In the time period 2012–2013, over 20 national elections and two constitutional referendums are scheduled in Africa. In several of these elections, violence is anticipated to play a prominent role. There is great urgency to support the establishment of effective and legitimate electoral institutions and electoral frameworks; institute reforms aimed at lowering the stakes of elections; encourage the devolution of powers; improve the socio-economic standing of the populace; and devise strategies to prevent and manage electoral violence.

The 2007 general elections in Sierra Leone marked a decisive moment in the country's post-war recovery. In this article we show how political parties strategically remobilized ex-combatants into 'security squads' in order both to protect themselves and to mobilize votes. We look at the tactical and strategic motives behind ex-combatants' choice to join the political campaigning and the alternatives (such as 'watermelon politics'), and we also examine the deep distrust between politicians and ex-combatants. Focusing on politics as the domestication of violence, we shed light on the continuation of pre-war and war-time mobilization of youth into politics and demonstrate how electoral moments can legitimize violence. In hindsight, the 2007 elections strengthened the democratic process in Sierra Leone, but this article shows on what fragile ground this success was built.

This book focuses on the lives and experiences of young people in Africa. On agents who, willingly or unwillingly, see themselves as belonging to the socio-generational category of youth and the ways in which they seek to shape and unfold their lives in a positive manner. Rather than seeing youth as either a social or cultural entity in itself, or as a predefined life-stage, the book argues for an exploration of how youth position themselves and are positioned within generational categories. In studying young people, social scientists must conceptualise youth as both social being and social becoming; a position in movement. It is from the duality of being positioned and seeking one's own socio-generational position that this book engages in the debate on contemporary African youth.

A comment on the UNHCR/Save the Children UK report "SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND EXPLOITATION: THE EXPERIENCE OF REFUGEE CHILDREN IN LIBERIA, GUINEA AND SIERRA LEONE

In the numerous armed conflicts that are tearing the African continent apart, young women are participants and carry guns alongside their male comrades-in-arms. Challenging the stereotype of women in African wars as victims only, this issue of the Nordic Africa Institute Policy Dialogues shows how in modern African wars women have often been as active as men. Female fighters are victimized, yet they are not mere victims. Girls and young women who volunteer to fight often possess quite considerable strength and independence. Programmes for disarming, demobilizing, and reintegrating former fighters must be based on better understanding of the range of women's roles and experiences in war and post-war settings in order to act in a gender-sensitive way and to empower this group of women in the aftermath of war.

Young women are combatants in contemporary African wars. They also participate in a whole array of different roles. However, by and large, they remain invisible to us. In fact, our “northern” hackneyed views on women’s innate non-participation in war prevent us from seeing specific needs for young women during and in the aftermath of wars. For instance, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes often fail to address appropriate needs for young women and in a variety of ways “prevent” them from partaking. Issues of stigma, safe demobilisation, individual concerns for post-war marriage, health and education, need to be addresed in both a more gendered way, but also with an apposite understanding of young women’s agency in both peace and war. In this Policy note it is argued that to improve policy and programming efforts it is necessary to broaden the understanding of young women’s roles and participation in armed conflict in Africa historically and today.

As a policy field largely characterised by handbooks and manuals, gender and Security Sector Reform (SSR) has been insufficiently studied and analysed. Analytical discussion of what gendering SSRmeans is quite rare, as is the study of the already gendered nature of the security institutions that are the subject of intervention. This policy dialogue unpacks aspects of the discourses and practices regarding gender and SSR. It highlights limitations and problems both in the conceptualisation of gender and its incorporation into practical SSR work. The publication also demonstrates how researchers and policymakers often have divergent views of what gendering SSR means. Finally, it calls for closer and more constructive dialogue between researchers and practitioners, a dialogue which acknowledges the conditions and constraints in these two spheres of work.

For the past 20 years the Mano River Basin (MRB) has been an area of violent upheavals and political instability. Although the area today enjoys peace in formal terms, life for many citizens of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea is one of immense struggle in poverty for a decent livelihood. Both Sierra Leone and Liberia are currently recovering from a decade of devastating civil strife that tore countries apart and caused massive death as well as destruction of private property and state struc-tures. Despite ample emergency and development funds from Western donors being dispensed into the region, surprisingly little real development can be observed. This can have a real effect on long-term security and stability. Guinea awaits the death of its President, and with him a totalitarian ruling system. The abundance of different strategy papers, development blueprints, comprehensive approaches, multidimensional Security Sector Reform (SSR) attempts and other donor-orchestrated development efforts indicate a great deal of international interest in dealing with the post-conflict situation in the MRB region. Unfortunately, direct outcomes remain uncertain and results from donor investment have not led to the social stability and security that have been wished for. This study describes the functions of the formal structures of the MRB states, the MRU, ECOWAS and the AU. It also looks into the informal networks that enmesh this formality. The study shows that it is the informal that pursues and carries the formal forward. It argues that without a thorough understanding of the concept of Big Men and informal net-works external actors will never be able to make any real contribution to how political and social matters unfold in the MRB area. If we do not support this knowledge with comprehensive capacity-enhancing assets, and if we do not continue doing this for a substantial length of time, there will be no real change in the security situation in the region.

“Anarchy”, “religious war”, “genocide” and, recently, “cannibalism”– these are some of the most commonly used words in Westernnews media when referring to the crisis in the Central African Republic(CAR), at least since the takeover of power by the rebel coalition Sélékain March 2013. In the context of these media stereotypes, this articleunravels some of the complexities that have arisen in the CAR conflictsince the fall of the Bozizé regime and the Séléka takeover. We showhow international actors have been pivotal in shaping the current crisis inthe country. In order to help steer CAR out of its predicament, we showhow important it is that international peacekeeping operations, policymakersand diplomats understand not only the situation on the groundbut also the close ties major groups in CAR have with various regionaland other international actors. If context awareness remains scant, thereis a serious risk that their activities will at best be suboptimal and at worstaid in fuelling the crisis.

In international peacekeeping operations (PKOs) some individuals are involved in sexual exploitation and abuse of the host country’s population, buying of sexual services and trafficking of prostitutes. Far from being a new phenomenon it goes back a long time, and reports on the issue have increased over the years. All too frequently we read about peacekeepers visiting prostitutes, committing rape, or in other ways sexually exploiting host populations. Some peacekeepers are taking advantage of the power their work gives them, and becoming abusers rather than protectors in situations where the host population is powerless and in dire need of protection. Peacekeepers’ abuse of their mandate is inflicting severe damage on host societies and often results in a number of unintended consequences such as human rights violations, rapid spread of HIV, decreased trust in the UN as well as other international aid agencies, and harmful changes to gender patterns. Women and children, both girls and boys, are especially exposed. Having already suffered from war and instability they risk becoming even more physically and mentally wounded. Peacekeeping operations risk doing more harm than good in African war zones, and if they cannot learn from previous mistakes maybe they ought to stay at home. We do not argue for the latter; rather, we point towards the urgent need to change explicit and implicit patterns and habits in international peacekeeping operations in relation to sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in Africa. In this Policy Note we focus predominantly on military staff, but acknowledge that the civilian staff of PKOs, and international aid workers, are also implicated. On the other hand it should initially be pointed out that most PKO staff are not sexual exploiters and abusers.

There is currently a lack of knowledge about how elites rule post-civil war societies without strong state institutions. This paper argues that elites oftentimes overcome such institutional deficiencies by engaging in governance through brokerage. According to this perspective, elites outsource central state functions to influential broker figures. This is particularly true when dealing with war-affected groups that possess much violent agency. By functioning as social membranes, brokers can help elites and war-affected groups to redefine a new social contract. Liberia is employed as an example to illustrate the paper’s central arguments.

Through a variety of indepth case studies – from DRC to Somalia to Liberia amongst others – this book shows how important informal political and economic networks are in many of the continent’s  conflict areas.