While cooperation between international forces, the Somali army and allied militias have delivered victories against Al-Shabab this spring, the political infighting and corruption of the Transitional Federal Government prevents further successes.
A group of us gasped when one tiny mother of five, who looked no older than my 20-year old daughter, lamented, “When I think about my life here, I often feel I’d rather be back in the bush with the Lord’s Resistance Army, at least there I had a community". While we are making some progress in fitf
The Côte d’Ivoire now needs to enter a period of demilitarisation. This faces challenges in the long and the short term arising from the sort of resistance that developed under Bédié and Gbagbo. But there is hope that genuine republicanism might emerge from Ouattara’s violent victory
To tackle Cote d’Ivoire’s intractable problems after the demise of Gbagbo’s regime, security sector reform, reconciliation, resettlement and development must work in tandem
The human security outlook deteriorates in Côte d'Ivoire, and "free and fair" elections are shown again to be far from a sufficient condition for democratic transition
Mary Kaldor’s latest book is The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: Human Security and the New Rules of War and Peace co-authored with an American serving army officer, Shannon Beebe and published by Public Affairs. The book was primarily aimed at an American audience in the hope that the actual experi
If the west is to continue to assert that there should be African solutions to African problems - as is so often espoused - then it is the west that must change its security paradigm
As Uganda moves into an intense election period under a multi-party system, Western notions of pluralism appear irrelevant in a context where cultural diversity often results in exclusion, to the detriment of the public good
Much media coverage of conflict in the Ivory Coast relies on a familiar explanation of Africa's wars - that they stem from immutable tribal and sectarian differences. Despite religious and ethnic faultlines, conflict in the Ivory Coast is above all political, argues Patrick Meehan.
Jos is located in the so-called Middle Belt of Nigeria at the juncture of the predominantly Muslim North and Christian South. Both sides accuse the other of seeking to ‘rule’ Jos in order to dispense favours to their specific religious constituency.
The recent European Parliament resolution on Western Sahara did not cite Moroccan repression and the need to liberate Sahrawi political prisoners. Nor did it call upon MEPs to send a contingent to investigate. Just as well. The Moroccan authorities would have stopped them at the border – again.
