Conflict Trends - latest Issue

The year 2018 is significant on the global calendar, as we celebrate the birth of Nelson Mandela exactly 100 years ago. Mandela – the lawyer, the political activist, the prisoner, the peacemaker and finally the president – started an armed resistance movement, Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”) to fight against apartheid. Following his release from prison and 27-years of a life sentence served, he did what many thought would be impossible: he led his political movement, the African National Congress, into negotiations with the apartheid regime’s ruling party.

According to the 2017 Global Peace Index, The Gambia has fallen 18 places since 2016 and is among the top five countries to have experienced the largest deterioration of an ongoing conflict situation. In addition, The Gambia is facing a range of socio-economic challenges including increasing poverty, high unemployment, a growing rural-urban divide and a decreasing literacy rate.

Across Africa, major advances in democracy have been affected by restrictions on civic space and on the activities of civil society organisations (CSOs), the media and individual activists. Civic space is the foundation for civil society to make its contribution to society, provoking discussion and debate, advocating for a more inclusive society, providing services, building community spirit and challenging those in authority on the decisions they make.

This article analyses the findings from field research, conducted in north-eastern Nigeria in late 2017, which explored the repatriation and reconciliation needs of the communities displaced by Boko Haram’s armed insurgency and the military operations that followed. Major findings include the displaced communities’ diverse contested outlooks on forgiveness, coexistence, physical separation and extermination, with respect to how they would like to interact with rehabilitated former Boko Haram foot soldiers wishing to return home. A secondary focus of this article is to explore how to develop practical and sustainable mechanisms of government–civil society collaboration capable of building the trust and security necessary for repatriation and reconciliation. To establish an informed basis for analysing these two issues, a brief introduction to the regional context is in order.

The 14 December 2016 announcement of a National Dialogue Initiative in South Sudan by the country’s leader, President Salva Kiir Mayardit, although met with divergent reactions locally, regionally and internationally, presented a rare and convenient opportunity for South Sudanese to engage, build peace and reconcile. This came against a background of cross-country intercommunal violence, political power struggles, national governance challenges, economic instability, massive internal displacement of citizens, disunity and disintegration, which had been aggravated by the near-collapse of the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS) in July 2016, following the resumption of fighting between forces loyal to Kiir against those aligned to the thenvice president and leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army in Opposition (SPLM/A-IO), Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon.

The thrust of this comparative analysis is to examine the extent to which reconstruction processes in Sri Lanka and Rwanda lead to social reconciliation, and the strengths and weaknesses of the divergent mechanisms of reconciliation adopted in the two countries. The process and outcomes of reconciliation and the effectiveness of different mechanisms are subject to debate and discussion. This article argues that Rwanda and Sri Lanka have succeeded in certain respects but failed in others, and hence can learn lessons from each other. How do countries coming out of wars achieve reconciliation among the polarised ethnic groups? Do we have sufficient knowledge on efficient and effective mechanisms of fostering reconciliation and stabilising peace? I try to respond to these key questions through a larger study on peace education in Rwanda in which I was one of the researchers, and several research endeavours in Sri Lanka in the last five years.

To avoid the recurrence of patterns of marginalisation, oppression and neglected grievances that drive groups to conflict in the first place, an inclusive approach to conflict resolution is often considered key. The three United Nations (UN) peace and security reviews – conducted in 2014–2015 on peace operations, peacebuilding and the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 – highlighted an inadequate recognition among member states and within the UN system of the potential of fully integrating a gender perspective into peace and security processes.

In most instances, post-conflict disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes do not sufficiently address the hardships of child soldiers. To achieve successful reintegration, former child soldiers require more than the usual DDR programme – they are in desperate need of community-based and communitygoverned initiatives. As such, it may be essential to redefine the third step of DDR as an “integration” rather than “reintegration”.