Conflict Resolution Wisdom From Africa

This publication is the product of the 25th Annual Africa and Diaspora Conference in 2016, organized by the Center for African Peace and Conflict Resolution at California State University, Sacramento, on the theme of “Peace and Conflict Resolution in Africa 25 Years Later: Lessons, Best Practices and Opportunities”. It brings together reflections on both historical and contemporary or recurring conflicts in Africa, especially on issues of ethno-religious conflicts, corruption, land, and leadership. The chapters include case studies and some theoretical perspectives on the persistent search for the right size and scope of visioning and programming on peace and conflict resolution in Africa. Understandably, this collection of ideas, thoughts and proposals will resonate with the field of Peace and Conflict Studies. Arguably, Africa is “rising” in the 21st century, with declining violent conflicts and an increase in stable democracies and economies. However, there are still the significant challenges of extremism, climate change, poor governance, ineffective leadership, widening wealth gaps, and weak institutions of moderation. The essays collected here also document areas of progress in legitimizing democracy and conceptualizing social justice, and suggest the need for building the next generation of peace leaders in Africa.

While dramatic changes are taking place on the international scene and among the major powers, Africa continues to suffer from a multitude of violent conflicts. The toll of these conflicts is monumental in terms of war damage to productivity, scarce resources diverted to armaments and military organizations, and the resulting insecurity, displacement, and destruction. At the same time, Africans, in response to internal demands as well as to international changes, have begun to focus their attention and energies on these problems and are trying innovative ways to resolve differences by nonviolent means. The outcomes of these attempts have urgent and complex implications for the future of the continent with respect to human rights, principles of democracy, and economic development. In this book, African, European, and U.S. experts examine these important issues and the prospects for conflict management and resolution in Africa. They review the scholarship in resolution in light of international changes now taking place. Addressing the undying, internal causes of conflict, they question whether global events will promote peace or threaten to unleash even more conflict. The authors focus their analysis on the issues involved in African conflicts and examine the areas in need of the most dramatic changes. They offer specific recommendations for dealing with current problems, but caution that unless policymakers confront the security situation in Africa, further destruction to national unity and political and economic stability is imminent. Case studies and themes for further, long-term research are recommended.

This book builds on the overarching theme of conflict management to reflect on negotiations, mediation, and conflict resolution in Africa.

"These two volumes clearly demonstrate the efforts by a wide range of African scholars to explain the roots, routes, regimes and resolution of African conflicts and how to re-build post-conflict societies. They offer sober and serious analyses, eschewing the sensationalism of the western media and the sophistry of some of the scholars in the global North for whom African conflicts are at worst a distraction and at best a confirmation of their pet racist and petty universalist theories." --From the introduction by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza This book offers analyses of a range of African conflicts and demonstrates that peace is too important to be left to outsiders.

What causes local conflict in Africa and the rest of the Third World? What role, if any, can the U.S. play in helping to resolve these conflicts, and when is the ripe moment for a response by an external power? This new study, written by the internationally renowned Africanist I. William Zartman and undertaken as part of the Africa Project of the Council on Foreign Relations, examines the causes and nature of African conflict and addresses the issue of how foreign powers can productively contribute to the management and resolution of such conflicts without resorting to the use of military force. The book focuses on four case studies of local conflict and external response-in the Western Sahara, the Horn of Africa, the Shaba province in Zaire, and Namibia-to assess various approaches to conflict management, and offers guidelines for identifying the critical moment for effective external response. Zartman also evaluates U.S. policy toward Third World conflict and spells out a policy toward Africa and the Third World in general that is based on preemptive treatment rather than military intervention.

Conflicts in Africa have a great deal in common, and striking parallels can be drawn between them at all levels. Dynamics affecting the most complex war-time conflicts, civil unrest and other macro disputes are in play even in the smallest community conflicts. The converse is also true: lessons learned through community mediation, for example in South Africa, are applicable to the most complex and largest conflicts to be found on the continent. Together, the eleven chapters in this publication, in addition to the prologue and epilogue, suggest that a comprehensive assessment of efforts and investments in conflict resolution and peace studies in Africa since the mid-1990s is due in order to identify lessons and challenges, as well as best practices. Just as conflict dynamics are comparable between African conflicts, whether large or small, local or international, so are alternative dispute resolution processes. Effective approaches to resolving large-scale conflicts and civil wars are effective at the community level, and ineffectual techniques at the community level are just as likely to be counter-productive in mediating international disputes. While there may be some differences in mediating macro- and micro-conflicts (such as the time required, the need for negotiation teams, and the complexities of agenda development or pre-negotiations), as far as the mediation process is concerned, the differences are more like variations on a theme than real substantive dissimilarities. This volume provides case studies of programs and policies, and legislations on alternative dispute resolution and peace building, and examines and proposes some new, promising ideas for conflict prevention, as well as maintenance of peace, justice and security in Africa.

The authors assert that sovereignty can no longer be seen as a protection against interference, but as a charge of responsibility where the state is accountable to both domestic and external constituencies. In internal conflicts in Africa, sovereign states have often failed to take responsibility for their own citizens' welfare and for the humanitarian consequences of conflict, leaving the victims with no assistance. This book shows how that responsibility can be exercised by states over their own population, and by other states in assistance to their fellow sovereigns. Sovereignty as Responsibility presents a framework that should guide both national governments and the international community in discharging their respective responsibilities. Broad principles are developed by examining identity as a potential source of conflict, governance as a matter of managing conflict, and economics as a policy field for deterring conflict. Considering conflict management, political stability, economic development, and social welfare as functions of governance, the authors develop strategies, guidelines, and roles for its responsible exercise. Some African governments, such as South Africa in the 1990s and Ghana since 1980, have demonstrated impressive gains against these standards, while others, such as Rwanda, Somalia, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sudan, have failed. Opportunities for making sovereignty more responsible and improving the management of conflicts are examined at the regional and international levels. The lessons from the mixed successes of regional conflict management actions, such as the West African intervention in Liberia, the East African mediation in Sudan, and international efforts to urge talks to end the conflict in Angola, indicate friends and neighbors outside the state in conflict have important roles to play in increasing sovereign responsibility. Approaching conflict management from the perspective of the responsibilities of sovereignt