West Africa was the most peaceful sub-region in Africa until the end of the 1980s. Although the other African sub-regions faced devastating civil wars and severe interstate conflicts, apart from the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70), in the Cold War era West Africa underwent neither large-scale international conflicts nor prolonged civil wars which threatened sub-regional security. However, this starkly contrasted with widespread internal violence and military coups in the sub-region. Nearly a half of successful military coups in independent Africa took place in West Africa. The reality of Pax West Africana in the Cold War era can be characterised by negative and limited peace with domestic political instability such as military coups.
However this negative sub-regional peace was broken by the erupt of civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) played a leading role in conflict resolution of the virulent civil wars, establishing the ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) at its own initiative and militarily intervening in the conflicts.
The aim of this article is to examine the root of ECOMOG. Although ECOMOG is labelled by ECOWAS as its own sub-regional peace-keeping force, the author believes that the root of ECOMOG is in the tradition of “armies on loan, ” which is one form of the use of military power in interstate relations of independent Africa. African states have often deployed elements of the armed forces in open support of foreign policy objectives on other African countries. ECOMOG is not a neutral peacekeeping force but multilateral “armies on loan” whose purpose is to provide military assistance to threatened regimes or governments in West Africa.

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Between 1989 and 2003, Liberia underwent a devastating civil war. The aim of this article is to provide a panoramic analysis of how the ethnic rivalry known as the “Mandingo Question” in Liberia has historically transformed before, during and after conflict. There are approximately 16 ethnic groups in Liberia, excluding the settlers such as the Americo-Liberians and foreigners such as the Lebanese. Mandingo people are mainly a Muslim ethnic group that played an important role in trans-Saharan trade and remain one of major ethnic groups in Mali and Guinea. However, they are the latest group to have migrated to present-day Liberia in the 18th century and are an ethnoreligious minority in the country. The Mandingo in Liberia have been frequently subjected to hatred and discrimination, being widely perceived as “foreigners from Guinea”. Prior to the civil war, the Americo-Liberian and Samuel Doe regimes developed close cooperative ties with the Mandingo to take advantage of their economic power and support. Despite this, which may be summed up in a single phrase as “cooperation with those in power”, the fact that the Mandingo formed close ties with the Doe administration in the 1980s, which blatantly engaged in the political use of ethnic identity, mired the “Mandingo Question” with deeper antagonism than ever before. During the conflict, the “Mandingo Question” was more intensified. A number of armed groups were formed on the basis of ethnic identity, and combatants of the Mandingo and other ethnic groups such as the Gio/Mano fought against each other. The Liberian civil war was not a so-called “ethnic conflict”, but the ethnic tensions which had been strongly politicised by the Doe administration prior to the outbreak of the conflict functioned powerfully as a “logic of war”. After the conflict, many land-related disputes occurred in Nimba County, particularly at Ganta, a city in the north-western region of the county. The Mandingo were not always victims but sometimes perpetrators in the land disputes that occurred in the post-conflict Ganta. The land disputes that the Mandingo are involved there are no longer conflicts simply involving the land rights of individuals or families, it is rather caught in the larger context of the “Mandingo Question”, which has been historically constructed and deeply politicised. Although the conflict in Liberia came to an end in 2003, the “Mandingo Question” involving the land disputes in Ganta, Nimba County, can be seen as one of the most difficult problems to resolve in post-war Liberian society.

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2014年から2015年にかけて西アフリカはエボラ出血熱の流行に見舞われた。その被害の中心となったのがシエラレオネ、、ギニアの三国である。本発表はシエラレオネに焦点を当て、首長をはじめとする農村のエリート層が、いかにエボラ出血熱に対応したのか、そして、いかに政府を中心とする感染拡大を防止する対策に動員されたのかを明らかにする。

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 比較教育学は「政策移転」の概念を用いてきたが、「教育の輸出」事象においては輸出側の優位性を保持し、利益を確保し続けるためにトランスフォーメーションが疎外される。本稿はPartnership Schools for Liberia（PSL）の事例を用いて、トランスフォーメーションを意図しない新しい形の政策移転の特徴を明らかにし、「教育の輸出」において「パッケージ化された学校」を購入するという事象を分析するための枠組みを構築する必要性があることを指摘する。

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It is widely accepted that policy for women in peacebuilding is a crucial issue, yet there are some academic discussions that policy for women by the UN (United Nations) tends to be marginalised. This note attempts to discuss and reveal the UN's flawed implementation of policy for women in peacebuilding operations focusing on the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR1325). The resolution was adopted in 2000 for improving female active involvement in conflict resolution, conflict prevention, peacebuilding operations and peacekeeping operations. The literature review on SCR1325 and its implementation describes that the resolution gave women a positive role in peacebuilding operations; however, other literature also criticises the fact that SCR1325 was used as a convenient loophole for the UN to marginalise and ghettoise policy for women from peacebuilding operations.

To examine the attitude of the UN towards policy for women in peacebuilding operations based on SCR1325, DDRR (Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration and Repatriation) for ex-female combatants in UNMIL, (the United Nations Mission in Liberia) was investigated. In DDRR, some consideration by the UN for female participants has been shown; however, there were some difficulties for women. Moreover, there are some criticisms that some difficulties was caused due to lack of consideration by the UN.

The study revealed the reason why the policy by the UN for women is afforded such low priority can be explained using the power relationship between the UN and the aid recipient country, Liberia, in peacebuilding operations. Developed countries, including those within the UN, are likely to introduce a western-oriented liberal economy, rational institutions and policies to conflict-affected countries in the context of the peacebuilding. In the process, it seems that post-conflict society, e.g. Liberia, is forced to accept the institution due to the power relationship. Moreover, the ‘gender hierarchy’, that is the system that privileges maleness and underestimates the female status, is also embedded in the transplanted system; and ‘gender hierarchy’ is also latent in the discourse within SCR1325. In conclusion, it is possible for the article to suggest that due to the power relationship on peacebuilding operations between the UN and the aid recipient country, and ‘gender hierarchy’, the policy for women by the UN tends to be afforded low priority in peacebuilding operations.

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