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At War's End Building Peace after Civil Conflict
All fourteen major peacebuilding missions launched between 1989 and 1999 shared a common strategy for consolidating peace after internal conflicts: immediate democratization and marketization. Transforming war-shattered states into market democracies is basically sound, but pushing this process too quickly can have damaging and destabilizing effects. The process of liberalization is inherently tumultuous, and can undermine the prospects for stable peace.
Saving liberal peacebuilding
Liberal peacebuilding has become the target of considerable criticism. Although much of this criticism is warranted, a number of scholars and commentators have come to the opinion that liberal peacebuilding is either fundamentally destructive, or illegitimate, or both. On close analysis, however, many of these critiques appear to be exaggerated or misdirected.
Peacebuilding in Crisis
The 1990s saw a constant increase in international peace missions, predominantly led by the United Nations, whose mandates were more and more extended to implement societal and political transformations in post-conflict societies. However, in many cases these missions did not meet the high expectations and did not acquire a sufficient legitimacy on the local level. Written by leading experts in the field, this edited volume brings together ‘liberal’ and ‘post-liberal’ approaches to peacebuilding.
International African Institute
The International African Institute (IAI), hosted at SOAS University of London, aims to promote the scholarly study of Africa's history, societies and cultures.
The institute realizes its aims primarily by means of scholarly publishing.
The institute is a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee, managed by a group of trustees. Additionally, an academic council, drawing members from the international African studies community meets annually.
Fighting for the rain forest: war, youth & resources in Sierra Leone
Paul Richards argues that the war in Sierra Leone and other small wars in Africa do not manifest a "new barbarism". What appears as random, anarchic violence is no such thing. The terrifying military methods of Sierra Leone's soldiers may not fit Western models of warfare, but they are rational and effective. The war must be understood partly as "performance", in which techniques of terror compensate for lack of equipment.
To Fight or to Farm? Agrarian Dimensions of the Mano River Conflicts (Liberia and Sierra Leone)
The wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone have been linked to the condition of urbanized youth. Recent research in southeastern Sierra Leone and northwestern Liberia suggests the rural context is of greater significance. The fighting was mainly in rural areas, involved mainly rural youth, and adapted itself to their local concerns. A model of war as the work of urban criminal gangs, reflecting local student politics in the 1970s and embraced internationally, is ripe for replacement by a model of war as agrarian revolt.
A Post-liberal Peace
This book examines how the liberal peace experiment of the post-Cold War environment has failed to connect with its target populations, which have instead set about transforming it according to their own local requirements.
A local to global perspective on resource governance and conflict
This article serves as an introduction to the special issue ‘A Local to Global Perspective on Resource Governance and Conflict’. It advances the debate on natural resource governance and conflict by bringing together three different strands of literature with the aim of developing a local to global research perspective and framework for analysis. First, this article reviews and identifies research gaps in the literatures on (1) the resource curse, (2) environmental security and (3) the large-scale acquisition of land and natural resources.
A local to global perspective on oil and wind exploitation, resource governance and conflict in Northern Kenya
In north-western Kenya, significant oil reserves have been discovered and the first oil trucks have left Turkana County in June 2018. On the east side of Lake Turkana, the largest wind power project on the African continent was completed in mid-2017. This article applies a local to global perspective to explore the benefits and externalities for the local communities living in close proximity to the oil and wind exploitation sites. A particular focus is placed on governance of energy resources, water and employment opportunities and its impacts on new and existing conflict dynamics.
Capacity Development in Post‐Conflict Countries
The recent Secretary General’s “Report on Peacebuilding in the Immediate Aftermath of Conflict” warns of the threats posed by the failure to restore state authority to lead the peacebuilding process in early post‐conflict situations. This report advocates for coherent and well coordinated early action to support post‐conflict governments to build core state capacities that will help to restore legitimacy and effectiveness. This paper lays out a framework for reconsidering the unique challenges post‐conflict contexts pose to processes of state capacity development.