UNAMID and the Legitimation of Global-Regional Peacekeeping Cooperation: Partnership and Friction in UN-AU Relations

ABSTRACT

The ‘hybrid' United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was initially hailed as a model for peacekeeping cooperation between the UN and African regional organizations. However, UNAMID soon faced contestation from different stakeholders, and the UN and the AU have now essentially abandoned the hybrid approach. The article reconstructs how the mission’s deteriorating legitimacy relates to changing self-legitimation strategies by the two organizations. The UN and the AU pursued mutual legitimation when establishing UNAMID, but later mobilized historical narratives and diverging normative standards to promote competing authority claims. The article thus advances an understanding of inter-organizational relations as inherently political.     

韩国金钱债权执行制度概述

在韩国,对金钱债权1的执行主要分为两个阶段,即对债权的押留阶段和现金化阶段。在金钱债权的押留阶段,韩国主要利用押留命令限制第三债务人对债务人清偿,同时禁止债务人对该债权的处分和领受。在金钱债权的现金化阶段,韩国主要利用推寻命令和转付命令对被押留债权进行现金化,将被押留债权转化为金钱,用所得价款清偿执行债务人的债务。我们需要利用比较研究的方法,研究和借鉴韩国关于金钱债权执行制度的法律规定和相关实务经验,不断完善我国关于债权执行制度的相关规定。     

Antiforeigner Resentment as a Manifestation of Xhosa Hegemonic Masculinity

Abstract

During a xenophobia and social cohesion research project conducted by the Safety and Violence Initiative (SaVI) of the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Freedom House USA, researchers found an overwhelming perception that foreign nationals were taking things that belong to South Africans. This perception was most prevalent in the male population, and antiforeigner resentment was mainly aimed toward male foreign nationals. This paper uses ethnographic research in the form of qualitative interviews from Motherwell and Makhanda in the Eastern Cape province to find out how constructions of hegemonic masculinities at the local level contribute to antiforeigner resentment.     

南海航道安全保障法律机制有效性与局限性研究

为了应对海上航道安全威胁，南海各方经过努力形成了航道安全保障法律机制。该机制具有一定有效性，但也存在许多局限性，如合作机制的软法性导致遵约和履约行为的非拘束性、合作机制固有的妥协性与弱惩戒性损害其权威性、合作机制的原则性影响权利义务的确定性、合作机制的独立性受限于国际势力干预性，以及合作机制的公共物品属性影响其实效性。这些局限需要南海各方协同以破解制度困境：构建软硬法有机联系的合作法律机制；完善航道安全保障法律机制的内在构成要素；协同努力确保合作法律机制的独立性；强化南海各方有效合作的“选择性诱因”机制。     

Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper: Deconstruction and Critique

The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper identifies major themes and recommends preferred strategies in Australia’s engagement with the world. These themes and strategies relate to geopolitics, economics and the ‘new international agenda’; there is also a more specific focus on Australia’s Pacific island neighbours and Timor-Leste. There is a strong emphasis on perceived Australian national interests throughout the document. The geopolitical discussion is primarily ‘realist’; economically the document is pro-globalisation; the discussion of the ‘new international agenda’ involves an Australian-oriented pragmatism; there is an assertion of Australian leadership in the South Pacific. With some minor criticism, Labor has accepted the general direction advocated in the White Paper. The document is thus indicative of the likely future direction of Australian foreign policy. Lack of US response indicates declining US engagement with Australia and the Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific region. China, as the other major power highly significant for Australia, has been low-key in its criticisms.     

The spaces of intervention for Mali and Guinea-Bissau

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on interventions by the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States in Guinea-Bissau and Mali. In the literature, these are often approached in a ‘top-down’ manner, focusing on formal institutions, not accounting for the complex dynamics in and around conflict intervention. This article argues that adopting space as an analytical lens allows new ways to address these issues. It highlights how interventions by different actors and their interactions are influenced by spatial perceptions and framings, which result in the making of different ‘spaces of intervention’ through different practices. The two described here, ‘scaling’ and ‘establishing reach’, enable strategic and continuous formation and negotiation of spaces for action, according to actors’ needs and interests. Thus, shedding light on specific actors and their practices, the article contributes to a better understanding of the complex dynamics in conflict intervention in West Africa.     

Knowledge production on conflict early warning at the African Union

ABSTRACT

How does the African Union (AU) generate knowledge about on-going violent conflict as well as post-conflict situations? This article offers an analysis of the multiple sites and sources in the construction of conflict-related knowledge. It also reflects on the various institutional ways this knowledge is filtered into the activities of a wide range of AU actors, starting with the AU Commission, the AU Commission Chairperson and the Peace and Security Council. Emphasis is on the development of the Continental Early Warning System and some of its limitations, the latter partly related to the specific organisational culture of the African Union.     

Meeting Cheikh Anta Diop on the Road to African Resurgence

The African people's relentless struggle to tell their own stories and take charge of their own historical languages is a prerequisite for achieving an African Renaissance. This argument, informed by Afrocentricity—a theoretical framework which advances the view that any examination of African issues must be informed by African history and culture—takes its cue from the great Senegalese Pan-Africanist and African Renaissance advocate, Cheikh Anta Diop. The year 2018 marks 70 years since Diop, at a tender age of 25, wrote his essay When will we be able to speak of an African Renaissance? On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of this article, it is appropriate that the African Renaissance project advocates take a moment and deeply reflect on how they can take African scholarship to higher levels and intensify and consolidate the struggle to liberate Africa from being preoccupied with the Eurocentric trajectory of privileging Europe and Europeans in all aspects of life—the intellectual, political, cultural, social and material. This article argues that embracing Africology—the Afrocentric approach to scholarship—is the first step towards the liberation of a scholarship project. Diop dedicated his life to using sciences—both the natural and social sciences for the liberation of Africa and humankind—to liberate Africans from inferiority complex, and Europeans from superiority complex. Although Diop recognised both the importance of science and ideology in the service of humanity, he drew a line between them.     

Chick lit politics in a post-truth era: tricksters,blessees and postfeminist girlpower in Angela Makholwa’s The Blessed Girl

The possibility of an emancipated politics in chick lit novels remains a contested question among postfeminist critics. Drawing on definitions of postfeminism as a transnational sensibility, this article examines South African chick lit in relation to what has been termed post-truth or trickster politics in the context of the rise of politicians, such as Donald Trump. I read Angela Makholwa’s novel The Blessed Girl as an example of African chick lit that features a blessee narrator, a young woman who lives a luxurious lifestyle financed by older men, who is deeply influenced by a Trumpian mode of self-making. By employing a trickster aesthetic and narrative strategies, such as unreliable narration and reader address, the novel, I argue, however also unsettles established parameters of neoliberal girlpower, moving beyond its assumed anti-politicalness, as well as a simple understanding of the blessee figure through either a lens of victimhood or amorality.     

The limits of agency: Emily Hobhouse’s international activism and the politics of suffering

Abstract

This article pieces together the activism of the British welfare worker and feminist-pacifist Emily Hobhouse (1860–1926) during two largely unrecorded episodes of transnational activism: firstly, her ministry of Cornish miners in Virginia, Minnesota, in the United States; and secondly, her interventions during the period of reconstruction following the South African War (1899–1902). The article endeavors to contextualize Hobhouse’s activism and offer a broader understanding of the limitations and restraints on her actions. Ultimately, her activism required a platform that was in the gift of political actors and establishment figures, and dependent on fluctuations within specific political and bureaucratic situations. Based on close inspection of undocumented material in both South African and British archives, the article investigates Hobhouse’s repertoire of missionary and philanthropic roles within a wider context of humanitarian politics. It demonstrates how women’s activism and their behind-the-scenes politicking informed political decision-making in modern imperial and international affairs.