Below is an excerpt from Alex de Waal’s essay, “Violence and peacemaking in the political marketplace” in Legitimacy and Peace Processes: from Coercion to Consent (Accord 25); pgs. 17 – 21. Full text available online.
The implication is the starting point for a legitimate process, leading to a legitimate agreement, is enabling the affected [...]
While those killed in war are described as ‘victims,’ those who experienced torture, sexual violence, kidnapping, or witnessed atrocities without having experienced physical violence directly are often described as ‘survivors.’ Language matters not only because it seeks to represent acts of violence, but also because it has the capacity to accord agency to – or diminish the agency of – those affected by the violence. Yet, ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ are often insufficient terms for capturing the varied and layered experiences of violence.
It is no accident that a museum would provide the context for an unexpected and powerful human rights intervention. And, although Wiesel’s provocation cannot be understood absent the particular circumstances of Holocaust memorialization and contemporary genocide, the inherent potential of museums to spark new forms of human rights activism is not limited to this framework. In the years since 1993, museums are increasingly testing the waters of engagement on human rights issues.
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Talk presented at a workshop ‘Youth, Conflict and Governance in Africa’, Yale University, USA, March 2014
South Africa celebrates its twentieth year of democracy this year. It has been an eventful twenty years, with much debate and contestation around the political values and practices in a new and noisy democracy. The institutions and procedures [...]
Continue Reading →The unique structure of the SPLA means that the same kleptocratic principle applies to local leaders and army commanders in rural areas. This generates the “rent-seeking rebellion” cycle:
The level of fatalities among soldiers and civilians is completely disproportionate to the claims of the rebel leader or mutineer.
This in turn [...]
Continue Reading →In 1968, the Polish political scientist Stanislav Andreski wrote, “The essence of kleptocracy is that the functioning of the organs of authority is determined by the mechanisms of supply and demand rather than the laws and regulations.”
Corruption in an institutionalized system of governance is the abuse of public office for private gain. In a [...]
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