Abstract
The end of the Cold War witnessed many states in Africa experiencing military coups, attempted coups, civil strife and violent internal conflicts posing new challenges to the continent, with West Africa being among the most affected sub-regions. West Africa has proved to be one of the poorest and most unstable sub-regions in the world,1 and a major site and arena of some of the most brutal conflicts in the contemporary world. The instability and insecurity in the region have been attributed to challenges of poverty, human rights abuses, poor governance, political exclusion, endemic economic and political corruption, and weak statehood.
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Notes
Adekeye Adebajo and Ismail Rashid, eds, West Africa’s Security Challenges: Building Peace in a Troubled Region (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004).
For a comprehensive discussion of the liberal peace, see Oliver P. Richmond, The Transformation of Peace (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005);
Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
For a detailed discussion of internal and external dynamics of conflicts in West Africa, see Issaka K. Souaré, Civil Wars and Coups d’État in West Africa (Lanham: University Press of America, 2006);
John Emeka Akude, Governance and Crisis of the State in Africa: The Context and Dynamics of the Conflicts in West Africa (London: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd, 2009).
Patrick Tom, The Liberal Peace and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding in Africa (PhD diss., University of St Andrews, 2011).
Paul Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest: War Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone (London: Heinemann, 1996), xvi.
Michael Jackson, In Sierra Leone (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 155.
Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler (2004), ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil War’, Oxford Economic Papers 56, no. 4 (2004): 563–595.
Festus Ugboaja Ohaegbulam, U.S. Policy in Postcolonial Africa: Four Case Studies in Conflict Resolution (New York: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2004), 33.
An anti-social culture of gamblers, petty thieves and drug addicts. For a comprehensive discussion of his lumpen youth thesis, see Ibrahim Abdullah, ‘Bush Path to Destruction: The Origin and Character of the Revolutionary United Front/Sierra Leone’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 36, no. 2 (1998): 203–235.
Boubacar N’Diaye, ‘Conflicts and Crises in West Africa: Internal and International Dimensions’, in ECOWAS and the Dynamics of Conflict and Peace-Building, ed. Thomas Jaye, Dauda Garuba and Stella Amadi (Dakar, CODESRIA, 2011), 27–44, 31.
Jeffrey Herbest, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
TRC, Witness to Truth: Report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, volume 3A (Accra: Graphic Packaging Limited, 2004), 39.
See, for example, Richards, Fighting for the Rain Forest; Krijn Peters, War and the Crisis of Youth in Sierra Leone (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Funmi Olonisakin, ‘ECOWAS: From Economic Integration to Peace-Building’, in ECOWAS and the Dynamics of Conflict and Peace-Building, eds Thomas Jaye, Dauda Garuba and Stella Amadi (Dakar, CODESRIA, 2011), 11–26, 11.
ECOWAS, Protocol Relating to the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping, and Security (December 1999).
ECOWAS, Protocol A SPI 12/01 on Democracy and Good Governance (December 2001).
ECOWAS, ECOWAS Vision 2020: Towards a Democratic and Prosperous Community (Abuja: ECOWAS Commission, 2011), 10.
ECOWAS, ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework (January 2008), para. 7a.
Ali A. Mazrui, ‘Towards Containing Conflict in Africa: Methods, Mechanisms and Values’, East African Journal of Peace and Human Rights 2, no. 1 (1995): 81–90.
See, for example, Christine P. Cubitt, Local and Global Dynamics of Peacebuilding: Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Sierra Leone (London: Routledge, 2012).
Richard Fanthorpe, ‘On the Limits of Liberal Peace: Chiefs and Democratic Decentralization in Post-War Sierra Leone’, African Affairs 105, no. 418 (2005): 27–49;
Edward Swayer, ‘Remove or Reform? A Case for (Restructuring) Chiefdom Governance in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone’, African Affairs 107, no. 428 (2008): 387–403.
Patrick Tom, ‘In Search for Emancipatory Hybridity: The Case of Sierra Leone’, Peacebuilding 1, no. 2 (2013): 239–255.
Igor Kopytoff, ‘Ancestors as Elders in Africa’, Journal of the African Institute 41, no. 2 (1971): 129–142, 129.
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© 2016 Patrick Tom
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Tom, P. (2016). Peace in West Africa. In: Richmond, O.P., Pogodda, S., Ramović, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40761-0_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40761-0_23
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