Chair: Gama Roberts, Crisis Management Initiative (gama.roberts[at]cmi.fi)
Coordinators: Matthias Wevelsiep (matthias.wevelsiep[at]cmi.fi), Crisis Management Initiative
Room: 312 (Thursday only)
Workshop focuses on research on citizenship and conflict in Africa. The workshop invites participants and researchers to elaborate on questions of citizenship in relation to conflict prevention, mediation, conflict resolution and post-conflict state-building. The workshop addresses questions of unsolved citizenship and cases showing under which conditions unsolved citizenship can lead into conflict. It also presents how policy and practice regarding citizenship can contribute to conflict resolution and conflict prevention. The subject can also be approached through identity: As the conference organizers point out, citizenship as a form of social belonging and membership is challenged and reconstructed in a myriad of ways. How are then differences among people based on, for example, social position, gender, age, ethnicity or geographic location related to national identify, and how this perception of national identity affects state-building and sustaining peace? Both the historic view of creating national entities as well as the contemporary view on non effective or non existing border control / border demarcation and effects on sense of belonging adds additional layers to the discussion.
About Gama Roberts: Gama works as an Adviser on State-Building at CMI. He coordinates CMI’s Governance out of a Box initiative which aims to identify tools for the effective implementation of priority functions of state administration in post-conflict countries. Recently he has planned and facilitated a high-level seminar on civil registration in West Africa with participants from Liberia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria. Before joining CMI, Mr. Roberts consulted for the Liberian Government and worked with the Liberian Reconstruction and Development Committee in the Office of the President. He holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration and an undergraduate degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Mercer University (Georgia, USA).
PRESENTATIONS
(1) The political Economy of State Formation in Africa: Lessons for the Arab spring
Abdirashid Ismail, Hanken School of Economics (abdirashid.ismail67[at]gmail.com)
In the first decade of the twenty-first century the problems posed by fragile states and the international community‘s endeavours to check it and manage the consequences of state fragility are major questions on the international policy agenda. In 1991, after over a decade of political upheavals, the fall of the Military Regime left a political vacuum in which the means of violence fall into the hands of non-state actors. The collapse of the state in Somalia is the source of most of the calamities that have befallen the Somali people. Without any form of central political power, Somalia became an outlaw zone where non-state actors, Somalis and non-Somalis alike, could victimize first Somalis and then others. The uprisings that began in Tunisia in December of 2010 have unleashed a set of dynamics that present a complex set of opportunities and risks in the region. One possible outcome would be an emergence of democratic state, while another is a return to an authoritarian rule. However, a worst case scenario is that some of these countries follow the footsteps of Somalia. Using the theory of political economy this paper intends to study the possibility of the formation of a viable democratic state and the role of the identity in the process in these countries.
(2) The Consequences of Niti Approach to Liberian DDRR programmes
Leena Kotilainen, University of Turku (leena.kotilainen[at]utu.fi)
Following ancient Indian tradition, Amartya Sen divides justice into niti and nyaya, both of which can be translated as “justice”. The difference between the terms, according to Sen, is that whereas niti refers to institutional justice with correct procedures and such, nyaya takes a broader perspective, concentrating e.g. on the effects of chosen procedures on human beings’ lives. In my paper, I use this divide for examining the Disarmament, Demobilisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (DDRR) programmes implemented in Liberia after its two civil wars, from the perspective of former girl soldiers in particular. I conclude that Liberian DDRR programmes offer an example for the international community as a whole about the importance of acknowledging the conflict-specific features in programme design and implementation, and thus about the need of integrating nyaya perspective into these kinds of processes in the future. I argue that by taking nyaya as a guiding principle in post-conflict state-building, citizenship is constructed both sustainably and in a manner that can better prevent future conflicts in the region.
(3) Contested Boundaries, Shifting Solidarities: Citizenship, Development and Identity Conflicts in Nigeria
Mohammad J. Kuna, Usmandu Danfodio University, Nigeria (mjkuna[at]msn.com)
The paper observes that contemporary transformations are generating fresh realities, reposing old questions about practices /notions of membership and interrogating historical processes within which national political units in Africa generally, and in Nigeria particularly have been framed. Such transformations are generating new or recasting old realities that are seem to exacerbate various forms of infra-national, while eroding broader, more national identities. Such transformations are reopening old tensions/conflicts in the constitution of the nation, in conceptions of membership, in notions and practices of development and in the practice of democracy. Altogether, they represent multiple challenges that the rise of particularistic identities (e.g. religion, gender, race and ethnicity) pose to the idea of the nation-state embedded in arguably more inclusive notions of identity (e.g. citizenship). Challenging the constitution of the state and related discourses, these transformations compel a re-examination of identity categories as contested and shifting boundaries of social /political practice within the dynamics of contemporary global capital. The shifting boundaries and contested solidarities manifest in various forms of identity conflicts across Nigeria are partly a reflection of these dynamics and partly critical registers in broader struggles at the reconfiguration of state and political community arising from worsening material conditions.
(4) NGDOs and multiple accountabilities. The case of adult literacy in Liberia
Anja Onali, University of Helsinki (anja.onali[at]helsinki.fi)
Non-governmental development organizations (NGDOs) have multiple roles and accountabilities that might be in conflict with each other. They may be watchdogs of the government and service providers at the same time. In these roles they are accountable to various stakeholders. The case in point is adult literacy in post conflict Liberia in which state and civil society cross boarders as NGDOs play a major role when it comes to non-formal education for adults. I will look into the multiple accountabilities from one NGDO‘s point of view as it works with different actors including the Ministry of Education, donors, other NGDOs and people in literacy circles. This is a background paper based on a documentary review for a field research in Liberia that will take place in February – March 2012. The aim is to sharpen the research questions for the field study.