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Transitional justice processes are now considered to be crucial steps in facilitating the move from conflict or repression to a secure democratic future. This book contributes to a deeper understanding of transitional justice by examining the complexities of transition in postcolonial societies. It focuses particularly on Zimbabwe but draws on relevant comparative material from other postcolonial polities. Examples include but are not limited to African countries such as South Africa, Rwanda and Mozambique. European societies such as Northern Ireland, as well as other nations such as Guatemala, are also considered. While amplifying the breadth of the subject of transitional justice, the book...
The concept of 'hybridity' is often still poorly theorized and problematically applied by peace and development scholars and researchers of resource governance. This book turns to a particular ethnographic reading of Michel Foucault's Governmentality and investigates its usefulness to study precisely those mechanisms, processes and practices that hybridity once promised to clarify. Claim-making to land and authority in a post-conflict environment is the empirical grist supporting this exploration of governmentality. Specifically in the periphery of Bukavu. This focus is relevant as urban land is increasingly becoming scarce in rapidly expanding cities of eastern Congo, primarily due to inter...
Jon Unruh examines the role of a disordered and dysfunctional legal pluralism in Liberia's descent into internal armed conflict. Thoko Khaime considers the concepts of children's universal rights and their relationship to the social reality of living law in an African society. Abdulmumuni Oba discusses the jurisdiction and functioning of Area Courts in the state of Ilorin in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Sue Farran examines the land law in the Pacific state of Vanuatu.
Responding to a diplomatic stalemate and a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, Yemen's civil actors work every day to build peace in fragmented local communities across the country. This book shows how their efforts relate to longstanding justice demands in Yemeni society, and details three decades of alternating elite indifference toward, or strategic engagement with, questions of justice. Exploring the transformative impact of the 2011 uprising and Yemenis' substantive wrestling with questions of justice in the years that followed, leading Yemen scholar Stacey Philbrick Yadav shows how the transitional process was ultimately overtaken by war, and explains why features of the transitional fra...
This book enhances our understanding of how societies torn by violence can be rebuilt. Instabilities in those societies continue to be fuelled by political marginalization, economic-social inequality, violent crimes, and injustice. Historically, international response has been largely inadequate due to a failure of adaptation to local circumstances. This collection focuses on how peacebuilding programmes can be more effectively carried out to create a more functional society. In a nutshell, this volume sheds light on local practice and experiences that can be utilized to meet unique circumstances of countries that have suffered from a destructive conflict. The collection will investigate the transition to peace by highlighting the missing links between peacebuilding norms and practice, political economy, emotions, justice, and reconciliation.
This book analyzes the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in the context of the conflict in Darfur, using detailed empirical evidence. The volume traces Darfur’s evolution from forgotten conflict to a major global cause and back to obscurity. The emergence of a far-reaching international response to the war in Darfur began in 2004 and included the most influential international advocacy movement since the anti-apartheid campaign and one of the world’s largest peacekeeping missions. The book analyzes how Darfur slid back into international obscurity after 2011, despite ongoing violence against civilians and the continued risk of conflict escalation following Omar al-Bashir’s ousting in Apr...
A bottom-up analysis of what displaced people need rather than what states want
John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality and Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital shifted the focus of current thought on capital and economic development to the cultural and conceptual ideas that underpin market economies and that are taken for granted in developed nations. This collection of essays assembles 21 philosophers, economists, and political scientists to help readers understand these exciting new theories.
Since 2012, ceasefires have been used in Syria to halt violence and facilitate peace agreements. However, in this book, Marika Sosnowski argues that a ceasefire is rarely ever just a 'cease fire'. Instead, she demonstrates that ceasefires are not only military tactics but are also tools of wartime order and statebuilding. Bringing together rare primary documents and first-hand interviews with over eighty Syrians and other experts, Sosnowski offers original insights into the most critical conflict of our time, the Syrian civil war. From rebel governance to citizen and property rights, humanitarian access to economic networks, ceasefires have a range of heretofore underexamined impacts. Using the most prominent ceasefires of the war as case studies, Sosnowski demonstrates the diverse consequences of ceasefires and provides a fuller, more nuanced portrait of their role in conflict resolution.
The Horn of Africa has suffered repeated disasters: wars, drought, famine, mass refugee movements and environmental decline. This book explains the historical and political background to these crises and outlines the prospects for development in the region. Experts on the Horn cover a broad range of topics, including ethnic conflict, gender and refugees, food security, the survival of pastoralism, the future of independent Eritrea, operations of intelligence agencies and the possibilities for regional cooperation.