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bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Is Democracy Dangerous in Multi-ethnic Societies?
Interview with Frances Stewart, Oxford University
Professor of Development Economics
OXFORD, Jun 26 (IPS) - The Centre for Research on
Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity (CRISE)
would seem to have its work cut out for it in a
world racked by brutal and enduring conflict. The
centre's goal is to explore the links between
ethnicity, inequality and conflict in order to
identify policies that could lead to more inclusive multi-ethnic societies.
A first book-length publication 'Horizontal
Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group
Violence in Multi-Ethnic Societies' from CRISE is
slated for a July release, the fruit of the
institutions recent years of research into conflict and its causes.
To find out more about that research, IPS
correspondent Michael Deibert spoke to CRISE Director Frances Stewart.
IPS: Can you explain the concept of horizontal inequalities?
Frances Stewart: Horizontal inequalities put
people into groups and look at how unequal those groups are.
For example, black and white in the United
States, or ethnic groups such as the Tutsi and
Hutu in Rwanda, religious groups such as Muslims
and Christians in many countries. Essentially,
these groups are ways in which people see
themselves, ways which are very important to people.
As a result, if there are big inequalities
between the groups, for example between Muslims
and Christians in a country like Nigeria, this
can be very politically powerful because people
mobilize behind (them). This mobilization can
sometimes take a political, peaceful form, but it
can sometimes take a violent form.
The other point to be made about horizontal
inequalities is that they are
multi-dimensional... This should be true of all
measures of inequality, but most measures of
inequality are confined to income, or perhaps consumption.
Horizontal inequalities have political, economic,
social and cultural dimensions... Inequalities in
political power, which are very important, where
one group may have total dominance of the
political system, and another group does not have
any access, which is the situation more or less in Sri Lanka.
Then you have inequalities in religious or
cultural status, so one group may have its
religion or its language recognized and another
groups may not be recognized. Then of course
there are the obvious economic differences in
land and assets, and there are differences to
social access, education and so on.
So essentially, horizontal inequalities are
inequalities between culturally defined groups,
and they are multi-dimensional.
IPS: The book covers a fairly wide geographic
range -- from Asia to Africa to Latin America --
and I was wondering what were some of the
similarities that were found that existed in the situations in these regions?
FS: There are obviously differences in the way
people view themselves. For example, in Africa we
have ethnic groups, sometimes called tribes,
being a very important difference among people,
and also religion. Interestingly, Indonesia is
very similar in that respect to Nigeria, which
also has many ethnicities and in addition has the
religious divide between Muslims and Christians.
But in contrast, if we think about Latin America,
in the countries that we looked at, the big
difference is between the indigenous people and
the white settlers, and of course the big mixed population.
This is rather different from the ethnic
divisions that you find in Africa. Though within
the indigenous communities themselves there are
quite a number of groups with different languages and so on.
Then, if we turn to Malaysia, which is another
country we were looking at, the racial divide is
the big divide: Chinese, local Malays and then
Indians and a religious difference, as well...
In each case, these horizontal inequalities are
extremely important, thought not always
recognized to be as important as they are. They
are more explicit in some areas than in others.
IPS: It seems like the incidence of conflict in
poor countries remain high. Is that a fair assessment?
FS: It is certainly fair. Its certainly true
that the incidence of conflict within countries
-- civil wars -- is significantly higher in poor
countries than it is in middle-income or rich countries.
Still we should note that it has been declining
recently. It rose quite sharply when the Cold War
ended, but recently there has been some decline.
But it does remain a significant problem.
Probably the majority of very poor countries have
experienced some sort of conflict over the last quarter of a century.
IPS: Does the spike in conflicts that we saw
after the Cold War now seem to be stabilizing?
FS: Definitely, there has been some reduction,
and people have different explanations for that.
Partly, there was an explosion after the Cold War
because there was a transition, people were
sorting out exactly how they wanted to live and
with whom and so on
There had been conflicts
before but they had been suppressed, by the Russians, in particular...
Why have they declined? Some people would say
that the active intervention of the international
community, and the United Nations in particular,
has been quite important, but obviously not all of them...
In Afghanistan, the war is raging, the war is
raging in Iraq, very serious wars still
continue... The Congo war isnt really over,
theres conflict going on in Niger. But I think
the level is a little bit less than it was 10 years ago.
IPS: After reviewing this research, what steps
can be taken by governments and international
institutions to address these inequalities and prevent conflict in the future?
FS: This issue has been surpassingly neglected by
the international community. If you look at the
normal policies that we advocate, such as
democracy, saying that countries have to be
democratic and they have to have many parties, we
dont think about the implications between groups.
Democracy can lead to quite a dangerous situation
in a multi-ethnic society unless you accompany it
with policies to protect groups. If you have one
group that is in a majority, they can really
suppress the freedoms of a minority group.
On the political side, what it requires is
recognition of the importance of distributing
power across groups and not having exclusive power.
That means all sorts of constraints on the
democratic system. Some of these are already in
place in some countries. It could mean that
political parties cannot be mono-ethnic and only
located in one part of the country... There are
restrictions on political parties in Ghana and
Nigeria of that sort, to try and induce
multi-ethnic political parties. There is a big
tendency in multi-ethnic countries for political
parties to become single ethnic parties.
You can also have restrictions on the political
system at many other levels so that you must have
representation from different groups in all sorts
of politically important positions. Sometimes
these restrictions can be formal, such as in
Nigeria, or they can be informal... What one
needs is a recognition on the political side of
the need for incorporation of all major groups in
the political power and then a variety of ways in which one might do it.
On economics, the issue has also been greatly
neglected in the international arena. Most of the
World Bank policies, for example -- macroeconomic
adjustment policies, strategy papers -- simply ignore the issue...
What you need is an explicit recognition that you
need fair distribution of economic and social
resources. You need to have systems of monitoring
it... Incorporate it into a variety of economic
policies, for example public expenditure
policies, tax policies, government employment policies and so on.
Although the international bodies have neglected
this, national policy makers in multi-ethnic
societies often recognise this because they have
to live with the consequences...
We didnt have to invent the new policies, we
could simply look around the countries that had put them into effect.
source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42981
===
-muslim voice-
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