Leaders in Africa and around the world give lip service to addressing
underlying causes of terrorism, violent internal conflicts, criminal violence and other threats. In practice,
they prioritize militarized responses that are not only
abusive of human rights but also ineffective and counter-productive.
African conflicts are most often seen in terms of simplistic
narratives and applied to the entire continent. But each country
is distinct. Most are at peace, afflicted not by war and warlords,
but by the less visible kinds of violence that prevail around the
world: violence against women or the everyday violence of crime and
discrimination against immigrants.