The African Social Forum was born out of the larger World Social Forum, which provides an annual open meeting place where groups and movements of civil society come together to dialogue and network towards collaborative action. The Third African Social Forum (ASF) took place in Lusaka, Zambia in mid-December 2004. This report includes notes and analysis of the African Social Forum and provides reflection s on emerging social movements in Africa.
The legal definition of GENOCIDE: The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Article II describes the two elements that constitute the crime of genocide: The mental element , meaning the " intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such", and The physical element , which includes five types of violence described in sections [a] though [e] as follows: [a] Killing members of the group; [b] Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; [c] Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; [d] Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [e] Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
On Sunday, January 9, African leaders and world diplomats will gather in Nairobi, Kenya to witness the signing of an historic peace deal intended to end Africa's longest-running civil war. This conflict between the Sudanese government in the north and the Sudan People's Liberation Army /Movement (SPLA/M) in southern Sudan has raged for m o re than two decades. Sunday's signing ceremony marks the culmination of two years of form al peace talks and many years of periodic negotiations, sustained by regional and international diplomacy. The signing of this peace deal could mark an historic moment for Sudan, by bringing to an end decades of violence and devastation in Africa's largest country. It could similarly mark an important moment for the entire African continent. However, this peace agreement does not cover the ongoing conflict in Darfur, western Sudan, where the Sudanese government continues to wage a campaign of genocide against civilians from three ethnic groups. Over the past two years, up to 400,000 people have died, and 2 million more have been made homeless in Darfur as a consequence resulting in what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The paper explains the evolution of India's software industry. Domestic entrepreneurship emerges as the key factor for origination, survival and innovation in a hostile industrial policy environment. The maturing of the industry required a shift to a supportive government policy; maturation was also critically enabled by the modularization of the programming function through new technologies. These changes favored domestic firms that provided programming services. Later policy and technological changes induced transnational entry and led to higher value-added output. The paper shows that technologically sophisticated industries can develop even when many conditions typically present elsewhere are missing. We provide conditions under which this may happen and show their effect on subsequent developments.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This paper concerns the paradox of democratization in South Korea, whose progression has been entwined with neoliberal capitalism beginning in the 1990s. There have been critical moments of democratization since the military rulers gave in to popular pressure for democratization. These moments range from the recommencement of the popular electoral system in the Presidential election in 1987 to the transfer of the state power to civilian leaders, and the participation of former dissidents in the parliament and the administration. A particular form of democratization addressed in this paper is not electoral state politics but the broad-reaching initiatives to transform the relationship between the state and society. Specifically, I examine the initiative to rewrite colonial and cold-war history. This particular initiative is part of an effort to correct a longstanding tendency of previous military regimes that suppressed the resolution of colonial legacies and framed Korean national history within an ideological confrontation of capitalist South Korea and communist North Korea.
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The late Michael Leifer's association with an insecurity-focused realist approach to international affairs and his work on Southeast Asian regionalism inspire this question: How have the Asian financial crisis and the 'war on terror' affected the plausibility of insecurity-concerned realism compared with other ways of approaching regionalism in Southeast Asia?
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The role of subnational units (states, provinces, cantons, Lander) in international affairs is a growing subject in the literature on federalist affairs. Scholars of political science have traditionally seen the conduct of foreign policy as the exclusive domain of the national government. This would seem an especially apt observation about India's federalist system. The Indian constitution has given the center particularly strong powers—so strong, in fact, that some have described it as “quasi federal” because of the lack of autonomy it affords to the states. Yet, there is an increasing consensus that the states have not been shy of foreign policy advocacy. Some have argued that the era of coalition governance has increased such advocacy and, potentially, influence, especially in the context of globalization and economic reform and liberalization.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Government
Few issues matter more to public health, economic opportunity, and environmental integrity than the availability of clean water and sanitation. With the 4th World Water Forum scheduled for Mexico City in March 2006, the Aspen Institute and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University conducted a multistakeholder dialogue to help highlight the importance of global water issues, suggest steps to provide services more rapidly and effectively, and to identify and draw attention to constructive ways the US government and other US participants can take part in the Forum.
Topic:
Development, Environment, Government, and Human Welfare
The notion that a person can turn a dream into a small business by applying healthy doses of ingenuity, elbow grease and grit has resonated with Americans from the earliest days of this nation. Indeed, there is something so intrinsically appealing about that scenario that more than 22 million Americans are small business owners today—including some 20 million who operate "micro"—or very small—enterprises.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Environment, and Industrial Policy
The American media have always been intimately connected with American public life. The newspapers of the colonial era helped generate public support for the idea of separation from England and the creation of a democratic state. The newspapers of the 19th century fed the urbanized public life of a young industrializing nation. The media of the 20th century reflected the national and international political and social movements of their era.