Over the last decades, various explanatory narratives of African armed conflicts have been articulated in both political-media and academic circuits (ethnicity, ‘resource curse’, ‘failed states’, international terrorism, violent extremism, etc.) that have framed and driven certain international peace-building policies and have given rise to a rich theoretical debate on the causes of political armed violence in the region. However, these visions, which have often been predominant in political, media and even academic circles, have contributed, in the case of the understanding of conflicts, to build an imaginary that understands war in Africa as a phenomenon intrinsic to African societies, to their “customs”, identities, struggles for resources and power in scenarios that are always unstable and prone to the use of violence as a way to solve their conflicts. Severine Autesserre (2012) denounced that these narratives have been tremendously pernicious because, on the one hand, they have prevented understanding the complexity of the phenomenon, how it originates and unfolds in each African country, and on the other, because they have promoted a particular type of “solution” in international peacebuilding policies that have often ended up being harmful, counterproductive and incapable of contributing to transforming the causes of violence or achieving a positive peace (Galtung, 1964) that addresses the underlying social, political or economic problems. These “solutions” have followed the historical continuum of a supposed civilizing mission in which Africa is understood as a space to be “modernized” and “saved” from its own nature.
Therefore, the critical literature that has analyzed the African conflict in recent decades has highlighted the need to overcome these readings by proposing to understand the war in Africa as an enormously complex, multi-causal, multi-actor and multidimensional phenomenon, which also requires peace-building proposals that go beyond the prevailing liberal peace model and place local needs and agendas at the center. From this approach, this panel proposes to analyze the phenomenon of war and peace in Sub-Saharan Africa, reflecting on the most appropriate analytical tools to understand the causes, nature, consequences and impacts of armed conflict, as well as analyzing the different policies and activities that, at different levels, are being developed in peace-building efforts on the continent.
Specifically, we seek, among others, case studies that introduce novel reflections on under-researched aspects of a scenario (and/or episode) of armed conflict and/or the peace-building agenda(s), such as, among many others: the role played by capital conflict against the fabric of life, the sex-generating dimension of war or peace, the challenges for the achievement of a legitimate, just, ecofeminist and sustainable peace, indigenous knowledge and practices of peace-building, etc. We also welcome papers that focus on critical approaches (feminist, decolonial, etc.) to the current theoretical debates surrounding armed conflict in Africa, the current transformations in the global peace agenda, or the academic controversies surrounding the prevailing models of peace or the different solutions proposed to build peace.
