Conflicts and Conflict Resolution in the Horn of Africa: Toward the Study of Regional Peace and Security
The article attempts to provide an understanding of the phenomenon of conflict in the Horn of Africa. It identifies and discusses the political factor as the root cause of the problem of peace and security in the sub region. The paper does not argue that thee is a gap of literature on the conflicts...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Addis Ababa University
2008-12-01
|
| Series: | Ethiopian Journal of the Social Sciences and Humanities |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://10.90.104.77/index.php/EJSSH/article/view/6164 |
| Summary: | The article attempts to provide an understanding of the phenomenon of conflict in the Horn of Africa. It identifies and discusses the political factor as the root cause of the problem of peace and security in the sub region. The paper does not argue that thee is a gap of literature on the conflicts in the Horn of Africa. The argument it is trying to present is that many of the works on the subject that the author has consulted and reviewed concentrate on conflict markers such as ethnicity, region, religion, etc. This way of understanding of the source of conflicts has the effect of obscuring the primacy of politics as a major root cause of the problem. The approach of academic research on the conflict problematic must not be based on the horizontal and asymmetrical society-society relations; but rather on the asymmetrical and undemocratic state-society relations. Based on this, the conclusion of the article, as the scenarios in the conclusion clearly illustrate, is that in conflict studies giving little or no attention to the role of state and its institutions as a a major root cause to conflicts and instabilities within and between states in the Horn of Africa would make it difficult to suggest practical/realistic copping strategies of dealing with the problem of peace and security in the sub region. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1810-4487 2520-582X |