Conflict Trends - Volume 2012, Issue 4, January 2012

As 2012 comes to a close, I am reminded of a visit that I made to Syria in September 2010 with Mr Aziz Pahad, the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) Senior Political Advisor and South Africa's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1994 to 2009. In September 2010 Syria's violent conflict was confined to a few areas and involved clashes between street protesters and the police. The purpose of our visit was to engage in dialogue with all the parties to the conflict and to share with them South Africa's experience of peaceful negotiations that ended our own conflict almost two decades earlier.

Electoral violence is becoming a common feature in African politics. Analyses of the causes of this phenomenon often focus on the electoral process and institutions charged with overseeing it. Election-related violence, however, reflects deep-seated problems including dislocations in the socio-economic and political fabric. In other words, elections can easily become a mechanism through which public questions on issues of governance and distribution of national resources are violently contested. In identifying the basis of election related violence, this article aims to focus not only upon the rules and procedures for administering elections, but also on the broader structural architecture of governance. There are many conceptions of electoral democracy, each of which has distinct implications about what kind of legislation should be adopted. Moreover, there is a growing body of literature that deals specifically with the question of how the design of election systems can either prevent conflict or promote peaceful solutions to existing ones.

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This article therefore maintains that lasting solutions to election related violence should not only be sought in the technical deficiencies of the electoral process. Rather, broader structural problems of governance must also be addressed.

The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was a landmark treaty for Sudan. An exclusive two-party agreement, it paved the way for the independence of South Sudan on 9 July 2011. This generated optimism that the legal partition of the state would bring about a durable resolution to Sudan's longest rebellion.

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However, Sudan formally losing part of its territory and the accompanying natural resources raised the stakes. This converted its political row with South Sudan into an international confrontation. Although the negotiation process on the pending issues related to the final resolution of the conflict and the creation of two separate states has continued after South Sudan's independence, thus far it has brought few results. In April 2011, this politico-economic deadlock between the two parties culminated in the border military escalation in Heglig (Panthou in the local Dinka language).

The United Nations Security Council's (UNSC) response to the recent crises in Libya and Cote d'Ivoire needs to be seen in the context of its increasing willingness to authorise all necessary means for human protection in peace operations. This is so even though it has previously remained reluctant to authorise force against states. Responsibility to Protect has become a commonly accepted frame of reference for preventing and responding to mass atrocities. In these two cases, the problem was not that military force was used to protect civilians from mass atrocities. In both Libya and Cote d'Ivoire this had been authorised by the UNSC, but the use of force resulted in regime change despite the Council not specifically authorising it. This has reinvigorated the debate over the Responsibility to Protect. However, what has so far been largely missing from the debate is how to protect civilians from regimes; that is, the operationalisation of the Responsibility to Protect. Exploring this problem leads to a number of important questions that need answers in order to investigate 'whether there are ways of maintaining a clear distinction between Responsibility to Protect and regime change without sacrificing the protection of civilians'. How is protection defined as a military objective? What is the role of the use of force? How should we define military success? Is the cessation of attacks against civilians sufficient? Can we ensure protection without regime change?

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This article argues that a distinction between the Responsibility to Protect and regime change is, from a military standpoint, illogical when intervening on behalf of a civilian population against a regime that is committing mass atrocities. Rather, the best way to ensure the protection of civilians from mass atrocities committed by regimes is to remove that regime.

The outbreak and persistence of piracy off the Gulf of Guinea has for long been overshadowed by Somali piracy, which has seized the attention of the international community in recent years. Over the last three years, however, the dynamics of piracy in African waters has assumed a new direction. While the number of ships signalling attacks by Somali pirates has dropped, due to the intervention of foreign naval forces and use of vessel protection detachments, the incidence of piracy is rising in the Gulf of Guinea. Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has escalated from low-level armed robberies to more sophisticated violent hijackings and cargo thefts. As a result, piracy off the coast of the Gulf of Guinea is increasingly gaining the attention of stakeholders in the maritime domain - states, international and regional organisations, ship owners, crew members and insurance firms, among others.

Nowadays there is a general international recognition of the role private military and security companies (PMSCs) can play in a country's development. There is no doubt that the increase in the number of these companies has created debates about the privatisation of war, the monopoly of the legitimate use of force, and the new challenges they pose to humanitarian law. There is also a debate about whether their role can be understood as either beneficial or detrimental.

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The growth of PMCSs responds to an 'increasing disinclination on the part of great powers to intervene in civil wars', a glut of trained manpower and the new ideology of market, leading to a paradigm change. This involves thinking about security in terms of cost-effective privatisation and not as a fundamental function of the modern state.

Reconciliation and development are deeply interconnected in conflict-affected societies. The relationship between them, however, is far from self-evident. This article examines the nature of their interdependence and explores ways in which practitioners of reconciliation and development can integrate these two sets of activities. Examples of relevant concepts in reconciliation and development will be derived from the research I conducted in Rwanda in January 2012. This is supplemented by the practical experience I have gained over the years as a practitioner of reconciliation and development in Africa and elsewhere.

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In this article, development is defined as a progressive satisfaction of basic human needs, both material and non-material, with the emphasis on those most in need. Reconciliation refers to a sustained communal process that facilitates healing from trauma and closure to revenge. Conceptually, reconciliation is a subtype of conflict transformation. This is a term used to describe an umbrella category of practices that seek to understand conflict sources and contexts in a systematic, multi-angled manner. This understanding is used to redirect the way of relationship-building toward sustainable coexistence. While this article focuses primarily on reconciliation, it also argues that lessons learned from this inquiry apply to conflict transformation in general. This is because reconciliation and conflict transformation both share the core practice of rebuilding human relationships.

North-western Kenya has been a theatre of violent conflict pitting the Pokot, Samburu and Turkana communities against each other. It is a fierce and deadly competition. The causes are a combination of diminishing pasture and water resources, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, political incitement, disputes over land and ethnic boundaries, the absence of adequate state security and the commercialisation of cattle raiding. This has led to a state of helplessness in many pastoralist households. They have been violently deprived of their source of livelihoods (cattle), many have lost their lives and many more are living in destitution in trading centres such as Baragoi in Samburu, Chemolingot in Pokot and Kapedo in Turkana. The frontline participation of thousands of youth from these communities in violent conflict has been blamed on their lack of education and high unemployment. There is also a cultural requirement that young men participate in cattle raids against neighbouring communities to enhance their status in society. The raided cattle are sometimes used to pay bride wealth in marriage which moves the young man up the social status ladder.