Posts by: Alex DeWaal
Creating a peaceful political order in South Sudan often seems like trying to cage a torrent: however creative the formula, however forceful its application, the water always escapes.
Three recent publications from the research team at the Conflict Research Programme at the London School of Economics and the World Peace Foundation deepen our analysis and […]
Continue Reading →Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok is in Washington DC seeking U.S. help in assisting the civilian-led government deal with the deepening economic crisis that threatens to unravel that country’s democratic revolution. Hamdok was appointed in August in the hope that U.S. will take long overdue steps to lift comprehensive sanctions and thereby set a path […]
Continue Reading →The single most important reason for the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed was his initiative last year to make peace with Eritrea. This is an occasion to reflect on the question, does Africa need more inter-state peacemaking? The answer is, yes it should. The Nobel award should alert policymakers to […]
Continue Reading →It’s rare in political science to be able to say, authoritatively, that an extensive sub-field of study has been operating under a false assumption, and that there’s an adjacent sub-field that has been almost entirely neglected. But this is the case with civil war and transnational/inter-state war in Africa. A Google Scholar search for the […]
Continue Reading →Starvation isn’t at the core of these malign political developments. But it’s clear that xenophobia, corruption and dishonesty are the enemies of humanitarian action and advocacy in the short term, and in the longer term they will impede sustained action to mitigate climate crisis and its traumas. The people who are deprived of what is indispensable for sustaining life, whether in Yemen or South Sudan, in refugee camps in Bangladesh or in detention facilities on the U.S.-Mexico border, are not only the victims of starvation crimes in need of our aid and advocacy, but are the wind chimes that warn of approaching storms.
Continue Reading →Mass starvation is a white-collar war crime. When there’s a man-made famine (the gendered language is deliberate–we have yet to witness a women-made one), there can be no excuse that the deprivation was perpetrated in the heat of the moment, or by rogue elements acting beyond orders. This is the case in Yemen today: four […]
Continue Reading →Follow Us!
