Suchergebnisse

Des années 1980 au début des années 2000, le Liberia a été associé dans l'esprit de la plupart des observateurs à une situation inextricable de guerre, de désordre et de dévastation. De nombreux analystes ont vu dans le conflit qui touchait ce pays un exemple typique de ce que l'on a appelé une « nouvelle guerre », dans laquelle des milices se combattaient dans l'unique but de pouvoir mieux piller les ressources. S'il est évident que les motifs économiques ont été essentiels dans le développement de cette guerre pluri-décennale et des milices qui l'ont entretenue, on ne saurait néanmoins réduire à cette seule dimension le conflit libérien : des antagonismes et des oppositions ancrées dans une histoire plus longue ont en effet déterminé la naissance des milices et alimenté cette crise majeure.

AbstractBased on data from four different surveys – street children in Accra, Ghana; street children in Bamako, Mali; children and youth in alluvial‐diamond production in Kono district, Sierra Leone; and war‐affected children in Voinjama district, Liberia – this article analyzes how children and youth seek to use different economic strategies to shape their lives. In each of these cases, child labour is a consequence of poverty, steep school fees and the family need for the income that the children can earn. The results show school attendance among the children is low, and lowest among the street children and highest among the children in Voinjama who have recently returned after the war. All the children in this article live under difficult circumstances, but those working in the mines, or living a life as street children are particularly prone to respectively physical and mental stress. The type of labour performed in the alluvial diamond mines is extremely hard and repetitive. The life of a street child in West Africa is also very hard. It is a life that only the boldest and bravest will endure. The most fortunate ones are the returnee children in Voinjama. They have survived the Liberian civil war with their family or family‐related networks intact. The children in the study are not just passive victims of structures and actions they do not comprehend, but also people who try to adapt to a situation where education is less an option than it used to be. Faced with these constraints the children, either as miners or as street children, try to assume responsibility for their lives by the choice of the economic strategy that they are currently using. The study also indicates that efforts to support these groups should pay more attention to their lived realities of work and migration.

ABSTRACTLiberian ex-combatants are generally seen as uprooted urban youths with a history of unemployment, underemployment and idleness. The data that form the basis of this article suggest another picture. What caused the Liberian youth to fight were mainly security concerns, suggesting that the effects of 'idleness' and 'unemployment' are overstated with regards to people joining armed groups. They went to school, worked and lived with parents or close relatives prior to the war. They are not Mkandawire's (2002) uprooted urban youths or Abdullah's (1998) 'lumpens'. They lived quite ordinary Liberian lives, and based their decision on whether to join an armed group on the security predicament that they believed that they and their families were facing. This suggest that disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration and rehabilitation approaches are in need of re-thinking that links them more directly to social cohesion and societal security.

Introduction: conflict, land scarcity and tales of origin -- Autochthony, melancholy and uncertainty in contemporary African politics -- Liberia: civil war and the 'Mandingo question' -- Kenya: majimboism, indigenous land claims and electoral violence -- Democratic Republic of Congo: 'dead certainty' in North Kivu -- Côte d'Ivoire: production and the politics of belonging -- Conclusion.