Civil Wars and Conflicts

"Situation of violence involving extensive armed confrontations between government forces and one or more organized armed groups, or between such groups themselves, arising on the territory of a State".

ICRC (Red Cross)

Mark Gersovitz - Norma Kriger

"Politically organized, large-scale, sustained, physically violent conflict that occurs within a country especially among large/numerically important groups of its inhabitants or citizens over the monopoly of physical force".

​Brittanica

"Distinguished from interstate conflicts (in which states fight other states), violent conflicts or riots not involving states (sometimes labeled intercommunal conflicts), and state repression against individuals who cannot be considered an organized or cohiseve group, including genocides, and similar violence by non-state actors, such as terrorism or violent crime".

Why do civil wars break out?

"The main factor here is financial, as establishing and equipping a non-state armed force is extremely costly.​ Civil wars break out where the finances are available to sustain the necessary non-state armed force. An economic factor which facilitates rebel access to funds is the presence of primary commodities, i.e. any goods which require minimal processing before being used (such as crude oil, cotton, rubber, grains, timber, diamonds, metals and other minerals), since these can be sold easily."

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Florence Gaub​

"Mountainous countries are equally at a higher risk – in part because mountains are difficult to access (and therefore natural safe havens), but in part also because they have, on average, lower levels of GDP​."

"At high risk are also those countries which have a low GDP as the state is less likely to have control over the whole territory and there is a greater pool of recruits available to the rebels​"

​Indentifying a civil war

1. Read the following text​: The United Nations Security Council and Civil War: First Insights from a New Dataset

2. ​Choose two active conflict fron this website, and make a comparative chart explaining why you could consider it a civil war or not. https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/?category=us.

3. You most work individually, and the workshop must be done in your notebooks, don't forget to write down yor full names.

Agenda: ​

1. Decolonization.​

2. ​Causes and means of decolonization.

3. ​Crash Course video.

1. Between 1947 and 1975, the decolonization of Asia and Africa transformed the world with the rise of almost a hundred new countries, and third world leaders demanded a place on the international stage. But the new countries had to deal with economic dependency, poverty and political instability.​

The quick defeat of the colonial powers at the beginning of the Second World War, and the weakness of the United Kingdom at the beginning of it, reduced the prestige of the metropolis in its colonial territories.​

​Metropolis weakness

Born in the ​interwar period and influenced by the disappearance of the Otoman Empire.

Lead by ​charismatic leaders.

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​National movements

​International Support.

International organizations such as the United Nations spoke out in favor of decolonization. In 1945 its founding charter proclaimed the equality of all peoples and the recognition of the right to self-determination.​

Resistance from France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal gave place to wars and armed clashes that could not stop the processes of independence.​

​fight for independence

method used mainly by the colonies of the United Kingdom. It was not exempt from armed confrontations, but its negotiated character allowed the creation of collaborative structures.​

​Negotiated process