Measuring development’s ‘ions’

When it comes to measuring ions, natural scientists have it easier than those working in international development. In natural science, defining ions and determining whether one is negative or positive is a basic process. The ‘ions’ of development are much more difficult to define or measure, yet are as fundamental to the process as the ions of nature

Even eating you can bite your tongue: dynamics and challenges of the Juba peace talks with the Lord’s Resistance Army

RUNNER-UP for the Cedric Smith Prize 2014, a prize for the best piece of peace and conflict research awarded by the Conflict Research Society. NOMINATED for Peace Science Society's 2014 Walter Isard Award for the Best Dissertation in Peace Science. This thesis offers an alternative narrative why the Juba Peace Talks between the Government of Uganda and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and its political wing, the Lord’s Resistance Movement (LRM), did not produce a Final Peace Agreement. Widely considered the most promising peace effort in the history of a violent conflict that began in 1986, talks were mediated by the Government of Southern Sudan from 2006 to 2008. During this time, the parties signed five separate agreements on a range of issues, yet in 2008 the LRA’s leader, Joseph Kony, failed to endorse them through a final signature. An aerial attack on the LRA by the Ugandan army spelled the end of the Juba Talks. It is commonly argued that as the first peace talks conducted with people wanted by the International Criminal Court, the Juba Talks collapsed because the arrest warrants made a negotiated agreement impossible. Another widely accepted reason is that the LRA/M were not committed to peace. This thesis, however, argues that how the LRA/M experienced the muddled and convoluted peace talks was the crucial factor because the dynamics of the process confirmed existing power dynamics. Internally, the LRA/M’s dynamics were profoundly influenced by their perception of being trapped in an established hostile system, causing a struggle to transform their own dynamics constructively. Offering an analytical chronology of the Juba Talks with an empirical emphasis on the perspective of the LRA/M and an analysis of LRA/M structures and behavioural patterns that emerged in the process, this thesis further outlines that judging success or failure of a peace process on whether agreements have been signed is misplaced. Despite not producing a final agreement, the Juba Talks contributed to peace and change in Uganda

Mareike Schomerus and Anouk Rigterink, “Off the hook: Can mobile phones help with statebuilding?”

Even though the phone stands for communication, it only works if both ends play along — which is a good way to describe the dilemma about mobile phones and politics

Anouk Rigterink and Mareike Schomerus, “The World Development Report 2015: One step forward, one step back”

Moving Beyond the Rational, Returning to the Apolitica

South Sudan's long crisis of justice: merging notions of socio-economic justice and criminal accountability

South Sudan’s peace agreements offer two versions of justice: The Comprehensive Peace Agreement includes justice as a description of a better future with more equality. The Agreement for the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan focuses on justice as individual criminal accountability for war crimes. However, the South Sudanese demand for justice combines and goes beyond these two conceptions of justice. Using structured and openended interviews conducted in January 2014, the chapter argues that justice is used to describe holistic accountability. This means accountability is understood not as individual accountability for crimes, but additionally as holding leaders formally to account for failing to deliver socio-economic justice and equality, as evoked by the spirit of the CPA. It is a request of sorts to bring leaders to justice for their lack of collective social and economic responsibility in a system where elections do not function as a way to hold leaders to account

Off the hook: can mobile phones help with statebuilding?

Lady Gaga thinks the telephone is pretty much a one-way street: “Call all you want, but there’s no one home—and you’re not gonna reach my telephone,” she sings, together with Beyoncé in the aptly-named song “Telephone”

#Kony2012: How not to change the world

LSE’s Mareike Schomerus says that the Kony 2012 campaign advocates a narrow worldview that could prove very costly

A stone, justice and security

You might be wondering: what is this picture in the website header? It looks like a dirt road, some washed-out colours, blue, white and red. What does this have to do with research, with justice, or with security, in areas caught up in violent conflict or just coming out of it