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The Role of the Organization of African Unity in Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution
The African continent has benefited immensely from Afrocentric nature of Nigerian foreign policy. This has invariably added to the reasons behind the successful transformation of Organization of African Unity (OAU) to African Union (AU). Having checked through the existing literature, it was observed that limited studies were found on Nigerian foreign policy’s contribution towards the transformation of the continental organization in Africa. The study’s findings have revealed the following attributes possessed by Nigerian foreign policy as one of the factors that aided the transformation of the continental organization in Africa. These attributes include: leadership role, economic-existing role, democratic-setting role, peace and security role, population factor, decolonization and anti-apartheid role. As part of the academic contribution of the study to the existing knowledge, the study indicated that Nigeria and its citizens tend to benefit more if its foreign policy tailors in such a way that would have a direct positive impact on Africa as a continent. Thus, the study concludes that Nigeria would have more influence in the continent particularly during decision making on Africa’s matter, if she allows her fellow African countries to benefit from her favourable foreign policy. This study adopts functionalism theory to describe the possibility of mutual benefits when countries come together through functional cooperation to address common issues. This work is a qualitative study that utilizes both primary and secondary sources of data. Eight respondents were interviewed from different Nigerian government parastatals and higher institutions. The interview data was analyzed thematically with the aid of Nvivo-10.
The study was carried out to document the experiences and voices of Congolese women refugees as they flee their homes to refugee camps in Western Uganda. The study focused mainly of the Congolese population that fled the town of Kamango in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo around July 2013 due to attacks by the Congo based Uganda rebel group Allied Democratic Force in conjunction with the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF-Nalu). The study takes a feminists’ stance that challenge the hierarchical ways of creating and distributing knowledge about women’s experiences of conflict, which often silence the voices of women.
In representing and making women’s perspectives and voices visible, the study documented the stories of women, mainly using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions involving 227 women and men. Same sex focus group discussions were held in two refugee centers, Bubukwanga transit centre in Bundibugyo District and Kyangwali refugee settlement in Hoima District western Uganda.
The study found that women experienced specific forms of multifaceted gender based violence during flight and resettlement. These experiences are important in peace building and post conflict reconstruction processes, as they actually should shape actions to rebuild war torn communities and enable effective reintegration and resettlement activities. The study makes a case for the inclusion of women in the ongoing peace process for DRC to achieve sustainable peace and development.
The present article focuses on the efficiency of international law application in relation to refugee prevention. The main attention is paid to the analysis of the potential of traditional legal means, techniques and methods of peaceful dispute settlement so as to make it possible to develop strategies for the prevention of the refugee phenomenon. The research reveals that conventional instruments of international law, in spite of their weaknesses, can be applied effectively, especially as the complement to political measures for refugee movement prevention and elimination.
Keywords: international law; refugee prevention.
Their absence was not really a surprise. The conference's subject, internal displacement, deals with persons forcibly displaced within their own countries, and ASEAN scrupulously avoids taking positions on "internal" conditions within member states. Its member governments, in fact, often take the lead at international conferences in arguing against action on issues within the domestic sphere of states on the grounds that this would constitute an infringement of state sovereignty.1 ASEAN appears to draw no linkage between its goals of promoting regional stability and economic and social cooperation and the interference with those goals caused by conflict-induced displacement in the region. Similarly, SAARC, founded to promote economic and social cooperation in the south Asian region, emphasizes noninterference in internal affairs. It considers steps to deal with natural disasters part of its mandate but does not try to prevent or manage the human-made disasters plaguing this same region.2 Within the SAARC region, conflict and displacement are having damaging effects on India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Within the ASEAN region, Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma) and the Philippines currently are experiencing problems of conflict and displacement, while Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam struggle with the after effects of conflict and displacement. Beyond these two sub-regions of Asia, displacement caused by conflict and human rights violation plagues Afghanistan, Iraq, and Tajikistan.
This article examines human rights abuse and “bad governance” as factors in forced migration. More specifically, it focuses on militarized violence as the most extreme cause of displacement internally and internationally. The article discusses the potentially precarious position of refugees and the historical pattern of displacement. It argues that the formulation of a set of policies to respond to the more than 16 million refugees and 26 million internally displaced people will inevitably need to confront some of the most pressing problems of contemporary politics, such as failed states, “ethnic” violence, systemic human rights abuse, arms trafficking, and resource mismanagement. Ultimately, the policy objective must be to improve bad governance before it degenerates into the levels of violence that create massive refugee flows.
The recently established African Union mandates the creation of an African Standby Force. This policy paper reviews the current engagement by other Western nations with the new African Union and its Peace and Security Council to address challenges to security in Africa through the African Standby Force, its accompanying early warning system, and civil society engagement. Building on Canada's long‐standing expertise in peacekeeping and peace building, the report presents foreign and defence policy options that can put Canada in a better position to help build the indigenous capacity of Africa to address security issues, as well as to carve out a distinctly Canadian approach to peace and security on the continent. This paper makes a total of 35 specific recommendations to the Government of Canada with specific reference to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the Department of National Defence and Canadian Forces on the roles Canada can play in supporting the AU's African Standby Force.
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