Our new feature film from Roy Maconachie and Simon Wharf explores the pathway of a diamond from mine to market, and asks the question, who really benefits?
The impacts of large-scale agricultural investments on rural communities’ land ownership, food security, productivity, income, and access to education and health differ within and between communities depending on business and government influence. Recent examples of large-scale investment models are dependent on the legal landscape in the investor’s country of origin, the investor-community linkages, and the nature of partnership with governments.
This paper was written as part of the research initiative entitled Engaging the Business Community as a New Peacebuilding Actor. It is a joint project of the Africa Centre for Dispute Settlement (ACDS), CDA Collaborative Learning Projects (CDA), and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
En Honduras, con la expedición del Decreto Ejecutivo PCM-053-2013, empezó un trabajo institucional tendiente a reconocer que en el país, aún después del conflicto armado de 1907 y de 1969, persisten fenómenos de desplazamiento forzado, violencia y dinámicas de despojo de tierras, territorios y viviendas.
Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives is a compelling documentary exploring the under-reported environmental impacts of war and preparations for war. The film confronts the immensely broad ecological and human ramifications of everything from technological development and natural resource exhaustion to weapons testing and modern warfare itself.
In the heart of central Mozambique, Gorongosa park was destroyed in the crossfire of the country's civil war. Now women are leading the way in its restoration, helping to heal the scars left by the conflict and inspiring young girls from the surrounding communities, through an education programme that offers them the promise of a brighter future
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is a non-legally binding agreement designed to reduce existing levels of risk and prevent emerging risks. While references to conflict were deleted from the final text, Sendai addresses issues parallel to those that would need to be addressed in a prevention and sustaining peace agenda.
The Framework, if properly implemented, would tackle three sets of factors that increase both disaster and conflict risks:
We, leaders of groups of women affected by the expansion of industrial monoculture plantations, particularly oil palm plantations, coming from all regions in Sierra Leone and different countries from West and Central Africa;
We, national and international organizations involved in the struggle for the rights of women and local communities in Africa, Latin America and Asia, signatories of this declaration, met from 14 to 15 August 2017 in Port Loko, Sierra Leone.
This contribution suggests how to identify and deal with ex-combatants in (un)peaceful post-war environments from a methodological perspective. While it is obvious that large-N studies or standardized interviews fall too short to depict post-war dynamics and related conflict risks, ethnographic methods face numerous challenges, too. First, the identification of and access to former combatants may prove to be difficult. Often being stigmatized or perceived as outlaws they may not wish to get in touch with ‘outsiders’, like academics.
There is wide engagement with large-scale land deals in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly from the perspectives of development and international political economy. Recently, scholars have increasingly pointed to a gendered lacuna in this literature. Engagement with gender tends to focus on potential differential impacts for men and women, and it also flags the need for more detailed empirical research of specific land deals.
The West African country of Côte d’Ivoire is divided between two large agro-ecological zones: the northern savannah zone, where food crops, cotton and livestock predominate; and the fertile forest zone of the south, where most of the country’s cash crops, including cocoa and coffee, are produced. Nearly 64% of land in Côte d’Ivoire is used for agricultural purposes, and 68% of the labor force works in agriculture.
Through a review of recent writings in political ecology and agrarian studies, this paper appraises the potential for emerging forms of ‘green economy’ initiatives to catalyze new forms of internal displacement in West Africa, with specific emphasis on the postwar contexts of Liberia and Sierra Leone.