21st-century peace operations. This perspective leads to an understanding of counterpiracy as a problem of peacebuilding. This allows restructuring and reframing of the problem to permit a much wider repertoire of policy solutions than is currently conceived. This repertoire may include development and security assistance programmes as well as state-building programmes. The approach also permits integration of lessons learned in the frame of international peacebuilding operations, including avoiding technocratic solutions, focusing on power constellations, integrating local knowledge and incrementalism. If the international community wishes to take piracy seriously and respond to its complexities, it would be well advised to adopt a policy in which such alternatives are considered.
The Trauma of Truth Telling: Effects of Witnessing in the Rwandan Gacaca Courts on Psychological Health
Truth telling has come to play a pivotal role in postconflict reconciliation processes around the world. A common claim is that truth telling is healing and will lead to reconciliation. The present study applies recent psychological research to this issue by examining whether witnessing in the gacaca, the Rwandan village tribunals for truth and reconciliation after the 1994 genocide, was beneficial for psychological health. The results from the multistage, stratified cluster random survey of 1,200 Rwandans demonstrate that gacaca witnesses suffer from higher levels of depression and PTSD than do nonwitnesses, also when controlling for important predictors of psychological ill health. Furthermore, longer exposure to truth telling has not lowered the levels of psychological ill health, nor has the prevalence of depression and PTSD decreased over time. This study strongly challenges the claim that truth telling is healing and presents a novel understanding of the complexity of truth-telling processes in postconflict peace building.
Completing the circle: Building a theory of small arms demand
This essay presents a theory of small arms demand and provides initial evidence from ongoing case studies in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, South Africa and Brazil. The theory revolves around the motivations and means to acquire arms, addressing issues such as contrasting acquirers and possessors and differentiating between acquirers and non-acquirers, consumers and producers, and final and intermediate demand. The essay also studies characteristics of small arms that make them so desirable as compared to other means of conducting violent conflict. The overall goal is to provide a theoretical framework and language that is common to a variety of social science approaches to the study of small arms use, misuse and abuse.
Revenge and reprisal violence in Kosovo
Aid effectiveness: bringing country ownership (and politics) back in
Western Soldiers and the Protection of Local Civilians in UN Peacekeeping Operations: Is a Nationalist Orientation in the Armed Forces Hindering Our Preparedness to Fight?
Mandates for UN peacekeeping operations in Africa have become more robust since the delivery of the Brahimi Report in 2000. Contrary to before, soldiers are now unmistakably expected to use force to protect local civilians in a number of UN peacekeeping missions in Africa. While this expectation of force may be celebrated, the question rises whether peacekeeping soldiers can meet the expectation. Are they ready to kill and risk their lives to protect local civilians? This question is especially pertinent to Western armed forces, which have contributed little to post-millennium UN peace operations in Africa but are explicitly called upon by the UN administration to contribute to the robust peacekeeping missions. This article discusses the question of moral and psychological preparedness in light of the possible tension between the nationalist orientation in Western armed forces and the cosmopolitan demands of UN peacekeeping operations in Africa.
The Pirates of Somalia: Ending the Threat, Rebuilding a Nation
Somali piracy attacks surged between 2005 and 2011. Although maritime piracy is as old as seaborne trade, and currently pirates also prey on ships in the Straits of Malacca and the waters of Southeast Asia, the Caribbean seas, and the Gulf of Guinea, what is unique about Somali pirates is the high frequency of attacks. Somali pirates almost exclusively attack vessels to hold cargos and crews hostage and negotiate their release in exchange for ransom. Piracy has not only imposed a hidden tax on world trade generally, it has severely affected the economic activities of neighboring countries. The actual and potential links between pirates and Islamist insurgents are another source of global concern. This report evaluates the nexus between pirates and terrorist organizations. This report shows that it is in the international community’s common interest to find a resolution to Somali piracy, and more generally to help the government of Somalia to rebuild the country. Its findings reinforce the case for action. The costs imposed by Somali pirates on the global economy are so high that international mobilization to eradicate piracy off the horn of Africa not only has global security benefits, it also makes ample economic sense. This report affirms that, beyond its firepower and financial resources, the international community can and should assist Somalia with generating knowledge-knowledge of how local power dynamics shape the rules for resource-sharing, how they drive clan and sub-clan relationships, and ultimately how they determine national political stability-to find solutions to the piracy problem. The report exemplifies the value of using rigorous analytical tools to address some of the pressing problems of Africa.
This article explores the relationship between the UK and Rwanda, using the lens of the UK Department for International Development’s integrated approach to state building and peace building in fragile and conflict-affected states. It identifies a number of priorities for UK aid under such a framework, but shows that in the case of Rwanda these have not been foregrounded in the bilateral aid relationship. The article suggests a number of reasons for this, arguing that, by refusing to acknowledge or address Rwanda’s deviations from what was considered a positive development trajectory, the UK is becoming internationally isolated in its support for the rpf regime. It concludes that, while this bilateral relationship may support achievement of stability and relative security in Rwanda, promoting such a narrow form of state building is detrimental to more holistic peace building, both nationally and regionally.
Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines
Most aid spending by governments seeking to rebuild social and political order is based on an opportunity-cost theory of distracting potential recruits. The logic is that gainfully employed young men are less likely to participate in political violence, implying a positive correlation between unemployment and violence in locations with active insurgencies. The authors test that prediction in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines, using survey data on unemployment and two newly available measures of insurgency: (1) attacks against government and allied forces and (2) violence that kill civilians. Contrary to the opportunity-cost theory, the data emphatically reject a positive correlation between unemployment and attacks against government and allied forces (p < .05 percent). There is no significant relationship between unemployment and the rate of insurgent attacks that kill civilians. The authors identify several potential explanations, introducing the notion of insurgent precision to adjudicate between the possibilities that predation on one hand, and security measures and information costs on the other, account for the negative correlation between unemployment and violence in these three conflicts.
The Birth of South Sudan and the Challenges of Statebuilding
Libya’s Lessons
Transition from war to peace in Sub-Saharan Africa
Several devastating conflicts have persisted in Sub-Saharan Africa for the past 20 years or more. Some countries are still emerging from the era of cold war politics, while debilitating internal struggles continue to plague others. Ethiopia, Namibia, South Africa, Uganda, and more recently, Angola and Mozambique are examples of the former. The latter is illustrated by the situation in countries such as Liberia, Somalia and the Sudan. This study, the transition from war to peace in Sub-Saharan Africa, offers practical guidance and examples of good practice for improving the design and implementation of programs for demobilization, reinsertion, and reintegration of ex-combatants and their dependents in client countries. It also provides a list of early warning signals that indicate whether the demobilization and reintegration programs (DRPs) process is not going according to plan and suggests preventive actions. Work on the ground, as well as case analysis in countries such as Ethiopia, Namibia, Uganda, Angola, Mozambique, and Rwanda form the basis of the suggested good practice in DRPs.
Towards Inclusive and Sustainable Development in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Soon after coming to power in May 1997, the new government of Congo initiated a national reconstruction process, based on the principles of decentralization, and participation, to overcome the centralist, and authoritarian legacies of the past. The Government also prepared, and adopted a decree-law in 1998, with a view to institutionalizing these two principles during a transition period of two years. Despite the resurgence of war in August 1998, the Government’s decentralization policy remains, by and large appropriate. After presenting the legacies of Mobutu’s rule that propel the current need for decentralization, and participation, the paper discusses what these ideas mean to people at the grassroots level. Harnessing some of the many ideas expressed in consultations, and conferences sponsored by the Government, the paper discusses the substance of the Government’s decentralization policy, and the extent to which it was applied. The paper goes on to explain the growing role of traditional, and religious actors within Congolese society, and discusses their relationship to the new Government. Finally, the paper suggests building on the policy already initiated by the Government, to institutionalize participation, and decentralization, and use them to overcome the divisions left by decades of conflict.
Sierra Leone: Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR)
This note describes the Disarmament and Demobilization (D&D) of combatants from all warring parties in January 2002, which marked the official end of the civil war in Sierra Leone. D&D was part of a larger disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) program, implemented by the Government of Sierra Leone with the support of the World Bank, together with other international institutions and Nongovernmenal Organizations (NGOs). The experience of Sierra Leone is discussed, as well as, how the Bank can play a role in post-conflict transitions, complementing political and security efforts of client governments and the international community.
Greater Great Lakes regional strategy for demobilization and reintegration
This document first outlines a comprehensive strategy for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) activities in the greater Great Lakes region of central Africa. The purpose of this strategy is to enhance the prospects for stabilization and recovery in the region. The DDR of the ex-combatants is necessary to establishing peace and restoring security, which are in turn pre-conditions for sustainable growth and poverty reduction. A multi-country approach will enhance effectiveness of the international response, provide greater coherence among DDR activities, facilitate positive feedback relationships among DDR activities in the region, provide similar incentives for all parties to the conflict to pursue peaceful strategies, address the regional externalities associated with some individual programs, enhance transparency of closely related DDR activities, and facilitate knowledge-sharing and training across DDR implementers. A regional strategy also serves as a confidence-building measure. The strategy, if successfully implemented, will have a significant impact on reducing poverty by helping to consolidate peace, building confidence among governments in the region, helping to free up national resources for investment, attracting foreign capital, investing in the human capital of ex-combatants, and enhancing capacities for development at the community level.
Assessment of Development Needs of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons in Eastern Sudan
East Sudan has received a continuous influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees over the last forty years. Mass influxes were witnessed during years when the region experienced natural catastrophes as droughts and floods, or an escalation of tensions and conflict in neighboring countries, mainly Eritrea and Ethiopia. Presently there is still a steady but smaller in numbers influx of refugees, mostly from Eritrea, but with an apparent change in their social composition and expectations. Present day internal population movements relate to more conventional forms of migration within Sudan, that is, households in search of work and economic opportunities. Still, the situation of the large number of IDPs that moved to the area over 15 years ago and are living in camps is precarious and needs urgent attention. Presently there are not the basic conditions required to provide a durable solution to the refugees in a protracted situation in eastern Sudan. To a large extent that also applies to IDPs with long permanence in camps; there are not conditions to achieve self-reliance by most of the displaced population given the situation of their locations in eastern Sudan in terms of natural environment and its capacity to support sustainable agriculture and other urban and rural economic activities. Within the overall mission of the World Bank, its strategic objective in contributing towards the durable solution of forced displacement situations is to bring the affected countries and displaced population back to the path of peace and development, enabling the application of pro-poor policies and fostering economic growth. Under these conditions, the World Bank will be in a better position to engage the affected countries through its regular operations.
This Is How We Survived: Civilian Agency and Humanitarian Protection
A future disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process in Sudan: lessons learned from Ethiopia, Mozambique and Uganda
The conflict that broke out in Sudan on the eve of its independence from Britain in 1956 has devastated the country, retarded developmental progress, drained human resources and damaged the social fabric of the entire nation. However, the Protocol of Machakos which was signed by the Government of the Republic of the Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Sudan People’s Liberation Army on 20 July 2002, states the commitment of the parties to a negotiated, peaceful and comprehensive resolution to the conflict within the unity of the country. With peace now in sight, the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants is essential to avoid the mistakes made in 1972. It is crucial to build a new future for the generations that have suffered so much in five decades of war. This paper examines the challenges that might confront DDR in post-conflict Sudan. It draws on past experience following the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement between the regime of President Gaffar Mohammed Nimeiri and the Anya-nya rebels, and on the experiences of countries that have gone through similar situations, such as Ethiopia, Mozambique and Uganda.
The Arab Spring: Its Geostrategic Significance
The democratic uprisings and consequent turmoil in the Arab world during the last 18 months have had significant impact on the geostrategic situation in the Middle East as well as on the policies of major regional and global powers. As the upheavals continue to unfold, especially in strategically important countries such as Syria and Bahrain, they will continue to have a major impact on intraregional politics as well as great-power interests.
Afrocentricity and the Argument for Civic Commitment: Ideology and Citizenship in a United States of Africa
This article discusses an ideological framework, that is, a superstructure for continental civic commitment to African nationalism based on the perceived and practical relationships of Africans with each other. In an attempt to minimize the threats of regional, religious, or ethnic obstacles to continental integration and civic commit ment to the continent, the author proposes both intel lectual and pragmatic steps for continental integration. Using concrete examples, as well as generative source philosophies, myths, and traditional proverbs as funda mentals for the creation of a new ethic of politics, this article seeks to advance
State reconstruction in Africa: the relevance of Claude Ake’s political thought
Gender, conflict, and peace-building: how conflict can catalyse positive change for women
After War then Peace: The US-based Liberian Diaspora as Peace-building Norm Entrepreneurs
Civil War, Reintegration, and Gender in Northern Uganda
What are the impacts of war on the participants, and do they vary by gender? Are ex-combatants damaged pariahs who threaten social stability, as some fear? Existing theory and evidence are both inconclusive and focused on males. New data and a tragic natural quasi-experiment in Uganda allow us to estimate the impacts of war on both genders, and assess how war experiences affect reintegration success. As expected, violence drives social and psychological problems, especially among females. Unexpectedly, however, most women returning from armed groups reintegrate socially and are resilient. Partly for this reason, postconflict hostility is low. Theories that war conditions youth into violence find little support. Finally, the findings confirm a human capital view of recruitment: economic gaps are driven by time away from civilian education and labor markets. Unlike males, however, females have few civilian opportunities and so they see little adverse economic impact of recruitment.
Unintended Impacts and the Gendered Consequences of Peacekeeping Economies in Liberia
Despite increased international attention to managing the potential impacts of peacekeeping on host countries, unintended consequences continue to emerge. This article focuses particularly on the alternative economies that peacekeeping operations generate and the differential economic impacts on individuals who come into contact with peacekeepers. Based on empirical evidence derived from fieldwork in Liberia, the article highlights the everyday lives of women whose livelihoods have been affected by the presence of peacekeeping missions. It also discusses how such economies adjust during the peacekeeping drawdown phase, and explores the dynamics that such economies have on specific segments of the Liberian population. The argument is that, while peacekeeping economies are critical in stimulating the local economy and providing livelihoods during and in the immediate aftermath of war, they have negative unintended impacts that need mitigation.
Transnational Feminism and Norm Diffusion in Peace Processes: The Cases of Burundi and Northern Ireland
Outsiders Inside the State. Post-Conflict Liberia between Trusteeship and Partnership
The essay explores how the statebuilding intervention in Liberia produces a situation in which the locus for public authority is unclear and lines of responsibility and accountability are difficult to pinpoint. It does so by zooming in on one particular element in the intervention – the Governance and Economic Management Assistance Program – and concludes that the opacity surrounding this programme risks defeating the wider liberal objectives of the statebuilding intervention.
Religious actors as epistemic communities in conflict transformation: the cases of South Africa and Northern Ireland
Filling the “Security Gap” in Post-conflict Situations: Could Formed Police Units Make a Difference?
The increased sophistication of peacekeeping missions has inevitably expanded the roles of all actors in the field particularly the military who have to play law enforcement functions, in addition to their traditional role, until civilian police are deployed. This essay discusses the consequences of the military role as law enforcers in conflict situations. The author proposes the concept of Formed Police Units (FPUs) to close the security gap that arises in these cases.
Postconflict Monetary Reconstruction
During civil wars governments typically resort to inflation to raise revenue. A model of this phenomenon is presented, estimated, and applied to the choices and constraints faced during the postconflict period. The results show that far from there being a fiscal peace dividend, postconflict governments tend to face even more pressing needs after than during war. As a result, in the absence of postconflict aid, inflation increases sharply, frustrating a more general monetary recovery. Aid decisively transforms the path of monetary variables in the postconflict period, enabling the economy to regain peacetime characteristics. Postconflict aid thus achieves a monetary “reconstruction” analogous to its more evident role in infrastructure.
Debating Darfur in the World
This article compares the debates and demonstrations about Darfur that have taken place in the Sudan, the United States, and Qatar and illuminates how political violence is apprehended and cultural identities are constructed. The rallies that occurred among Sudanese inside and outside the Sudan following the 2009 indictment of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) are particularly revealing. Examining what has been represented worldwide as the first genocide of the twenty-first century brings to light the ideologies that are expressed in impassioned political positions. Ideology, which implicitly undergirds the mixed emotions with which the ICC warrant was received, has been fundamental to the Darfur story from the start of the crisis in 2003. Describing Darfur in three distinct sociopolitical arenas, one sees various scenarios that are akin to a play with multiple actors and scenes, each of which is contextually mediated and expertly produced. The disconnections, ruptures, and shifts in the flow of this narration point to the disparities in the situational, local, regional, and transnational forces at work.
Desk Study on the Environment in Liberia
Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes
Monopoly of Force: The Nexus of DDR and SSR
At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict
Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? International Intervention and the Duration of Peace After Civil War
This article examines international interventions in the aftermath of civil wars to see whether peace lasts longer when peacekeepers are present than when they are absent. Because peacekeeping is not applied to cases at random, I first address the question of where international personnel tend to be deployed. I then attempt to control for factors that might affect both the likelihood of peacekeepers being sent and the ease or difficulty of maintaining peace so as to avoid spurious findings. I find, in a nutshell, that peacekeeping after civil wars does indeed make an important contribution to the stability of peace.
Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations
UNEP Post-Conflict Capacity Building Programme in Liberia
Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment
Environmental Considerations of Human Displacement in Liberia: A Guide to Decision-makers and Practioners
Diaspora Communities and Civil Conflict Transformation
Capacity-building or Capacity-taking? Legitimizing Concepts in Peace and Development Operations
This article critically analyses capacity-building and local ownership in the context of UN peace operations through interviews with UN staff and NGO representatives in Liberia and Burundi. The argument is that these concepts are left ambiguous and undefined to avoid accountability for peace operations while still functioning as value-adding and legitimizing discursive instruments for the latter. This article proves that the many paradoxes and contradictions surrounding the concepts clearly deter their operation in practice, while their positive connotations remain important, discursively, as legitimizing tools.
Engendering Peace in Africa: A Critical Inquiry Into Some Current Thinking on the Role of African Women in Peace-building
Romanticised, popular concepts of womanhood and of women’s peace-building capacities need to be critically investigated. A gendered approach is recommended as a corrective to stereotyped perspectives about women and peace, as well as to gender-blind experiments. Such an approach may be found realistic and useful, not only in everyday circumstances, but especially also in war and post-war situations. Particular attention is given to gender in post-war politics, economy and social reconstruction.
African Peacekeeping in Africa: Warlord Politics, Defense Economics, and State Legitimacy
Since the end of the Cold War, sub-Saharan African states have substantially increased their participation in international peacekeeping operations in Africa. Their contributions have become highly valued and even facilitated by major powers. This article examines why certain African states might contribute more than others to peacekeeping. In particular, prominent arguments are considered about the primacy of regime security concerns and the dynamics of warlord politics in the foreign policymaking of African states, the economic incentives of peacekeeping, and the importance of African states’ concerns over their state legitimacy and territorial integrity. First, this study investigates the possibility that peacekeeping might be utilized as a diversionary strategy to divert the attention of both an African state’s military and major powers from a regime’s misrule. Second, this study examines the extent to which financial and material assistance from donor states encourages poorer states to engage in peacekeeping. Third, the study investigates whether states with less legitimate and more arbitrary borders might have greater incentive to contribute to peacekeeping operations to promote the territorial status quo in Africa. Empirical evidence from a quantitative analysis across 47 states of sub-Saharan Africa from 1989 to 2001 suggests that states that are poorer, with lower state legitimacy and lower political repression, participate more often in regional peacekeeping.
Structural Causes, Development Co-operation and Conflict Prevention in Burundi and Rwanda
This article examines in turn the four main pillars of the international peacekeeping agenda (security, development, good governance and justice) in Burundi and Rwanda. Each section reviews the scholarly and policy debates about these dimensions of external engagement prior to the civil wars that ravaged both countries. Next, they analyse the post-conflict approaches used by the international community (after 1994 in Rwanda and since 2000-05 in Burundi. The concluding section draws together key lessons about the interactions between poverty, governance, violence and international assistance in Burundi and Rwanda. They bring into sharp focus the limits that development co-operation faces in shaping these issues.
Peacekeeping in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Waging Peace and Fighting War
The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) has been derided as one of the world’s least effective peacekeeping forces. This article assesses its performance by using two indicators: mandate implementation and the reduction of human suffering. The analysis shows that effective peacekeeping in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been hampered by two major problems. First, MONUC has had a struggle with, and inconsistent approach to, the vague concept of ‘robust peacekeeping’. During key moments of the peace process, it tried to wage peace when it should have used force. Second it failed to adapt to a dynamic conflict environment. Both problems were underpinned by flawed assumptions about the peace process, the behaviour of local actors and the presumed benefits of ‘post-conflict’ elections.
The article analyses peacebuilding theories and methods, as applied to justice system reform in post-conflict scenarios. In this respect, the international authorities involved in the reconstruction process may traditionally choose between either a ‘dirigiste’ or a consent-based approach, representing the essential terms of reference of past interventions. However, features common to most reconstruction missions, and relatively poor results, confirm the need for a change in the overall strategy. This requires international donors to focus more on the demand for justice at local levels than on the traditional supply of financial and technical aid for reforms. The article stresses the need for effectively promoting the local ownership of the reform process, without this expression being merely used by international actors as a political umbrella under which to protect themselves from potential failures.
Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil War
Timely and pathbreaking, Securing the Peace is the first book to explore the complete spectrum of civil war terminations, including negotiated settlements, military victories by governments and rebels, and stalemates and ceasefires. Examining the outcomes of all civil war terminations since 1940, Monica Toft develops a general theory of postwar stability, showing how third-party guarantees may not be the best option. She demonstrates that thorough security-sector reform plays a critical role in establishing peace over the long term. Much of the thinking in this area has centered on third parties presiding over the maintenance of negotiated settlements, but the problem with this focus is that fewer than a quarter of recent civil wars have ended this way. Furthermore, these settlements have been precarious, often resulting in a recurrence of war. Toft finds that military victory, especially victory by rebels, lends itself to a more durable peace. She argues for the importance of the security sector–the police and military–and explains that victories are more stable when governments can maintain order. Toft presents statistical evaluations and in-depth case studies that include El Salvador, Sudan, and Uganda to reveal that where the security sector remains robust, stability and democracy are likely to follow. An original and thoughtful reassessment of civil war terminations, Securing the Peace will interest all those concerned about resolving our world’s most pressing conflicts.
Getting the Policies Right: The Prioritization and Sequencing of Policies in Post-Conflict Countries
One of the most pressing issues in the post-conflict reconstruction field is how to prioritize and sequence political, social, and economic policies to enable post-conflict countries to sustain peace and reduce the risk of violence re-occurring. Analyzing three cases of post-conflict reconstruction (Cambodia, Mozambique, and Haiti) and expert opinions of 30 academicians and practitioners, this study identifies major reconstruction policies, outlines the preferred way to prioritize and sequence them, and develops a framework to help policymakers better navigate the complexities and challenges of forming appropriate policies.
National Design and State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa
This article examines the political geography of state building in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. The absence of interstate war has produced a unique situation for contemporary state builders in Africa; they have inherited states with relatively fixed borders encapsulating a variety of environmental and geographic conditions, compounded by varying distributions of population densities. The author examines the effects of a variety of strategies that African rulers have employed to enhance their state-building efforts given the type of national design they inhabit. These strategies include the allocation of citizenship, interventions in land tenure patterns, and the adoption and management of national currencies. The author tests the effects of these strategies on several dimensions of state capacity in sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2004 using a variety of statistical analyses. The results indicate that the strategies currently adopted by African rulers have generally failed to substantially augment their capacity.
Addressing the Perils of Peace Operations: Toward a Global Peacekeeping System
Over the past two decades, people have seen considerable progress made in international conflict management, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. The end of the Cold War has led to the obsolescence of war between major powers, and globalization has increased the interconnectedness and interdependence among people, societies, and countries. However, the longevity and large-scale nature of armed conflicts in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, Chad, and Sudan with enormous humanitarian consequences are solemn reminders that international institutions and peacekeeping actions are still unable to meet global challenges with global responses. Here, Tanner addresses the perils of peace operations toward global peacekeeping system. He also cites the important progress that peacekeeping has made over the past twenty years and explores, in view of a continuous North-South divide and a resurging Westphalian bias, what such a global peacekeeping system could look like.
Strategic Approaches to Reintegration: Lessons Learned from Liberia
From a security perspective, the reintegration of ex-combatants has been largely successful in Liberia due to six years of sustained effort to reestablish rule of law throughout the country, to rebuild institutions, to promote early recovery, and to reintegrate the former fighting forces as well as other war-affected populations. This, however, does not mean that all problems related to integration are completely resolve. Since 2003, an array of efforts have been undertaken to reintegrate ex-combatants, from classic disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration to strategic and community-based interventions that aims at promoting alternative livelihoods. Here, Tamagnini and Krafft consider what those efforts have achieved and what was not achievable, explain why it is time to end targeted assistance to ex-combatants in Liberia, and propose the next steps to be taken.
New Dilemmas in Transitional Justice: Lessons from the Mixed Courts in Sierra Leone and Cambodia
This article argues that the mixed tribunals of Sierra Leone and Cambodia provide important lessons about the problems and dilemmas in achieving the legitimacy that is necessary for transitional justice mechanisms to have a positive local impact. High hopes have been held for the mixed model, but experiences show that this model is no easy fix to the legitimacy problems faced by the international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. By locating a tribunal in the post-conflict setting, new dilemmas of legitimacy may arise. This article suggests that transitional justice mechanisms should strike a balance between backward-looking and forward-looking justice, and between international and national participation in the tribunals, but this is not done by simply locating a tribunal in the affected country.
Briefing: Liberia’s Experiment With Transitional Justice
Ending Civil Wars: The Success and Failure of Negotiated Settlements in Civil War
Based on the study of every internationally negotiated civil war settlement between 1980 and 1998, this volume presents the most comprehensive effort to date to evaluate the role of international actors in peace implementation. It looks into promises made by combatants in peace agreements and examines when and why those promises are fulfilled. The authors differentiate between conflicts, showing why Guatemala is not Bosnia, and why strategies that succeed in benign environments fail in more challenging ones. Going beyond attributing implementation failures to a lack of political will, the volume argues that an absence of political will reflects the judgment of major powers of the absence of vital security interests. Overall, the authors emphasize that implementers must tailor their strategies and give priority to certain tasks in implementation, such as demobilizing soldiers and demilitarizing politics, to achieve success.
Exploring Subregional Conflict: Opportunities for Conflict Prevention
The causes of violent conflict, as well as approaches to conflict prevention have been studied extensively, but only recently has attention been given to the subregional dynamics of internal wars. The authors of this original collection of subregional case studies explore conflicts in Africa, Central Asia and Central America, seeking new insights that can provide the foundation for more nuanced, more effective preventive strategies.
From Promise to Practice: Strengthening UN Capacities for the Prevention of Violent Conflict
How can the United Nations, regional and subregional organizations, government donors, and other policymakers best apply the tools of conflict prevention to the wide range of intrastate conflict situations actually found in the field? The detailed case studies and analytical chapters in this book offer operational lessons for fashioning strategy and tactics to meet the challenges of specific conflicts, both potential and actual. The cases included are Burundi, Colombia, East Timor, Fiji, Georgia, Kenya, Liberia, Tajikistan, and Tanzania/Zanzibar.
Building “National Armies” – Building Nations?: Determinants of Success for Postintervention Integration Efforts
Harmonizing the Humanitarian Aid Network: Adaptive Change in a Complex System
Humanitarian aid operations save many lives, but they also fail to help many people and can have unintended political consequences. A major reason for the deficit is poor coordination among organizations. In contrast to “lessons learned” studies that dominate the literature on this topic, this article uses systemic network theory, drawn from business management literature. It presents the humanitarian aid community as a complex, open, adaptive system, in which interaction of structure and processes explain the quality of the response to environmental demands. Comparison of aid operations in Rwanda in 1994 and Afghanistan in 2001 probes the argument that the humanitarian system is becoming more effective by developing characteristics of a network through goal-directed behavior of participating organizations. The study finds development of network characteristics in the system when clusters of organizations learn to coordinate more closely, but the system is constrained by the workload of a crisis environment, lack of trust among organizations, and the political interests of donor governments.
The New Security in Democratic South Africa: A Cautionary Tale
The broadened and deepened notion of security has been evolving in two dimensions, one primarily intellectual and the other concerned more with political practice and policy. This paper briefly describes these dimensions, and then critically examines the acceptance of the new notion of security in the form a security-is-development thesis in South African security policy. This case shows how the security-is-development thesis affects the functions of security agencies and legitimates their anti-democratic behaviour. The case serves as a cautionary tale about how an intellectual construct, movement and school, originally intended to be a critique of state behaviour, can become a tool of state power at the expense of democracy.
Securitization of HIV/AIDS in Context: Gendered Vulnerability in Burundi
Conflict Resoultion and Reconciliation in the Arab World: The Work of Civil Society Organizations in Lebanon and Morocco
A tense relationship has marked decades of interaction between Arab regimes and their civil societies in the areas of human rights, democracy, governance reform, justice and reconciliation. While the role of civil society in development, humanitarian and environmental issues has generally been tolerated more easily by Arab governments, the same cannot be said for the areas just mentioned. In recent years there has been greater awareness of the increasing importance of civil society in assisting governments to push forward the wheel of development. There exists, though, no clear assessment of the role of civil society in reform movements or the degree and seriousness of their involvement to date. This article aims to contribute to closing this gap by exploring crucial civil society functions – strengthening civic engagement and community-empowerment – in the specific context of the Arab world, and by introducing the work of a number of organisations in this region. The next section briefly discusses the role of Arab civil society organisations (CSOs) and NGOs and explains some of their functions. Section three reflects on traditional conflict resolution and reconciliation methods and their relation to the “Western field” of conflict resolution. Section four presents cases from Lebanon and Morocco, looking at concrete projects, objectives and achievements of organisations, while section five discusses common challenges. The final section identifies possible next steps in light of the current political developments in the region.
The U.K. in Sierra Leone: Post-Conflict Operation Success?
A Framework for the Analysis of Post-conflict Situations: Liberia and Mozambique Reconsidered
For a long time analysts of war-torn societies have understood post-conflict situations primarily as processes of transition towards consolidated statehood. This perspective is increasingly considered unsatisfactory in that it raises false expectations of state-building processes and conceals important dynamics unfolding in situ. This article formulates an integrated analytical framework that allows for characterizing and assessing the dynamics in post-conflict polities. It is argued that any post-conflict polity can be characterized by focusing on the interactions between three post-conflict actors: the formal government, external actors and informal powers. In a second step Amartya Sen’s capability approach is used as an analytical benchmark for measuring state-building achievements. Subsequently, the analytical framework is applied for comparing two diverse post-conflict environments, Mozambique and Liberia, in order to illustrate the potential and limitations of the analytical framework.
Employing the Environment as a Peacebuilding Tool: Environmental Peacemaking in the Context of Post-conflict Peacebuilding in Liberia and Mozambique
This paper aims at contributing to this branch of research by providing first attempts for a theoretical discussion of the role of environmental cooperation in post-conflict peacebuilding, followed by an illustration of two concrete peacebuilding cases: Liberia and Mozambique. The major underlying question is how a closer link between research on environmental peacemaking and post-conflict peacebuilding can be achieved. The paper argues that both branches of research have historically been rather detached from one another. Work on the link between environmental aspects and security has often been dominated by environmentalists, e.g. water engineers or conservationists, while research on post-conflict peacebuilding has often been done by those specialized in the fields of international relations or conflict resolution. A systematic study of potential spill-over effects between research and environmental peacemaking and other branches of research might therefore reveal interesting findings about the potential role of environmental peacemaking in the context of post-conflict countries. Chapter 2 provides a start into this discussion by reviewing some of the core literature on the link between natural resources and violent conflicts, the theoretical background of the environmental peacemaking theory, and some of the literature on post-conflict peacebuilding. Chapter 3 uses the insights gained from this theoretical discussion in order to systematically look for interconnections and spill-over effects. As a result of this discussion, concrete hypotheses about the role of environmental peacemaking in post-conflict countries will be derived. Chapters 4 and 5 contain a discussion of the peacebuilding challenges in Mozambique and Liberia, followed by an analysis of the potential role for environmental peacemaking to support their peacebuilding processes. Chapter 6 contains the conclusions of this discussion, followed by a range of concrete policy recommendations, addressed primarily to the international community.
Security & Justice Development-What Next?
The United Nations and Regional Security: Europe and Beyond
Events in Europe over the past decade have created a dynamic requiring significant conceptual and practical adjustments on the part of the UN and a range of regional actors, including the EU, NATO, and the OSCE. This volume explores the resulting collaborative relationships in the context of peace operations in the Balkans, considering past efforts and developing specific suggestions for effective future interactions between the UN and its regional partners. The authors also consider the implications of efforts in Europe for the regionalization of peace and security operations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The Role of Constitution Making and Institution Buiding in Furthering Peace, Justice and Development: South Africa’s Democratic Transition
Can Truth be Negotiated? History Textbook Revision as a Means to Reconciliation
International school textbook revision and research became a professional academic activity after the First World War. It broadened its scope and methodological approaches considerably after the collapse of the bipolar world. Today, a number of different agencies, such as international governmental institutions, NGOs, and academic as well as pedagogical institutions, are involved in projects on the revision of history teaching in postconflict societies. This article examines the pros and cons of different project designs, focusing on the sometimes contradictory aims projects are expected to achieve and on the interplay between the various agencies. Examples highlighting the reconstruction and reconciliation process are taken from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel-Palestine, and Rwanda and South Africa.
Police in Peace and Stability Operations: Evolving US Policy and Practice
The United States has consistently failed to deal with the breakdown in public order that invariably confronts peace and stability operations in internal conflicts. Analysis of experience in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans and Iraq demonstrates that indigenous police forces are typically incapable of providing law and order in the immediate aftermath of conflict, and so international forces must fill the gap – a task the US military has been unwilling and unprepared to assume. After 20 years of lessons learned (and not learned), this article argues that the United States must develop a civilian ‘stability force’ of constabulary and police personnel deployable at the outset of on operation to restore public order and lay the foundations for the rule of law.
Managing Insecurity: Field Experiences of Security Sector Reform
Effective peacebuilding in the aftermath of civil war usually requires the drastic reform of security institutions, a process frequently known as security sector reform. Nearly every major donor, as well as a growing number of international organizations, supports the reform of security organizations in countries emerging from conflict and suffering high levels of violence. But how are reform strategies implemented? This collection of case studies (Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Timor-Leste, Mozambique, Serbia, Colombia, Uruguay, Peru, Jamaica) examines the strategies, methods, and practices of the policymakers and practitioners engaged in security sector reform, uncovering the profound conceptual and practical challenges encountered in transforming policy aspiration into practice.
Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone: The Story of UNAMSIL
The first in a series of “inside” histories, Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone relates how a small country-one insignificant in the strategic considerations of the world powers-propelled the United Nations to center stage in a crisis that called its very authority into question; and how the UN mission in Sierra Leone was transformed from its nadir into what is now widely considered one of the most successful peacekeeping missions in UN history.
In Search of Appropriate Peacemaking/Peacebuilding Pradigm in Dealing with Africa’s Intrastate Violent Conflicts: Considering Lederach’s Faith-based Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding Approach
With conditions created by Western colonialism and the dynamics of the Cold War bipolar global rule, the inability of governments to rise beyond corrupt and imbalance political order, and, hence, the resurgence of ethnic, religious, and ideological identity consciousness and identification, Africa has been a bleeding Continent since the end of the colonial era. Contemporary Africa?s conflicts are intrastate, with many protracted. This paper argues that to deal adequately with such conflicts there is a need for an inner-oriented, indigenous-based, organic, and long-term sustainable nonviolent process of conflict transformation and peacebuilding aimed at constructive holistic change. It demonstrates that this is core to the peacebuilding paradigm Lederach develops and so apt for dealing with today?s Africa?s conflicts.
The Democratic Republic of Congo: Economic Dimensions of War and Peace
Options for Transitional Justice in Kenya: Autonomy and the Challenge of External Prescriptions
The African Union’s Foray into Peacekeeping: Lessons from the Hybrid Mission in Darfur
The African Union (AU) was officially inaugurated on July 2002, and a year later it had already deployed its first peace operation in Burundi. The AU subsequently deployed peacekeeping missions in Darfur, in 2004, and in Somalia, in 2007. This article will examine the AU‘s foray into peacekeeping which appears to have been hasty, erratic, and not carefully planned. The article will also assess the extent to which what the AU has been doing can be defined as peacekeeping using the Brahimi Criterion for the deployment of operations. The article will briefly assess the AU‘s operations in Burundi and Somalia before focusing on the joint AU-United Nations (UN) hybrid mission in Darfur. The article examine whether the hybrid mission represents a paradigm shift in peacekeeping, based on the way that it was launched and how it is currently operated. The article examines whether the hybrid mission fulfils the Brahimi Criterion, and whether it can serve as a model for future peacekeeping operations in Africa. The article concludes that the AU has a better chance of success when it undertakes a concise and focused operation with a clear mandate and the modicum of logistics to ensure its effective implementation, as demonstrated by its experiences in Burundi. The AU‘s efforts in Somalia has left it mired in an open-ended complex emergency with no easy remedy. The organisation‘s joint effort with the UN in Darfur is similarly constrained by the absence of a peace to keep. The hybrid mission therefore falls short of the Brahimi Criterion and suggest that UN intervention following an initial AU peace operation is not necessarily a panacea to the continent‘s peacekeeping challenges.
State Making in the Horn of Africa: Notes on Eritrea and Prospects for the End of Violent Conflict in the Horn
This paper looks at the Eritrean state-making process in light of the 1998-2000 Eritreo-Ethiopian war and its aftermath. Three historical layers are discussed as determining the workings of the present Eritrean state. Their most important legacies are concerns around territorial integrity coupled with a deep mistrust of the international community, and a political system based on mobilisation coupled with authoritarian control. The war had two major consequences for the Eritrean polity: It led to many ruptures within the state, and it re-enforced deeply held suspicions towards the main international actors engaged in finding a sustainable solution. The latter’s involvement has resulted in a stalemate. Looking into the future, in a best-case scenario, pressure will be put on Ethiopia to accept once and for all its boundary with Eritrea as defined by international law. At the same time, this could open the way for domestic change towards constitutional government in Eritrea. At present, lacking a base for mutual engagement, future prospects for both countries, but more so for Eritrea, look bleak.
Security and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Dealing with Fighters in the Aftermath of War
This book provides a critical analysis of the changing discourse and practice of post-conflict security-promoting interventions since the Cold War, such as disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR), and security-sector reform (SSR). Although the international aid and security sectors exhibit an expanding appetite for peace-support operations in the 21st Century, the effectiveness of such interventions are largely untested. This book aims to fill this evidentiary gap and issues a challenge to ‘conventional’ approaches to security promotion as currently conceived by military and peace-keeping forces, drawing on cutting-edge statistical and qualitative findings from war-torn areas including Afghanistan, Timor Leste, Sudan, Uganda, Colombia and Haiti. By focusing on specific cases where the United Nations and others have sought to contain the (presumed) sources of post-conflict violence and insecurity, it lays out a new research agenda for measuring success or failure.
Outsourcing Post-Conflict Operations: Designing a System for Contract Management and Oversight
Security Sector Reform and the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Protecting Civilians in the East
The Democratic Republic of Congo has been plagued by continued conflict and violence in the East despite the official ending of the war. And civilians have borne the brunt of this conflict. Security sector reform (SSR) is a critical element in ensuring security, stability and sustainable peace. This article examines security sector reform conducted by the UN Mission in Congo, and also refers to other actors involved in the process, focusing primarily on the East where insecurity is prevalent due to the non-integrated Congolese forces, the Armed Forces of the DRC, other armed groups and foreign, mainly Rwandan, troops. It contends that SSR is vital to protect civilians and that thus far MONUC has not fulfilled its mandate of protection.
Governance Without Government in Somalia: Spoilers, State Building, and the Politics of Coping
This article assesses the challenges of state revival in Somalia. It reviews the roots of state collapse in the country, attempts to explain the repeated failure of state-building projects, tracks trends in contemporary governance in Somalia and Somaliland, and considers prospects for integrating local, “organic” sources of governance with top-down, “inorganic” state-building processes. The Somalia case can be used both to document the rise of governance without government in a zone of state collapse and to assess the changing interests of local actors seeking to survive and prosper in a context of state failure. The interests of key actors can and do shift over time as they accrue resources and investments; the shift “from warlord to landlord” gives some actors greater interests in governance and security, but not necessarily in state revival; risk aversion infuses decision making in areas of state failure; and state-building initiatives generally fail to account for the existence of local governance arrangements. The possibilities and problems of the “mediated state model,” in which weak states negotiate political access through existing local authorities, are considerable.
Vicious Circles and the Security Development Nexus in Somalia
The metaphor of the vicious circle is deeply embedded in analysis of protracted conflicts. Yet in at least some instances conflicts that appear to be self-reinforcing in the short term are in the longer run producing conditions out of which new political orders can emerge. These protracted conflicts are thus dynamic, not static, crises and require post-conflict assistance strategies that are informed by accurate trend analysis. The case of Somalia is used to illustrate the dramatic changes that occur over time in patterns of armed conflict, criminality, and governance in a collapsed state. These changes have produced a dense network of informal and formal systems of communication, cooperation, and governance in Somalia, helping local communities adapt to state collapse, manage risk, and provide for themselves a somewhat more predictable environment in which to pursue livelihoods. Crucial to this evolution of anarchy in Somalia has been the shifting interests of an emerging business community, for whom street crime and armed conflict are generally bad for business.
Kenya and the Rule of Law: The Perspective of Two Volunteers
Flip-flop Rebel, Dollar Soldier: Demobilisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo
A significant number of countries worldwide are described as entering a phase of `post’-conflict transition. Drawing on the experience of the health sector, this paper argues that the nature of the rehabilitation task is often misunderstood. In particular, it is often equated with reconstruction of war-damaged infrastructure and assets. Such an approach derives from a misconception of the origins and nature of contemporary warfare. It also serves to reinforce a linear approach to the transition from relief to development. This paper attempts to redefine the rehabilitation task in situations of `post’-conflict transition, drawing on examples from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Uganda. It argues that the direct effects of military action on the social sector are less significant than the indirect effects of political, economic and social changes which both underlie and are precipitated by conflict. Therefore, rehabilitation needs to go beyond reconstruction and tackle the root causes of instability. Such a reinterpretation of the rehabilitation task raises a number of dilemmas, particularly for international actors concerned to contribute to a sustainable peace. These dilemmas are rooted in both the uncertainty about the legitimacy of incoming governments in transitional situations, and in the organisation of the aid system itself. The paper concludes that confronting these dilemmas implies a fundamental change in the orientation and delivery of aid in `post’-conflict situations.
The Liberal Peace and Post-War Reconstruction: Myth or Reality?
International Justice After Conflict: Outreach, Legacy and Accountability
This book critically examines the role of outreach within the application of international justice in post-conflict settings. The assumption that justice brings peace underpins much of the thinking, and indeed action, of international justice, yet little is known about whether this is actually the case. Significant questions surrounding the link between peace and justice remain: do trials deter would-be war criminals; is justice possible for the most heinous crimes; can international justice replace local justice? This book explores these questions in relation to recent developments in international justice that have both informed and shaped the creation of the hybrid tribunal in Sierra Leone. This was the first hybrid tribunal to be based in situ, equipped with a dedicated Outreach office. Outreach was seen as essential to ensuring that expectations were managed for what was ultimately a limited judicial mechanism. Yet, there is little evidence to support the claim that Outreach garnered wide-spread acceptance of the Special Court. This book explores the challenge and tensions in communicating the role of international justice in a post-conflict setting. The goals of international justice after conflict are clear: hold fair and transparent trials of alleged perpetrators under the strict adherence to international judicial procedures in order to establish accountability for the worst crimes against humanity. The assumption being that this will contribute to peace by firmly drawing a line under the past in order to move forward peacefully. This has been evident with the recent drive towards international judicial intervention after conflict in places such as the former Yugoslavia, Uganda and Afghanistan. But so far these assumptions remain largely untested. Few empirical studies examine how justice contributes to peace and within these instances, how the complexity of international justice mechanisms have been communicated to their respective audiences in order to foment wide-spread knowledge and understanding of the processes. This book addresses this deficit by testing these assumptions on the ground in a post-conflict setting in West Africa.
Building Peace with Conflict Diamonds? Merging Security and Development in Sierra Leone
Conclusion: Security Sector (Re)construction in Post-conflict Settings
This essay concludes a study of how the international community has approached the security sector in six countries where there has been severe conflict leading to significant international engagement. Various factors are identified as being critical in shaping the outcome of (re)construction efforts, and they are evaluated from several perspectives. External actors have tended to take a limited and unbalanced approach to the security sector, focusing on building the efficiency of statutory security actors, and neglecting the development of managerial and governance capacity. While programmes tended to become more effective after the first major post-Cold War effort was undertaken in Haiti in 1994, the situation in Afghanistan may point to a reversal of this trend.
Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding after Mass Violence
What You See is What You Get: Analytical Lenses and the Limitations of Post-Conflict Statebuilding in Sierra Leone
This article juxtaposes donors’ analyses of state failure and strategies of post-conflict statebuilding in Sierra Leone with actual processes of state-formation. It argues that international state-builders’ analytical and policy frameworks are built on stylized assumptions about how states form and operate influenced by ideas derived from neoclassical economics. They focus on individual decision-making and functionalist formal institutions and provide a-historical analyses that fail to comprehend long-term state-formation. Interveners need to broaden their conceptual toolbox by paying more attention to local power structures, informal institutions and historical path dependency. Such a deeper analysis would encourage reflection on whether and how social change can be influenced by external intervention and allow donors to evaluate their statebuilding activities more honestly. This would raise important questions about the mismatch between interveners’ ambitious goals and modest tools.
The Role of Local Business in Peacebuilding
Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone
Rethinking State-building in a Failed State
Establishing Law and Order After Conflict
This study contains the results of research on reconstructing internal security institutions during nation-building missions. It analyzes the activities of the United States and other countries in building viable police, internal security forces, and justice structures. This study examines in detail the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo, three of the most important instances in the post-Cold War era in which the United States and its allies have attempted to reconstruct security institutions. It then compares these cases with six others in the post-Cold War era: Panama, El Salvador, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and East Timor. Finally, the study draws conclusions from the case studies and analysis, and derives recommendations to help the United States and other international actors improve their performance in the delivery of post-conflict security. The results should be of interest to a broad audience of policymakers and academics concerned with the successes and shortcomings of past security efforts. Although the study is not intended to be a detailed analysis of U.S. or allied military doctrine regarding stability operations, we believe it provides a useful set of guidelines and recommendations for a wide range of military, civilian, and other practitioners.
Securing Health: Lessons from Nation-Building Missions
We define nation-building as efforts carried out after major combat to underpin a transition to peace and democracy. Nationbuilding involves the deployment of military forces, as well as comprehensive efforts to rebuild the health, security, economic, political, and other sectors. The research we conducted focused on one aspect of nation-building-efforts to rebuild the public health and health care delivery systems after major combat. We looked at seven cases- Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. These are some of the most important cases since World War II in which international institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and countries such as the United States have taken part in efforts to rebuild the health sector. These missions also have important health components. To date, a significant amount of academic and policy-relevant work has been devoted to efforts to rebuild such areas as police and military forces. Little comprehensive work has examined efforts to rebuild public health and health care delivery systems, however. The work that has been done on health tends to focus on immediate humanitarian and relief efforts rather than long-term health reconstruction. The goal of our research was to fill this void.
Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure
The 1990s has seen an explosion of attention to the phenomenon of civil wars. A proliferation of actors has added complexity to conflict resolution processes. Recent theoretical research has highlighted the importance of inter-connections between parallel or overlapping conflict resolution activities. With this context in view, this book explores the connections between different regional and international conflict resolution efforts that accompanied the Rwandan civil war (from 1990 to 1994), and assesses the individual and collective impact they had on the course of that conflict. Jones explores the reasons for the failure of wide-ranging peace efforts to forestall genocidal violence in Rwanda in 1994. The book traces the individual and collective impact of both official and unofficial mediation efforts, peacekeeping missions, and humanitarian aid. It sets the peace effort in Rwanda in the wider context of academic theories about civil war and its resolution, and identifies a range of policy implications and challenges relating to conflict prevention, negotiation, and peacemaking.
Western Sahara: Anatomy of a Stalemate
The Struggle to Satisfy: DDR Through the Eyes of Ex-combatants in Liberia
This article calls for a re-examination of the justification, formulation and implementation of DDR programming in certain post-conflict environments. Qualitative fieldwork among ex-combatants in Monrovia, Liberia, suggests that the extent and form of DDR programming must be more sensitive to and predicated on context, accounting for conflict histories and current socioeconomic conditions and local institutional capacity. Moreover, in some post-conflict societies, a better use of international community resources may be to delink disarmament and demobilization from reintegration, focusing reintegration resources instead on open-access jobs programmes with discrete, complementary bilateral or multilateral programmes for particularly vulnerable groups.
Sudan: The Elusive Quest for Peace
This concise volume examines the cultural, sociopolitical, economic, and geographic facets of the prolonged hostilities that have embroiled Sudan since its independence. With great care, the authors address both the internal grievances that fuel the current conflict in Darfur, and the failure of regional and international actors to fully come to terms with the complexities of the issues involved.
Demobilization and Reintegration
Since 1989, international efforts to end protracted conflicts have included sustained investments in the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of combatants. Yet while policy analysts have debated the factors that contribute to successful DDR programs and scholars have reasoned about the macro conditions that facilitate successful peace building, little is known about the factors that account for successful reintegration at the micro level. Using a new dataset of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, this article analyzes the individual-level determinants of demobilization and reintegration. Past participation in an abusive military faction is the strongest predictor of difficulty in achieving social reintegration. On economic and political reintegration, we find that wealthier and more educated combatants face greater difficulties. Ideologues, men, and younger fighters are the most likely to retain strong ties to their factions. Most important, we find little evidence at the micro level that internationally funded programs facilitate demobilization and reintegration.
Would You Fight Again? Understanding Liberian Ex-Combatant Reintegration
Space, Performance and Everyday Security in the Peacekeeping Context
Studies of peacekeeping have helped to reveal the complexities, dilemmas and challenges of operations since their inception, and almost certainly into the future. Yet, despite the empirical and theoretical breadth of this canon, the field continues to be dominated by political science, development studies, international law and military studies, whose scholars tend to draw on problem-solving, macro-level and positivist perspectives in their writings. The impact of post-structural and post-positivist epistemologies developed in sociology, human geography and cultural studies remain marginal in the field. Given this, the present article seeks to complement and develop the study of peacekeeping through its framing of blue-helmet activity as embodied, spatial-security practice that is performed ‘out front’ for the beneficiary audience. In so doing we draw on critical geopolitics, military/human geography and sociological theorizing with a focus on space and performance. Our main aim is to show how the concepts of space and performance can be used to illuminate perceptions of everyday security by recourse to a modest, illustrative empirical component based on fieldwork in Haiti, Kosovo and Liberia.
Can Peacekeepers Be Peacebuilders?
The role of UN peacekeeping missions has expanded beyond the traditional tasks of peacekeeping to include a wide range of political, economic, and humanitarian activities. While such expansion indicates an improved understanding of the complexities and challenges of post-conflict contexts, it also raises questions about whether UN peacekeeping missions are equipped to handle peacebuilding tasks. Evidence from a study of the peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone suggests they are not. This article argues that peacekeeping missions are a poor choice for peacebuilding given their limited mandates, capacity, leverage, resources and duration. Peacekeepers should focus on peacekeeping, by which they can lay the foundation for peacebuilding. Peacebuilding should be the primary task of national governments and their populations.
Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions
In a sweeping review of forty truth commissions, Priscilla Hayner delivers a definitive exploration of the global experience in official truth-seeking after widespread atrocities. When Unspeakable Truths was first published in 2001, it quickly became a classic, helping to define the field of truth commissions and the broader arena of transitional justice. This second edition is fully updated and expanded, covering twenty new commissions formed in the last ten years, analyzing new trends, and offering detailed charts that assess the impact of truth commissions and provide comparative information not previously available. Placing the increasing number of truth commissions within the broader expansion in transitional justice, Unspeakable Truths surveys key developments and new thinking in reparations, international justice, healing from trauma, and other areas. The book challenges many widely-held assumptions, based on hundreds of interviews and a sweeping review of the literature. This book will help to define how these issues are addressed in the future.
Mozambique: “The war ended 17 years ago, but we are still poor.”
Mozambique, an aid darling, poses some stark questions for development co-operation. Current economic management strategies mean that a growing group of young people are leaving school with a basic education but no economic prospects. Will marginal youth in towns and cities pose a threat of political and criminal violence? Can peace be built on poverty and rising inequality? Are elections and expanded schooling enough when there are no jobs?
Systems-building Before State-building: On the Systemic Preconditions of State-building
State failure is often seen as due to endogenous factors, rather than systemic ones; correspondingly, the idea that states can be built by supporting internal processes and institutions alone is prevalent in policy documents and in some of the literature on state-building. This paper calls both assumptions into question. I demonstrate that three factors were important external preconditions of historical state formation: (1) effective states and sustainable regional security, which is expressed on an inter-state as well as a sub-state level, requires a region-wide creation of effective structures of state; (2) effective states and effective inter-state security require well-functioning states systems; (3) effective states require regional acceptance of the process of state-building. Analysing three contemporary countries and regions, Somalia/the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan/Central Asia and Namibia/ south-western Africa, the article concludes that state-building is substantially facilitated where these three contextual factors are in place. The absence of these external factors in the regions where Afghanistan and Somalia are located illuminate the depth of the problems facing these countries. In these cases regional structures are preconditions of state-building.
Transformation and the Independence of the Judiciary in South Africa
Aiding Peace? The Role of NGOs in Armed Conflict
As non-governmental organizations play a growing role in the international response to armed conflict – tasked with mitigating the effects of war and helping to end the violence – there is an acute need for information on the impact they are actually having. Addressing this need, Aiding Peace? explores just how NGOs interact with conflict and peace dynamics, and with what results.
Why Humanitarian Interventions Succeed or Fail: The Role of Local Participation
Why do interstate interventions, even when carried out with the best of intentions, so often fail to contain conflicts and support a peaceful settlement? We argue that the extent of local participation exerts a strong effect on the prospects for successful peace-building and reconstruction efforts in the wake of humanitarian interventions. Even though the population in target countries may sympathize with the goal of the intervention, local populations are unlikely to feel a personal attachment to a solution externally imposed unless actively consulted or involved in the intervention strategy. Humanitarian interventions without some form of local participation are likely to create cognitive dissonance among the local population between the outcome and the means chosen to implement it. We evaluate our hypotheses about the relationship between local involvement and successful post-conflict reconstruction by looking at variation in conflict and local involvement over time in two humanitarian interventions, Bosnia (1991-95) and Somalia (1987-97). Consistent with our hypotheses about how lack of local involvement can undermine post-conflict reconstruction efforts in the wake of interventions, we find that phases with more local involvement are associated with lower levels of conflict.
Gender Empowerment and United Nations Peacebuilding
Previous studies have suggested that societies where women have higher social and economic status and greater political representation are less likely to become involved in conflict. In this article, the author argues that the prospects for successful post-conflict peacebuilding under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) are generally better in societies where women have greater levels of empowerment. Women’s status in a society reflects the existence of multiple social networks and domestic capacity not captured by purely economic measures of development such as GDP per capita. In societies where women have relatively higher status, women have more opportunities to express a voice in the peacemaking process and to elicit broader domestic participation in externally led peacekeeping operations. This higher level of participation in turn implies that UN Peacekeeping operations can tap into great social capital and have better prospects for success. An empirical analysis of post-conflict cases with a high risk of conflict recurrence shows that UN peacekeeping operations have been significantly more effective in societies in which women have relatively higher status. By contrast, UN peacekeeping operations in countries where women have comparatively lower social status are much less likely to succeed.
The Contributions of Truth to Reconciliation: Lessons From South Africa
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is undoubtedly the most widely discussed truth and reconciliation process in the world, and by many accounts, the TRC is among the most effective any country has yet produced. What is the explanation for its success? This article has two objectives. First, it seeks to identify the characteristics of South Africa’s truth and reconciliation process that contributed to its performance. Second, it then asks whether the truth and reconciliation process is itself endogenous. Thus, the ultimate objective is to assess whether truth and reconciliation processes can have an independent influence on reconciliation and especially on the likelihood of consolidating an attempted democratic transition. The conclusion of this article is that the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa did indeed exert independent influence on the democratization process through its contributions toward creating a more reconciled society.
Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World
The international community has struggled without much success to remedy the problem of failed states. Meanwhile, 40 or 50 countries around the world — from Sudan and Somalia to Kosovo and East Timor — remain in a crisis of governance. In this impressive book, Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister, and Lockhart, who has worked at the World Bank and the United Nations, assess the missteps and offer a new framework for coordinated action. They argue that international responses have failed because they have been piecemeal and have proceeded with little understanding of what states need to do in the modern world system to connect citizens to global flows. They advocate a “citizen-based approach.” State-building strategies would be organized around a “double compact”: between country leaders and the international community, on the one hand, and country leaders and citizens, on the other. The book also proposes methods for the generation of comparative data on state capacity — a “sovereignty index” — to be annually reported to the UN and the World Bank. Ultimately, this study offers a surprisingly optimistic vision. The fact that so many disadvantaged countries have made dramatic economic and political transitions over the last decade suggests that developmental pathways do exist — if only the lessons and practical knowledge of local circumstances can be matched to coordinated and sustained international efforts. The authors provide a practical framework for achieving these ends, supporting their case with first-hand examples of struggling territories such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo and Nepal as well as the world’s success stories–Singapore, Ireland, and even the American South.
Security Sector Reform under International Tutelage in Sierra Leone
This essay examines Sierra Leone’s security sector reform (SSR) programme in the context of a post-war recovery agenda with strong international involvement. It discusses the background and priorities as well as the successes and failures of the programme in the areas of armed forces restructuring; disarmament, demobilization and reintegration; police reform; parliamentary oversight; justice sector reform and intelligence and national security policy coordination. It concludes that an ongoing SSR programme in the country should be owned and driven by Sierra Leoneans with support from the international community, and that SSR should go beyond the restructuring of formal security institutions and retraining their personnel, and also work to strengthen the oversight capacities of parliament, the judiciary and civil society groups.
Military Integration after Civil Wars: Multiethnic Armies, Identity and Post-Conflict Reconstruction
This book examines the role of multiethnic armies in post-conflict reconstruction, and demonstrates how they can promote peacebuilding efforts. The author challenges the assumption that multiethnic composition leads to weakness of the military, and shows how a multiethnic army is frequently the impetus for peacemaking in multiethnic societies. Three case studies (Nigeria, Lebanon and Bosnia-Herzegovina) determine that rather than external factors, it is the internal structures that make or break the military institution in a socially challenging environment. The book finds that where the political will is present, the multiethnic military can become a symbol of reconciliation and coexistence. Furthermore, it shows that the military as a professional identity can supersede ethnic considerations and thus facilitates cooperation within the armed forces despite a hostile post-conflict setting. In this, the book challenges widespread theories about ethnic identities and puts professional identities on an equal footing with them.
Africa’s Development Beyond Aid: Getting Out of the Box
Too Little, Too Late? International Oversight of Contract Negotiations in Post-conflict Liberia
International actors involved in transitional post-conflict situations often focus their attention on the reconstruction of a state’s political apparatus. Even where control of natural resources is central to the conflict, there tends to be less consideration of resource governance issues in transitional periods. This article examines one particular aspect of resource governance – the negotiation and signing of foreign investment contracts – in the context of post-conflict, pre-election Liberia. The investment contract process was mishandled by the transitional Liberian government. Although local interests resisted external oversight, international actors could and should have done more, in the interest of all Liberians, to proffer contract negotiation expertise and to prevent the transitional government from locking the state into unsatisfactory deals on major resource assets. International actors did address the contract issue and external oversight of economic governance more generally during Liberia’s formal transitional period, but ultimately their interventions amounted to too little and they came too late.
Context, Timing and the Dynamics of Transitional Justice: A Historical Perspective
This report was written with the intention of providing information and enhancing the debate around accountability processes, and in particular further prosecutions in South Africa. The report begins with an overview of the international obligations around holding perpetrators accountable within post-conflict societies. This overview also includes a description of attempts in Argentina and Chile to pursue prosecutions in conjunction with (or following upon) a truth commission. The next section of the report focuses specifically on South Africa, and consolidates the information on indemnities, amnesties and prosecutions from the 1990s to present. A legal analysis of the amended prosecution guidelines, passed in 2005 is then provided. This analysis is provided in that it is deemed as a policy which has, and will continue to, affect prosecutions for “conflicts of the past.” The report then continues with a case study of the Highgate Massacre of 1993, which explores the opportunities and challenges for further investigations and prosecutions. Finally, some concluding remarks are made which highlights some of the key points outlined through the report.
The Liberal Peace Is Neither: Peacebuilding, State building and the Reproduction of Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo
This article discusses the attempts at state-building by international actors in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It uses this experience to discuss some of the obstacles and dilemmas facing external state-builders. I argue that attempts at state-building by foreign actors in the DRC have not had much success, and point out four reasons. First, insufficient resources have been provided. Second, donors have used a standardized approach that does not take local context sufficiently into account. Third, domestic power relations have been such that state-building has not served the interests of key actors. Finally, the policy has been based on a fixed, non-negotiable conception of what the state eventually should look like. Although all these factors have contributed to the failure to create a liberal state in the DRC, the last two appear to be more fundamental than the first and the second.
Postconflict Reconstruction in Africa: Flawed Ideas about Failed States
The Role of Security Sector Reform in Sustainable Development: Donor Policy Trends and Challenges
This paper attempts to account for the gap between donor policies in support of SSR in developing countries, in particular in post-conflict African states, and their record of implementation. It explores the inadequacies of the present development cooperation regime and argues that a substantial part of this gap can be explained by the tension that exists between the prevalence of a state-centric policy framework on the one hand, and the increasing role played by non-state actors, such as armed militia, private security and military companies, vigilante groups, and multinational corporations on the other hand, in the security sector. This paper, which acknowledges the growing importance of regional actors and questions the state-centric nature of SSR, recommends a paradigmatic shift in the current approaches to development cooperation. The external origin and orientation of SSR needs to be supplemented by more local ownership at the various levels of SSR conceptualisation, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation in order to enhance synergy between donor priorities and interests on the one hand, and local needs and priorities on the other hand.
The Challenges and Lessons of Security Sector Reform in Post-conflict Sierra Leone
This paper assesses the main elements of SSR process in Sierra Leone, against its historical background as well as the imperatives of a responsive and responsible security sector. The reform of the security sector in Sierra Leone has enhanced the restoration of public safety in the country, and the positive features of the process relate to the inclusion of SSR as the first pillar of the country’s poverty reduction strategy, and the emphasis of SSR on the decentralisation of the security apparatus. Significant gaps however remain. Donor dependency and the ‘youth question’ are continuing challenges. Arguably, the most significant deficiency is the fact that the security sector has not been adequately embedded in a democratic governance framework. There is an absence of functional oversight mechanisms, and a failure to involve other actors beyond the executive arm of government in the governance of the security sector. The paper cautions that SSR can be successful only as part of an overarching democratic post conflict reconstruction framework
Surviving the Peace: Challenges of War-to-Peace Transitions for Civil Society Organisations
This report seeks to address the question “what happens to protagonists for change once that change has been achieved?” by analysing the transformations of peace/human rights civil society organisations (CSOs) during peace processes and democratic transitions in South Africa and Guatemala. Section one clarifies the analytical ground by exploring the conceptual roots, definitional boundaries, organisational and functional characteristics, and normative understanding of CSOs, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Section two adopts a more dynamic approach, assessing the organisational and functional shifts undergone by CSOs during and in the aftermath of peace processes and democratic transitions. This literature survey is then followed, in sections three and four, by two empirical studies on CSOs in South Africa and Guatemala, where interviews were collected in April 2007 with current and former members of relevant organisations. The conclusion, finally, draws a brief comparative summary of the main findings in both case studies, and derives a few conceptual and practical implications for the research, CSO and international donor communities.
Resurrecting the Rule of Law in Liberia
The rule of law is more than a legal concept. It encompasses more than an established set of rules and legal institutions. In the case of Liberia, there can be no rule of law without the commitment of those relatively few people who administer those rules on behalf of a post-conflict state that has endured twenty-five years of civil war and exploitation. This Essay seeks to prove that existing legal architecture and institutions in a post-conflict state matter less to the rule of law than does the character of the people who run the legal system. The Essay does not suggest that legal rules are, or should be, subordinate to personality in the orderly functioning of a postconflict society. However, it concludes that emphasis on creating new laws to address the perceived causes of state failure will ultimately accomplish little if the judges and lawyers who operate the legal system are not genuinely committed to the rule of law. This argument is developed by outlining, in very broad terms, the pre-conflict Liberian legal system and how it failed to serve as a meaningful bulwark against warlord predators. Then, the Essay focuses on a particular case, decided by Liberia’s Supreme Court on August 23, 2007, involving Liberia’s former head of state, Charles Gyude Bryant, who served as chairman of the National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL) from October 2003 until the inauguration of Liberia’s current President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, on January 16, 2006. The Bryant case provides an example of how the presidential immunity provision in Liberia’s Constitution was invoked in an attempt to trump the rule of law with the rule of impunity, and how the Supreme Court of Liberia’s judgment offers hope for a better day in Liberia’s legal future, notwithstanding the divided opinion of the Court.
America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq
The post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan set standards for postconflict nation-building that have not since been matched. Only in recent years has the United States has felt the need to participate in similar transformations, but it is now facing one of the most challenging prospects since the 1940s: Iraq. The authors review seven case studies – Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan – and seek lessons about what worked well and what did not. Then, they examine the Iraq situation in light of these lessons. Success in Iraq will require an extensive commitment of financial, military, and political resources for a long time. The United States cannot afford to contemplate early exit strategies and cannot afford to leave the job half completed.
Civil War Peace Agreement Implementation and State Capacity
Negotiated civil war terminations differ from their interstate war counterparts in that one side must disarm and cease to exist as a fighting entity. While termination through military victory provides a relatively more enduring peace, many civil wars end with peace agreements signed after negotiations. However, research has shown that the implementation of civil war peace agreements is difficult and prone to collapse. Often these failures are followed by recurrence of the conflict. In some cases, the agreements break down before key provisions are implemented. This article adds to this topic by focusing on the role of state capacity in peace agreement success. We argue that peace agreements and state capacity are necessary but not sufficient conditions for sustainable peace. The article employs a case study approach to explore the importance of state capacity in implementing civil war peace agreements. The role of third-party interventions is also considered. The cases (United Kingdom-Northern Ireland, Indonesia-Aceh, Burundi, Mali, and Somalia) include 14 peace agreements that vary by war type (secessionist or control over government), type of agreement (comprehensive or partial), levels of state capacity (high or low), and peace success (success, partial or failure), and each experienced third-party involvement in the peace process.
Wartime Sexual Violence: Assessing a Human Security Response to War-Affected Girls in Sierra Leone
Mission Without End? Peacekeeping in the African Political Marketplace
Development Co-operation and Conflict in Sierra Leone
This article examines the role of development co-operation in the 1991-2001 civil war in Sierra Leone. British military intervention, sanctions against Liberia for supporting the rebellion and the deployment of UN peacekeepers were key, albeit belated, initiatives that helped resolve the conflict. The lessons are that, first, domestic forces alone may be incapable of resolving large-scale violent conflicts in Africa. Second, conflict tends to spread from one country to another, calling for strong regional conflict resolution mechanisms and deeper regional integration to promote peace. Third, donor policies need to address the root causes of state fragility, especially the political and security dimensions, which they tend to ignore. Fourth, a critical analysis is required to determine circumstances in which elections could undermine peace: the conduct of donor-supported elections under an unpopular military government in Sierra Leone culminated in an escalation of the conflict. Finally, a united international community is crucial to resolve a complex conflict and it should be accompanied by strong and timely measures informed by a full understanding of local conditions.
Challenges to Peace: Conflict Resolution in the Great Lakes Region of Africa
Efforts to bring peace and reconstruction to the Central African region have been fashioned by contemporary conflict resolution models that have a standard formula of peace negotiations, with a trajectory of ceasefire agreements, transitional governments, demilitarization, constitutional reform and ending with democratic elections. Local dynamics and the historical and multifaceted nature of the conflicts are rarely addressed. Furthermore, participants in the peace process are restricted to representatives of political parties, the state and rebel movements, to the exclusion of civil society. Using as examples the conflicts and peace processes in three Great Lakes countries-Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo-the paper contends that contemporary global frameworks for peacemaking and peace building that rest on the acceptance of neoliberal political and economic models cannot lay the foundations for the conditions necessary for sustainable peace. This necessitates the utilisation of a more inclusive concept of peace, the starting point of which has to be the emancipation of African humanity.
Labour Markets, Employment, and the Transformation of War Economies
Although many different analyses in some ways acknowledge the relevance of labour markets to the political economy of violent conflict and of war to peace transitions, there has been little sustained or systematic exploration of this dimension of war economies and post-conflict reconstruction. This paper highlights the empirical and analytical gaps and suggests that a framework departing from the assumptions of the liberal interpretation of war allows for a richer analysis of labour market issues and policies. This is illustrated by the history of rural Mozambique through the war economy and into the first post-war decade.
Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies
Although the idea of postconflict peacebuilding appeared to hold great promise after the end of the Cold War, within a very few years the opportunities for peacebuilding seemed to pale beside the obstacles to it. This volume examines the successes and failures of large-scale interventions to build peace in El Salvador, Cambodia, Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Rethinking Post-war Security Promotion
When Peacebuilding Contradicts Statebuilding: Notes from the Arid Lands of Kenya
Local peace initiatives have been introduced in post-conflict settings in aid of statebuilding processes. However, contradictions in such efforts that undermine the state become apparent in a development context when government institutions are, generally, functioning. Peacebuilding initiatives in the arid lands of Kenya are a good example of this. While they have proved successful in resolving conflicts at the local level, they challenge the state structure in three ways. First, some of their features run counter to the official laws of Kenya and jeopardize the separation of powers. Second, they pose a dilemma, since their success and legitimacy are based on grassroots leadership and local concepts of justice. Both can be at odds with democratic decision-making, inclusiveness and gender equity. Third, they provide yet another tool for abuse by politicians and other local leaders. This reveals a dilemma: aspects of peacebuilding can actually undermine a statebuilding endeavour.
Ethnonationalist Triads: Assessing the Influence of Kin Groups on Civil Wars
Although the case-based literature suggests that kin groups are prominent in ethnonationalist conflicts, quantitative studies of civil war onset have both overaggregated and underaggregated the role of ethnicity, by looking at civil war at the country level instead of among specific groups and by treating individual countries as closed units, ignoring groups’ transnational links. In this article the authors integrate transnational links into a dyadic perspective on conflict between marginalized ethnic groups and governments. They argue that transnational links can increase the risk of conflict as transnational kin support can facilitate insurgencies and are difficult for governments to target or deter. The empirical analysis, using new geocoded data on ethnic groups on a transnational basis, indicates that the risk of conflict is high when large, excluded ethnic groups have transnational kin in neighboring countries, and it provides strong support for the authors’ propositions on the importance of transnational ties in ethnonationalist conflict.
Looking Backward to Address the Future? Transitional Justice, Rising Crime, and Nation-Building
This Article considers the role of crime in transitional states. I draw on three case studies, two from Latin America (Brazil and El Salvador), and one from sub-Saharan Africa (South Africa). It first briefly considers the similarity in focus of transitional justice approaches to police and criminal justice reform, invoking acculturation theory to explain the replication of a dominant, backward-looking script across different transitional states. Next, it considers the frequent inability of police and the criminal justice system to cope adequately with rising crime using these replicated scripts and the consequences of this failure for the defense of human rights, the rule of law, and the stability of new democracies. The Article assesses the particular dynamics of these processes for each of the three country case studies. Throughout the Article, I seek to demonstrate that it is crucial to address deficiencies in domestic criminal justice systems precisely during periods of transition and that criminal justice solutions should be developed at this time-to the extent possible-in an objective and comprehensive fashion, rather than in ways that seek to respond to problems of the pre-transitional state. In this way, I suggest, transitional justice can progress beyond existing, backward-looking frameworks to build nations capable of addressing the challenges they will face as they move forward.
How Liberal Peacebuilding May be Failing Sierra Leone
The concept of security is the driver for peacebuilding and development, as well as social and political change in post-conflict countries. A review and analysis of three key government documents indicates that, in Sierra Leone, securitisation discourse is embedded in both the political economy discourse of the state and in the popular imagination. The Security Sector Review equates security and peace while the country’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper sees security as a driver for change. The 2006 Work Plan of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security illustrates the extent to which the work of ministries is security-based. Sierra Leone’s political economy of post-conflict peacebuilding favours macro-economic security that is to trickle down into social and political peace. Discourse analysis shows that, framed within security parameters, post-conflict peacebuilding is meant to have an effect of ‘trickle-down peace’ that in effect constrains transformation with the potential for facilitating conditions for a return to conflict.
Fuelling Friendship: Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Angola
After almost three decades of civil war, post-conflict reconstruction is progressing quickly in Angola. The country has become a huge construction site. China in particular has played an important role in stimulating this building boom. Its private and state-owned firms are constructing schools, hospitals, low-cost housing and basic infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and railway networks. Development through infrastructure has worked in China, but will the boom have the desired effect in Angola where human and institutional capacity is so weak? Schools without teachers, or hospitals unable to operate, would not answer the public need.
Building States to Build Peace
There is increasing consensus among scholars and policy analysts that successful peacebuilding can occur only in the context of capable state institutions. But how can legitimate and sustainable states best be established in the aftermath of civil wars? And what role should international actors play in supporting the vital process? Addressing these questions, this state-of-the-art volume explores the core challenges involved in institutionalizing postconflict states. The combination of thematic chapters and in-depth case studies covers the full range of the most vexing and diverse problems confronting domestic and international actors seeking to build states while building peace. Case studies include: Somalia, Palestine, Bosnia, East Timor / Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, Liberia
Constructing Justice and Security After War
This book addresses what both scholars and practitioners now recognize as a foundation of effective peace: effective, legitimate, and rights-respecting systems of justice and physical security. This volume provides nine case studies by distinguished contributors, including scholars, criminal justice practitioners, and former senior officials of international missions, most of whom have closely followed or been intimately involved in these processes. The wide-ranging case studies address whether and how societies emerging from armed conflict create systems of justice and security that ensure basic rights, apply the law effectively and impartially, and enjoy popular support. The studies examine the importance of social, economic, and cultural factors as well as institutional choices regarging the form, substance, and sequence of reforms. Cases include: El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala, South Africa, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor / Timor Leste. Additional Topic: Gender.
Disarming Somalia: Lessons in Stabilisation From a Collapsed State
Neither Loyalty, Nor Fear: Some Thoughts on Building Greater Respect for Justice and Law in South Africa
In the midst of the current crisis of crime and violence, it seems almost trite to state that there is a need for greater respect for justice and the law in South Africa. As reflected in some recent studies on organised crime, attitudes of ambivalence towards the law on the part of many South Africans contribute to an environment in which organised, and other crime, flourishes. Known criminals are widely tolerated, or even admired – notably if they are perceived as preying on people from other communities. This forms part of a culture which also condones other illegal practices, spanning everything from the buying of stolen goods and illegal reconnections, to corruption and white-collar crime. The fact that there is also a significant problem of vigilantism is also obviously a manifestation of a lack of respect for the law. Vigilantism is, in part, motivated by the sense that people have that they need to take the law into their own hands as they cannot rely on the criminal justice system to enforce the law. This belief in the ineffectiveness of the criminal justice system in turn provides vigilantes with the confidence that, in punishing the alleged perpetrators of the original crime, they themselves can violate the law with impunity.
Agriculture, Poverty, and Postwar Reconstruction: Micro-Level Evidence from Northern Mozambique
This article analyzes the effects of household-level activity choices on farm household welfare in a developing country affected by mass violent armed conflict. The study uses household survey data from postwar Nampula and Cabo Delgado provinces in Northern Mozambique capturing many activity choices, including market participation, risk and activity diversification, cotton adoption, and social exchange, as well as income-and consumption-based measures of welfare. The study advances the literature on postwar coping and rural poverty at the micro level by estimating potentially endogenous activity choices and welfare outcomes using instrumental variables. The study finds that increasing the cultivated area and on-farm activities enhances postwar welfare of smallholders exploiting wartime survival techniques. Subsistence farming reduces income but does not affect consumption, while market participation has positive welfare effects. This suggests that postwar reconstruction policies should encourage the wartime crop mix but offer enhanced marketing opportunities for such crops. Cotton adoption, which was promoted by aid agencies in the postwar period, reduces household welfare per capita by between 16% and 31%, controlling for market access. This contradicts previous studies of postwar rural development that did not control for the war-related endogeneity. Hence, addressing the potential endogeneity of activity choices is important because the standard regression approach may lead to biased estimates of the impact of activity choice on welfare, which in turn may lead to biased policy advice. The article discusses and contextualizes these findings, concluding with a discussion of suitable pro-poor reconstruction policies for national governments and donors.
Peace and the Public Purse: Economic Policies for Postwar Statebuilding
The Role of International Law in Rebuilding Societies after Conflict
International law can create great expectations in those seeking to rebuild societies that have been torn apart by conflict. For outsiders, international law can mandate or militate against intervention, bolstering or undermining the legitimacy of intervention. International legal principles promise equality, justice and human rights. Yet international law’s promises are difficult to fulfil. This volume of essays investigates the phenomenon of post-conflict state-building and the engagement of international law in this enterprise. It draws together original essays by scholars and practitioners who consider the many roles international law can play in rehabilitating societies after conflict. The essays explore troubled zones across the world, from Afghanistan to Africa’s Great Lakes region, and from Timor-Leste to the Balkans. They identify a range of possibilities for international law in tempering, regulating, legitimating or undermining efforts to rebuild post-conflict societies.
The Challenge of DDR in Northern Uganda: The Lord’s Resistance Army
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have been fighting in northern Uganda for the past two decades in conflict which has devastated the region. The group is notorious for abducting children and young people. Over 20,000 have been taken since the war began and turned into soldiers and rebel “wives”. This is the context of Uganda’s informal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme. Rather than being an organised process set up to help consolidate peace at the end of war, it has largely been a necessary response to a flow of escaping former abductees, taking place within an on-going conflict. In 2006, the government of South Sudan began mediating peace talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government. Although the talks have yet to deliver, they have focused attention on managing an end to the conflict, including a formal programme of DDR to deal with those rebels remaining in the bush. Based on primary research- undertaken in Gulu, Kitgum, Kira and Apac Districts of northern Uganda in August and September 2005 and March 2006- this paper lays out the problems that have marred earlier attempts to reintegrate former LRA combatants- and looks at the challenges that lie ahead.
Building Peace and Political Community in Hybrid Political Orders
Peacebuilding supports the emergence of stable political community in states and regions struggling with a legacy of violent conflict. This then raises the question of what political community might mean in the state in question. International peacebuilding operations have answered that question in terms of the promotion of conventional state-building along the lines of the Western Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) model as the best path out of post-conflict state fragility and towards sustainable development and peace. This article argues for peacebuilding beyond notions of the liberal peace and constructions of the liberal state. Rather than thinking in terms of fragile states, it might be theoretically and practically more fruitful to think in terms of hybrid political orders, drawing on the resilience embedded in the communal life of societies within so-called fragile regions of the global South. This re-conceptualization opens new options for peacebuilding and for state formation as building political community.
On Hybrid Political Orders and Emerging States: State Formation in the Context of Fragility
Security Sector Reform in Liberia: An Uneven Partnership without Local Ownership
The security situation in Liberia is currently quite good, and at a glance the peacebuilding process seems to be moving ahead. However, the root causes of the conflict have not been adequately addressed, but have in fact become more interlinked in the aftermath of the civil war. Instead of addressing local perceptions of insecurity the international community made plans for Liberia without considering the context in which reforms were to be implemented. The peace in post-conflict Liberia is therefore still fragile and the international presence is regarded as what secures the peace. Still, the UN is supposed to start its full withdrawal in 2010, indicating that the international community will leave the country without addressing the root causes of conflict.
Making Plans for Liberia – A Trusteeship Approach to Good Governance?
Since the end of the Liberian civil war in August 2003 the international community has been “making plans” for Liberia. However, it rarely questioned whether these plans were in accordance with the political and economic logic of the peace agreement and the subsequent transitional government. The consequence was that corruption continued and a much more intrusive economic management plan was established. The Governance and Economic Management Assistance Programme is supposed to combat corruption and facilitate good governance, but it also limits the range of policy options for the new democratically elected government of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. The irony is that the best and most legitimate government that Liberia has ever had is subject to stronger external control than any of its predecessors. The probability that this scheme will remain sustainable when donor interest shifts elsewhere is low, and what is needed is a more pragmatic approach that draws a wider segment of Liberian society into anti-corruption management and creates checks and balances between them.
Does Deployment Matter? Examining the Conditions under which Peacekeeping Missions Effectively Protect Displaced Persons and Refugees
Reintegrating Armed Groups After Conflict: Politics, Violence and Transition
East Africa and the Horn: Confronting Challenges to Good Governance
Assessing the Environmental Constraints of Repatriation and Reintegration in Post-Conflict Societies: Implications for Policy and a Durable Peace
Restoring Dignity: Current Psychosocial Interventions with Ex-Combatants in South Africa: A Review, Discussion and Policy Dialogue Project.
Countries that have been through transition find themselves faced with the task of (re)building political, economic and social stability. One of the main areas of concern for countries that have experienced some form of conflict on the path towards democracy (like South Africa) is the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants. DDR programmes have been developed and implemented across the continent. According to President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone (Harsch, 2005), long-term stability depends on the existence of a comprehensive DDR programme. In reality, however, these programmes tend to fall short of being comprehensive. In countries where aspects of the DDR process were poorly managed, such as South Africa, the effects are still being felt today. According to Everatt & Jennings (2006), the demobilisation process in South Africa was riddled with difficulties. Many ex-combatants were not included and the process was characterised by several administrative problems. They go on to describe the process as “a complete mess” (2006, p.21) and suggest that due to this it is not surprising that many ex-combatants continue to strugglle. The project aims to empower ex-combatants to engage in policy dialogue with key stakeholders on addressing their psychosocial needs. This will be achieved through facilitating their engagement in evaluating and identifying gaps in the psychosocial services available to them.
Access to Justice in a Post-conflict State: Donor-supported Multidimensional Peacekeeping in Southern Sudan
Post-conflict governments and donors prioritize rebuilding the justice sector through state delivered rule of law and access to justice programmes. Misunderstanding the nature of the post-colonial state, such programmes make questionable assumptions. First, that a lack of access to state justice is the same as an overall absence of justice. Second, that the state system that is being built is what people want. Third, that the state system of justice that is being built could provide a sustainable nationwide network in the foreseeable future. Based on interviews conducted with policy designers, practitioners, local people and chiefs at three sites in southern Sudan 2007, this article calls for a rethinking of donor-supported justice and police development and advocates an approach that recognizes the importance of local justice.
Security in Post-Conflict Africa: The Role of Nonstate Policing
The African Post-conflict Policing Agenda in Sierra Leone
This article examines policing in Sierra Leone four years after the civil war. It evaluates the achievements in the area of policing against the major policing challenges in African post-conflict societies. These are recruitment and (re)training of a civilian force; establishing an organizational culture that is accountable and responsive to citizen concerns; organizational rebuilding and re-equipment; utilizing the resources of commercial and community organized policing; and establishing a sustainable basis. The research finds that for all the positive achievements, the fact remains that the government of Sierra Leone still does not exert effective control over, nor is it able to deliver state policing services to, significant parts of its own territory. The 7,000 active police officers are too small in number and too limited in resources to provide all Sierra Leone’s citizens with a service that protects them from crime and investigates crime. Its fundamental weaknesses mean that post-conflict internal security programmes may have to look again at others who currently authorize and provide policing. It may be that some community led policing groups can be harnessed and if necessary reformed to assist the police in establishing the rule of law.
The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding
Hobbes and the Congo: Frames, Local Violence, and International Intervention
Why do international peacebuilders fail to address the local causes of peace process failures? The existing explanations of peacebuilding failures, which focus on constraints and vested interests, do not explain the international neglect of local conflict. In this article, I show how discursive frames shape international intervention and preclude international action on local violence. Drawing on more than 330 interviews, multi-sited ethnography, and document analysis, I develop a case study of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s transition from war to peace and democracy (2003-2006) I demonstrate that local agendas played a decisive role in sustaining local, national, and regional violence. However, a postconflict peacebuilding frame shaped the international understanding of violence and intervention in such a way that local conflict resolution appeared irrelevant and illegitimate. This frame included four key elements: international actors labeled the Congo a “postconflict” situation; they believed that violence there was innate and therefore acceptable even in peacetime; they conceptualized international intervention as exclusively concerned with the national and international realms; and they saw holding elections, as opposed to local conflict resolution, as a workable, appropriate, and effective tool for state- and peacebuilding. This frame authorized and justified specific practices and policies while precluding others, notably local conflict resolution, ultimately dooming the peacebuilding efforts. In conclusion, I contend that analyzing discursive frames is a fruitful approach to the puzzle of international peacebuilding failures beyond the Congo.
When Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors: Fixed Borders, State Weakness, and International Conflict
Since the end of World War II, the norm of fixed borders-the proscription against foreign conquest and annexation of homeland territory-has gained prevalence in world politics. Although the norm seeks to make the world a more peaceful place, it may instead cause it to become more conflict prone. Among sociopolitically weak states-states that lack legitimate and effective governmental institutions-fixed borders can actually increase instability and conflict. Adherence to the norm of fixed borders can lead to the perpetuation and exacerbation of weakness in states that are already weak or that have just gained independence. It does so by depriving states of what was traditionally the most potent incentive to increase efforts of state building: territorial pressures. By creating conditions that are rife for the spillover of civil wars and by supplying opportunities for foreign predation, sociopolitically weak states in a world of fixed borders have become a major source of interstate conflict in much of the developing world. Investigation into one case, the war in Congo, reveals the plausibility and the potential force of this argument. Good fences indeed can make bad neighbors.
Conflict among Former Allies after Civil War Settlement: Sudan, Zimbabwe, Chad, and Lebanon
The interesting theoretical question about civil war in general is not why it begins (the possible reasons are surely too many to enumerate) or why it stops (all sorts of contingent explanations from simple fatigue to outside force may apply) but why it so often does not resume when it might. We need to comprehend this process of conflict transformation, whereby the conflict either becomes less important or is pursued without using mass violence. Understandably, most analyses and prescriptions for peacemakers focus on relationships between former enemies and attempts to reduce incentives for them to take up arms again. However, a recent analysis of four negotiated settlements of civil wars (Sudan in 1972, Zimbabwe in 1980, Chad in 1987, and Lebanon in 1989) reveals that in all four cases the critical conflict was actually between former allies. The compromises required in negotiated settlements, combined with the other problems of post-civil war societies, make such conflicts likely. In some cases they led to violence; in Zimbabwe and Lebanon conflict again reached the level of civil war. However, the ironic results was that the countries that had experienced the most violence subsequently produced new settlements which essentially confirmed the original ones and appear to be holding. In Sudan, interallied violence was quite low, but the result was that the government changed its policy, the first settlement was undermined, and the original civil war began again. Outsiders should not assume either that wartime cooperation will continue in peace or that `normal’ peacetime behavior will naturally appear of its own accord. Indeed, they should probably anticipate that ad hoc wartime alliances are likely to dissolve with the risk of renewed civil violence.
Views on the Ground: The Local Perception of International Criminal Tribunals in the Former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone
Amnesty, Peace and Reconciliation in Algeria
Amnesties constitute the most contentious issue in transitional justice processes. While largely rejected for contravening international law and being morally objectionable, political realities may sometimes force us to accept them in the interest of peace and stability. Determinations about the desirability and effectiveness of amnesties to promote peace thus need to look beyond legalistic claims, and take into account the specific political context within a country, as well as the nature of the amnesty itself. Taking the case of Algeria, where an amnesty was adopted in 2005 with the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, this article argues that although the amnesty can be justified partially by the fragile political context in Algeria and may contribute to reducing levels of violence in the country, its effective contribution to peace and reconciliation will be limited because it has, so far, not been accompanied by other political and economic measures necessary to bring peace and stability to the country, and because it promotes amnesia and largely ignores the plight of the victims of the war.
Filling the “Security Gap” in Post-conflict Situations: Could Formed Police Units Make a Difference?
The increased sophistication of peacekeeping missions has inevitably expanded the roles of all actors in the field particularly the military who have to play law enforcement functions, in addition to their traditional role, until civilian police are deployed. This essay discusses the consequences of the military role as law enforcers in conflict situations. The author proposes the concept of Formed Police Units (FPUs) to close the security gap that arises in these cases.