CMI Research by Geographical Region
The Middle East and Northern Africa
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Map: CMI projects on The Middle East and Northern Africa
| Projects |
Party Politics in Palestine: Hamas and the Politicization of Resistance
Start: Jan. 2010 (Current)
Keywords: Hamas, political Islam, political party
Geography: Palestine, Syria, Lebanon
This four-year research project will explain Hamas's transition from militant movement to political party, and through this provide a fuller understanding of Hamas’s current and past political behaviour. The project also aims to identify Hamas's most likely future political trajectories.
This is accomplished by studying Hamas within analytical frameworks provided by established party theories, focusing on their organizational makeup and institutional development, in addition to aims, goals, and ideological rigidity.
The project is based at the CMI, and carried out in collaboration with the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy (Muwatin). The project is led by Dr Are Knudsen (CMI) and include Dr Basem Ezbidi (Muwatin) together with PhD-candidate Frode Løvlie.
Forced Migrants, Human Rights and Lasting Peace
Start: Jan. 2010 (Current)
Keywords: forced migration, IDPs, refugees, peacebuilding
Geography: Lebanon, Cyprus, Afghanistan/Pakistsn
This three-year institute programme (IP) studies how human rights protection for forced migrants (refugees and internally displaced persons, IDPs) can help secure a lasting peace. To explore this research issue, this programme targets three types of forced migration, defined, in part, by the anatomy of the conflict that produced them and the context of their refugee/IDP existence: protracted (“warehoused”), in transit and in emergency. In the three country cases studied here (Lebanon, Cyprus, Pakistan/Afghanistan), the refugees/IDPs rights are a key element in any lasting settlement to the conflict:
- In Lebanon, about half of the country’s 250,000 Palestinian refugees live miserably in 12 refugee camps, lacking civil rights.
- In Cyprus communal conflict between the island’s Greek majority and Turkish minority led to the 1974 war and subsequent partition of the island. This led to internal displacement of 162 000 Greek Cypriots and 43 000 Turkish Cypriots leaving behind their homes and properties.
- Afghanistan has witnessed war since 1978, with over five million of the population seeking refuge in Pakistan and Iran during the 1980s.
The research programme is tied to institutional collaboration in host country institutes and benefits from institutional linkages and ongoing projects in the three countries funded by other sources.
Conflict and Co-existence in Lebanon
Start: Oct. 2009 (Current)
Keywords: Lebanon, post-conflict violence, peacebuilding
Geography: Lebanon
This research project examines fifty years of conflict and co-existence in Lebanon, beginning with the short 1958 civil war and ending with the May 2008 clashes in Beirut.
The project includes commissioned studies written by leading Lebanon-experts from France, UK, Canada and Lebanon to be followed by a workshop in Bergen in 2010. The papers and workshop will allow a wider examination of Lebanon’s recurring political violence. Thus, critical aspects the period 1958–2008 is examined in six commissioned papers covering: recurring "conflict events", foreign intervention, power-sharing, monopolising the use of force, the urbanisation of violence and impunity. The project has two main aims: to increase our understanding of recurring political violence in Lebanon and, through this, contribute to its prevention.
The project will be coordinated by Research director Are Knudsen (CMI) in collaboration with Dr Michael Kerr (Director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies and Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at King's College London).
Women and Peacebuilding in Sudan
Start: Apr. 2009 (Completed)
Keywords: Islamism, elite, grasroots, women, peacebuilding, state, civil society
Geography: Sudan
The different roles taken on by and given to women in a post-conflict transition period are likely to determine their future power. Participation in the various processes in a post-conflict transition, where power structures may be cemented, is important for the advancement of women. Preliminary research suggests that there seems to be a belief among the female Sudanese political elite that so long as women are included in political decision-making institutions, this will ensure legal reforms of their political, civil, and socio-economic rights from the elite level to the grassroots. Women's political participation is not only regarded as desirable but vital to the advancement of gender justice. The project raises two main questions:
- To what extent are Sudanese elite women's perceptions of gender justice unitary?
- To what extent do the Sudanese elite women represent grassroot women's priorities and attitudes?
The project is relevant for Norwegian development and peace building policies, which in recent years have taken on a strong focus on women and gender equality and -mainstreaming. A project such as the one presented here will provide insights that can become valuable tools both for governmental and non-governmental peacebuilding and development efforts. Such efforts need to be grounded in an understanding of which processes of gender constructions have taken place locally before international interventions began and how these processes continue to develop in cooperation with, but also in contradiction to, these interventions. By mapping and explaining local definitions of gender through contextual analyses and providing an understanding of social construction of gender roles, the project can contribute to creating better-informed interventions when it comes to improving the position of women in conflict and post-conflict situations.
Documentary film: Nahr el-Bared Talks Back
Start: Jan. 2008 (Completed)
Keywords: Forced migration, refugees, IDPs
Geography: Lebanon
Nahr el-Bared talks back
On 20th May 2007, fighting broke out between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and a new militia group calling itself Fatah al-Islam based in Nahr el-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli, North Lebanon. After 15-weeks of intense bombardment, the camp was reduced to rubble and more than 30,000 residents made homeless. Despite plans to rebuild the ruined camp, the displaced families live under dire conditions and face an uncertain future.
In Nahr el-Bared Talks Back the displaced refugees narrate the fearful story of the camp's destruction, the dangers of being under siege, their fateful escape from the camp and their hopes of one day to return. But most of all, Nahr el-Bared Talks Back is the tale of Palestinian families losing their most valuable assets - home and community - in the face of chronic uncertainty. Mixing original footage shot in the camp with the refugees' own voices, this film is the inside story of a humanitarian disaster that shocked Lebanon and made international headlines.
Film details: Documentary film, colour, 45 minutes, Arabic with English subtitles.
Directed by: Aidoun and CMI
Editor/edited by: Hashem Adnan, Bashar Younes
Produced at: RedLine - Seven Media House Beirut Ltd (2009)
Funded by: Global Moments in the Levant (GML) project with support from the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI).
For more details of the film and film trailer, see external website:
http://www.nahrelbaredfilm.org/
The MUWATIN agreement (phase 4)
Start: Dec. 2007 (Current)
Geography: Palestine
The Moderation of Islamist Movements
Start: Jan. 2007 (Current)
Keywords: Islamism, the state, political institutionalization, moderation
Geography: Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Sudan.
Religious Dialogue and Peace-Building in Sudan
Start: Dec. 2006 (Completed)
Keywords: Inter-religious dialouge, civil society, Islam, peace and conflict
Geography: Sudan
Violence in the post-conflict state
Start: Aug. 2006 (Current)
Keywords: peacebuilding, violence, armed conflict, post-war reconstruction
Geography: Africa: Angola, Democratic Rep. of Congo.
Asia: Afghanistan.
Middle East: Lebanon.
The ending of wars is often followed by continued or new forms of violence in the affected states. Such violence, whether associated with ex-combatants, organized crime, disaffected warlords, recriminating agents of the state or marginalized groups, seems widespread but poorly understood. The example of El Salvador is notorious: on average, more persons died a violent death in the first four years of peace than during the civil war itself.
This project aims to increase our theoretically informed knowledge about the causes, manifestations and scale of such violence, as well as patterns of transformation. How widespread is such post-war violence, and what forms does it take? Which conditions and strategies are likely to reduce post-war violence?
The project has three main aims:
- To establish a typological understanding of post-war violence;
- To explore "warlordism" as a constructed socio-political category, with a focus on Afghanistan and Lebanon; and
- To analyse incentive structures designed to reduce post-war violence, with a focus on Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway under its program Poverty and Peace. It is part of CMI's program on peacebuilding and entails collaboration between scholars from CMI, the London School of Economics and Political Science, King's College London and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo.
Papers:
Armed politics and political competition in Afghanistan
Antonio Giustozzi
Political Violence in Post-Taif Lebanon, 1989-2007
Are Knudsen & Nasser Yassin
More than a Shot to the Back of the Head: The Ugly Poetics of Violence in Post-Accord Guatemala
John-Andrew McNeish & Oscar López Rivera
Ingrid Samset
Patterns of violence in postwar Mozambique, Liberia and Sierra Leone
Torunn Wimpelmann
Politics of Faith
Start: Jan. 2006 (Current)
Keywords: Religion, the state, secularisation, political institutionalisation,political mobilization, development, religious revival, conflict, violence and peace.
Geography: Middle East and Northern Africa: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Sudan.
Asia: Indonesia and Pakistan
What is the impact of religion on democratization, development and conflict in the South?
This interdisciplinary research programme maps and explores the interconnected process of religious resurgence and political development in the South. By examining diverse religious traditions in politics and contemporary conflict across a number of states and societies, the programme attempts to establish a theoretical framework for understanding the force of religion in the developing world.
Corporate security responsibility? - corporate governance contributions to peace and security in zones of conflict
Hamas - the Islamic resistance movement
