Monday, 22 February 2016

Alternative Conflict Management Principles and Community Protocols to Resolve the Natural Resources-based Competition and Allocation in Ethiopia Case - Gambella Region


The Gambella region has been plunged in ethnic driven conflicts, which claimed and continue doing so thousands of innocent lives since 1950s. The Gambella regional state of Ethiopia, situated in the western part adjacent to South Sudan, is home of Nuer, Agnuak, Mejenger, Opo, Komo and other highlanders. This lecture proposes alternative conflict management, a multidisciplinary field of research and action that seeks to address the question of how people can make better decisions together, particularly on difficult, contentious issues. The voluntary problem-solving and decision-making methods most often employed are conciliation, negotiation and mediation. Conciliation, negotiation and mediation processes are found in traditional as well as modern local level dispute resolutions. Many traditional leaders have extensive experience in dealing with disputes within their own communities or between a particular community and outside interests, though not enough information is available about how these and other processes are carried out by local political systems in addressing disputes. In addition, in many countries, the terms conciliation, negotiation and mediation refer to processes that have been formally institutionalized and are increasingly conducted by professionals. In the process, a body of information is being developed about what works best in managing various types of contemporary conflicts through collaborative rather than adversarial means. The goal of research in the area of dispute resolution is neither to impose a model of alternative conflict management nor to define a process. Rather it is to anticipate ways in which specific existing systems of dispute resolution or conflict management can be adapted to other cultural contexts. These approaches complement these more adversarial strategies, and broaden the range of tools available to communities and interest groups who are involved in conflict.

Key words: Gambella, ACM, conciliation, negotiation and mediation, knowledge management

See paper here

Tuesday, 2 February 2016

Great Leaders Erect Their Outfit on an Elevated Human Security & Rights Locus

African Union Summit 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Human Rights with a focus on the Rights of Women
Public Lecture - XCV, MMXV
Addressing Human Security through Leadership
Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD
Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,
College of Business and Economics, AAU
Abstract
The theme of the paper addresses leadership and public management challenges and reform in Africa, augured on the hypothesis that the relative potency of leadership requires a plural set of rules and governing institutions, which promote and protect rules of peaceful participation and competition and human security. Notwithstanding the fact that the effectiveness of leadership is intertwined with the notion of objectivity, a noxious illusion persists that a political civil service of the developmental state model would deliver superior public goods, prevails all over Africa. The recommendations augur on evolving a meritocratic state that can deliver visionary public spending, fiscal policy discipline and inward foreign direct investment; coupled with prudent oversight of financial institutions and legal security for labor and property rights -- a brand of governance that unleashes free enterprises in a pluralistic milieu. Good governance requires mediation of the different interests in society to reach a broad consensus in society on what is the best interest of the whole community and how this can be achieved. It also requires a broad and long-term perspective on what is needed for sustainable human development and how to achieve the goals of such development. This can only result from an understanding of the historical, cultural and social contexts of a given society or community. A society's well-being depends on ensuring that all its members feel that they have a stake in it and do not feel excluded from the mainstream of society.
Key words: civil service, governance, impartiality, leadership, objectivity

Slums are the litmus test of civilizations.
Robert Kaplan, the Coming Anarchy, Atlantic Monthly
Click here to see the article