The last two decades have witnessed a
growing recognition of the importance of taking cultural and
ethnic diversity into consideration when designing and
implementing development programs. As societies around the
world have become more culturally diverse, and the role
culture plays in the formation of identity has become better
understood, governments are beginning to pay greater
attention to the management of cultural diversity and are

The consensus among scholars and
policymakers that "institutions matter" for
development has led inexorably to a conclusion that
"history matters," since institutions clearly form
and evolve over time. Unfortunately, however, the next
logical step has not yet been taken, which is to recognize
that historians (and not only economic historians) might
also have useful and distinctive insights to offer. This

Seven years out of brutal conflict,
Sierra Leone is now a peaceful and stable country. Yet, its
strides toward economic recovery and competitiveness have
been modest even in sectors such as tourism, which used to
be a major generator of foreign exchange revenues prior to
the conflict. This paper presents a cluster-based analysis
of the tourism sector in Sierra Leone. The analysis shows
that tourism in Sierra Leone draws entirely on basic factor

This report includes a situation update submitted to KHRG in February 2012, by a villager describing events occurring in Toungoo District during the period between November 2011 and January 2012. It discusses augmented troop rotations, resupply operations and the sending of bulldozers to construct a new vehicle road between the 20-mile point on the Toungoo – Kler La road and Kler La. It also contains reports of forced labour, specifically the use of villagers to porter military equipment and supplies, to serve as set tha, and the clearing of vegetation by vehicle roads.

This report contains the full transcript of an interview conducted during March 2011 in Bu Tho Township, Papun District, by a villager trained by KHRG to monitor human rights conditions. The villager interviewed Saw H---, a 34-year-old hillfield farmer and the head of N--- village. Saw H--- described an incident in which a 23-year-old villager stepped on and was killed by a landmine at the beginning of 2011, at the time when he, Saw H--- and three other villagers were returning to N--- after serving as unpaid porters for Border Guard soldiers based at Meh Bpa.

This report contains the full transcript of an interview conducted during August 2011 by a villager trained by KHRG to monitor human rights conditions. The villager interviewed Saw T---, a 74 year-old Buddhist village head who described the planting of what he estimated to be about 100 landmines by government and non-state armed groups in the vicinity of his village.

The development of international mining projects is one of the most visible consequences of globalisation. But developments in the mining industry are the cause of about 10.3 percent of all displacements in the world. This means that more than a million people per year may be resettled as a result of resource extraction in various parts of the globe. Countries displaying the greatest growth rate of this phenomenon include India, China, Ghana, and many other African counties.

The Tenke Fungurume Mining (TFM) company controls a 1,600 square kilometre mining concession in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Tenke Fungurume deposits make up one of the most important reserves of copper and cobalt in the world with abundant quantities of high assay ore.

This report looks at a consultation with a wide range of officials, members of institutions, groups and organisations, and other interested individuals living in the concession area about the impact of the TFM mine on their lives and livelihoods.

The objective of this research report was to establish whether, and to what extent, post-conflict efforts at national, regional and international levels are improving the situation of artisanal gold-mining communities in the provinces of Orientale, North and South Kivu, and Maniema in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The research proceeded from the assumption that legal and regulatory instruments and institutions created after the 2006 elections to regularise and support the DRC’s informal mining sector should now be starting to show positive effects.

The current approach to peacebuilding by the international community is to focus on the priorities thought to be important to recovery, but this occurs in a largely non-integrated way. With these different endeavors largely isolated from each other in planning, analysis, implementation, and measures for success, little is known about how they interact and whether or not the aggregate effect contributes to, or detracts from durable peace. This is especially important for priorities which in some way interact with each other on the ground among a recipient population.

ResourceContracts.org is a repository of publicly available oil, gas, and mining contracts in machine-readable, searchable, open data format. ResourceContracts.org promotes greater transparency of investments in the extractive industries, and facilitates a better understanding of the contracts that govern them. This site provides summaries of contracts and their terms to facilitate understanding of important provisions in the documents.