Conflict resolution

The African Peace and Security Annual Conference (APSACO) just concluded its 8th edition, serving as a crucial platform for discussing conflict prevention and management in Africa. APSACO has fostered a vibrant community that facilitates dialogue on Africa’s unique challenges and allows for the exchange of innovative ideas on conflict resolution. The Policy Center for the New South (PCNS) is proud to be an active participant in this ecosystem, contributing to key initiatives such as ...

History is unfolding before our eyes. These are days that could define the future of our world. The United Nations is calling for a “Summit for the Future,” promising “Multilateral Solutions for a Better Tomorrow.” This vision will take shape on September 23-24, 2024, in New York City. António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the UN since January 2017, has championed this summit as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvigorate global action, recommit to fundamental principle ...

La dynamique qui anime aujourd’hui le conflit israélo-palestinien, notamment la guerre que mènent à Gaza les troupes du Tsahal et les combattants du Hamas, appuyés par le Jihad islamique et les autres factions armées palestiniennes, laisse espérer un accord entre les parties prenantes pour mettre fin à une guerre qui a généré des dizaines de milliers de morts et de blessés. Espoirs nourris par le dernier discours (31 mai) du président américain qui détaille, on ne peut plus clair, l ...

الحرب بطبيعتها ليست عملية حسابية. فمن حيث الاستراتيجية العسكرية، لا تعتبر عملية الجمع دائما إضافة، ولا عملية الطرح تنقيصا. فعملية الضرب لا ُتضخِّم كما أن القسمة لا ُتقلل. وإذا كانت الوسائل هي بالتأكيد ميزة في الحرب، فإن نتيجة الصراعات (النصر أو الهزيمة) لا تعتمد فقط على هذه الوسائل، ذلك ان الحرب تكشف عن صمود المجتمع وليس عن قوة الجيش فقط. فالحرب ُتظهر ارتباط القوة العسكرية بصلابة الجبهة الداخلية المرتبطة بدورها إلى حد كبير بالتماسك الاجتماعي. و ليس لهذا الأخير وحدة قياس، ف ...

On November 13, 1974 (YouTube, Nov 14), Yassir Arafat appeared in front of the United Nations General Assembly. He reminded his audience and the world that, “today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.” Almost half a century has passed since then, and Arafat as well, and there is still no olive branch for the Palestinians, only the gun. Before the current Israel-Gaza war, noted the respected Foreign Affairs ...

أعاد "طوفان الأقصى"، الاسم الرمزي للهجوم المفاجئ على إسرائيل الذي شنَّته حماس وكتائب عز الدين القسَّام، في السابع من أكتوبر 2023، والردُّ الإسرائيلي المُدمِّر للأهالي المدنيين والبنى التحتية في غزة نتيجة لذلك، قضية الشعب الفلسطيني إلى الواجهة. قضيةٌ لا زالت تسكن العقول والقلوب والضمائر. أكثر من أي وقت مضى. هكذا لا يمكن أن يبرز «شرق أوسط جديد» ويكون قابلاً للاستمرار بدون حل عادل ودائم لهذا الصراع الذي استمر 75 عاماً. ...

La guerre n’est, par sa nature, pas arithmétique. En matière de stratégie militaire, ni l’addition est toujours un ajout ni la soustraction une diminution. La multiplication n’amplifie pas comme la division ne réduit pas. Les moyens sont certes un avantage dans la guerre, mais l’issue des conflits (victoire ou défaite) n’en dépendent pas exclusivement. La guerre révèle la résilience d’une société et pas seulement la puissance d’une armée. Mieux, elle montre la dépendance de la puiss ...

في 6 أكتوبر 1973 تلقت السلطات الإسرائيلية تحذيرات عن احتمال اندلاع حرب على حدودها مع الدول العربية. هذا التحذير أكد المعلومات التي تم استلامها قبل بضعة أيام، ولكن أصحاب القرار السياسي والاستخبارات في اسرائيل لم يأخذوا الأمر على محمل الجد. حيث تعرضت إسرائيل لهجوم مفاجئ وعرف جيشها حالة من الهلع. وكانت الكارثة. خمسون عاما بعد ذلك، تقريبًا في نفس اليوم، فوجئت إسرائيل بهجوم جديد. في صباح 7 أكتوبر 2023، عبر مئات الرجال مسلحين الحاجز بين إسرائيل وقطاع غزة، انتشروا في أكثر من 20 مكانًا، قت ...

On October 6, 1973, the Israeli authorities were warned of the imminent outbreak of war on their borders with the Arab states. This warning confirmed information received a few days previously, which Israeli political decision-makers and iintelligence services had not taken seriously. Israel was taken by surprise and its army panicked. It was a debacle. Fifty years later, almost to the day, Israel was once again taken by surprise. On the morning of October 7, 2023, hundreds of armed ...

Le 6 octobre 1973, les autorités israéliennes ont été averties de l’éclatement imminent d’une guerre à leurs frontières avec les États arabes. Cet avertissement confirmait les informations reçues quelques jours auparavant, mais que les décideurs politiques et le Renseignement israéliens n’avaient pas pris au sérieux. Israël est pris par surprise et son armée est en panique. C’est la débâcle. Cinquante ans plus tard, quasiment jour pour jour, l’État hébreux est enco ...

The Policy Center for the New South organized the 7th African Peace and Security Annual Conference (APSACO) on July 10-11, 2023, under the theme ‘Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Africa’. This annual conference provides a platform for the analysis of Africa’s peace and security structures and institutions, focusing on the continent’s assets, history, and its ability to overcome current and emerging challenges and gain global competitive advantage. The debate on post-conflict reconst ...

La septième édition de la Conférence africaine sur la paix et la sécurité (APSACO) s’est déroulée sur deux journées enrichissantes, les 10 et 11 juillet 2023. La conférence, organisée par le Policy Center for the New South, a rassemblé une pléiade d’experts du monde entier, représentant divers secteurs d’activité, sur le thème “Reconstruction post-conflit en Afrique”. Elle s’articulait autour de 6 panels ainsi que d’une discussion autour du Rapport annuel sur la géop ...

Cette 6ème édition du rapport géopolitique de l’Afrique s’inscrit dans la même ligne éditoriale que ses précédentes. Elle se veut une plateforme où des auteurs et analystes africains racontent l’Afrique géopolitique de 2022 en débordant parfois sur les événements saillants du début de 2023. Ce moment, d’environ une année et demie, ne peut échapper à la guerre en Ukraine comme toile de fond du monde. Même lorsque les auteurs ne s’y réfèrent pas explicitement, cett ...

Twenty-Four Hours June 23-24, 2023. Over those days, Russia, the sanctioned world power, was not destabilized by the nuclear enemy in Washington, but by one man, who made his wealth serving food to school children and soldiers. A caterer who attempted a revolution. A bald man, who apparently wore wigs during his days off, as the Russian secret police claimed to have discovered when they searched his home in St Petersburg. The photos of the wig-wearing Yevgeny Prigozhin were shown o ...

La réflexion sur le post-conflit a été stimulée ces dernières années par les efforts africains visant à offrir au continent un cadre politique propre à la période post-conflit ou post-crise (transition politique) dans la continuité de l'Architecture de paix et de sécurité de l'Union africaine (APSA) et dans le sillage de l'Architecture de gouvernance africaine (AGA). Ce souci pour une paix durable sur le continent est à l’origine de l’adoption à Banjul (Gambie) en 2006 ...

After decades of globalization and integration, the world seems to be fragmenting again, epitomized best, perhaps, by the return of geopolitical crisis, protectionism, unilateral sanctions, treaty withdrawals, and even military and economic coercion. Designed to foster cooperation among states, the multilateral system put in place after the Second World War grew quickly to encompass economic development, international security, global health, human rights, and environmental issues. ...

مرت تسعة وعشرون عاما منذ أن انطلقت رواندا في مسار تحقيق المصالحة الوطنية بعد أحداث الإبادة الجماعية التي ارتكبتها حكومة الهوتو الخاضعة لسيطرة المتطرفين، والتي استهدفت أقلية التوتسي خلال مئة يوم إلى حين دخول الجبهة الوطنية الرواندية البلاد. حيث اعتمدت على الآليات المحلية التي جمعت بين المقاربات الشمولية والمحلية القائمة على الثقافة، كما شملت استجابات قضائية وغير قضائية تفاعلية ووقائية، علاوة على إطلاق مجموعة من الإصلاحات الدستورية، المؤسساتية والقطاعية. غير أن هذا المسار، لم يخل من ...

The 2021 judgment of the EU General Court holds that ‘Western Sahara’ is separate from Morocco, imposing on Morocco a responsibility to secure Polisario’s consent to its exploitation of natural resources in ‘Western Sahara’ and its adjacent waters, allegedly based on the UN Friendly Relations Declaration, which states that a non-self-governing territory has “a status separate and distinct from the territory of the State administering it.” The phrase is originated in the General Asse ...

The global wave of democratic retrenchment has not spared North Africa as seen in the cases of Tunisia and Sudan, where democratic transitions have stalled or regressed into autocracy. How do to explain Tunisia and Sudan’s troubled transitions from authoritarian rule? Both states are attempting to transition from single-party authoritarianism. In both cases, economic crises exacerbated by COVID, the Russian-Ukraine war, and involvement by external actors stymied the fragile transiti ...

This publication was originally published in rsaiconnect.onlinelibrary.wiley.com   The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, scaled up the ongoing conflict in Donbas beyond its regional borders, hindering and halting different aspects of economic life. Considering the internal geography of Ukraine's economic structure, the damage to physical infrastructure and supply chain disruption are likely to propagate to other parts of the country through an intricate plot of pro ...

The sixth African Peace and Security Annual Conference (APSACO) was held on July 20-21, 2022, under the theme 'African Security in Times of Uncertainties'. The two-day event was composed of five panels and one report discussion.  • Panel 1: The Impact of the Russia-Ukraine War on Africa • Panel 2: Conflict Resolution and w in Africa • Panel 3: The Worsening of the Food-Security Challenge in Africa • Panel 4: Security Implications of Climate Change in Africa • Panel 5: African F ...

“February 24, 2022,” noted Robert Pszczel in « Nato Review”(July 7, 2022),”is likely to engrave itself on the history template of the contemporary world.”Pszczel, a Senior fellow  at the Polanski Foundation, Warsaw, and former Polish diplomat serving as director  of the NATO information office  in Moscow for half a decade, judged Russia’s unprovoked, unjustified invasion of Ukraine is  not only a “manifestation of a huge  security danger that has shattered peace in Europe”, but “has ...

Les missions militaires de l’Union européenne (UE) en Afrique revêtent aujourd’hui, à l’heure de la réinvention du partenariat euro-africain, une importance considérable. Alors que Bruxelles entend plus que jamais s’imposer comme l’un des garants de la sécurité au niveau mondial, tout en se mesurant aux nouveaux rapports de force mondiaux, elle tient parallèlement à devenir un acteur incontournable en matière de paix, de surcroît motivé par la prolifération des risques ...

How did an insurrection in Northern Mozambique escalate into a crisis that is drawing myriad external actors, and risks destabilizing the region? What are the colonial and Cold War origins of this conflict in Cabo Delgado? Why is Rwanda such a prominent intervener? How are tensions between Kigali, Maputo and Pretoria playing out in the peacekeeping operation now underway? ...

Ce thème, abordé au Centre HEC de Géopolitique à Jouy-en-Josas, lors de la 12e édition des Dialogues stratégiques avec le Policy Center for the New South, une rencontre semestrielle, a permis de revenir dans le détail sur cette zone qui relie la Méditerranée à l’océan Indien, à la jointure de trois continents : l’Asie, l’Afrique et l’Europe. Cette route maritime qui s’étend sur plus de 2 200 km, pour une largeur qui varie de 300 km à moins de 30 km entre Djibouti et le Yémen, représ ...

An HRW report details the massacre of at least 300 civilians in the central Malian town of Moura — the deadliest single atrocity in the country’s decade-long armed conflict. Most of the victims were from the Peuhl ethnic group. The widespread political and social exclusion of the Peuhl puts them at further risk of this type of violence and drives a cycle of grievances and fear that empowers violent extremist organizations (VEOs) and impedes peacebuilding. National governments and in ...

Of all the regions included in this report series, Tillabéri is the region that scores best when it comes to both general community resilience, as well as traditional and religious authorities’ functioning. The region is not as exposed to shocks as Est (Burkina Faso) and Ménaka (Mali), and its ability to recover from shocks is high compared to the other regions. Trust in traditional and religious authorities is comparatively high as is their equal treatment of different subgroups in ...

La situation sécuritaire dans le Sahel central est à ce point dégradée que la menace djihadiste déborde désormais sur la partie nord des pays côtiers d’Afrique de l’Ouest. Les régions de l’Est et des Cascades au Burkina Faso ou celles de Sikasso et de Kayes au Mali constituent des bases arrière permettant aux groupes djihadistes – et principalement à la Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) pour l’instant – de s’étendre au Bénin, en Côte d’Ivoire, et dans une moindre mesure au T ...

Dans un contexte de gouvernance complexe, où autorités traditionnelles et modernes se côtoient même si leur pouvoir décroît, le Mali connait depuis de nombreuses années une situation sécuritaire alarmante, notamment dans le centre du pays. La montée des tensions entre communautés agricoles et pastorales est aggravée par la présence de groupes extrémistes. La population du Cercle de Niono, dans la région de Ségou, a été victime de violences inouïes pendant plusieurs mois avant que de ...

This article was initially published on usip.org   The presence of CBAGs raises issues that force a rethink of local implementation of peacebuilding processes. The RESOLVE Network’s multiyear research on Community-Based Armed Groups (CBAGs) has established critical findings for the international community on how to engage, manage and transform violent actors in conflict-affected states. While mitigation efforts tend to target anti-state extremist organizations, understanding the ...

“Once upon a time a classic first line in fairy tales, used by Charles Dickens, for example in his “A Christmas card” in 1843, or Charles Perrault, the French poet, writer of “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty”, both published in 1697 in “histoires ou contes du temp passé” Once upon a time suggests a nostalgic touch, the good old, romantic days glamourized because negative memories are annihilated and deposed in the dustbin of the human mind. Once upon a time, Beirut, the capital ci ...

Almost ten years after the beginning of the security crisis in the Sahel, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger face a graver predicament than ever before. In the throes of multiple insurgencies, they and their foreign patrons, including France, have shown the limits of military containment. While these three countries are the victims of terrorist aggression, their crises also have deep domestic roots, including long-standing patterns of state abuses of their populations, even in the more d ...

How do you treat a brutal dictator who had lost power after 42 years, hiding in a drainpipe, after his convoy was attacked by fighter jets from the air? It was a bloody mess and not a pretty scene. The dictator had a few seconds to beg for his life, “what did I do to you», he gasped reported the London Guardian on October 22, 2011, and then his turbulent life came to an end, shot with a pistol. Triumphantly his assassin raised Gaddafi’s golden revolver -- a few minutes of global fam ...

The Polish memory of oppression, occupation, the holocaust, Nazi occupation, and communist dictators is burned into the national soul and conscience. A Polish born Pope, Jean Paul II, supported the long national struggle for freedom, giving faith to Poland’s 38 million citizens, mainly Catholic. Freedom turned into a national treasure. Membership of the European Union, achieved in May 2004, promised a path towards social justice, wealth, and global acceptance of their abused homela ...

This young and outspoken Ghanaian citizen, a peace and security expert with a focus on gender, describes herself as “engaging, accomodating and seeking”. Born and raised in Ghana, Joana has a deep knowledge of her country, as her father was transferred a lot throughout his career. Her family has also spent some time in Louisville, Kentucky. As a teenager, her dreams were definitely altruist, as she wanted to become a photojournalist or a human rights lawyer. Since 2017, she is the ...

The proliferation of community-based armed groups (CBAGs) in Mali’s Mopti and Ségou Regions has contributed to transforming Central Mali into a regional epicenter of conflict since 2016. Due to the lack of adequate presence of the state, certain vulnerable, conflict-affected communities resorted to embracing non-state armed groups as security umbrellas in the context of inter-communal violence. These local conflicts are the result of long-standing issues over increasing pressure on ...

Events in the Sahel, and Mali especially, are taking an uncertain and worrying turn. Mali witnessed two coups d’état in less than a year, while the West African Sahel went through its most violent year yet and there are no signs that the violence is slowing down. In the midst of this unprecedented instability, recent developments involving Mali’s transitional government and the international community, France in particular, provide no assurances that things are likely to improve any ...

In the Sahel, and Central Mali in particular, the proliferation of armed groups over the past decade has resulted in formal and informal non-state governance structures. This paper assesses the various definitions and typologies associated with rebel and jihadist governance in order to better understand the mechanisms of governance provision used by key non-state governance providers in Central Mali.   ...