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Displacing Human Rights

Displacing Human Rights War and Intervention in Northern Uganda

Author: Adam Branch
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
ISBN: 9780199351299
Published In: January 2014
Format: Paperback , 336 pages
Jurisdiction: U.S. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Description
Contents
Author

Details
- A thorough explication and debunking of "traditional justice" interventions
- First book to make a critical analysis of the political consequences of a number of different human rights interventions in Africa
- An original account of the historical development of human rights intervention in Africa since the end of the Cold War
- The most comprehensive account to date of the politics of the northern Uganda conflict
Today, Western intervention is a ubiquitous feature of violent conflict in Africa. Humanitarian aid agencies, community peacebuilders, microcredit promoters, children's rights activists, the World Bank, the International Criminal Court, the U.S. military, and numerous others have involved themselves in African conflicts, all claiming to bring peace and human rights to situations where they are desperately needed. However, according to Adam Branch, Western intervention is not the solution to violence in Africa but, instead, can be a major part of the problem—often undermining human rights and even prolonging war and intensifying anti-civilian violence. Based on an extended case study of Western intervention into northern Uganda's twenty-year civil war, and drawing on Branch's own extensive research and human rights activism there, this book lays bare the reductive understandings motivating Western intervention in Africa, the inadequate tools it insists on employing, its refusal to be accountable to African citizenries, and, most important, its counterproductive consequences for peace, human rights, and justice. In short, Branch demonstrates how Western interventions undermine the efforts Africans themselves are undertaking to end violence in their own communities. The book does not end with critique, however. Motivated by a commitment to global justice, it proposes concrete changes for Western humanitarian, peacebuilding, and justice interventions as well as a new normative framework for re-orienting the Western approach to violent conflict in Africa around a practice of genuine solidarity.

"A key strength of the book is its ability to analyse and reveal common patterns in seemingly disparate and complex empirical instances of counterproductive human rights interventions in Uganda. ... [T]his book should be required reading for all those working on various themes in Africa today."—The Journal of Modern African Studies

"This book provides a pessimistic, but much needed, critique of the history of foreign intervention in Northern Uganda. ... Responsible discussions of foreign policy must consider the ways in which 'great power politics' can hurt people in the name of protection; this book is an excellent place to start that discussion." —The Christian Science Monitor

Readership: Students and scholars of political science, international relations, development, sociology, African studies, African history
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Human Rights Intervention in Africa
2 The Politics of Violence in Acholiland
3 Humanitarianism, Violence, and the Camp
4 Peacebuilding and Social Order
5 Ethnojustice: The Turn to Culture
6 The ICC and Human Rights Enforcement
7 AFRICOM: Militarizing Peace
8 Beyond Intervention
Acronyms
Notes
References
Index
Adam Branch is Associate Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University, USA, and Senior Research Fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research, Uganda.