Decolonizing Human Rights

In his extensive body of work, Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim challenges both historical interpretations of Islamic Sharia and neo-colonial understanding of human rights. To advance the rationale of scholarship for social change, An-Naim proposes advancing the universality of human rights through internal discourse within Islamic and African societies and cross-cultural dialogue among human cultures. This book proposes a transformation from human rights organized around a state determined practice to one that is focused on a people-centric approach that empowers individuals to decide how human rights will be understood and integrated into their communities. Decolonizing Human Rights aims to illustrate the decisive role of human agency on the subject of change, without implying that Islamic or any other society are exceptionally disposed to politically motivated violence and consequent profound political instability.

Reconciliation without Justice: The State and the Invalidation of Victimhood in Post-colonial Zimbabwe, 1980–2017

This article calls for the location of victimhood rather than political convenience at the centre of Zimbabwe’s peace-building matrix. From the attainment of independence in 1980 to the military assisted end of President Robert Mugabe’s rule in November 2017, Zimbabwe’s episodic cycles of violence were concluded through elite bargained amnesty ordinances, state mediated reconciliation pronouncements and clemency orders that unconditionally benefitted perpetrators at the expense of victims. The forgive-and-forget ethic central to these routine and fractional peace building measures, I argue, not only disregarded the rule of law but negated victimhood and rendered justice divisible. Victims of politically motivated violence could not secure redress through the courts of law against amnestied perpetrators as this would amount to double jeopardy. The government withheld prosecutorial justice against perpetrators and disregarded reparations for victims. Within the national legislative framework ordinary legislators could not move motions compelling the government to compensate survivors of violence because only the vice-presidents and ministers could move motions that had the consequence of either depleting state revenues or causing the imposition of additional taxes on citizens. Considering that ministers who had the prerogative to move such motions served in cabinet at the behest of their intractable president they could hardly embarrass or contradict their principal. Essentially, the Robert Mugabe led Zimbabwean government established legal firewalls for perpetrators of politically motivated violence which ipso facto invalidated the quest for justice by victims of the country’s ever recurring cycles of violence. This authoritarian legalism disregarded victimhood and emboldened human rights violators.

Political Violence

Political scientists, pundits, and citizens worry that America is entering a new period of violent partisan conflict. Provocative survey data show that up to 44% of the public support politically motivated violence in hypothetical scenarios. Yet, despite media attention, political violence is rare, amounting to a little more than 1% of violent hate crimes in the United States. We reconcile these seemingly conflicting facts with three large survey experiments (N=3,041), demonstrating that self-reported attitudes on political violence are biased upwards because of disengaged respondents, differing interpretations about questions relating to political violence, and personal dispositions towards violence that are unrelated to politics. Our estimates show that, depending on how the question is asked, existing estimates of support for partisan violence are 30-900% too large, and nearly all respondents support charging suspects who commit acts of political violence with a criminal offenses. These findings suggest that although recent acts of political violence dominate the news, they do not portend a new era of violent conflict.

Perceived injustice, perceived group threat and self-reported right-wing violence: An integrated approach

The present study seeks to explain individual differences in self-reported politically motivated violence and vandalism, and participation within an extreme right-wing group. While violent extremism is highly debated, few criminological studies explicitly test factors that can trigger violent extremism. The present study addresses this gap by integrating two different frameworks: a perceived injustice and group threat-initiated model and an impulsivity-initiated model. We also investigate several intervening mechanisms. We draw on a sample of 705 adolescents and young adults living in Flanders, Belgium to test the strength of direct and intermediary effects of perceived injustice, perceptions of out-group threat from Jewish populations, ethnocentrism, feelings of superiority, moral support for right-wing extremism, and exposure to racist peers on politically motivated violence and vandalism. Results of structural equation models (SEM) indicate various direct and intermediary effects between both perceived injustice and violent extremism, and between impulsivity and violent extremism. Our model reveals the complex and intricate antecedents of violent extremism. Importantly, we find that feelings of injustice and unfair treatment are a major source of extremist violence, as they easily trigger often debated causes such as high in-group identification and ethnocentrism. Implications of these findings for preventing violent extremism are discussed, given the centrality of perceptions of injustice and threat.

What do our future teachers think about terrorism and politically motivated violence in the Basque Country?

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna—Basque Country and Freedom (ETA) was an armed organisation from the Basque Country and after it declared that it would cease violent actions and subsequently disbanded, the Basque Country has been involved in a peace process. The Adi-adian programme that is part of this process has been implemented as a part of teacher training programmes. By means of a mixed model that combines both qualitative and quantitative elements, the present study has attempted to identify the attitudes of future teachers—prior to implementation of Adi-adian—regarding terrorism and politically motivated violence that occurred in and from the Basque country since 1960, the information they have received with respect thereto, and their opinions as to how the issues are dealt with in the classroom. The results obtained reveal a generally respectful attitude toward human rights and the delegitimisation of violence; lack of satisfaction regarding the information they have received throughout their lives; and, as future teachers, a lack of certainty as to how to approach such issues in the classroom. It was noted that these future teachers had a high degree of motivation and interest with respect to these matters.

Leadership, conflict, and cooperation

The author reviews what he has learnt from 40 years of analysing and engaging in the resolution of campaigns of terrorism and politically motivated violence, initially in Ireland, and then in other parts of the world. He uses his experience as a psychoanalytic psychiatrist and the leader of a political party to address not just theory but practice and some key lessons learnt about leadership in the context of increasing polarization and violence. This includes the personality and qualities of the leader, the counter-intuitive tactics required and the challenges and opportunities in moving from violent conflict to democratic cooperation. He describes aspects of large group psychology and the practice of negotiation and peace-building as well as important requirements for political and community leadership in the changing context of violent conflict.

Authoritariansm of the 21st Century: Analysis in the Institutional Purpose Paradigm

This article covers the study of modern authoritarianism in institution-targeted paradigm and describes the main trends in modern research: refinement of classification and measurement of authoritarian regimes; analysis of factors influencing their stability and survival. It considers continuous and categorical approaches to classification of political regimes. Authoritarianism is defined as a form of organization of political and state orders based on the use of informal practices in order to retain the power of the ruling political actor (individual or collective) and redistribute the national resources in his interest. This article also presents a new type of authoritarian regimes – neo-authoritarian, where depending on the current political situation and tasks of political and state governance faced by the regime, the dominant mechanism is either systemic corruption or politically motivated state power coercion alongside permanent manipulation of public opinion. The typological analysis of modern authoritarian regimes presented in the article identifies four categorial groups: authoritarian monarchies, communist regimes, postcolonial dictatorships and neo-authoritarian regimes. The latter is divided into two sub-groups: transformational neo-authoritarian regimes established as a result of overthrow of previous dictatorial regimes, or authoritarian reversals; post-Soviet authoritarian regimes stemming from the collapse of the Soviet Union, where the same type of governing social stratum is a direct legacy of the Soviet party and economic nomenklatura. The boundaries between postcolonial dictatorships and neo-authoritarian regimes are conditional and flexible. In situations critical to retaining power, neo-authoritarian regimes use a full range of practices of politically motivated violence intrinsic to dictatorships, while dictatorial regimes employ a wide array of methods of neo-authoritarian regimes to simulate compliance with modern requirements and demonstrate “softening of customs”. The article suggests a topical research trend – analysis of modern practices of authoritarian rule with regards to political and historical dynamics, endogenous and exogenous factors caused by postindustrial civilizational transit and impacting on such practices.

Sierra Leone’s political divisions will widen further

Significance A White Paper on a Commission of Inquiry (COI)'s findings has outlined charges of misappropriation by former state officials and leading elites. President Julius Maada Bio’s government has agreed to restart some iron-ore mining operations after company licences were cancelled last year. Impacts Sporadic politically motivated violence is likely in the coming months, exacerbated by a polarised social media. The government’s relationship with China will improve on the back of the resolution reached around iron-ore mining at Tonkolili. Finance Minister Jacob Jusu Saffa may find his position under threat if economic conditions continue to worsen for most Sierra Leoneans.

Memorials as discursive spheres: Holocaust and Second World War iconography in public commemoration of extremist-right violence

In recent decades, the experience of non-governmental politically motivated violence became a central element of global memory culture. Motivated by several shocking attacks at the beginning of the new millennium, this commemorative culture evolved in a memory ecology, which was significantly shaped by the prosperity of global Holocaust memory. Therefore, public commemoration of politically motivated violence intersects different discursive elements, leading to multidirectional forms of memory. Based on interdisciplinary theoretical approaches, this article examines public memorials commemorating two notable cases of neo-Nazi xenophobic attacks in Germany as discursive spheres referring to the confrontation with the country’s unique past and its impact on Germany’s contemporary self-image challenged by right-wing extremism. We argue that various commemorative actors in the field adopted and appropriated Second World War and Holocaust-related iconography and terminology to shape these memory sites as instruments linking current Germany to the period of National Socialism.

Multiple crises threaten Mozambican gas dividends

Significance Meanwhile, a recent court decision surrounding a long-running debt scandal will make it more difficult for Maputo to secure external budgetary support and ensure that state-owned hydrocarbons company Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos (ENH) can participate in LNG investments without being 'carried' by investors. Impacts Politically motivated violence will likely escalate as internal FRELIMO divisions worsen ahead of its 2022 party congress. Recent progress on demobilising former RENAMO rebels will boost hopes of entrenching the peace settlement. A coordinated Southern African Development Community (SADC) counterinsurgency strategy for Cabo Delgado is unlikely for now.