Understanding Obstacles to Peace
Understanding Obstacles to Peace

Author: Mwesiga Laurent Baregu

Publisher: IDRC

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 9970250361

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This book describes and analyzes protracted conflicts in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. In doing so, it emphasizes obstacles to peace rather than root causes of conflict. Case studies are presented from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Northern Kenya, Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan, and Zanzibar. Amongst other conclusions, the book shows that, to settle or transform protracted conflicts, distinction must be made between strategic and nonstrategic actors: the former must be able to prevail upon the latter in the negotiation and implementation of peace agreements. The theme and collection of the research presented in this book is unique in the literature. The case studies all employ methods of othick description, o process tracing (following particular actors and their interests), and in-depth personal interviews. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, undergraduate and post-graduate students, and professionals in conflict theory, analysis and resolution, African and development studies, political science and international affairs, as well as to mediators, negotiators, and facilitators in conflict resolution

Conflict and Peacebuilding in the African Great Lakes Region
Conflict and Peacebuilding in the African Great Lakes Region

Author: Kenneth Omeje

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2013-06-19

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0253008484

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Driven by genocide, civil war, political instabilities, ethnic and pastoral hostilities, the African Great Lakes Region, primarily Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Burundi, has been overwhelmingly defined by conflict. Kenneth Omeje, Tricia Redeker Hepner, and an international group of scholars, many from the Great Lakes region, focus on the interlocking conflicts and efforts toward peace in this multidisciplinary volume. These essays present a range of debates and perspectives on the history and politics of conflict, highlighting the complex internal and external sources of both persistent tension and creative peacebuilding. Taken together, the essays illustrate that no single perspective or approach can adequately capture the dynamics of conflict or offer successful strategies for sustainable peace in the region.

War and Peace in Africa’s Great Lakes Region
War and Peace in Africa’s Great Lakes Region

Author: Gilbert M. Khadiagala

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-07-11

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 3319581244

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The book probes major security and governance trends in Africa’s Great Lakes region since the 1990s. It examines political dynamics in key states – Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda – as well as the role of international actors such as the AU, the EU, and the UN, thereby providing a unique perspective on efforts towards regional peace and prosperity. The authors suggest that while the region has made tremendous progress, it faces continuing challenges (including reversals in governance) that threaten future regional security.

War and Conflict in Africa
War and Conflict in Africa

Author: Paul D. Williams

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-06-23

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1509509089

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After the Cold War, Africa earned the dubious distinction of being the world's most bloody continent. But how can we explain this proliferation of armed conflicts? What caused them and what were their main characteristics? And what did the world's governments do to stop them? In this fully revised and updated second edition of his popular text, Paul Williams offers an in-depth and wide-ranging assessment of more than six hundred armed conflicts which took place in Africa from 1990 to the present day - from the continental catastrophe in the Great Lakes region to the sprawling conflicts across the Sahel and the web of wars in the Horn of Africa. Taking a broad comparative approach to examine the political contexts in which these wars occurred, he explores the major patterns of organized violence, the key ingredients that provoked them and the major international responses undertaken to deliver lasting peace. Part I, Contexts provides an overview of the most important attempts to measure the number, scale and location of Africa's armed conflicts and provides a conceptual and political sketch of the terrain of struggle upon which these wars were waged. Part II, Ingredients analyses the role of five widely debated features of Africa's wars: the dynamics of neopatrimonial systems of governance; the construction and manipulation of ethnic identities; questions of sovereignty and self-determination; as well as the impact of natural resources and religion. Part III, Responses, discusses four major international reactions to Africa's wars: attempts to build a new institutional architecture to help promote peace and security on the continent; this architecture's two main policy instruments, peacemaking initiatives and peace operations; and efforts to develop the continent. War and Conflict in Africa will be essential reading for all students of international peace and security studies as well as Africa's international relations.

The Great African War
The Great African War

Author: Filip Reyntjens

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-08-24

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0521111285

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This book examines a decade-long period of instability, violence and state decay in Central Africa from 1996, when the war started, to 2006, when elections formally ended the political transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A unique combination of circumstances explain the unravelling of the conflicts: the collapsed Zairian/Congolese state; the continuation of the Rwandan civil war across borders; the shifting alliances in the region; the politics of identity in Rwanda, Burundi and eastern DRC; the ineptitude of the international community; and the emergence of privatized and criminalized public spaces and economies, linked to the global economy, but largely disconnected from the state - on whose territory the "entrepreneurs of insecurity" function. As a complement to the existing literature, this book seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of concurrent developments in Zaire/DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda in African and international contexts. By adopting a non-chronological approach, it attempts to show the dynamics of the inter-relationships between these realms and offers a toolkit for understanding the past and future of Central Africa.

Political Economy of the Great Lakes Region of Africa
Political Economy of the Great Lakes Region of Africa

Author: Stefaan Marysse

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2006-03-17

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781403949509

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This book examines the international factors such as enforced democracy and globalization that have affected the Great Lakes region of Africa. The horrendous consequences in terms of violence and human suffering of the events in this area have been exhibited in the media, however news coverage after 1994 was at times unreliable. This book takes a look at life since then, adopting an independent, and on occasion controversial perspective.

Politics, Religion, and Power in the Great Lakes Region
Politics, Religion, and Power in the Great Lakes Region

Author: Murindwa Rutanga

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 2869784929

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"This book ... focuses on the European invasion of the GLR. It analyses the factors that underlay the invasion, the demarcation process that followed and the indigenous people’s responses to it. What is worth noting is that most of the anti-colonial struggles in the GLR were anchored in religion. Reference is made to the Maji Maji Rebellion, the Nyabingi Movement, the Lamogi Movement, Dini Ya Misambwa and the different independent churches that arose in the GLR during colonialism. Even the more secular Mau Mau Movement integrated religious cultural practices in its bondings through oath taking. The most pronounced was the Nyabingi Movement, which covered almost the whole region – Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC and Uganda ... This work investigates why [the groups] resisted, the nature of their resistance and the reasons why they were defeated. It explains why and how the European colonisation of this region created material conditions and seeds for thesubsequent recurrent conflicts in the GLR."--Page 6.

The Great Lakes of Africa
The Great Lakes of Africa

Author: Jean-Pierre Chrétien

Publisher: Mit Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781890951351

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The first English-language publication of a major history of the Great Lakes region of Africa. Though the genocide of 1994 catapulted Rwanda onto the international stage, English-language historical accounts of the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa--which encompasses Burundi, eastern Congo, Rwanda, western Tanzania, and Uganda--are scarce. Drawing on colonial archives, oral tradition, archeological discoveries, anthropologic and linguistic studies, and his thirty years of scholarship, Jean-Pierre Chr tien offers a major synthesis of the history of the region, one still plagued by extremely violent wars. This translation brings the work of a leading French historian to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Chr tien retraces the human settlement and the formation of kingdoms around the sources of the Nile, which were "discovered" by European explorers around 1860. He describes these kingdoms' complex social and political organization and analyzes how German, British, and Belgian colonizers not only transformed and exploited the existing power structures, but also projected their own racial categories onto them. Finally, he shows how the independent states of the postcolonial era, in particular Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda, have been trapped by their colonial and precolonial legacies, especially by the racial rewriting of the latter by the former. Today, argues Chr tien, the Great Lakes of Africa is a crucial region for historical research--not only because its history is fascinating but also because the tragedies of its present are very much a function of the political manipulations of its past.

Urban Africa and Violent Conflict
Urban Africa and Violent Conflict

Author: Karen Büscher

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 1000011682

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Urban centres are at the heart of the dynamics of war and peace, of stability and violence: as ‘safe havens’ for those seeking protection, as concentrations of public administrative and military apparatus, and as symbolic bases of state sovereignty and public authority. Heavy fighting in South Sudan’s capital city of Juba, post electoral protests and brutal killings in Bujumbura, Burundi, and violent urban uprisings in Congo’s cities of Goma and Kinshasa, all demonstrate that cities represent critical arenas in African conflict and post-conflict dynamics. This comprehensive volume offers a profound analysis of the complex relationship between the dynamics of violent conflict and urbanisation in Central and Eastern Africa. The authors underline the need to look simultaneously at cities to understand ongoing conflict and violence, and at conflict-dynamics to understand current urbanisation processes in this part of the world. Building on empirical and analytical insights from cities in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, South Sudan and Kenya, this collection demonstrates how emerging urbanism in the larger Great-Lakes region and its Eastern neighbours presents a fascinating window to investigate the transformative power of protracted violent conflict. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies.

The Right to Learn: Batwa Education in the Great Lakes Region of Africa
The Right to Learn: Batwa Education in the Great Lakes Region of Africa

Author: Fay Warrilow

Publisher: Minority Rights Group

Published: 2008-12-12

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 1904584810

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The Batwa communities of the Great Lakes Region are mainly former hunter-gatherers who have been evicted from their forest homes over the course of many decades. They now live as a neglected and marginalized minority, often in remote conflict and post-conflict areas. Although Batwa adults and children across the region have identified education as their most important priority, the vast majority have had little if any chance to go to school. Poverty and hunger, and the long distances they often have to travel to access schooling, prevent children from enjoying what is their fundamental human right. Batwa identity has been historically misrepresented in school curricula in the region, and this continues today. Batwa children in Burundi report being told by teachers that because they are Batwa, they are ‘worth nothing’. For Batwa, access to education means change at the most basic level, such as being able to read public signs and notices. It allows self-sufficiency and promotes self-esteem; it offers the potential to undertake training in technical skills or access to employment, all of which would help Batwa people combat the poverty they live in. The welfare of minorities within a country has repercussions for its welfare as a whole. If the social and political exclusion of the Batwa is to end, it is clear that their education opportunities must improve dramatically at every level. This report contains a wealth of first-hand research from Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda which clearly shows that more positive action is needed from governments, civil society organizations and the international community.