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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Increasing Violent Conflict between Herders and Farmers in Africa: Claims and Evidence |
Authors: | Hussein, Karim Sumberg, James Seddon, David |
Year: | 1999 |
Periodical: | Development Policy Review |
Volume: | 17 |
Issue: | 4 |
Period: | December |
Pages: | 397-418 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Subsaharan Africa Africa |
Subjects: | social conflicts farmers pastoralists Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Law, Human Rights and Violence Development and Technology |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7679.00094 |
Abstract: | This paper deals with violent conflict between herders and crop farmers in semi-arid Africa. Recently development policies have been influenced by claims that violent conflict between the two groups has increased, especially since the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. Much of the recent literature suggests that this 'increasing conflict' is due to two factors: 1) changing patterns of resource use and increasing competition for resources, and 2) the breakdown of 'traditional' mechanisms governing resource management and conflict resolution. Development policy and programmes based on such recommendations could have profound implications for social and economic relations and patterns of natural resource use. It is essential, therefore, that the analysis on which they are based is robust. The authors assess the validity of the claims of increasing violent conflict on the basis of a review and analysis of the research literature from both the francophone and anglophone areas of semi-arid Africa and through a postal survey of researchers and development workers. They conclude that the evidence that violent farmer-herder conflicts are increasing is inconclusive. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |