Wednesday, 24 February 2016
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
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