Saturday 16 January 2010

Drought, Famine, and Conflict: Case from the Horn of Africa

In the Horn of Africa especially, drought is part and parcel of daily life. It is so common that in many African societies, the drought season marks an important part of the annual calendar. In a recent BBC report, the UN expressed fears that ... "The world is in danger of allowing a drought in East Africa to become a humanitarian catastrophe".[1] At the same time, I came across news headline that said, "Kenya drought worsens conflict."[2] These headlines made me think more deeply about the two issues: if conflict and drought are the scourge of our modern world, it would therefore be appropriate to question their symbiotic relationship. If they are related, how do they influence each other? Is drought a cause of conflict or is conflict a cause of drought? Will drought always trigger conflict? Will conflict exacerbate drought? (Conflict cannot change weather patterns, but it can affect agricultural practices, land use, and other social factors that intensify the effects of diminished rainfall, particularly by causing famine).

This paper will show the relationship between drought, famine, and conflict. Drought is mainly a natural phenomenon that affects parts of the world. Some areas of the world with strong economies and viable political structures have successfully responded to the advent of drought in their countries by adjusting water storage, allocation, and usage patterns, while other parts of the world have dismally failed to do so. Africa is an example of an area that suffers from recurring drought and desertification. Short-lived droughts are seldom dangerous; but sequential drought years are. Though sequential droughts are common in the Horn of Africa, people there have not successfully responded to it; rather they have been devastated by it. Is this because almost all of the recent droughts and famines in the Horn of Africa region have occurred in situations of armed conflicts? A relationship seems likely.

In this paper, I argue that drought is a contributing factor to conflict and conflict exacerbates drought, making famine more likely. Therefore, drought, conflict, and famine are inextricably linked, with each acting as a catalyst to the other. The situation in the Horn of Africa will be a showcase to support the thesis.
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Pastoralism and conflict in the Horn of Africa

Violent conflicts involving pastoralists have become widespread and increasingly severe throughout much of the Horn of Africa. This report identifies and examines the factors contributing to such conflicts, and discusses issues and priorities for conflict prevention and peace-building. These are examined across the Horn of Africa in general, and in Laikipia – a district in northern Kenya – in particular. On the basis of this examination, a number of conclusions and recommendations are developed on ways in which the EU and its member states could contribute to efforts to prevent conflicts involving pastoralists in Kenya and more generally in the Horn of Africa.

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Horn of Africa: Conflict and Consequences

Yussuf Kalib, Horn of Africa Peace and Development Center, Dallas, Texas


The Horn of Africa- Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti-, located in the strategic Northeastern part of the continent, has a combined area of more than 1.9 million square kilometers; a coastline of over 4000 kilometers, the longest in Africa; and a combined population of approximately 93 million. One of the primary obstacles to development in the region has been perennial conflict within and between countries. The consequences of these perennial conflicts have been very costly for the region in both human and economic terms. Even though endowed with great natural resources, the region is one of the poorest in the world. Where does the region go from here? The region needs a complete paradigm shift; for the people of the region to have a realistic shot at a prosperous future, the countries of the region must commit themselves to a few basic tenets in their relationship: mutual respect for one another; renunciation of war as a tool to resolve disputes; and acceptance of arbitration decisions on disputed boundaries as demarcated and/or recognized by the United Nations. This would create a stable environment that would open up opportunities for economic cooperation- and ultimately economic integration- that the region desperately needs. A Horn of Africa at Peace with itself and its neighbors will be able to exploit its rich natural and complimentary resources for the benefit of its entire people and lift all boats from the abject poverty, disease and despair that currently characterize the region.
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Building Peace in the Space of Civil Society: The Case of Somali Women I

In this short presentation, I will provide discussion on women’s gained space in the civil society space, the origins of women’s organizations, their activism and their roles in peacebuilding in Somalia. I will also address some of the challenges facing them.
War affects everyone negatively but also transforms people positively, including women. In Somalia, the heroes have been Somali women who have been saving their war-ravaged nation. I would like to say that: “There are only two things going for Somalia: God and women. Both God and women have not let Somalia down. The war provided Somali women opportunity to re-examine their own identity as women (their status) and recognized their own agency and capacities.

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Unity-Based Peace Education: A New Approach To Peace Education by Tranforming World news by Havva Kök

Despite the numerous efforts to prevent, manage and/or resolve conflicts and violence, they only seem to be increasing in frequency and intensity in our life. It appears that the methods we are using are not sufficient to prevent conflicts and create a sustainable culture of peace in the inner, interpersonal, inter-group, and international life of humanity. It may be that the time has come to create global peace-based worldviews and to teach it at schools, in order to overcome this situation of fragmentation. Current approaches to peace education tend to focus rather on specific issues or themes and leave many broader questions about the nature of peace and transformative role of worldiews in peace education and vice versa. Such a transformation requires an integrative view of peace as a psychosocial, political, moral and spiritual condition, and depends not merely upon reducing conflict but on actively creating unity. Unity-Based Peace Education program offers this kind of approach and proposes the education for peace curriculum developed on integrative peace-based worldview. This paper aims to present the program called ‘Education for Peace’ (EFP) which has demonstrated transformative results in post-conflict societies of Bosnia
and Herzegovina (BiH).

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Monday 11 January 2010

Political Rights In Ethiopia

To generate ideas on how to support the strengthening of human rights protection
and good governance in Ethiopia a roundtable discussion was convened in
Ottawa on May 4, 2007, through the collaboration of the Solidarity Committee
for Ethiopian Political Prisoners-Canada (SOCEPP-Canada), Amnesty International
Canada, Partnership Africa Canada, SubSahara Centre, the Canadian Network of
NGOs in Ethiopia, and the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee
(CPCC). In the still supercharged political atmosphere stemming from the contested 2005 legislative elections in Ethiopia the by invitation- only gathering was designed to provide a space for in-depth and candid discussion, in order to encourage
constructive dialogue. The roundtable brought together more than 30 opinion leaders from the Ethiopian diaspora in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, a senior advisor to the Government of Ethiopia, representatives of Canadian nongovernmental
organizations with ties to Ethiopia, officials of both the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Canadian International Development Agency and
others.
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Sunday 10 January 2010

Ethiopia: A Transition Without Democratization

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ETH N IC CON FLICT IN TH E HORN OF AFRICA

This paper looks at the formation of
ethnicity and ethnic conflict in the Horn
of Africa with particular attention to the
conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Firstly, conflict in the Horn of Africa at
large is mapped out. Ethnic and political
groups within Ethiopia and Eritrea are
looked at respectively so as to analyse
the outbreak of war in the two countries.
The extent of external role players'
involvement in this conflict is examined.
Finally the essay also attempts to assess
the social and economic consequences of
the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea

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SUCCESSFUL HORN AFRICAN AMERICANS FOR PEACE (HAAP) 1ST ANNUAL CONFERECE IN MINNESOTA

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“Challenges and Opportunities in the Horn of Africa” A conference on the political and humanitarian situation in the Horn and the Ogaden Region

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SOMALIA: Conflict timeline from 2000

NAIROBI, 29 June 2009 (IRIN) - Somalia has had no functioning government since January 1991, when former President Siad Barre was ousted.

Since that time, fighting between Somali warlords, government forces and various alliances of Islamist insurgents has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Somalis and the displacement of hundreds of thousands.

One of the boldest attempts to turn a new page in Somalia and end a famine was the US Restore Hope intervention in 1992, which however, ended in failure in October 1993.

In the north, the former British protectorate of Somaliland declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in May 1991, and in 1998 the northeastern region of Puntland declared itself an autonomous state. Both regions have remained largely peaceful.
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