Africa

22 Items

Ugandan police and other security forces chase people off the streets to avoid unrest after all public transport was banned for two weeks to halt the spread of the new coronavirus.

AP Photo/Ronald Kabuubi

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Opportunistic Repression: Civilian Targeting by the State in Response to COVID-19

    Authors:
  • Donald Grasse
  • Melissa Pavlik
  • Hilary Matfess
  • Travis B. Curtice
| Fall 2021

Opportunistic repression arises when states use crises to suppress the political opposition. An examination of the relationship between COVID-19 shutdown policies and state violence against civilians in Africa, including and a subnational case study of Uganda, tests this theory.

Analysis & Opinions - Hate Speech International

IS Rival Al-Shabab Seeks to Regain Footing in East Africa

| November 25, 2016

"Local pro-IS figures are willing, it seems, to move away from the actual IS organization's general practices, in particular related to the violence of control, in order to win over new supporters.  In Kenya, for example, pro-IS voices are reportedly attempt to lure support with promises of a decrease in violence (such as the implementation of the hudud or 'set' punishments for certain crimes such as murder and theft in Islamic criminal law) and lower taxes than with Al-Shabab."

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Affairs

Don't Bank On It

| July/August 2014

"Mobile-based financial tools are thus highly vulnerable to abuse by money launderers and terrorist financiers. But if governments and financial institutions find ways of addressing these security issues, the mobile-finance revolution could provide benefits far beyond helping the poor."

The women in this image are Minova, DRC, rape survivors who are veiled so they cannot be seen or recognized in court during their testimony.

Globalpost image

Journal Article - Journal of Peace Research

Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict: Introducing the SVAC Dataset, 1989–2009

| May 2014

Which armed groups have perpetrated sexual violence in recent conflicts? This article presents patterns from the new Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (SVAC) dataset. The dataset, coded from the three most widely used sources in the quantitative human rights literature, covers 129 active conflicts, and the 625 armed actors involved in these conflicts, during the period 1989–2009.

Analysis & Opinions - Taipei Times

Incompatibility Hinders BRICS Bloc

| April 8, 2013

"...[W]hile the BRICS may be helpful in coordinating certain diplomatic tactics, the term lumps together highly disparate countries. Not only is South Africa miniscule compared with the others, but China's economy is larger than those of all of the other members combined. Likewise, India, Brazil and South Africa are democracies, and occasionally meet in an alternative forum that they call IBSA (the India, Brazil, South Africa Dialogue Forum)."

A young Timorese girl walks through a refugee camp crowded with people still too afraid to go home due to the ongoing communal violence

Ed Wray - AP Images

Report - United States Institute of Peace

Wartime Sexual Violence: Misconceptions, Implications, and Ways Forward

| February 2013

Wartime rape is neither ubiquitous nor inevitable. The level of sexual violence differs significantly across countries, conflicts, and particularly armed groups. Some armed groups can and do prohibit sexual violence. Such variation suggests that policy interventions should also be focused on armed groups, and that commanders in effective control of their troops are legally liable for patterns of sexual violence they fail or refuse to prevent.

Somali port workers load food aid onto trucks from a warehouse in Mogadishu's port, Dec. 7, 1992.  Disagreements between warring warlords had kept the port closed for more than a month.

AP Photo

Journal Article - International Journal

Agenda for Peace or Budget for War? Evaluating the Economic Impact of International Intervention in Somalia

| Spring 2012

This article shows how international humanitarian aid, particularly food aid, has played an instrumental role in perpetuating chronic civil war and state collapse in Somalia from 1992–2012. During the 1992 famine, food aid created lucrative opportunities for criminal elements of the Somali business community, who partnered with local warlords to create an enduring system of corruption and aid dependence. International aid financed this elite pact between business and warlords, which subsequently undermined domestic processes of order-making and reduced the bargaining power of local communities in the peace-building process.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

The Business of Islamism: A Rational Look at Political Islam in Somalia

| Spring 2012

"The rise of political Islam in failed states is one of the most pressing security concerns in the world today. Given the increasingly tense interaction between the United States and Islamic countries, such as Pakistan and Iran, the potential for new Islamic regimes emerging out of failed states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East could add a notable degree of uncertainty to future international relations," writes Aisha Ahmad, a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program/Program on Religion in International Affairs.