Funmi Olonisakin

• King's College London

Successive socio-economic shocks in the past three years have undermined Africa’s development gains, impeding the economic convergence of Africa and the developed world. While these shocks originated externally, internal factors within Africa are reinforcing their impact. One such factor is conflict and instability. Nearly half of the African state...

Background Despite theoretical support for including mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) with peacebuilding, few programmes in conflict-affected regions fully integrate these approaches. Aims To describe and assess preliminary outcomes of the Counselling on Wheels programme delivered by the NEEM Foundation in the Borno State of North-Ea...

This paper analyses the links between socioeconomic concerns and one of the most significant conflicts in the world, the Boko Haram-led insurgency in Northeastern Nigeria. In doing so it centers group dynamics for analysis of how women and youth constituencies intersect with vulnerability to violent extremism. It offers sophisticated quantitative a...

This paper introduces the Special Issue that grew out of a research project at the African Leadership Centre, which was supported by the Canadian International Centre for Development Research (IDRC). Like the underpinning research, the papers in this volume engage with two aspects of the state-building and peace-building debate and foreground the t...

This paper does not directly engage the state-formation, political settlement and state-building debates in Africa but it foregrounds the notion of conversation as the lens through which to examine Rwanda’s state-building history. In particular, it explores an overlooked perspective from Rwanda’s state-building trajectory by focusing on a particula...

This paper systematically maps the field of scholarly works on the theme of youth and violent conflict in Africa. It reviews the evidentiary base of the nexus between youth and violent conflicts in Africa by interrogating the conceptual, methodological, and empirical foundations of the different explanations adduced for why and how youth participat...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the need for states to strike a delicate balance between implementing measures to curb the spread of coronavirus, and respecting the rights and dignity of the populace. Human rights organisations warned that COVID-19 mitigation measures, such as the use of digital surveillance to trace and track population movement...

This article offers reflections on the meaning of peace and peace-building in Africa and proposes a reframing of the state-building problematic. It argues for a shift in analytical lens by providing alternative ways of looking at state-building in order to explore a different approach to peace-building. Thus, the paper re-centres the notion of conv...

This article sets the theme for this issue. Weberian understanding of statehood has been valid and dominant for 100 years. However, it no longer reflects the complex dynamics of the superstructure resting on the social contract. One must acknowledge the widening frame of social and political influence and take it into account to make true sense of...

This article sets the theme for this issue. Weberian understanding of statehood has been valid and dominant for 100 years. However, it no longer reflects the complex dynamics of the superstructure resting on the social contract. One must acknowledge the widening frame of social and political influence and take it into account to make true sense of...

Dieser Sammelband dokumentiert die Beiträge, die auf der Jahrestagung 2017 des Arbeitskreises Militär und Sozialwissenschaften (AMS) vorgestellt und im Anschluss an diese Jahrestagung für diesen Sammelbandes überarbeitet, aktualisiert und erweitert wurden. Der sozialwissenschaftliche Band legt den Fokus sowohl auf die Innere Führung als auch auf Gl...

Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror Helen C. Epstein. New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2017. £10.99/$14.99. 262 pp. Congo’s Violent Peace: Conflict and Struggle Since the Great African War Kris Berwouts. London: Zed Books, 2017. £16.99/$24.95. 193 pp. The Horn of Africa: State Formation and Decay Christopher Clapham. London:...

This article explores the convergence between three pillars of influence – feminist security studies, civil society activism and policy decision-making – and its role in the adoption and implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325. It argues that these three pillars, individually and collectively, have made important c...

Concern about terrorism in, and from, West Africa has prompted both military responses and criticisms of these. Criticism has focused on ‘hegemonic’ international attention to the region, the inappropriateness of a military and a misplaced focus on religion, and specifically Islam, where a range of ethnic, social, economic and historical problems a...

By 2000, ‘radicalisation’ had become a major global issue. Although ‘9/11’ was still a year away, the American Embassies in East Africa had been bombed in 1998 and violent conflicts simmered in many parts of the world. At just about the same time, bitter civil wars, resource-centred conflicts and intra-ethnic strife raged in West Africa. Against th...

THIS CHAPTER EXAMINES THE CREATION AND OPERATIANALIZATION of the United Nations (UN) Peacebuilding Commission (PBC). We argue that while this institutional mechanism offers an improvement to the global approach to peacebuilding, its impact on and relevance to African security realities are marginal. The chapter begins with a discussion of the origi...

This article argues that the West African subregion has radically shifted its approach to security from a state-centred framework to one that now encompasses human security concerns. Civil society is now an active part of the regional security decision-making processes. While it has been difficult to transform local-level civil society engagement i...

The UK's work in reforming security institutions in Sierra Leone is widely held as representing an example of successful SSR. Basic capacity and public trust has been restored in politicized and debilitated police and military institutions. It provided much needed confidence to people who no longer had faith in their own security institutions, and...

While other regions of Africa have had their share of crises, the challenge of meeting numerous security threats has been particularly arduous in West Africa. Nevertheless, there are unmistakable signs that, through its collective regional integration instrument, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the sub-region is beginning to...

This article charts the course of regional crisis in West Africa since 1999 and assesses the extent to which the United Nations (UN) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) succeeded in preventing an escalation of crisis in that sub-region. It argues that although windows of opportunity existed for preventing the escalation of co...

Regional actors, including regional and subregional organizations, have certain inherent advantages, which make them better suited to dealing with conflict in their neighborhoods. The impact of conflict in a country is felt first by its neighbors in various ways including, for example, the influx of refugees and other cross-border activities that h...

This chapter begins from the premise that people and states must be secure from the fear of violence at the local, national, regional, and international levels if an enabling environment for sustainable political and economic development is to be created. This means both that states must be adequately protected against external aggression and inter...

In recent years, African leaders have aggressively sought to strengthen their regional security structures while simultaneously attempting to democratise. Although they recognise that African regional organisations will need to assume a greater role in tackling Africa's security problems, the challenges posed by on‐going democratisation efforts hav...

To the residents of the target community, humanitarian intervention connotes an act of benevolence, which will ease their suffering and ensure the protection of human rights. However, such interventions and the eventual conduct of troops, no matter how well meaning, rarely produce this outcome. Liberia and Somalia are just two examples. This articl...

The end of the Cold War altered the perspective of conflict resolution globally. One such alteration is the transformed nature of the tasks performed by the military in operations designed to control violent conflicts. Some of the most significant changes have occurred in Africa, where peacekeeping has escalated beyond traditionally accepted princi...

The burden placed on the UN in the aftermath of the Cold War by the numerous intrastate conflicts around the globe has increased the demand for co‐operation with regional organizations. The Liberian civil war presented an opportunity for the UN to work together with a regional peacekeeping force in a joint operation, under the provisions of one agr...