The Casamance conflict for decades has been unable to produce a sustained peace settlement. This project utilised among others, the relative deprivation and basic human needs satisfaction theories respectively and concludes that the conflict is underpinned by relative deprivation, strongly felt and driven by the elite group. Both the current phase as well as in the past, the conflict has been driven and to an extent manipulated by these elite, motivated by self-empowerment. Masked under the struggle of a relatively deprived masses into collective violence, seeded in a classic social conflict of a type rooted in stereotyping, marginalisation and underdevelopment, primarily driven by basic human needs dissatisfaction expressed in terms of the levels of poverty.   These stemmed in part from the colonial pass which set into motion the continuous suppression and segregation of the Casamance region. In particular, of the Diola ethnic identity thus, the conflict’s ethno nationalists dimension. This research presents a deprivation approach strategy to peace making, which among other factors includes addressing the socioeconomic and political causes of the conflict and also one that underscores the relevance of a credible third party involvement to resolving the dispute between a fractured MFDC and a reluctant Government of Senegal.

This paper represents the root causes of Hazaras persecution in Afghanistan through ethno-religious and psycho-cultural approaches, using Protracted Social Conflicts (PSC) and Relative Deprivation (RD) frameworks. The Hazara community has been subject to persecution in variety of ways including assassinations, physical torture, enslavement, forced displacement, kidnapping, and target attacks by both state and non-state actors. This study explored multifrontal causes consisting international connection, structural inequalities, communal cleavages, access to economy and power, and interpersonal and ingroup values contributed to Hazaras persecution in Afghanistan. This study argues that the excessive persecution and discrimination against Hazara community was founded, particularly by Abdul Rahman in 1890s which shaped the ethno-religious and psycho-cultural approaches of Hazaras afterward. The ethno-religious and psycho-cultural approaches led the common thinking against Hazaras in the form of wrong identification, wrong myths, false consciousness, and ill-definition of Hazaras as monolithic Shi’as who have consistently been labelled as “Kafirs,” unbeliever, and decedents of Genghis Khan. The persecution of Hazaras can be studied through the lens of PSC, manifests the longstanding inter-state and intra-state conflicts, and RD depicts comparison of disadvantagedness of an individual or a group with other individuals and groups.