Democracy and Human Rights

The roots of present-day development problems and conflicts deserve further historical analysis, and particularly more methodical comparison of countries and times. This was the rationale underlying the seminar on 'The historical dimension of development, change and conflict in the South', held in The Hague in April 1993. The seminar was organized in four sessions. The first concerned general questions relating to the study of history and the study of development, and whether the two shall ever meet. One of the three papers took Africa as example: Déflation de l'État et privatisation de la violence publique en Afrique sub-saharienne (by Achille Mbembe). The second session focused on political ethnicity and historical appraisals of areas of possible international conflict, such as the former Soviet empire, the Indian subcontinent and western Africa, viz. the case of the Tuareg in Mali (paper by Tiébilé Dramé). The third session dealt with the historical roots of national conflicts, such as those in Bolivia, Senegal (paper in French by Abdoulaye Bara Diop), Madagascar (paper in French by Faranirina Esoavelomandroso-Rajaonah) and Kenya (E.S. Atieno-Odhiambo). It also included a paper on democracy and human rights in Africa (Stephen Ellis). In the fourth session, some Asian cases of economic history were discussed