School of International Relations & Diplomacy

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Browsing School of International Relations & Diplomacy by Author "Cristina D'Alessandro"

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    Introduction to the Special Issue: Women, Leadership, and Peace in Africa
    (African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review,, 2017) Nic Cheeseman; Francis Onditi; Cristina D'Alessandro
    Are women empowered enough to make peace in Africa? Despite over two decades of multiparty politics, the answer appears to be “no,” if we start by looking at the formal political realm. In general, women remain marginalized within African political systems. To date, there have only been three female presidents (i.e., not including “acting” presidents) on the continent since the reintroduction of multiparty politics in the early 1990s: Ellen Sirleaf Johnson in Liberia, Joyce Banda in Malawi, and Bibi Ameenah Firdaus Gurib-Fakim in Mauritius. Of these three, only two—Sirleaf Johnson and Gurib-Fakim—secured their position by winning an election (Joyce Banda assumed power after Bingu wa Mutharika died in office and lost the next general election). In many countries, the picture at the legislative level is similarly bleak. In 2015, there were many countries in Africa in which women made up less than 10% of members of parliament. For example, that year only 5.6% of the Nigerian legislature was female (Tripp forthcoming).
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    The need for a good enough territorial and economic governance in south Sudan
    (Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy, 2017) Francis Onditi; Cristina D'Alessandro
    Peace and conflict dynamics in South Sudan are intertwined with political governance, institutional capacities, and leadership. Nevertheless, in the specific South Sudanese intractable civil wars since signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, territorial and economic governance are also certainly strictly connected to any possible prospect of sustainable peace for the country. As such, after carefully defining these concepts, this article emphasizes that territorial governance in South Sudan relates to boundaries definition and to the division of the national territory in states with a certain degree of autonomy. The issues and divergences engendered by territorial governance are intertwined with economic governance concerns. The uneven distribution of natural resources (especially oil) produces wealth and power redistribution concerns that are at the core of contentious relations between social and ethnic groups. These circles of tensions rapidly degenerate into conflict in a context of widespread poverty, inequality, and consequent social vulnerability. The article defines and illustrates a “good enough” territorial and economic governance framework for the South Sudanese case study.