Tag: Violence

Sudan

Sudan is facing one of the world’s most devastating yet underreported humanitarian crises. Since the outbreak of war in April 2023, millions have been displaced, infrastructure destroyed, and civilian lives shattered amid a climate of international neglect and inadequate media attention. This silence is not new. Sudan’s complex histories of revolution, resistance, and repression have long been marginalized in global discourse, often overshadowed by reductive narratives or geopolitical disinterest. Despite this, Sudanese scholars, activists, and communities continue to produce powerful analyses and interventions that illuminate the country’s struggles and aspirations. This intervention page centers Sudanese voices, inviting deeper engagement with the brilliant yet too often overlooked intellectual and political labour of Sudanese thinkers, as well as those in solidarity with them.

Policy Paper: „Restes humains” dans les collections universitaires

Cette note stratégique aborde un débat aussi urgent que nécessaire : la responsabilité des universités de se confronter activement à leur passé colonial et de dépasser les rapports de violence qui en résultent. Bien qu’une sensibilité grandissante à ce sujet soit à observer, l’absence de directives claires orientant les pratiques et politiques universitaires, essentiellement s’agissant des collections coloniales et du rapatriement de restes humains, demeure. Afin de libérer la recherche de ces bases problématiques, une coopération étroite avec les communautés affectées et les acteurs politiques, de même qu’une réflexion systématique, sont nécessaires. L’Africa Centre for Transregional Research (ACT) de l‘Université de Freiburg (Fribourg-en-Brisgau) est parvenu à obtenir un financement du Ministère des Sciences, de la Recherche et des Arts (MWK) du Baden-Württemberg pour examiner la provenance de reliques issues de l’époque coloniale. Sur la base de cette expérience, ce document d’orientation politique met en lumière des pistes concrètes permettant aux universités de travailler en profondeur leur passé colonial.

Policy Paper: „Menschliche Überreste” in Universitätssammlungen

Dieses Policy Paper greift eine dringend notwendige Debatte über postkoloniale Hierarchien in der Forschung auf. Im Zentrum steht die Verantwortung von Universitäten, sich kritisch mit ihrer kolonialen Vergangenheit auseinanderzusetzen und fortbestehende Gewaltverhältnisse zu erkennen und zu überwinden. Trotz wachsender Sensibilität fehlt es bislang an klaren Richtlinien für universitäre Praxis und Politik, insbesondere im Umgang mit kolonialen Sammlungen und der Rückgabe menschlicher Überreste. Um Forschung von diesen problematischen Grundlagen zu befreien, braucht es eine systematische und methodologische Auseinandersetzung sowie eine enge Zusammenarbeit mit betroffenen Gemeinschaften und politischen Akteuren. Das Africa Centre for Transregional Research (ACT) der Universität Freiburg beantragte erfolgreich eine Förderung beim Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst (MWK) in Baden-Württemberg, um die Herkunft kolonialer Relikte zu erforschen. Basierend auf diesen Erfahrungen zeigt dieses Policy Paper konkrete Wege auf, wie Universitäten ihre koloniale Vergangenheit aufarbeiten können.

Policy Paper: Mobilisation, Resistance and Popular Memory

Scientific scholarship does not always recognize the knowledges produced by activist actors as valid or rigorous, often marginalizing their insights from academic and policy-oriented debates. This exclusion is both problematic and paradoxical, particularly given that those most directly affected by (state) violence in its various manifestations are continuously engaged in critical inquiry —analyzing the conditions that shape their lives and actively developing responses and pathways out of politically complex, often violent, situations. As authors of this policy paper, we are primarily concerned with creating a communication channel to uplift activist and academic voices, thereby contributing to position them at the center in both scientific and practice-oriented discussions. In March 2024, we met virtually with social movements and activists from the cities of Santiago de Chile and Santiago de Cali (Colombia) for an exchange of experiences and reflections on the mass protests that took place at different times between 2019 and 2021 in each city. This document compiles the key reflections from the exchange. It aims to convey the insights of an illustrated policy report originally written and published in Spanish. This translated English version seeks to reach a broader audience at the intersection of urban protests, the politics of memory, and repertoires of resistance —including civil society organizations, international donors, activists, journalists, and artists. This policy paper tells the story of the storymakers —of those whose lived experiences and reflections offer indispensable knowledge for rethinking justice, memory, and political transformation.

Security. Speaking with Fanon?

The anticolonial writer and psychiatrist Fanon became famous in the 1960s for his radical criticism of colonial racism and its influence on the colonized peoples. His descriptions of how colonialism destroys people not only physically but also mentally and emotionally have inspired many political movements and theoretical concepts to this day. His work highlights the enduring nature of colonial relations and the different ways in which (in)security and its protection is perceived differently depending on the very position in society. However, Fanon’s name also remains inextricably linked with his most controversial and uncompromising stance: his commitment to the right of colonized peoples to insecure others by the use of violence in their struggle for liberation. Post/decolonial research as one of the heirs of Fanons writings challenges critical security research till today. In the following, the article uses post/decolonial research to indeed point to multiple ways in which both theoretical fields enrich the articulating and practicing of (in)security.

Systems of Conflictivity

Beyond the state-centric categories of war/peace, the ongoing genocide against Indigenous and African-descendent populations on the continent which Lélia Gonzalez renamed ‘Améfrica Ladina’ – recognised neither as a civil war nor as an international conflict – calls for methods of analysis which respond to what and whom has been excluded from the debate as a condition of possibility for its reproduction. By means of transnational and diasporic perspectives – which neither begin nor end at state borders and limits, nor rely on universal or particular/relative decrees – it effectively repositions inherited Eurocentric categories for thinking about violence towards instead relational accounts of systems of conflictivity.

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