Re: Masters Research Student from Cameroon

[David Carment]

Margaret - many thanks for your comments. You will find additional information here: www.carleton.ca/cifp and here: http://earlywarning.wordpress.com/

I am ccing my colleagues who work in the area and who might be able to assist with any specific questions you might have. I do think there were a number of monitoring initiatives regarding land tenure, ethnic identity and related political issues that indicated imminent conflict in Kenya.

The author who writes for Ghanaweb has covered this issue as well.. You might contact him.

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID=182013



Please feel free to direct your questions to those in these working groups noted above  and be sure to check out Patrick Meier's website.

Sincerely

David Carment


05:15 AM 7/6/2010, margaret FOMINYEN wrote:

Dear Sir,

It with a lot of pleasure that I send this mail.

I am a student from the Protestant University of Central Africa, studying a Masters program on Peace and Development. I am presently conducting my academic research in the area of Early Warning and Conflict Prevention, looking at the role of some African Religious Practices.

Your repertoire is simply amazing and most especially your works - "Conflict Prevention: Path to Peace or Grand Illusion?" and "Conflict Prevention From Rhetoric to Reality," Volumes 1 & 2, has been very inspiring. Not to mention your online publications, Early Warning and Conflict Prevention: Problems, Pitfalls and Avenues for Success and Building Conflict Prevention Capacity: Methods, Experience, Needs, among others. I would really like to discuss my work with you and hopefully gain some inspiring insight and direction at your convenience sir.

This university is based in Cameroon, which could be said is at the heart of central Africa, presently ravaged by internal ethnic conflicts. The aim is to train professionals who would seek home-based solutions to African conflicts. I presently have a dilemma between Conflict Prevention and Conflict Transformation. I chose the aspect of Conflict Prevention in light with the need to control latent conflicts before the escalated. This was in line with the notion that prevention is better than cure, especially where African countries were involved. Plus I was further motivated by the violence that erupted during the 2008 Kenyan elections not to mention the February 2008 crisis in Cameroon. This had me wondering about the effectiveness of the Early warning systems and Conflict Prevention mechanisms. So I asked myself these questions: Had there not been any indicators to notify this violent outbreak in Kenya which led to the death of many? Is the 2008 crisis in Cameroon amongst other indicators not accelerators to an imminent violent conflict in the near future? And why do most peace agreements dissolve to give way to conflict re-escalation in Africa? Is it not time to delve within the African perspectives and practices to seek further solutions to these conflicts?

On the other side, I thought of assessing African traditional practices rather as a process of Conflict Transformation because I thought this concept somehow embodied all the other concepts (prevention, resolution and even management). CT is all about change, as well as a continuous process targeting durable peace. This was also in regards to the fact that not all conflict was negative and the process of transformation was not limited to violent conflict, but targets the root causes all the way to resolving existing conflicts before the degenerated.

My analysis are not conclusive, but tentative....that is why I would like to be enlightened some more on these concepts by discussing some of the main ideas running through some of your works for a better clarification. I  noted on your webpage, that your most recent works focused on developing failed state risk assessment and early warning methodologies and evaluating models of third party intervention. It would be an honor to get some of this knowledge from you.

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Fominyen

David Carment
Professor of International Affairs,
CDFAI Fellow  and Editor  Canadian Foreign Policy
www.cdfai.org
www.carleton.ca/cifp
www.carleton.ca/cfpj
www.carleton.ca/~dcarment