Técnicas basadas en la identificación de ácidos nucleicos

The conflict in South Sudan has been described as an ethnic conflict. Many newspaper articles or radio reports explicitly mention ethnic tensions (see, for example, BBC 2011; Maru 2013; Joak 2014; The Guardian 2015). In March 2017, the Human Rights Council of the United Nations published a report in which it explicitly warned of ethnically- based violence in South Sudan. It stated that “since the outbreak of violence in 2013, civilians have been deliberately and systematically targeted on the basis of their ethnicity by armed forces and groups” (Human Rights Council 2017, p.7). In many intrastate conflicts, ethnicity seems to be at the heart of the problem. The concept of ethnic conflict gained attention among policy makers with the Yugoslav war in the 1990s. Following the massacres in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ came into use widely and was brought to public attention, although mass murder and forced migration to ‘clean’ a territory was nothing new, neither in Europe (Thum 2010) nor in the rest of the world. The genocide of the Armenians at the start of the 20th _{century as well as} the mass killings in Cambodia in 1975 all fall under the heading of ‘ethnic conflict’ (Hannum 1989, p.85; Midlarsky 2005). Horowitz stated in his seminal book Ethnic Groups in Conflict that “ethnic conflict is a worldwide phenomenon” (Horowitz 1985, p.3), and he defined ethnicity as the sense of belonging to a group based on, among other attributes, language, religion, culture, and race (Horowitz 1985, p.53). This is arguably a rather vague listing of possible dividing factors.

‘Ethnic conflict’ is defined as an episode of violent conflict in which national, ethnic, and religious or other communal minorities challenge a dominant group to enhance its own status in society. The main question asked in the academic literature is why ethnic conflicts occur. One

34 explanation is that “the world is becoming a smaller place. The interactions between peoples of different civilisations are increasing” (Huntington 1993, p.25). This is a rather problematic statement, as more groups live peacefully with each other than engage in violent conflict. In fact, civilisation differences are not an indicator for the occurrence of violent conflict (Fox 2002; Russett, Oneal and Cox 2000). Most rebellions and violent crimes occur “within rather than between communities, and so group identities appear to play a less important role” (Collier 2000, p.8.40). A second hypothesis claims a connection between the availability of resources; groups fight when they feel access to resources denied by a dominant group (Humphreys 2005). This is supported by the Robbers Cave experiments and the study of intergroup conflict (Sherif et al. 1988). Drawing on the definition given above this would, however, hardly count as ethnic conflict as the aim is not to enhance status but to secure survival. Other theories exist, including the role of religion (Fox 2004), spatial effects and contagion (Gurr 1993; Hill and Rothchild 1986), and an internal security dilemma (Roe 2005).

Although hardly shared by scholars (Varshney 2009), in policy circles, ethnic conflict was mostly seen as a consequence of a supposedly ‘ancient’ hate between groups, which unfortunately shared a territory. This is said to have been responsible for the late and reluctant international response to the Bosnian war. Sarajevo-based newspaper editor Kemal Kurspahic wrote that:

At a time of crucial decisions, [President Clinton] simply read the wrong book, or more precisely, drew the wrong conclusions from ‘Balkan Ghosts’ by Robert Kaplan, which led to the comforting thought that nothing much could be done in Bosnia ‘until those folks got tired of killing each other’. (Kurspahic 1997, p.222)

35 Another consequence of the essentialist view was the attempt to separate the warring parties as stipulated in the Dayton agreement (Caplan 2000; Malik 2000). The way a conflict is understood and how group identity and relations are seen, has important consequences for the way it is handled by international actors. Spitka (2016, pp.38-40) shows how the way group identity is perceived by international actors determines the intervention strategy. If group identity is seen as fluid and transformable, interventions aim at promoting transformation of hostile group identities into peaceful ones. If group identity is seen as fixed, intervention strategies aim at keeping groups apart, thus creating a ‘cold peace’. It is debatable whether the idea behind the Dayton agreement was to divide regular people or political leaders. For Horowitz (1985), ethnic conflict was mainly about elites. Ethnic Groups in Conflict hardly notes the grassroots. The view on ethnic conflicts being mainly elite-driven changed with the genocide in Rwanda. Varshney names three main forms of collective violence: riots, pogroms, and civil wars. Important for the distinction is the stance taken by the state:

Riots refer to a violent clash between two groups of civilians, often characterised as mobs. While, in riots, the neutrality of the state may be in doubt, the state does not give up the principle of neutrality. In pogroms, typically a majority community attacks an unarmed minority, and the principle of neutrality is for all practical purposes dropped by the state. The state administration either looks away, or sides with the attacking group. (Varshney 2009, p. 279)

In Rwanda, violence took the form of riots and pogroms – the genocide was widely portrayed as having been carried out by civilians and against civilians. Mass killings were executed by ordinary people whipped into a killing frenzy by hate speech on radio stations (Shabas 2000-2001; Dallaire 2003; De la Guardia 2012). With these two events, the ethnic cleansings in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the genocide in Rwanda, ethnic conflict is primarily understood as grounded in hate between groups

36 because of different ethnicities, and as conducted by civilians against civilians. On this basic understanding, iNGOs started their work on ethnic conflicts in the mid-1990s. Examples are the iNGO Radio LaBenevolencija HTF, who names the events in Bosnia, in particular Sarajevo, as a starting point for their work (LaBenevolencija HTF no date a) and the iNGO Search for Common Ground. The latter had started their work of overcoming conflicts through media interventions during the Cold War, but opened their first office in Africa in Burundi, a neighbouring state to Rwanda that was severely affected by the Rwandan genocide and wave of refugees, in 1995 (Search for Common Ground no date). Both iNGOs use media interventions in countries experiencing the aftermath of violent conflict.

Media programmes for peace can be divided into two categories: radio dramas that aim to provide positive role models and enable listeners to choose nonviolent behaviour and factual programmes that follow the principles of peace journalism. Peace journalism has been described as:

…a kind of journalism and media ethics that attempts, as well as possible, to transform conflicts from their violent channels into constructive forms by conceptualising news, empowering the voiceless, and seeking common grounds that unify rather than divide human societies. (Theranian, 2002, p.79, 80)

It is:

…when editors and reporters make choices – of what stories to report and about how to report them – that create opportunities for society at large to consider and value nonviolent responses to conflict. (Lynch and McGoldrick 2007, p.256)

In both cases, programmes are aimed at people on the ground. There seems to be the assumption that if regular people can be convinced to withstand manipulations and react non-violently, this will be a step in the direction of peace. This seems to make sense, as with no foot soldiers,

37 violence and fighting cannot be executed. The aim at the grassroots is probably also part of why media initiatives are attractive for international donors. There is growing consensus that local and bottom- up resolutions and measures are crucial for overcoming violence (Autessere 2010; Anderson and Wallace 2013; MacGinty and Richmond 2013; MacGinty 2014). While attentiveness to the grassroots is in general to be welcomed, attention to the local does not mean merely to implement a project on the local level. It means paying attention to the country’s circumstances, customs, and culture – which is what the above- cited scholars point out. Also, the aim of making regular people resilient to manipulation would only be reasonable if a so-called ethnic conflict is indeed based on ethnic hate and carried out by civilians. This is not necessarily the case.