{"title":"Sociocognitive Processes in the Construction of Identity and Conflict between the Jarso and Girhi in Eastern Ethiopia","authors":"J. W. Hussein, F. Beyene, Richard Wentzell","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.2.89","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.2.89","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the sociocognitive processes involved in the construction of identity, territory, and inter-group conflicts in eastern Ethiopia. The article is based on data collected through extensive fieldwork in the area. The article tries to show how macro-political and institutional orientations trigger ethno-territorial dynamics that change the meanings of territory, identity, and inter-group relations in the Jarso-Girhi territory. The article outlines the underlying processes and structures of identity-based categorizations and conflicts and how these are expressed and embodied through sociocognitive processes.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74701499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Almajiri in Northern Nigeria: Militancy, Perceptions, Challenges, and State Policies","authors":"Akali Omeni","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.2.128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.2.128","url":null,"abstract":"Representations of almajiri within popular literature often associate the system, and the attendant youth demographic, with youth delinquency and social violence. Yet few accounts correctly identify what almajiri is, how these young men are distinct from other youth categories in northern Nigeria, and why the system has undergone gradual collapse.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83371086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Promoting Peace and Conflict-Sensitive Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"Kenneth Omeje","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.2.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.2.33","url":null,"abstract":"One of the most effective ways universities in war-affected countries can be functionally relevant to the everyday needs and challenges of their immediate environment is by promoting peacebuilding through peace education. This paper explores the role of universities in fostering peace education in diverse post-conflict and conflict-prone countries of sub-Saharan Africa and further investigates the contending models and strategies (notably the Bradford Model and the Centralized Unitary Model) of conflict-sensitive peace education in universities in the countries concerned. It also analyzes the problems associated with promoting peace education in sub-Saharan Africa and recommends policy-relevant measures designed to strengthen the process. The data was generated from secondary sources, as well as a raft of conflict intervention, regional security, and peacebuilding projects of which the researcher took part in countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and South Sudan.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78290751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prison State, Pariah, And Proxy War: Human Rights Narratives and the Sovereignty Backlash in Eritrea","authors":"J. Riggan","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.2.57","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.2.57","url":null,"abstract":"The Eritrean state has been depicted by media and by human rights organizations as a pariah and “prison state” violating the human rights of its citizens and engaging in senseless conflicts with its neighbors. I examine these representations in mainstream, global media and the response to them in the rhetoric of Eritrea’s leaders. The characterization of Eritrea conflates its human rights record with international policies, particularly support for Islamists in Somalia, and casts the country as rogue. President Isaias Afwerki’s responses to these depictions draw on narratives of the international community persistently neglecting Eritrea, thus using discourses of isolationism and self-reliance to buttress his rule and situating critiques of Eritrea’s human rights record as part of a broader attack on Eritrea’s sovereignty. Eritrean leaders’ assertions of sovereignty, the right to protect one’s borders and govern within them, thus indirectly counter calls for an improved human rights record.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80288457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Journeys of Peace: Exhibitions, Objects, and Creative Dialogue","authors":"T. Gachanga, Diana Walters","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.123","url":null,"abstract":"This briefing paper reviews a twelve-month traveling exhibition on African peace cultures in Kenya developed by the Kenyan organization Community Peace Museums Heritage Foundation and the Swedish NGO Cultural Heritage without Borders. The exhibition, Journeys of Peace, traveled to several rural venues and created spaces for dialogue and encounter between peoples and communities. This briefing paper outlines the background to and the creation of the exhibition and examines the main features that contributed to the success of the project. The paper describes the approaches used and assesses the impact of Journeys of Peace. An important question in the paper is how the approach of Journeys of Peace could be refined and developed. The lessons of Journeys of Peace could be useful for other organizations seeking to use a creative peacebuilding approach.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72987242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Forum Theatre for Conflict Transformationin East Africa: The Domain of the Possible","authors":"Mecca Antonia Burns, Bonface Beti, M. Okuto, Denis Muwanguzi, Lydia Sanyu","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.136","url":null,"abstract":"From intimate domestic disputes to politically maneuvered ethnic clashes, power dynamics lie at the heart of conflict. Three organizations—Amani People’s Theatre from Kenya, Budondo Intercultural Center from Uganda, and Presence Center for Applied Theatre Arts from the United States—use Forum Theatre as a nonviolent force for change and leadership development in East African villages and slums, helping communities learn from each other and transform their conflicts from the inside out. This briefing paper provides a theoretical overview of participatory theatre methodologies. It examines seven case studies in which Forum Theatre has identified underlying community issues and offered a laboratory for imagining more just and peaceful alternatives to conflict.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81267366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Music as Education, Voice, Memory, and Healing: Community Views on the Roles of Music in Conflict Transformation in Northern Uganda","authors":"Lindsay McClain Opiyo","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.41","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.41","url":null,"abstract":"The Acholi of northern Uganda widely credit music with playing a central role in ending more than two decades of armed conflict. Drawing upon a conflict transformation framework—as well as more than 200 conflict-related songs and primary source in terviews and focus group discussions with 46 community members and artists—this article explores how Acholi communities experience and perceive music as creating peaceful change through the community-identified roles of music as education, voice, memory, and healing. It suggests that listening to community members’ perceptions on the role of music provides deeply rooted, context-ipecific insights into how communities experience and respond to the circumstances around them. Furthermore, by listening to community members’ experiences and interactions with music, one can better assess how music may have contributed to transformation in a setting. It concludes by proposing ways in which these insights can inform, and possibly improve, future peacebuilding strategies involving music.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83838520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Emmanuel Jal: A Modern-Day Nomad’s Approach to Peacebuilding Through Music","authors":"Lee-Anne Ragan, E. Jal","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.162","url":null,"abstract":"Emmanuel Jal, a selfdescribed modernday nomad, was born circa 1980 in wartorn Sudan. After witnessing horrific violence and being forced to serve as a child soldier for approximately five years, he was rescued by an aid worker and smuggled into Kenya, after which he enrolled in school, discovered hip hop music, and later became a Canadian resident. Today, Jal is an internationally renowned peace activist, singer, and actor. In this essay, we explore Jal’s songs and the ways they promote peacebuilding through music. Through interviews conducted in Vancouver on July 15, 2012, and in Nairobi on April 14, 2014, we unpack the stories and meaning behind three of his favorite peace songs: “Forced to Sin,” “Emma,” and “We Want Peace.”1 They reveal the redeeming power of music to heal a man who underwent horrific violence as a child, and to advocate for peace and forgiveness in South Sudan and the world.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81331482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preemptive Testimony: Literature as Witness to Genocide in Rwanda","authors":"Michael C. Montesano","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.88","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.88","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the work of literature as testimony to tragedy in the context of the Rwandan genocide and the 1998 “Writing in Duty to Memory” project, in which ten African authors visited Rwanda with the idea of bearing witness to what happened in 1994. The article surveys varying outlooks on the value of literary testimony, particularly Patrice Nganang’s idea of preemptive writing. Nganang admonishes African authors to preempt future tragedy rather than offer testimonies to past trauma. By reading the works of two “Writing in Duty to Memory” project authors, Boris Diop’s Murambi, the Book of Bones and Véronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of Rwanda, I argue that literature can not only restore the inhumanity of events like genocide, but also preempt future tragedy by exposing the conditions that make violence possible and imagining a way to move forward constructively.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88616820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Whose Music, Whose Country?: Music, Mobilization, and Social Change in North Africa","authors":"C. Robertson","doi":"10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.66","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/AFRICONFPEACREVI.5.1.66","url":null,"abstract":"Social change began to rapidly emerge in many North African states in 2011 and 2012, and this process continues today. Music has been embedded within this process from the beginning and has been a key feature in street protests and expressing group identity that opposed the status quo at the time. The situation has since become extremely complex as group identities have split and merged, but in the early days of social change in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, music was used by professional and amateur musicians as well as non- musicians for several purposes, namely, to express a more generalized group identity, to capture the moment of the protests, and to propagate information about the situation to a wider Arab diaspora and gain support from them. Conversely, the state also used music at this time as a form of social control by promoting music that was uncritical to marginalize the challenging music.","PeriodicalId":7615,"journal":{"name":"African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87053825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}