Transcript Multiple Trajectories Towards Reintegration

Multiple Trajectories Towards
Reintegration
Poster Presentation prepared for LSA
conference 23-25 March 2007 at Indiana
University
Maarten Bedert, Ghent University
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Content
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1. On the conflict in Liberia
2. Towards the end of the conflict
3. The official trajectory towards reintegration
4. Analytical assumptions
5. Multiple trajectories towards reintegration
6. Conclusion
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1. On the conflict
• Historic complexity
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Americo-Liberian settlers
TWP regime (1846-1980)
Coup d’ état by Samuel Doe (1980)
Taylor regime (1989-2001)
• Regional and international dimensions
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Civil war in Sierra Leone
Training of professional soldiers in Libya
United States’ unresponsiveness
ECOMOG intervention monitored by ECOWAS
• Weak state
– Implosion of economic and political institutions
– Loss of monopoly over the use of violence
• Involvement of youth in the conflict
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Involvement of youth: complexity and
diversity
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Combatants recruited by force
Youth recruited as labor forces
Conflict as a revolution of the youth
Fighting as a means to obtain strategic upward
mobility
• Fighting against the lack of opportunities in
society
• Link with initiation into adulthood (secret
societies)
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2. Towards the end of the conflict
(2003)
• Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)
– 2.1 Establishment of UNMIL: far reaching
influence at different levels of governance and
policy making
– 2.2 Bring back the many refugees and reintegrate
the many combatants: start of the reconstruction
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2.1 Establishment of UNMIL
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UN Security Council resolution 1509
15,000 military personnel
160 staff officers
1,150 civilian police officers
“Assist in the maintenance of law and order
throughout Liberia, and the appropriate
civilian component”
• Far reaching influence at different domains of
policymaking
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2.2 Reintegrating ‘Ex-combatants’
• “Although efforts are underway to reintegrate them
into society, they still remain a target group for either
ensuring peace or creating further instability”
• “Liberians, long fearful of this volatile population,
are concerned at what will happen if ex-combatants
are left idle”
• “the presence of UNMIL is crucial […] to facilitate
the reintegration of ex-combatants […]”
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3. The official trajectory towards
reintegration
• 3.1 UNDDRR
• 3.2 RR at work
• 3.3 Social implications of UNDDRR
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3.1 UNDDRR
• UN DDRR program
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Disarmament
Demobilization
Rehabilitation
Reintegration
Step-by-step program
As a Natural continuum
• Implemented ‘from
above’
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3.2 RR at work
• Entering an
institutionalized
structure
• Disarmament
– Registration for
reintegration program
– ID-card
• DDRR programs
– Formal education
– Vocational training
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3.3 Social implications of the DDRR
program
• Put in a ‘waiting-room’ before returning to
society
• Opportunity to accumulate economic, social
and political capital
• Label ‘Ex-combatant’ = stigma
• Homogenization trough categorization
• Social exclusion
– Return to the margins of society?!
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4. Analytical assumptions
• 4.1 On Reintegration
– A never ending process?!
• 4.2 On Identity
– Beyond primordialism
• 4.3 On Social navigation (Vigh, 2006)
– A non-transparent field in motion
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4.1 Reintegration
• Definition?
Objective?
– No consensus on definition
– No consensus on how to achieve
reintegration trough social practice
• ‘ex-combatants’ are an object rather than a
subject
• To be reintegrated to be brought in by
others
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4.2 On Identity
• Identity as production (Hall, 1990)
– Never ending process
– Importance of the context
• Identity = positioning trough representations
• Play of history, culture and power
– Flexibility
– Room for imagination
• Constantly renegotiated trough articulation
– Possible but therefore not necessary connection
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4.3 Social Navigation (Vigh, 2006)
• Focus on process of social being as well as
becoming
• Social terrain
– environment = never stable or solid but always in
motion and non-transparent
• Social navigation
– movement is never completely free
– constant intertwining between agency and social
forces
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4.3 Social Navigation (Vigh, 2006)
• Constant intertwining between agency and
social forces:
– Strategy
• process of creating and consolidating space
• Appropriation from above
– Tactics
• space of the other
• actions directed at making the best of them, using and
bending the rules
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5. Multiple trajectories towards
reintegration
• 5.1 Fieldwork
• 5.2 Complex social reality
– Relations with former commander
– Intra-ex-combatant relations
– Reintegration trough social practice
• 5.3 Rejecting the DDRR program
• 5.4 Formal and informal reintegration
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5.1 Fieldwork
• Three months in Voinjama (Lofa County)
• Describing how ‘ex-combatants’ explore
different trajectories rather than evaluating the
reintegration process
• Focus on experience
• Registration of personal stories
– Formal and informal interviews
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5.2 Complex social reality
• ‘Ex-combatants’ = ‘Community of experience’
• Break down of (combatant) social relation?
– Relation with former commander to come to
reintegration
– ‘ex-combatants’ look out for each other
– Meeting place = ‘the shop’ aka ‘the ghetto’
• Where past, present and future meet
• A “place of love”
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5.2 Complex social reality:
Relations with former commander
• Former commanders are
involved with local NGO’s
to reach out to the ‘excombatants’ to engage in
reintegration programs
• “he is a good man, when
you are vex, he can talk to
you and calm you down. If
you have a problem he
would call you and ask you
‘wa happen’ and help you”
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5.2 Complex social reality:
‘Ex-combatants’ look out for each
other
• ‘ex-combatants’ rely on
each other for economic
and personal help
• “If I have something
today, I will share it
with my friends; if my
friends have something
tomorrow, they will
share it with me”
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5.2 Complex social reality:
‘The Shop’ (insiders) aka ‘the Ghetto’
(outsiders)
• Shop: food, alcohol and
drugs for sale
• Public = male and ‘excombatant’
• Discussions about their past,
reintegration, the future,
marginalization, exclusion
and politics
• By outsiders considered as
obstacle to achieve
reintegration
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5.3 Rejecting the DDRR program
• Story of ‘an ex-combatant’:
– Scar from bullet wound = personal ID-card
– Lack of trust in the government
• “former commanders live in big houses and forgot about
those who fought at their side during the conflict”
• DDRR programs only send you “from one workshop to
another”
– Job as security guard for an international NGO
– Key player in the local football team
• Reintegration by exploring his own trajectory
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5.4 Formal & informal reintegration
• Registered as ‘ex-combatants’: ID-card
• No consensus about their position in society:
– Label = help
• “it’s a good thing because […] after giving my weapon to them,
they gave me an ID-card and small money, it can help me with my
future”
– Label = stigma
• “they think of us as bad people but we are not like that. When the
war came, there are two things you can do, run or fight. They killed
my parents, that’s when I decided to pick up arms. I had no one to
support me. […] But I am not a bad person”
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6. Conclusions
• Complex social reality
– Regard broader social context
– Diversity as the norm rather than the exception
– Stress on a field motion: dynamic and open for
renegotiation
• Reintegration = process
– Becoming as well as being
– Dynamics ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ always
intertwined
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