Suchergebnisse

This paper provides a case study of the politics and practices of family planning (FP) in the province of South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It is underpinned by research exploring the use (and non-use) of family planning services (FPSs) by women and men of reproductive age and young people, via 40 face-to-face one-to-one interviews and six focus-group discussions, along with five focus-group discussions with healthcare employees in various health centres and Panzi Hospital in Bukavu city. Thirty-one qualitative face-to-face interviews and meetings were conducted with policymakers and service providers from the government, churches and international agencies. Furthermore, the research explores education services for young people on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and the actions that government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have taken to increase the demand for FPSs.

__Purpose:__ When a major landslide and floods devastated Freetown, Sierra Leone had just overcome the Ebola crisis, which had left its mark on socio-political relations between different disaster response actors. With international disaster response frameworks increasingly shifting to local ownership, the national government was expected to assume a coordinating role. However, in "post-conflict" settings such as Sierra Leone, intra-state and state–society relations are continuously being renegotiated. This study aimed to uncover the complexities of state-led disaster response in hybrid governance setting at national and community levels in the response to the 2017 landslide and floods. __Design/methodology/approach:__ During the four months of fieldwork in Freetown in 2017, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with various state, aid and societal actors were conducted. __Findings:__ The findings show that a response to policy building on the idea of a uniform state response did not take into account intra-state power politics or the complexity of Sierra Leone's hybrid governance. __Practical implications:__ This paper argues for a more nuanced debate in humanitarian governance and practice on the localisation of aid in post-conflict and fragile settings. __Originality/value:__ The study's findings contribute to the literature on the disaster–conflict nexus, identifying paradoxes of localised disaster response in an environment with strong national–local tensions. The study highlights intra-local state dynamics that are usually overlooked but have a great impact on the legitimacy of different state authorities in disaster response.

Inequality and conflict in Sri Lanka have frequently been analyzed along ethnic lines. However, many scholars have stressed the importance of other dimensions of identity, such as gender, caste and class, in studying social tension. This study uses intersectionality theory to examine how a combination of the social categories of gender, race, ethnicity and location creates structural inequality. This article draws upon in-depth research on Muslim, Tamil, Sinhalese and indigenous/Veder women who catch and market fish in the conflict-affected eastern district of Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. The focus was on intra-group differences among these women and the different sources of power they use to subvert existing power structures. Although multiple inequalities affected the respondents' daily lives and participation in activities, they were not passive victims; they used their own agency to negotiate for their livelihoods. Nevertheless, the women who comprise the focus of this study appeared to be completely invisible to government fisheries management bodies. The lack

Since the early 2000s, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the international community have initiated a reform process in the artisanal mining sector to break the linkages between mineral extraction and violent conflict. Research on the reforms reaches different conclusions about their impact on conflict, governance and livelihoods, and usually focuses on one aspect of the reforms, accepting the objectives of the policy at face value. This discourse analysis of the objectives of reform policies aims to understand how they represent the problem, the solutions they envision and their proposed plans. The study applied the method of interpretive policy analysis to four policy documents originating from 2010 to 2012: the UN Group of Experts report, the Dodd– Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas, and the ICGLR Regional Certification Mechanism Manual. The study finds that the policies hinge on two seemingly commensurate objectives, varying between conflict-free sourcing and promoting peace. We find that, in reality, these objectives may not align. We also find that much reform practice is geared towards conflict-free sourcing, and is far less appropriate for promoting peace. This includes the tendency to implement the policies in conflict-free zones, their narrow scope, the reliance on the government and their indifference to the impact of the reforms for poor miners. The findings suggest that exercising due diligence has become a goal in itself. This raises the question of whether giving buyers a clear conscience and developing a traceable and conflict-free product has received more prominence than has contributing to improving the situation of the Congolese population.

Policy discourse on private sector development in fragile states has started attributing great importance to domestic entrepreneurship. This chapter follows Dutch initiatives to support entrepreneurs in South Sudan between 2009 and 2015. Despite the rhetoric, support for entrepreneurs did not materialise. Donor representatives refer to a lack of small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurial skills as prime reasons. Our research reveals that in practice, the apolitical interventionist rationale characterising donor support in South Sudan conflicts with the politicised nature of the private sector. In fact, interventions side-line domestic entrepreneurship, reinforcing an image of a 'missing middle' and diverting attention to international firms as 'capacity builders'.

Reforming artisanal mining has a pivotal role in breaking the linkages between mining and conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One specific measure has been the creation of mining cooperatives meant to represent mineworkers in their interaction with mining companies. This ethnographic study undertaken in 2013/2014 in northern Katanga examined how cooperatives function and interact with existing institutions and 'big men' involved in the mining business. We found that cooperatives were top-down creations that overlooked the influence of 'big men' in the process of institutional formation. The study suggests that new initiatives like the mining cooperatives should be based on knowledge of the actual situation and grounded in existing institutions.

This thematic issue aims at unravelling how the global consensus towards a shift to risk reduction and inclusive disaster governance evolves in everyday governance practices, where roles and responsibilities are evolving and negotiated, permeated by politics of power and legitimacy. It identifies three different dimensions of disaster governance. The first is the formal dimension: the way governance arrangements are designed or meant to work. The second is 'real' governance: the way in which formal governance arrangements manifest and evolve in actual practice. The third is invisible governance: an amalgam of household and neighbourhood-level activities and networks for disaster response that happen outside of the gaze of the formalized governance arrangements. The 21 articles in this issue address the politics of governance based on thorough empirical work, while theoretically contributing to several themes relating to the politics of disaster governance. The outcomes of the thematic issue are: 1) The three governance dimensions are useful to reveal what the roles and room for manoeuvre is of different actors, including governments, international community, experts, non-state actors and affected communities; 2) Technical solutions for risk reduction and disaster response crucially rely on socio-technical, political, and administrative systems and processes and hence need to be adjusted to the specific context; and 3) The political nature of disaster governance calls for a deeper understanding to advance accountability to affected populations.

Working paper 76. Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium, London, Overseas Development Institute. ; The United Nations' Agenda 2030 aims to achieve gender equality as part of the 5th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Yet, the way to reach this goal remains under-researched – particularly in rural, conflict-affected communities in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This paper uses the donorfunded, community-driven reconstruction programme 'Tuungane' as the foundation on which to analyse changes in gender norms in the context of a 'hybrid social order', defined as the interplay between 'modern' norms (state and non-governmental institutions); religious (church institutions) and traditional (institutions based on customary law).

This article aims to rekindle the debate on the politics of aid in the increasingly common – yet still under-studied – authoritarian and low-intensity conflict settings, detailing the case of Ethiopia in 2016, when a 50-year drought coincided with a wave of protests and a state of emergency. During four months of qualitative fieldwork in 2017, state, civil society, Ethiopian and international actors were approached – from humanitarian headquarters to communities in the Amhara, Oromiya and Somali regions. Research participants relayed stark discrepancies between the humanitarian theatre's 'frontstage', where disaster responders showcase an exemplary response, and its 'backstage', where they remove their frontstage masks and reflect on the information, the decision-making monopoly of the state and the intrusion of conflict dynamics into the humanitarian response. In humanitarian research and in policy, a collective conversation is necessary on where to draw the line between respect for governments' sovereignty and the intrusion of humanitarian principles.

A lack of accountability is often considered a root cause of conflict. Many post-conflict reconstruction efforts therefore aim to enhance accountability between authorities and the population through community-driven reconstruction (CDR) programmes. This article examines the details of the accountability mechanisms in the Tushiriki CDR programme in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Based on ethnographic research, we found little impact of formal programme accountability. Rather, accountability was shaped differently and had its own context-specific meaning. To make accountability more sustainable, stronger embeddedness in local institutions and more appropriate translations of abstract concepts into the local context are needed.

This article discusses the discourse and practice of co-governance in disaster risk reduction (DRR). It is based on an extensive ethnographic study of DRR at global level and in two disaster-prone countries in Southeast Asia: Indonesia and Myanmar. These country cases were selected not only because of their similarly high vulnerability to disasters, but also because the overlaps and differences between them in disaster governance allowed for a comparative study of the impacts of co-governance in DRR. Indonesia is characterised by a longer history with democratic governance institutions and a largely national-led response to disasters; Myanmar has only started to develop DRR in the last 10 years, and its policies are still largely led by international actors. In both countries, disaster response has shifted from being top-down and state-centred to following a co-governance approach. This reflects a worldwide trend in DRR, the idea being that co-governance, where different state and non-state stakeholders are involved in governance networks, will lead to more inclusive and effective DRR. Our findings suggest that, in Myanmar and Indonesia, DRR has indeed become more inclusive. However, at the same time, we find that DRR in both countries has remained highly hierarchical and state-centred. Although the possible gains of encouraging future initiatives among different actors negotiating disaster response is under-explored, we find that, to date, the multiplication of actors involved in DRR, especially within the state, has led to an increasingly complex, competitive system that negatively affects the ability to conduct DRR.