"This is a study of the causes of poverty among the indigenous peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh - variously known as the Jumma people, the Paharis, or the Hill peoples. The work is based on research activities undertaken over 1998-2004, including several rounds of fieldwork in the CHT. The varied sites of fieldwork include Pahari village settlements, habitations of Bengali settlers, towns and urban centres, bazaars and market-places, the reserve forests, and the Kaptai lake and river networks." -- book cover.

The threat of climate displacement looms large over a growing number of countries. Based on the more than six years of work by Displacement Solutions in ten climate-affected countries, academic work on displacement and climate adaptation, and the country-level efforts of civil society groups in several frontline countries, this report explores the key contention that land will be at the core of any major strategy aimed at preventing and resolving climate displacement. This innovative and timely volume coordinated and edited by the Founder of Displacement Solutions, Scott Leckie, examines a range of legal, policy and practical issues relating to the role of land in actively addressing the displacement consequences of climate change. It reveals the inevitable truth that climate displacement is already underway and being tackled in countries such as Bangladesh, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and the United States, and proposes a series of possible land solution tools that can be employed to protect the rights of people and communities everywhere should they be forced to flee the places they call home.

This book explores the relationship between climate change–induced migration and conflict in Bangladesh – one of the most ecologically fragile countries in the world. It explores why people migrate from their original place of land and how the migration of people with a different background to an ethnically distinctive region due to environmental changes can become a source of conflict and violence between the host peoples and migrants. The volume focuses on the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), which has experienced long-standing ethnopolitical conflict due to the settlement and migration of the Bengali people from the plain land of Bangladesh. This settlement and migration were mainly caused climatic events such as floods, cyclones, sealevel rise, and disasters. It traces the history of the ethnic conflict in the region and presents key findings from the field, as well as the dynamics of everyday politics in the region. This volume also highlights how internally climate-displaced people generate violence and civil strife in the major urban cities through their settlements in slums. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of environmental studies, human geography, migration and diaspora studies, public policy, social anthropology, and South Asian studies.

This book engages with the concept, true value, and function of democracy in South Asia against the background of real social conditions for the promotion of peaceful development in the region. In the book, the issue of peaceful social development is defined as the conditions under which the maintenance of social order and social development is achieved – not by violent compulsion but through the negotiation of intentions or interests among members of society. The book assesses the issue of peaceful social development and demonstrates that the maintenance of such conditions for long periods is a necessary requirement for the political, economic, and cultural development of a society and state. Chapters argue that, through the post-colonial historical trajectory of South Asia, it has become commonly understood that democracy is the better, if not the best, political system and value for that purpose. Additionally, the book claims that, while democratization and the deepening of democracy have been broadly discussed in the region, the peace that democracy is supposed to promote has been in serious danger, especially in the 21st century. A timely survey and re-evaluation of democracy and peaceful development in South Asia, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of South Asian Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies and Asian Politics and Security.

Since the publication of the 2005 Human Security Report, scholars and policy-makers have debated the causes, interpretation and implications of what the report described as a global decline in armed conflict since the end of the Cold War. Focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, this book analyses the causes and patterns of this decline. In few regions has the apparent decline in conflict been as dramatic as in the Asia-Pacific, with annual recorded battle deaths falling in the range of 50 to 75 percent between 1994 and 2004. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, this book looks at internal conflicts based on the mobilization of ethnic and nationalist grievances, which have been the most costly in human lives over the last decade. The book identifies structures, norms, practices and techniques that have either fuelled or moderated conflicts. As such, it is an essential read for students and scholars of international relations, peace and conflict studies and Asian studies.

Patterns of im/mobility, collective identity and conflict are highly entangled. The im/mobility of a social or cultural group has major impact on how identity narratives, a sense of belonging and relationships to ‘others’ are shaped, and vice versa. These dynamics are closely interlinked with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion between groups and power structures that involve a broad variety of actors from local populations, to migrants, government institutions and other intermediaries. Mainly looking at patterns of internal mobility such as ‘traditional’ or strategic mobilities and mobilities enforced by crisis, conflict or governmental programmes and regimes, this book aims to go beyond currently predominant issues of transnational migration. Dynamics of non/integration and belonging, caused by im/mobility, are analysed on a cultural and political level, which involves questions of representation, indigeneity/autochthony, political rights and access to land and other resources. With ethnographic case studies from Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Bangladesh, East Timor and Indonesia, this volume provides a comparative perspective on the multifold dimensions of im/mobility in contexts where changing mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion trigger or settle conflicts and social identities are constantly re/negotiated. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Social Identities.

This book analyses the ethnic conflict that engulfed Kenya’s Rift Valley Province at the turn of the nineties when multi-party democratic politics were being reintroduced in the country. Its central thesis is that ethnic conflict in the country then was a function of several issues, among them ethnocentrism, politics, the land question and criminal behaviour in certain circles. Both its determinants and consequences are demographic, economic, political and socio-cultural, implying the risks involved in oversimplifying issues.

Combining theoretical and empirical insights, this book provides an in-depth analysis of South Asia's transition in the areas of democracy, political economy and security since the end of the Cold War. It provides a close scrutiny to the state of democracy and political economy in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.