Diasporas, Development and Peacemaking in the Horn of Africa Edited by Liisa Laakso and Petri Hautaniemi
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Fantu Cheru and Renu Modi (eds), Agricultural Development and Food Security in Africa Amanda Hammar (ed.), Displacement Economies in Africa Mary Njeri Kinyanjui, Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa About the editors Liisa Laakso is professor and dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. Previously she held the UNESCO Chair in Devel opment and International Cooperation at the University of Jyväskylä. She is a coeditor of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. Petri Hautaniemi is a former senior researcher in development studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. His dissertation in social anthropology was on Somali child migration and young men, and he has published a number of articles on related themes. He has also scrutinized the concepts of Somali transnational families and kinship among state authorities in Finland, and the role of second generation youth in global Somali kinship networks. He currently works as a senior adviser in the Department of Development Policy at the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Diasporas, development and peacemaking in the Horn of Africa edited by Liisa Laakso and Petri Hautaniemi Zed Books london Diasporas, Development and Peacemaking in the Horn of Africa was first published in 2014 in association with the Nordic Africa Institute, PO Box 1703, se751 47 Uppsala, Sweden by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London n1 9jf, uk. www.zedbooks.co.uk www.nai.uu.se Editorial copyright © Liisa Laakso and Petri Hautaniemi 2014 Copyright in this collection © Zed Books 2014 The rights of Liisa Laakso and Petri Hautaniemi to be identified as the editors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 Set in OurType Arnhem, Monotype Gill Sans Heavy by Ewan Smith Index: [email protected] Cover designed by www.roguefour.co.uk Cover images: top image © Petterik Wiggers/Panos; bottom image © Orien Harvey/Lonely Planet Images/Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available isbn 9781783600984 hb isbn 9781783600977 pb isbn 9781783600991 pdf isbn 9781783601004 epub isbn 9781783601011 Kindle Contents Acknowledgements | vii Introduction: Diasporas for peace and development . 1 petri hautaniemi and liisa laakso PART ONE Contextualizing the Horn of Africa and the diaspora 1 Diaspora and multilevel governance for peace. 13 liisa laakso 2 Regional political history and the production of diasporas . 28 guenther schlee PART TWO Case studies from the Horn of Africa 3 Rebuilding Somaliland through economic and educational engagement . 53 markus virgil hoehne and mohamed hassan ibrahim 4 The Somali diaspora in conflict and peacebuilding: the Peace Initiative Programme . 77 mahdi abdile 5 The 2007 delegation of the Muslim diaspora to Ethiopia . 98 dereje feyissa 6 The Ethiopian diaspora and the Tigray Development Association . 122 bahru zewde, gebre yntiso and kassahun berhanu PART THREE European approaches to diaspora engagement 7 Interaction between Somali organizations and Italian and Finnish development actors. 165 petra mezzetti, valeria saggiomo and päivi pirkkalainen 8 Approaches to diaspora engagement in the Netherlands . 190 giulia sinatti 9 Norwegian collaboration with diasporas . 210 rojan ezzati and cindy horst Afterword . 225 petri hautaniemi, liisa laakso and mariko sato About the contributors | 228 Index | 231 Acknowledgements This collection would not have been possible without the work done within the research project DIASPEACE – ‘Diasporas for Peace: Patterns, trends and potential of longdistance diaspora involvement in conflict settings, case studies from the Horn of Africa’ (2008–12). The project was funded by the 7th Framework Research Programme of the European Commission and backed by dedicated staff in eight partner organiza tions in seven countries. Special gratitude goes to Julia Ojanen, who coordinated the compilation of the research proposal at the University of Jyväskylä, and Angela Liberatore from the European Commission Directorate General for Research. We want to thank the members of the Advisory Board – Mohamed Basweyne, Fantu Cheru, Nina Glick Schiller, MeeriMaria Jaarva, Yohannes Kidane, Jeremy Lester, Amina H. Mohamoud Warsame and Mario Raffaelli – for their support throughout the project. Another research project behind this collection is ‘Security, governance and identities in flux’ (2008–11), which was supported by the Academy of Finland and benefited greatly from Riitta Launonen’s advice. The authors want to thank Karin Fatimath Afeef, Silvia Aprile, Peter Croll, Volker Franke, Matteo Guglielmo, Nauja Kleist, Bettina Mann, Awil Mohamoud, Antony Otieno, Ferruccio Pastore, Juan Reyes, Marja Tiilikainen, Pekka Virtanen and Andrea Warnecke for research coopera tion, valuable comments and assistance. Nely Keinänen provided competent language editing and Mariko Sato and Frateline Kashaga helped in the editorial work. For publication we are grateful to Ken Bar low at Zed Books and Birgitta Hellmark Lindgren and Sonja Johansson at the Nordic Africa Institute. The academic discussions in this book complement an earlier handbook for practitioners and policymakers: Participation of Diasporas in Peacebuilding and Development (PRIO Report 22010), which was a vital forerunner to this collection. Finally we are most grateful to the many representatives of diaspora groups, international organizations and governmental agencies who have shared their experiences and offered their precious time for the research work. Only some of them are referred to and appear in the lists of interviews. vii Introduction: Diasporas for peace and development Petri Hautaniemi and Liisa Laakso It is not novel to claim that not only are displaced people affected by the circumstances of instability in their home countries but that they also affect the ways in which these conflicts develop, are prolonged or are settled. The role of diasporas in the development of their home countries is also a valid point of interest. However, while some evidence on the various roles played by diasporas in their host societies is available, their precise impacts in trans national contexts, and particularly with regard to development and conflicts at home, have often remained unclear. There is little systematic social scientific research on migrant political transnationalism in conflict settings, particularly within the African continent. Consequently, debates in this field have been largely speculative, relying on anecdotal evidence rather than hard facts. This book examines diasporic activism in countries of origin, in host states and also at the transnational level. Through its careful case analyses, it aims to contribute to a more indepth understanding of the roles diasporas play in the dynamics of war and peace