Politics and International Studies

In the year 2011, a poll was taken where 15 out of 22 countries shared the belief that China will replace or it (China) has already taken the place of the United States of America as a “superpower” country of the world (Nye, 2011). This shows that from the year, 2011, the world saw or held the belief that there is a decline in the power of the United States of America. So this essay will look into this decline of American power and how it affects the international order.

The third transitional arrangement in Somalia ended successfully in August 2012. Against a backdrop of the numerous challenges and failures of previous transitional endeavours, the ending of the transition – while not implying the return of peace to the country – has raised hopes about progress towards peace. This situation report discusses the lessons learned from the process including
how it succeeded, and the imperatives for sustaining and replicating the achievements in many of Africa’s challenging
cases of instability

The Somalia arms embargo was imposed in January 1992 by Security Council Resolution 733 (1992) primarily to restrict the delivery of all weapons and military equipment into Somali territory as a way of impacting on the worsening security situation in the country. Sixteen years after its imposition, however, the country appears to be more awash with small arms and light weapons than it was before the embargo was imposed. This paper argues that even though the Somali embargo may have failed abysmally in restricting the access of factions in the conflict to weapons, it has not failed in offering instructive lessons for other embargoes on the continent and in strengthening the use of embargoes as an instrument for the pursuit of peace in the world. On this basis, the implementation and monitoring dynamics of the arms embargo in Somalia are discussed as a basis for not only strengthening it, but also shedding light on modalities and conditions for effective implementation of embargoes el...

It has been argued that the end of the Cold War lifted the lid from a cauldron of simmering tensions and plunged Africa into bloody conflicts that exacerbated poverty, worsened disease prevalence and increased atrocities on the continent.70 In 1996 alone, 14 of the 53 countries of Africa were afflicted by armed conflicts, accounting for a significant number of war deaths and resulting in more than 8 million refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons.71 The accompanying atrocities and human rights abuses meted out to non-combatants made Africa home to some of the world’s most gruesome war-related human rights abuse records and atrocities.72 Contributing to this history of Africa in the post-Cold War era is the West African sub-region where Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau and Côte d’Ivoire were, at different times, plunged into civil wars. The combined sub-regional effects and interrelated conflict complex contributed to considerable negative tagging of the sub-region. ...

Following up on its threat to strike at Kenya if the country does not cease deploying troops in Somalia, al-Shabaab has effectively regionalised its activities, established an active presence in the country and succeeded in carrying out numerous attacks there. Insecurity associated with the group has therefore emerged to define Kenya’s postdeployment security terrain in a way that has affected many aspects of the country’s socio-economic and political landscape.

The year 2011 heralded the convergence of various initiatives seeking to curtail the financing of conflict in the Great Lakes region through the illegal exploitation of minerals. The combined effect of seeking to comply with the various processes has had significant implications at the national, regional and international levels by altering the dynamics of mineral exploitation in the region in both positive and negative ways. The positive impact has been in the area of the immense contribution of the initiatives to increased awareness of the role of illegally exploited minerals in financing conflict in the region and the need for various stakeholders to exercise responsibility in the sourcing and trading of minerals so as not to inadvertently fuel insecurity. On the flip side, however, this increased awareness has led to the labelling of minerals from the region, particularly gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten, as potential conflict minerals.

progress in the country. Despite the improvement in the security situation in parts of Somalia since the end of the transition period in 2012, the country is still far from achieving its goal of sustainable peace. The transition process was unable to bring about lasting peace because it was not meant to be a peacebuilding process. Rather, it was intended to end years of weak successive transition governments and feeble political leadership in a challenging situation. As a result, the transition process has succeeded in giving the country a new crop of leaders and helped to build towards peace, but it has not delivered peace. Consequently, the realities that the post-transition government faces are as old and entrenched as the genesis of the crisis itself. Peace efforts in the immediate post-transition period face complicated political and security dynamics. Progress in dealing with these dynamics will be defined by three key factors: first, the strength or weakness of the new Somali...