With few exceptions, not enough attention has been paid to the phenomenon of ethnic minority rule over hostile majorities in the studies of ethnic conflict. This thesis attempts to account for the ability of ethnic minorities to rule over hostile majorities for continuous periods of time, and to devise a theory for the study of this phenomenon by comparing three cases: the Alawis in Syria, the Tutsis in Burundi and the Sunni Muslim minority in Iraq. The major argument of the thesis is that the phenomenon in question does not occur randomly. There are certain conditions that motivate an ethnic minority to seek political power, and to be able to attain it and maintain continuous rule despite the hostility of the majority. Naturally, each case has its particular characteristics, yet common patterns underlying minority rule over hostile majorities can be found, and an analytical framework can bJe devised. The examination of the three cases leads to the conclusion that minority rule has to be explained by examining how the identities of the minority and majority were formed, how they have been shaped throughout the history of interaction between the two groups, and how they have influenced the relationship between the groups. There is also a need to study how political entrepreneurs manipulate traditional markers and modern issues for instrumental gains. On this basis, it is possible to understand the political salience of the identities, the level of hostility and the reasons why the minorities seek political power. Attaining it or retaining it, and maintaining it for a continuous period of time is dependent on an authoritarian government structure, which includes, indispensably, considerable army involvement in politics. Persistent minority rule is also dependent on its ability to legitimize itself, primarily by creating a unified identity. Success in forming such a unified identity implies a decrease in the saliency of elements of identity that' distinguish between the groups, and ultimately a decrease in the level hostility. This allows the minority rule to persist. If, however, this "unified identity" does not have the desired outcome of mollifying the majority, the ruling minority can, and will, use its military monopoly of coercive power to subdue internal opposition. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

The thesis focuses on analysis of causes of armed conflicts within security complex of the African Great Lakes region. Explored period is situated between 1990 and present. The major part of text is devoted concrete analysis of causes of conflicts according to sector approach. The thesis attempts to describe main causal frameworks of conflicts within researched area eventually to find some their common features.

Créée en 2002 en remplacement de l’OUA, l’Union africaine affiche l’ambition de trouver des solutions africaines aux problèmes africains en ajoutant l’article 4 dans son Acte constitutif. Cet article lui donne le droit de déployer une force militaire au sein d’un État membre pour protéger les civils lors de violations de droits de l’homme, de génocide ou de crimes contre l’humanité. Tandis que les conflits intraétatiques continuent de faire rage sur le continent africain, l’UA et ses États membres n’ont jamais autorisé — sans y renoncer — une intervention humanitaire contre l’un de ses membres. Ce mémoire vise à connaitre les raisons pour lesquelles les dirigeants africains ont renoncé à déployer une force militaire pour protéger les civils burundais en 2015, et ce, malgré le fait que l’UA l’a initialement recommandé quelques semaines plus tôt. En s’inspirant de la théorie réaliste des relations internationales, cette étude du conflit burundais de 2015 démontre que la non-intervention de l’UA est avant tout liée à un manque de volonté de la part des dirigeants africains qui ont privilégié leurs intérêts personnels ainsi que les intérêts économiques de leur pays au détriment de l’urgence humanitaire au Burundi. De plus, plusieurs dirigeants africains, qui ont un contentieux avec Paul Kagamé et qui voient le Burundi comme un contrepoids à l’influence rwandaise, se sont positionnés contre la MAPROBU pour léser le Rwanda. Ensuite, l’abandon de la MAPROBU s’explique aussi par le fait que le Conseil de Paix et de Sécurité est totalement dépendant de la volonté des États membres et ne dispose pas de l’autonomie institutionnelle nécessaire pour autoriser le déploiement des troupes de l’UA au Burundi. / Created in 2002 to replace the OAU, the African Union’s desire to find African solutions to African problems was demonstrated by the addition of Article 4 to its Constitutive Act, which gives the Union the authority to deploy a military force within a member state to protect civilians from human rights violations, genocide or crimes against humanity. While intrastate conflicts are still devastating the African continent, the AU has never authorized a humanitarian intervention against one of its members. This master’s thesis seeks to explain why the African leaders did not authorize the deployment of a military force to protect Burundian civilians in 2015, despite the fact that the AU had initially recommended it a few weeks earlier. Based on the realist approach in International Relations, this case study demonstrates that the decision not to intervene in Burundi is primarily due to a lack of commitment from African leaders who have prioritized their own interests as well as economic interests over the humanitarian urgency in Burundi. In addition, many African leaders, who see Paul Kagame as a rival, perceive Burundi as a counterweight to Rwanda’s influence. Therefore, their position against MAPROBU is also intended to undermine Rwanda. Secondly, the decision not to deploy MAPROBU could be explained by the fact that the Peace and Security Council (PSC) is totally dependent on the will of member states and does not have the necessary institutional autonomy to authorize the deployment of AU troops in Burundi.

La migration, phénomène mondial à multiples facettes, laisse des traces plus ou moins visibles sur les sociétés et les individus. Aux croisements de ces traces s'enclenchent des changements profonds et radicaux qui s'inscrivent dans les pratiques et le discours des sociétés et des individus. Leur histoire, leur mémoire et leurs identités s'en trouvent modifiés. La rupture migratoire transforme d'abord leur continuité, pour leur donner ensuite un autre sens. Ce mémoire porte sur l'impact de ces transformations chez les jeunes des familles burundaises réfugiées à Québec. Le travail de recherche consiste à mettre en évidence la complexité et l'interdépendance entre la mémoire familiale migratoire, les relations intergénérationnelles et la construction identitaire dans ces familles. Les cinq cas observés aident à mieux comprendre les éléments de tissu mémoriel spécifique et laissent entrevoir l'émergence des solutions originales dans l'intégration du récit familial et des variantes insoupçonnées dans la quête identitaire de ces jeunes.

[pt] A mediação internacional transformou-se nas últimas décadas devido a dois fatores: as mudanças nas características do conflito armado; e a entrada de novos atores. Os conflitos modificaram-se significativamente após o fim da Guerra Fria, apesar de já ser possível encontrar sinais destas transformações desde a década de 70. A entrada de novos atores, dos quais se destacam principalmente organizações não-governamentais (ONGs), foi uma resposta a essas novas necessitadas do conflito, a modificações na relação dos Estados com as ONGs e destas no campo da resolução de conflitos. As ONGs proporcionaram novas possibilidades à mediação internacional, abrindo o leque de possíveis soluções aos conflitos, por conseguirem atingir todos os níveis sociais durante o processo de resolução. As ONGs possibilitaram com que a mediação envolva toda a sociedade e desenvolva-se um longo processo de reconciliação. No entanto, como todo o mediador elas possuem vantagens e limitações que devem ser consideradas no momento da mediação. Além disso, é necessário ressaltar que a mediação pode envolver mais de um ator ou até mesmo mais de de um tipo de ator, desde que a ação deles seja coordenada. Objetivando analisar isto esta dissertação utilizará de três casos de estudo: Moçambique, Aceh e Burundi e as suas mediações. / [en] International mediation has been transformed over the last decades, primarily through two factors: the changed characteristics of armed conflict and the emergence of new actors. Conflicts were significantly modified after the Cold War, but races of these transformations can be found as early as the 1970s. The entry of new actors, principally Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), was a response to the exigencies of new conflict situations, and was due to the modification of the relationship between states and NGOs in the resolution of conflicts. Given this situation, this thesis analyzes the advantages and limitations of NGOs as international mediators, focusing on their role in three major conflicts: Mozambique, Aceh and Burundi.

This thesis focuses on the challenges posed by the refugees from the Great Lakes Region to the ministry of the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Nativity in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. It intends to inform the Christian world in general and specifically the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Nativity of the current refugee situation and its causes. Furthermore, this study shows that understanding the refugees' livelihood strategies is a prerequisite to improved interventions. Using the Sustainable Livelihood Framework, this study describes some of the positive and negative outcomes from the mechanisms and strategies developed by refugees in order to stabilize and enhance their situation. Looking at the livelihood challenges faced by the Great Lakes Region refugees, this study shows how UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) has been in a weak position to challenge the policies of its funders and host governments even when those policies fail to respond adequately to refugee problems. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

For the past two decades, statebuilding has been the object of a growing attention from practitioners and scholars alike. ‘International statebuilding’, as its dominant approach or model guiding the practices of national and international actors, has sparked numerous discussions and debates, mostly around its effectiveness (i.e. if it works) and deficiencies (i.e. why it often fails). Surprisingly, little efforts have been made to investigate what international statebuilding, in the multiple ways it is mobilized by various actors, actually produces on the political dynamics of the ‘fragile’ contexts it is supposed to support and reinforce. Using an instrumentation perspective, this dissertation addresses this gap by exploring the relationship between the micro-dynamics of the uses of international statebuilding instruments and the fragility of contexts. This exploration is articulated around five essays and as many angles to this relationship. Using the case of Hamas, Essay I explores the European Union’s (EU) terrorist labelling policy by questioning the nature and modalities of the enlisting process, its use as foreign policy tool and its consequences on its other agendas, especially its international statebuilding efforts in Palestine. Essay II examines a Belgian good governance incentive mechanism and sheds the light on the tension between the claimed apolitical and objective nature of the instrument and the politicization potential embedded in its design and modalities, naturally leading to a convoluted implementation. Essay III analyses the localization dynamics of transitional justice in Burundi and unveils the nature, diversity and rationale behind transitional justice subversion techniques mobilized by national and international actors, which have produced a triple form of injustice. Essay IV widens this scope in Burundi, developing the argument that the authoritarian trend observed in the 2010-2015 period did not only occur against international statebuilding but also through self-reinforcing subversion tactics of its appropriation. Finally, essay V deepens the reflection on appropriation by attempting to build a theory of regime consolidation through international statebuilding subversion tactics. Overall, the incremental theory building reflection of the essays converges towards the assembling of a comprehensive framework of the in-betweens of the normative diffusion of liberal democracy, the inner-workings of its operationalization through the resort to the international statebuilding instrument and the intermediary constraints or objectives of actors not only interfering with its genuine realization but also contributing to its antipode of regime consolidation, conflict dynamics and authoritarianism. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis starts by arguing that the civil conflicts that erupted in the African Great Lakes are rooted in a continuous pursuit of power, in which ethnic, regional and political identifiers are used by the contenders for power to rally community support. In an introductory chapter, I go back to the colonial era, drawing attention to Burundi and Rwanda, and then describe in more details Burundi's refugee crisis, ex-combatants' demobilization and the 2010 elections, all of which will be addressed in the subsequent chapters. <p><p>In the second chapter, entitled "On the Instrumental Power of Refugees: Household Composition and Civil War in Burundi", I study changes in household composition following household's exposure to civil war in Burundi. The analyses rely on a panel dataset collected in rural Burundi in 2005 and 2010. To address concerns over the endogenous distribution violence, I use an instrumental variables strategy using the distance to refugee camps, in which the Hutu rebellion was organized from the mid-1990s onwards. The analysis focuses on the impact of violence on demographic changes within households.<p><p>The third chapter, entitled "Who Benefited from Burundi's Demobilization Program?" and co-authored with Olivier Sterck (University of Oxford) and Philip Verwimp (ULB), assesses the impact of the demobilization cash transfers program, which took place from 2004 onwards in post-war Burundi. In the short run, we find that the cash payments had a positive impact on beneficiaries' consumption, non-food spending and investments. Importantly, it also generated positive spillovers on civilians in their home villages. However, both the direct impact and the spillovers seem to vanish in the long run. Ex-combatants' investments in assets were not productive enough to sustain their consumption pattern in the long run, as they ultimately ran out of demobilization money. <p><p>In the fourth chapter, entitled "From Rebellion to Electoral Violence. Evidence from Burundi" and co-authored with Andrea Colombo (ULB) and Olivier Sterck (University of Oxford), we aim at understanding the triggers of electoral violence in 2010, only a few months after the end of the war. We find that an acute polarization between ex-rebel groups -capturing the presence of groups with equal support - and political competition are both highly conducive to electoral violence. Disaggregating electoral violence by type, we show that these drivers explain different types of violence. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that ethnic diversity is not associated with electoral violence in post-conflict Burundi. <p><p>In the last chapter, entitled "Who Benefits from Customary Justice? Rent-seeking, Bribery and Criminality in sub-Saharan Africa" and co-authored with Olivier Sterck (University of Oxford), we have a closer look at the judicial system of Uganda, an important institution in a post-conflict economy. In many African countries, customary and statutory judicial systems co-exist. Customary justice is exercised by local courts and based on restorative principles, while statutory justice is mostly retributive and administered by magistrates' courts. As their jurisdiction often overlaps, victims can choose which judicial system to refer to, which may lead to contradictions between rules and inconsistencies in judgments. In this essay, we construct a model representing a dual judicial system and we show that this overlap encourages rent-seeking and bribery, and yields to high rates of petty crimes and civil disputes. <p><p>In Burundi, history has shown that instability in one country of the Great Lake region may destabilize the whole area, with dramatic effect on civilian population. Understanding the dynamics laying at the origin of violence, during and after civil conflict, is crucial to prevent violence relapse in any form, from petty criminality to larger scale combats. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Grâce à une réflexion sur ma création poétique, cette thèse exploite « la poétique négro-africaine de l’exil » à travers cinq recueils de Césaire, Kayóya, Senghor et Tshitungu Kongolo. D’une part, mon recueil extériorise les joies et les peines du Burundi précolonial, colonial, postcolonial et d’un exilé francophone au Canada largement anglophone. Mes exigences esthétiques sont, premièrement, l’emploi des figures de style pour que mes poèmes soient des paroles plaisantes au cœur et à l’oreille. Deuxièmement, chaque poème véhicule une poly-isotopie. Troisièmement, pareil à mon identité hybride, mon recueil est un mariage de la poésie des vers courts français et des unités discursives burundaises. D’autre part, mon analyse critique examine la manière dont le poète exilé idéalise le pays perdu et suggère des réserves face au pays hôte qui lui impose une nouvelle identité. Ensuite, mon analyse révèle que l’écriture poétique est en elle-même un exil.

Grâce à une réflexion sur ma création poétique, cette thèse exploite « la poétique négro-africaine de l’exil » à travers cinq recueils de Césaire, Kayóya, Senghor et Tshitungu Kongolo. D’une part, mon recueil extériorise les joies et les peines du Burundi précolonial, colonial, postcolonial et d’un exilé francophone au Canada largement anglophone. Mes exigences esthétiques sont, premièrement, l’emploi des figures de style pour que mes poèmes soient des paroles plaisantes au cœur et à l’oreille. Deuxièmement, chaque poème véhicule une poly-isotopie. Troisièmement, pareil à mon identité hybride, mon recueil est un mariage de la poésie des vers courts français et des unités discursives burundaises. D’autre part, mon analyse critique examine la manière dont le poète exilé idéalise le pays perdu et suggère des réserves face au pays hôte qui lui impose une nouvelle identité. Ensuite, mon analyse révèle que l’écriture poétique est en elle-même un exil.