Abu Bakarr Bah, the editor of ACPR, African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review*, will be attending the annual meeting of ASMEA (Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa) to be held in Washington, D.C., November 4-6, 2010. He will be presenting a paper on “The Contours of Humanitarian Intervention: War and Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone” from 8:30-10:00 AM on Friday, the 4th. The focus of the meeting is on “The Middle East and Africa in the 21st Century: Local Trends, Regional Challenges, Global Impacts.” This is the third annual conference of ASMEA, an academic society dedicated to promoting the highest standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies. The society was formed in response to the mounting interest in these increasingly inter-related fields and the absence of any single group addressing them in a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary fashion.
In the abstract for his presentation, Professor Bah writes, “The tide of civil wars in Africa and other parts of the world has raised considerable debates about international response to security and humanitarian crises. This paper examines the international response to the civil war in Sierra Leone. It argues that the international intervention evolved from traditional peacekeeping to a robust military intervention and peacebuilding effort driven by new humanitarianism. By analyzing the roles of regional organizations and the United Nations in the Sierra Leone civil war, the paper demonstrates the political conditions that led to robust humanitarian intervention, the implications of military humanitarianism, and the nature of new humanitarianism.”
*African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review (ACPR) is a new semi-annual journal to be launched by Indiana University Press/Journals in early 2011. The goal of the journal is to translate knowledge into tools that can make a difference to society in a world in which ideas and actions are locked together. “The purpose of knowledge,” says ACPR editor Abu Bakarr Bah, “is not knowledge for the sake of knowing, but knowledge for the sake of improving the human condition.”
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