Institute for African Development
Domestic and Global Politics of Police Violence
Sabrina Karim, PACS/SAP/IAD
Awarded an NSF Career award, Professor Sabrina Karim in the Government Department is developing research on the domestic and global politics of police violence to confront the challenge of excessive and/or illegitimate violence around the world.
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How The Global Food Shortage Helps US Farmers
Chris Barrett, IAD/SEAP
“It will be interesting to see what happens in the real wheat belt in North Dakota and Minnesota,” says Chris Barrett, professor of applied economics and policy. “They still have some time to decide what to plant. A deciding factor might be wheat prices shooting up.”
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Topic
- Development, Law, and Economics
Program
Institute for African Development Global Africa Monthly Webinar Series: Covid 19 Diagnosis and Vaccine Challenges: What Strategy for Africa?
April 29, 2022
10:00 am
IAD Global Africa Monthly Webinar Series
Friday, April 29, 2022
@10:00am - 12:00pm EST/2:00pm - 4:00pm GMT
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Introduction of the Series
N’Dri Assie-Lumumba
Professor, Africana Studies
Director, Institute for African Development
Discussant: Dr. Kouame KOUADIO, PhD Researcher, Environmental and health Department, Eco Epidemiology Unit, Institut Pasteur of Côte d'Ivoire
Professor Mireille Dosso, MD, PhD, Professor of Microbiology, Director of the Institut Pasteur of Côte d'Ivoire
Dr. Hervé Albéric Adjé Kadjo, MD, PhD, Head of the Respiratoy Viruses Unit, Institut Pasteur of Cote d'Ivoire
Richard Njouom, PhD, Head of the Virology Department, Centre Pasteur of Cameroon
Attoh Touré Harvey, MPH, Head of Immunization Service, National Institute of Public Hygiene, Cote d'Ivoire
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for African Development
Naminata Diabate
Associate Professor, Comparative Literature
A scholar of sexuality, race, biopolitics, and postcoloniality, Diabate’s research explores African, African American, Caribbean, and Afro-Hispanic literatures, cultures, cinema, and new media. Her book Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa (Duke UP, 2020) won the 2021 Best Book Award from the African Studies Association.
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Bartels Explainer
How did Leymah Gbowee's protests lead to lasting peace?
Naminata Diabate outlines the movement's tactics and explains how womens' protests helped end the Liberian civil war.
This year's Bartels lecturer, Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee, led an interfaith women's peace movement that played a pivotal role in bringing warlords to the peace table and ultimately ending Liberia's bloody 14-year civil war in 2003. The movement's historic achievement earned Gbowee the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011. She continues her work as a global leader and activist for peace and women's rights.
"We need to specify that both a sex strike and the threat to strip naked are not nonviolent forms of protest."
On this page: Naminata Diabate describes the tactics used by Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, the interfaith women's peace movement Gbowee led, and explains how the protests helped end the civil war. Diabate is an associate professor of comparative literature in the College of Arts and Sciences and member of the Institute for African Development's faculty steering committee.
Coming May 3: Reserve Your Free Ticket Today!
A Conversation with Naminata Diabate
What types of protests did Gbowee and the peace movement she led carry out?
Leymah Gbowee and the interfaith women wrote countless letters to major stakeholders, organized vigils, fasting, meetings, deliberations, sit-ins, dancing and chanting, a sex strike—and finally threatened to strip naked. Most importantly, they deployed determination to bring peace to their country.
Were these nonviolent protests?
We need to specify that both a sex strike and the threat to strip naked are not nonviolent forms of protest. In fact, they constitute the most violent types that women in specific communities (such as the ones Leymah Gbowee and her comrades worked in) can deploy against their menfolk, and by extension, their societies.
A sex strike—which we see organized around the world and even in the United States—is not peaceful because it reverses the gender expectation of the female body as available for procreation, male sexuality, and pleasure, and relatedly, it opposes procreation, which can endanger the life of the community.
As for defiant self-exposure—another name I use for naked protest—it constitutes the last resort in specific circumstances that allegedly cause the targeted males a myriad of misfortunes, including shame, impotence, infertility, incurable diseases, and literal or social death.
What were the protesters trying to accomplish?
With multiple strategies, both violent and nonviolent, the women tried to attract the attention of the international community and force the warring parties and strongmen such as Charles Taylor to understand the suffering of the Liberian people—and to bank on the women’s unfailing determination to bring about peace.
How was this group of women able to succeed against strongmen like Taylor?
This grassroots group of women was able to succeed against the warring factions and strongmen thanks to their unwavering resolve to matter as peace brokers in their country’s journey through war and toward peace. Additionally, their resourcefulness in deploying multiple conflict management tactics—both modern and indigenous—to make a difference remains remarkable.
Why do you think their protests were effective?
The women’s protest tactics were effective because they refused to be muzzled. Their journey was strewn with violent counterattacks, including verbal abuse, humiliation, dismissal, physical brutality, and even death threats. Although they were at times weakened, these exceptional women always came back with more tactics to achieve visibility. The stakeholders, including Charles Taylor, could not but work with these women who refused to go away.
Don't miss the Bartels World Affairs Lecture with Leymah Gbowee on May 3: Reserve your free ticket today!
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Institute for African Development Seminar Series: Emergence of Black Entrepreneurs in Eastern Africa
April 21, 2022
2:40 pm
Uris Hall, G-08
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for African Development Seminar: University of Ghana, Department of Adult Education and Human Resource Studies Special Topic Seminar Series, Spring 2022
April 28, 2022
2:40 pm
Uris Hall, G-08
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Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development, Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures and societies that call Africa home, and explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development.
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for African Development
How the UN Trusteeship Council might have shaped a substantive decolonization—and why it didn’t
April 28, 2022
11:25 am
Uris Hall, G08
This is a hybrid event. Registration information is below.
This talk sheds light on what various actors engaged with the United Nations trusteeship system wanted decolonization to mean, what they thought, or hoped, it should mean, and their contests of power over normalizing its meaning. The speaker will explain the importance of the UN trusteeship system in establishing decolonizing norms, particularly the meaning of universal rights within those norms. In opting not to address land claims and abuse of power complaints that petitioners brought to its attention, the Trusteeship Council created a precedent for excluding substantive rights from decolonization’s meaning in international law. This talk will elucidate what decolonization could mean within the trusteeship system, by examining the making of Italian Somaliland’s trusteeship agreement within the Trusteeship Council.
About the speakers
Meredith Terretta, is Professor of History at the University of Ottawa. She examines transregional legal and rights activism, both past and contemporary. Professor Terretta is now co-editing, with Dr. Samuel Moyn, The Cambridge World History of Rights, Volume 5: The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Her work appearing this academic year includes a special issue on African Refuge for the Canadian Journal of African Studies, co-edited with Dr. Philip Janzen, as well as single-authored articles on rights, international law, and decolonization in The Law and History Review; the Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; and the Humanity Journal: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development.
This seminar is part of the spring seminar series with the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS).
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In accordance with university event guidance, all campus visitors who are 12 years old or older must also present a photo ID, as well as proof of vaccination for COVID-19 or results of a recent negative COVID-19 test. If you are not currently participating in the Cornell campus vaccination/testing program, please bring proof of vaccination or the results of a recent negative test.
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for African Development Seminar Series: Income and Gender Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa
April 14, 2022
2:40 pm
Uris Hall, G-08
Registeration link
Speaker's details
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for African Development
What the War in Ukraine Means for Energy, Climate, and Food
Chris Barrett, IAD/SEAP
“One of the big casualties of the Russian invasion will be people who are already teetering on the edge in other places,” says Chris Barrett, professor of applied economics and management. “It’s not just Ukrainians. It’s Yemenis, and Syrians and Nigerians.”