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Abstract:
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"Traditionally, conflicts have been endemic to pastoral and agro-pastoral areas of horn Africa. The conflicts have been between different ethnic pastoral groups, as well as within ethnic groups. The majority of the conflicts have been over access to pastoral resources (grasslands, water and livestock). Most of these conflicts have been going on over a long period of time, with very little attention paid to resolving them. Even today, most such conflicts go unnoticed and unreported - unless large-scale killing and damages take place and the state intervenes militarily. Domestic disputes over pastoral resources have, in some cases, had spill over effects on neighbouring countries since often the same ethnic group lives in more than one country. The literature on conflicts in horn of Africa has focused mainly on the analysis of the causes of inter and intra- state or secessionist ethnic conflicts and very little on pastoral conflicts. Inadequate or poor understanding of pastoral conflicts in the sub- region has led to a situation where there are no mechanisms for dealing with this challenge. Hence, understanding the nature of conflicts and identifying available conflict mitigation and resolution mechanisms can thus have important policy implications for peace building in the horn of Africa. The purpose of the paper is to review the literature to indicate what we have learned about the nature of the Conflict with a view to draw policy implications for peace building. The study will provide further evidence from the fieldwork in pastoral areas. The magnitude of the problem is presented in the first section, which summarizes facts about pastoral conflicts in the Horn of Africa. Space precludes any effort to describe these conflicts in detail. Instead, specific facts abstracted from the complexity of conflicts will be presented. The next section attempts to integrating pieces of evidence on incidences of conflict in Northern Kenya and Interspatial and Interoperable Livestock market and price Integration across Southern Ethiopia view to draw policy implications for peace building. Since the research remains at a preliminary stage, the final section consists of suggestions for further research and some tentative policy implications for peace building."
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