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    Canadian Political Science Association
    2020 Annual Conference Programme

    Confronting Political Divides
    Hosted at Western University
    Tuesday, June 2 to Thursday, June 4, 2020
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    Presidential Address:
    Barbara Arneil, CPSA President

    Origins:
    Colonies and Statistics

    Location:
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 05:00pm to 06:00pm
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    KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
    Ayelet Shachar
    The Shifting Border:
    Legal Cartographies of Migration
    and Mobility

    Location:
    June 04, 2020 | 01:30 to 03:00 pm
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    Keynote Speaker: Marc Hetherington
    Why Modern Elections
    Feel Like a Matter of
    Life and Death

    Location:
    Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 03:45pm to 05:15pm
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    Plenary Panel
    Indigenous Politics and
    the Problem of Canadian
    Political Science

    Location: Arts & Humanities Building - AHB 1R40
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 10:30am to 12:00pm

CPSA/ISA-Canada section on International Relations



C12(a) - Post-War Reconstruction, Peacebuilding and Internationalism in Africa

Date: Jun 3 | Time: 02:00pm to 03:30pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Thomas Tieku (King's University College)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Thomas Tieku (King's University College)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Karolina Werner (Independent Scholar)

A Comprehensive Refugee Response? Assessing the Translation of Global Commitments into National Policy Priorities in Kenya and Tanzania: Blake Barkley (Carleton University)
Abstract: The Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2016. The CRRF has been heralded as a significant milestone in improving refugee governance worldwide because of its focus on enhancing the self-reliance of refugee populations, advocating for durable solutions to protracted refugee situations, and improving responses to emergency situations. While this is an ambitious agenda for the international community, the CRRF has not been universally adopted nor has its application been uniform between signatory states. As such, I draw on examples from major refugee hosting states in the global South that exist on either side of the CRRF divide to explain the strategies used to pursue individual national agendas regarding asylum and refugee governance. The cases of Kenya and Tanzania highlight two of the divergent approaches to refugee governance that have emerged since the adoption of the CRRF as a central pillar of the international refugee regime. A most-similar case design and semi-structured key-informant interviews are used analyze the divergent outcomes in refugee governance between two major actors in East Africa. The Kenyan government’s official endorsement of the CRRF is starkly contrasted with Tanzania’s abrupt withdrawal from the CRRF in January 2018. This paper argues that high-level political changes have resulted in a significant reorganization and redistribution of elite interests and decision-making authority, leading to subsequent shift(s) in local- and national-level engagement with the international refugee regime.


The Peacebuilding Fund and Post-war Economic Reform: Understanding the Relationship Between WPS, Land Rights and Extractive Economies in Liberia: Maria Martin de Almagro (Université de Montréal)
Abstract: Although scholarship on the implementation of WPS agenda in post-conflict contexts has been very prolific (McLeod 2013; Ryan and Basini 2016; Martin de Almagro 2018), there has been almost no focus on how the implementation of the agenda affects and is affected by post-war economies and international developmental policies (Duncanson 2018). This is all the more surprising since economic inequalities and access to natural resources are one of the main causes of conflict, and peace agreements often include provisions on the need to reform formal and customary land tenure. Furthermore, according to the Global Study on the Women, Peace and Security agenda, national reconciliation and transitional justice projects that focus on socio-economic injustices can have important implications in the transformation of gender relations in post-conflict societies. This paper seeks to address this gap by looking at how projects on national reconciliation and land rights in Liberia funded by the Peacebuilding Fund understand the role of women as both, participants in negotiation of concession deals and land exploitation, and as victims of structural inequalities and unfavourable customary law. Based on 30 semi-structured interviews carried out in Monrovia in November 2018 and document analysis, the paper argues that first, Peacebuilding Fund projects are sites where the WPS agenda can act as a tool to improve women’s access to land and natural resources; and second, that a detailed analysis of these projects can also give us hints about which women benefit from the implementation of the agenda in post-war economies and how.


The ICC: African Activism or Complex (neo)Colonialism?: Sarah Nimigan (University of Western Ontario)
Abstract: The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established by consensus negotiation in Rome on July 1, 1998. Since its implementation in 2001, the ICC has been heavily criticized on numerous bases, including its hyper-focus on Africans and African situations (cases). To be sure, the ICC has convicted only four individuals of international crimes, and four others have been acquitted – all of which are African. In and of itself, this reality lends to a (neo)colonial framing of the Africa-ICC relationship: the ICC sits in The Hague and is enmeshed in longstanding civil and common law principles emanating from the West, or else minimally from the global North. Based on its track record, it is logical to conclude that the ICC is a Western-driven institution which only targets Africans. However, this paper highlights the significant African activism that contributed to the establishment of the Rome Statute and by extension, the ICC. Emphasizing African agency and activism shifts the narrative from one of (neo)colonialism to one of active agency over a global international criminal justice movement. The African experience of apartheid in South Africa and genocide in Rwanda informed the desire to establish criminal justice mechanisms to prevent the repetition of such acts on the continent or elsewhere. While the expressions of ‘justice’ that emerge from the ICC are subject to fair criticism, the African vision of international criminal justice and commitment to the norms that undergird it deserve concerted attention and exploration in the discourse.


Participatory Peacebuilding or Statebuilding in Disguise?: Overlapping Authority Systems and Institutional Friction in Ghana’s Infrastructure for Peace: Eric Tanguay (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Abstract: Infrastructures for peace (I4P)— multilevel institutional mechanisms intended to collaboratively mobilize a host of state, nonstate and international actors in order to strengthen pre-existing domestic platforms for mediation and dialogue—have been widely hailed as a means to more effectively connect international peacebuilding to the local level, and thereby to promote organic and sustainable forms of conflict resolution. An analysis of the composition and functioning of Ghana’s I4P, however, exposes a significant disconnect between this optimistic rhetoric and policy realities. Ghana’s National Peace Council (NPC)—an oft-cited template for the successful institutionalization of I4P—has concentrated its activities predominantly at the national sphere through the promotion of peaceful elections, while struggling to meaningfully engage with local conflict-affected communities. Based on six months of fieldwork conducted in Ghana since 2018, this paper will identify the factors which have impeded the NPC’s relationship with the subnational stakeholders it has been mandated to coordinate with. The paper contends that the NPC’s interaction with civil society organizations, traditional authorities, and local security forces has been characterized more frequently by exclusion and competition than inclusivity and collaboration, due in large part to the historically overlapping logics of order and fragmented authority systems evident in postcolonial hybrid political contexts such as Ghana. By examining the ways in which the NPC has interacted with and impacted these local actors, this paper interrogates the extent to which peace infrastructures can genuinely represent a more people-centered approach to peacebuilding at the micro-level despite their formal institutionalization within the state.




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