Indigenous Institutions Of Conflict Resolution Among The Abala Afar Of North Eastern Ethiopia

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security, grade: 3.50, Addis Ababa University (INSTITUTE FOR PEACE AND SECURITY), course: conflict resolution, language: English, abstract: After the collapse of the Derg regime in 1991, Ethiopia adopted, its first Federal Democratic Constitution in 1995. Since then, Ethiopia is declared as a federal state encompassing various ethno-linguistic groups. Accordingly, the federation has comprised nine regional states and two city administrations. One of the members of the federation is the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Regional State. The Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region witnessed interethnic disputes such as identity, border and resource conflicts that caused unnecessary consequence. In the 2001constitution adopted by the Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region, the Council of Nationalities was institutionalized with a number of constitutional mandates of which dispute management and resolution is the prominent one. It is in light of this power that aims at examining how the Council fulfils this constitutional mandate. For the accomplishment of the objective of the study, largely secondary data and primary data obtained through unstructured interviews were used. In doing so, some cases entertained by the Council of Nationalities is analysed. The Council of Nationalities entertained a number of interethnic conflicts and resolved them accordingly. With regard to this, the Council of Nationalities engaged in numerous inter-ethnics conflict resolutions submitted to it by the respective contending ethnic groups. The conflicts have been managed and resolved mainly through deploying security force and round the table discussion in collaboration with indigenous conflict resolution institutions. But when we see its achievement in discharging its mandate properly, delays to make decision timely, late to intervene in conflicts, and absence of early warning system to provide information timely are some among the failures of CoN. Therefore, though there are some achievements in rendering peace education in some parts of the region, the Council of Nationalities has deficiencies in discharging its duties; conflict management and resolution aspects of its responsibilities in particular.

Wissenschaftliche Studie aus dem Jahr 2012 im Fachbereich Afrikawissenschaften - Kultur und Landeskunde, , Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: This study reveals the role of Areknsanti as a traditional conflict resolution mechanism in handling conflicts in Chagni woreda in Awi Zone, Amhara National Regional State. Qualitative research methodology particularly and design were employed for it. It was found to be appropriate to assess the role of traditional institution of Arkeknsanti in handling conflicts in the study area. The collected data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The Researcher used representative sampling techniques. In addition to this, researcher used both primary and secondary sources. Conflict of the study area emanated from two categories of economic ones and social conflict on the other side. In the world there are many conflict can arise in different group of society or the same group are known as intra or enter group conflict and it is the struggle over value or claims to status and scarce resource such as economy and political power. Almost all over the peoples of the world regardless of their location in time and space have their own methods to solve disputes and achieving resolution of their differences. Gulliver states that every society has its own mechanism of solving conflict. Conflict management refers to the long term management of intractable conflict. And label for the variety of ways by which people handle conflict standing up for what they consider to be right and against what they consider to be wrong. Conflict management is often considered to be distinct from conflict resolution. And it may occur between warring parties who contest an incompatibility. Nature of incompatibility can be territorial or governmental but warring party must be a government of a state or any opposition organization or alliance of organization that use armed force to promote its position in the incompatibility in an intrastate or interstate armed conflict.

African societies have their own traditional institutions for democratic administration. It would be quite reasonable to argue that Africans, at least like any other people elsewhere, certainly have for long time developed their own unique system of governance. As part of their strong and viable system, they had also and still have effective and practically workable conflict resolution mechanisms unlike some Westerner centric arguments which consider African people as savage and uncivilized. It has been assumed that the Western techniques of conflict resolution would also apply to African societies where the context is quite different. Unlike the Western techniques, the African traditional principles of conflict resolution are targeted at bringing about sustainable peace among the disputants; thereby the prevalence of enmity and hatred within as well as across communities could permanently be vanished. Indeed, this is also possible for the Irob society to do it away customarily at the grass-root level through the use of Melat-agle, one of their cultural institutions.