Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- 1 Building Peace in the Era of Three Waves
- 2 The Problem of Peace: Understanding the ‘Liberal Peace’
- 3 Pre-emptive Self-defence New Legal Principle or Political Action?
- 4 Beyond Criminal Justice: Promoting the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Societies
- 5 Peace by Pact: Data on the Implementation of Peace Agreements
- 6 Refugee Repatriation as a Necessary Condition for Peace
- 7 Catapulting Conflicts or Propelling Peace: Diasporas and Civil Wars
- 8 UN Peace Operations as Norm Entrepreneurs: The Challenge of Achieving Communicative Action on Human Rights
- 9 To Practice What They Preach: International Transitional Administrations and the Paradox of Norm Promotion
- 10 Re-examining the Roots of War in West Africa in a Globalizing World
- 11 The African Union (AU) and Its Commitment to Non-Indifference: Can the AU be an Actor for the Promotion of Human Security?
- 12 Hamas Between Sharia Rule and Demo-Islam
- 13 Environmental Scarcity and Intrastate Conflicts: The Case of Nepal
- 14 Narcotics: The New Security Threat for China
- References
- Bibliography
10 - Re-examining the Roots of War in West Africa in a Globalizing World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- 1 Building Peace in the Era of Three Waves
- 2 The Problem of Peace: Understanding the ‘Liberal Peace’
- 3 Pre-emptive Self-defence New Legal Principle or Political Action?
- 4 Beyond Criminal Justice: Promoting the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Societies
- 5 Peace by Pact: Data on the Implementation of Peace Agreements
- 6 Refugee Repatriation as a Necessary Condition for Peace
- 7 Catapulting Conflicts or Propelling Peace: Diasporas and Civil Wars
- 8 UN Peace Operations as Norm Entrepreneurs: The Challenge of Achieving Communicative Action on Human Rights
- 9 To Practice What They Preach: International Transitional Administrations and the Paradox of Norm Promotion
- 10 Re-examining the Roots of War in West Africa in a Globalizing World
- 11 The African Union (AU) and Its Commitment to Non-Indifference: Can the AU be an Actor for the Promotion of Human Security?
- 12 Hamas Between Sharia Rule and Demo-Islam
- 13 Environmental Scarcity and Intrastate Conflicts: The Case of Nepal
- 14 Narcotics: The New Security Threat for China
- References
- Bibliography
Summary
Introduction
According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme (2005) about one-third of all armed conflicts in the post-cold war world era have taken place in African countries (Cited in Harbom and Forsberg, 2005). On a global ratio, Africa in 2004, accounted for 10 out of 30 armed conflicts. Most of these conflicts have been intrastate in nature, but in several cases, as in West Africa and the Great Lakes region, they ‘crossed border’ and mutated into crossborder or the so-called ‘networked’ wars. A lot of these wars have their roots in historically constructed social contradictions and inequities that have alienated large sections of the citizenry, the foreclosure of peaceful change by authoritarianism and repression, and an altered global context following the end of the cold war. Increased transborder flows of people, goods and arms, and decades of misrule and socio-economic crises also contributed to the outbreak of these wars. In most cases, the trigger for the descent into violent conflict lay in the combination of political and economic policies that deepened social contradictions, and resulted in the massive erosion of the state's welfare role(s) and capacities in the face of globally-led reforms.
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- Globalization and Challenges to Building Peace , pp. 165 - 180Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2007
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