Marielle Debos

• Professor (Associate) at University Paris Nanterre

Quels sont les effets des interventions armées menées au nom de la « guerre contre le terrorisme » ? Fondé sur des études de cas localisées, en Afghanistan, au Mali et au Tchad, l’article invite à repenser les présupposés de l’interventionnisme et montre pourquoi la « guerre contre le terrorisme » ne peut être « gagnée » au sens classique du terme...

In a large number of countries in Africa, biometric identification technologies have become a key element of voter registration procedures. Based on an in-depth study of biometric voter registration in Chad, a country marked by a long history of political violence, the article explains how the technology has been construed as a “solution” to addres...

What to make of military interventions in academia? Segments of the academic field are partly funded by the Ministry of Defence and the arms industries. This trend is currently reaching a new high in France, while regular funding is declining. This article discusses the impact of the militarization of research funding on scholarship. The general ar...

The Prefects’ War Studies of state administration have occupied a prominent place in social sciences. However, current literature offers little understanding of its functioning in states governed by violence. The article seeks to provide an analysis of the formation and practices of local administration in Chad. How does the local state govern the...

Répressions violentes, engagements guerriers, mutineries, coups d’État : les « corps habillés » apparaissent régulièrement avec fracas dans l’actualité africaine. Avec la multiplication des programmes de « réforme du système de la sécurité » (RSS), les professionnels de l’ordre font désormais l’objet d’une grande attention sur la scène internationa...

This article explores men in arms’ conceptions of armed violence in a country which has been prone to a violent cycle of rebellion and repression. Based on ethnographic research in Chad, it analyses combatants’ life trajectories in an unstable political environment and a militarised economy. It moves beyond rebellion towards an analysis of the most...

The limits of accumulation by violent means. Pathways of ex-combatants in Chad While war may be a lucrative activity and while opportunities to live from the gun are numerous in Chad, only a small group of men in arms who have access to the state achieve astonishing upward social mobility. An analysis of ex-combatants’ pathways of (non-)accumulatio...

This article examines a neglected pattern of the regional crisis in Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic: the cross-border activities of combatants with fluid loyalties. The trajectories of Chadian ‘ex-liberators’ in CAR, which have been little documented, are used to illustrate the regional movements of armed men. The article explains ho...

Studying the process of the institutional engineering of the African Court on Human and peoples’ rights reveals the central role played by NGOs: they gave the initial impulse, orchestrated the mobilisation, supervised the negotiations and militated for the adoption of the Protocol. However, this new mode of producing law must be analysed with a cri...

NGOs and the manufacture of “international public opinion” To study the making of international public opinion it helps to distinguish between two phenomena : the new empirical growth of transnational movements, on the one hand, and militant discourse which, by invoking “international public opinion”, endows it with a social existence and global pl...