Analyses the involvement of the agro-pastoral al-Hakkamat Baggara women of Darfur in Sudan's recent civil wars and the implications of this for conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

This report presents elements of the development of Sudanese women’s political participation through time. It highlights several political routes from their early days until the contemporary era. The study is based on an analysis of secondary sources alongside empirical data derived from four states within Sudan, namely: Blue Nile, Central Darfur, Kassala and River Nile. Different themes are explored and they include: the meanings of political participation, women’s leadership roles, identifying structural limitations that hinder the participation of women in politics, possible avenues for women’s participation, the presence of women in politics, variations in religious interpretations and their impact on political participation, the status of the Sudanese constitution and the views of women and men on the extent that women might advance in the next elections. The report also address how the December revolution of 2018 might improve the situation for women’s political participation, since it marks a break from the earlier practices of the Islamist regime that had a severe negative impact on the freedoms of Sudanese women and their ability to engage in political activities. Political parties are considered gatekeepers for women’s access to political positions of power as they play an important role in institutionalizing women’s inclusion in politics. Ensuring that political parties in Sudan play an active role in the advancement of gender equality and the enhancement of women’s political participation is particularly important as Sudan prepares for its transition to democracy.

This book addresses the largely neglected place of women defendants in contemporary international criminal law, beyond the construction of women as victims, and asks what the analysis of women perpetrators, defendants and suspects reveals about international criminal law, the media and feminism. The book uses the topic of women perpetrators, defendants and suspects as a way to explore the concept of legal subjectivity via a gender analysis. It highlights how women perpetrators, defendants and suspects are constituted through three spheres, namely the areas of international criminal law, the media and feminism. In examining the relationship between women perpetrators, defendants and suspects and each of these spheres, the book exposes embedded gender biases and structural gender fractures. These reveal that problematic assumptions about how gender operates in conflict are embedded in the very foundations of legal imaginations. Ultimately, the book argues that this has far reaching consequences, beyond its impact on current understandings of armed conflict. Rather, these assumptions should be a concern for us all, even in times of peace. This book will be of use to legal academics and practitioners interested in gender within international criminal law, as well as those concerned with contemporary feminist approaches to law.

Analyses the structural and institutional obstacles to democratization in transitional societies - fractured societies, fragmented economies and institutions of governance, weak or deformed state structures - and how to overcome these.

A unique historical and linguistic resource for those in anthropology, art, folklore, history, linguistics, literature, psychology, religion, sociology, and environmental studies, as well as performers and poets. Not simply relics of the past, proverbs are an oral tradition containing historical and anthropological knowledge missing from conventional sources, and as micro-histories, provide a valuable source for the reconstruction of the manners, characteristics, and worldviews of societies. While only a few hundred Kamba proverbs have ever appeared in print, thousands have circulated over time, from the monsoon exchange era of the Roman Empire through the advent of Islam, European imperialism and colonialism to independence. Today, a resurgence of interest in the form has been generated via social media, songs and vernacular radio programmes. This book provides the first, comprehensive collection of Kamba proverbs from Eastern Kenya in their original Kĩkamba language and in translation. Analysing 2,000 proverbs drawn from oral interviews, archival collections, museum artefacts and published sources, the author traces the origins of each and explores their meaning, interpretation and use. Covering a diverse range of subjects that ranges from plants, animals, birds and insects, to weather, land, the roles of men and women, cosmology, ritual and belief, healing, trade, politics and peacemaking, the book offers new insights into Kenya's rural world and the expansion of Kamba society, East African history, language and culture of vital significance for the social sciences. A valuable comparative work for societal change elsewhere in Africa and beyond, the book also suggests an innovative, alternative approach to the study of the African past.

Finalist for the African Studies Association's 2021 Best Book Prize. Explores the limits of law in changing unequal land relations in Kenya.

A compelling exploration of one of the most ill-advised and calamitous interventions in colonial development history.

This first academic study of the history of modern sports in Ethiopia during the imperial rule of the 20th century argues that modern sports offers new possibilities to explore the meanings of modernity in Africa. Providing an in-depth analysis of the role of sports in modern educational institutions, volunteer organizations, and urbanization processes, the author shows how agents, ideas and practices linked societal improvement and bodily improvement.

In October 2016, the Ethiopian administration declared a State of Emergency in response to anti-Government demonstrations and mass riots. Officially said to result from subversive activities channelled from Eritrea, Egypt and diasporic populations in the West, the evidence in fact suggests that the riots stemmed from widespread internal dissatisfaction. Large-scale land dispossessions following bilateral deals with transnational agribusiness, damming of major rivers, construction of sugar estates and industry parks as well as urban sprawl have put pressure on agricultural and rural areas. Today, displacement, drought and widening inequalities surround fears of severe food shortages and political instability. Drawing on informant testimonies, court archives, field reports and other sources, the author examines these developments in Ethiopia's lake region. He shows how transformations over time in spatial politics, state-society relations and the organization of production and exchange have influenced the situation today, and reveals the impact of these changes on a population of smallholder farmers for which agriculture is not only the mainstay of the national economy but a way of life. Getnet Bekele is Associate Professor of History at Oakland University, MI, where he teaches African History and the Environmental and Economic History of Africa and the Global South.

For all the effort and attention women across the Global South receive from the international human rights community and from their own governments, human rights frameworks frequently fail to significantly improve the lives of these women or their communities. Taking Kenya as a case study, this book explores the reasons for this, emphasising the need to understand the effects of the legacy of local colonial and postcolonial histories on the production of gendered identities and power in modern Kenyan cultural and political life. Drawing on interviews with women in Nairobi and rural areas around Lake Victoria in Kenya, the author examinestheir access to, and experiences of, civil and political rights and citizenship, beginning with the colonial encounter, following these legacies into modern times, and the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution. In four thematic chapters, Kenny discusses women as victims and objects of cultural violence, the myths of the sorority of African women, women as victims of political and state violence, and women as actors in national political processes. In revealing that international human rights interventions have in fact reproduced the very patterns, structures, and hierarchies which are at the core of women's disenfranchisement and marginalization, the book provides new insights into the difficulties women face in accessing their rights and will be invaluable for scholars and NGOs working in developing states. Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa.