What are the differences among the three?
How can they work together where there is chaos to restore order?
To achieve the best results after a natural disaster or violent conflict, organizations involved in humanitarian assistance, development, and peacebuilding need to work together, in a symbiotic relationship, building off of their combined strengths and helping each other where there are weaknesses. To work well together, individuals and organizations need to understand not only the strengths and limitations of their own field, but of the other two fields as well. Unfortunately, many who work in one of those fields do not know much about the other two or where the three fields should intersect and where they separate.
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In a little less than two months, the year 2012 will draw to a close and so will the Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign. Whether or not Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is captured or killed is to some extent irrelevant given the success of Invisible Children’s efforts to make him internet-famous and a household name. While I am in awe of the visibility the Kony 2012 effort captured, I find myself more concerned with what it revealed about the current state of conflict work. Conflict work in this case is defined as actions taken by parties who intervene in societies experiencing or recovering from violence. Such work is generally connected to conflict resolution, development, human rights peacebuilding, and other related types of third party intervention. Although Invisible Children is only one particular NGO and Kony 2012 one intervention attempt, combined they are a particularly telling example of the disunity of what is considered appropriate when it comes to conflict work. Invisible Children’s ability to organize and market their cause set a bar unmatched in recent memory; nevertheless, as a precedent for future interventions it comes with a steep price. Kony 2012 might be a very successful piece of propaganda, but it is an equally disastrous piece of conflict practice.
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Welcome to Issue Seven of Unrest Magazine. Issue Seven emerges days before the 2012 elections in the United States. Unrest presents its own form of election coverage by offering three pieces (Michael Loadenthal, Tara Ruttenberg, and Jay Filipi) on voting and the potential for either candidate to change the direction of U.S. policy. Richard E. Rubenstein puts a different spin on the election by examining the impact of theological disputes within the Republican party. As the conflict in Syria rages on, Adan E. Suazo offers an analysis of the failure of the Annan Plan and possible next steps for the international community. In our Banter section, Ramlath Kavil explores human rights abuses in India, while Sramana Majumdar reflects on the impact of the struggle for autonomy in the Kashmir. Cerelia Athanassiou and Michael D. English analyze the consequences of militarism and Sarah Rose-Jensen closes the issue off with a reflection on the personal challenges of doing conflict work. In short, we are thrilled to bring you another issue of Unrest Magazine!
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I’ve been struggling lately – as a student, teacher, activist, writer, vegetarian, wife, you name it. More accurately, I’ve realized how much I have been struggling for a long time. Like many people who want to do good in the world, I have been forced to compartmentalize my life into the situations where I can make a difference and those were I can’t. What I have the time and energy to care about and what I need to ignore. However, this isn’t a sustainable model. Eventually, I am going to burn out or become so callous that I’m not any use to anyone. This essay is prompted by a number of factors: the high rates of burnout, bitterness, and alcohol use I see in conflict resolution practitioners and development workers, the dual questions posed by works such as Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution and Ross’s “’Good Enough’ Isn’t So Bad”, which ask if the system can be reformed or if imperfect actions can be considered “good enough” in a given situation; and my own frustration and misgiving with my own work.
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Last summer while on assignment in Mozambique, I had the opportunity to visit the UNHCR Refugee camp in Nampula Province. The camp was set up in the mid-1990s to receive refugees from the conflicts in the Great Lakes Region. The majority of the camp’s 5,000 refugees hail from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Uganda; yet, in the past year camp coordinators have seen a surge of arrivals of refugees from Somalia and Ethiopia fleeing the famine brought on by one the worst droughts the region has seen in 60 years. Drought and the resulting famine in the Horn of Africa is not a new occurrence. As a child, I recall seeing images of malnourished children and arid lands on television as organizations pleaded for donations, celebrities hosted events like Live Aid and Live8 to raise awareness, and in addition to calls of solidarity and financial support for those starving in Africa. Twenty plus years later, the images, the message, and the conditions all remain the same.
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Welcome to Issue Six of Unrest Magazine.
In our brief existence as a publication, we’ve been amazed to witness how quickly the world can change. From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street there is a renewed interest in mass movements and large scale social protest. Marx and Marcuse are back on reading lists and course syllabi. Liberal frameworks of intervention, democratization, and post-conflict peacebuilding are increasingly coming under scrutiny for their failure to address the contradictions inherent under global capitalism. Afghanistan and Iraq remain tragically mired in violence as a result. It is of little wonder that we find ourselves at this present juncture again confronted with the challenge of addressing what C. Wright Mills (1959) described in the Sociological Imagination as the intersection of biography and history, the collision of our private lives with social forces that appear beyond our control.
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