Return, Responsibility and Reintegration in Central Africa: A multi-disciplinary exploration into endemic violence and social repair

2015年，联合国难民署报告称，随着与冲突有关的暴力和迫害增加，威胁环境变得更加分散和复杂，全球流离失所人数达到“历史最高水平”。令人震惊的是，据计算，今天每122人中就有一人是难民、流离失所者或寻求庇护者。在地球仪的大片地区，人们在试图谈判极其困难的冲突环境时被连根拔起，这些冲突不仅涉及国家军队，还涉及非国家武装团体、犯罪团伙、贩毒者和圣战分子。使问题更加复杂的是，个人往往处于受害者-肇事者的模糊地位，在战斗人员和平民角色之间转换，要么是通过胁迫，要么是通过选择。中非多年来一直存在长期和反复的流离失所现象。2015年，联合国难民事务高级专员办事处将该地区的被迫流离失所数字描述为“令人沮丧”。到目前为止，国际组织已将“回家”作为解决这场危机的最持久办法。“返回和重返社会”进程对世界各国政府来说是一个巨大的实际和政策挑战，因此是一个关键的国际政策问题。本研究项目旨在通过跨学科、多地点的“回归”民族志，准确研究中非共和国、刚果民主共和国、乌干达和南苏丹等中部和东部非洲国家的这些动态。通过分析难民、境内流离失所者和前战斗人员如何谈判和体验“回归”，我们的目标是填补目前对世界上一些最困难地区冲突“生命周期”知识的巨大空白。利用人类学，漫画新闻，历史，遗产研究和政治学，我们将专注于那些试图在中部非洲建立或重建社区的人的日常经验，有助于更好地了解受冲突影响的社会如何构成或重建自己。我们的研究将探讨回归者之间的关系，与“stayee”人口以及他们与国家政府和国际和平建设行为体的接触。我们将研究标准化的建设和平回返方法-如解除武装、复员和重返社会（DDR）;过渡时期司法（TJ）;以及心理社会支持（PSS）-是否以及如何与当地每天都在谈判冲突现实及其遗留问题的人们相关。我们还将调查那些普遍存在的过程，这些过程一直被国际行为者搁置一边，包括个人和集体愈合的习惯性精神实践以及与宗教信仰相关的想法。我们将超越仅仅记录返回的方式，特别关注返回过程如何塑造和重塑我们研究地点的公共权威，质疑任何假设的线性过渡到“平民生活”和“和平”。我们对整个中部非洲地区的回返问题进行了深入的跨学科研究，这将有助于我们更好地了解受冲突影响的社会在何种条件下能够在严重的社会压力下和平前进和/或过上有成效的生活，以及在何种条件下根本不可能实现相互关系，暴力成为地方性的，似乎不可避免。我们还希望将中部非洲目前的经验置于更广泛的比较和历史背景下，使学者和决策者更清楚地了解在如此惊人的动荡和痛苦程度的情况下，如何以及何时能够进行社会修复。

In 2015, the United Nations Refugee agency (UNCHR) reported that world-wide displacement hit an 'all time high' as conflict related violence and persecution increase and threat environments become more diffuse and complex. Quite shockingly, it was calculated that today, one in every 122 people is either a refugee, displaced or seeking asylum. Across huge swathes of the globe, people are uprooted as they try to negotiate profoundly difficult conflict circumstances, involving not only state armies, but non-state armed groups, criminal gangs, drug traffickers, and jihadists. To make matters more complex, individuals often occupy ambiguous victim-perpetrator statuses, moving between combatant and civilian roles, either through coercion or through choice. Central Africa has witnessed prolonged and repetitive forms of displacement for many, many years. In 2015, the UNHCR described forced displacement figures related to this region as 'immense'. To date, international organisations have prioritized 'going home' as the most durable solution to this crisis. Processes of 'return and reintegration' represent a huge practical and policy challenge for world governments and are therefore a critical international policy issue. This research project aims to study precisely these dynamics in the central and eastern African countries of Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and South Sudan through an inter-disciplinary, multi-sited ethnography of 'return'. By analyzing how refugees, internally displaced persons and former combatants negotiate and experience 'return' we aim to fill a large gap in current knowledge on the 'lifecycle' of conflicts in some of the world's most difficult places. Drawing on anthropology, comic journalism, history, heritage studies and political science we will focus on the everyday experiences of those attempting to build or re-build communities in central Africa, contributing to a better understanding of how conflict-affected societies constitute or re-constitute themselves. Our research will explore the relationships of returnees with each other, with the 'stayee' population and their engagement with national governments and international peacebuilding actors. We will examine if and how standardized peacebuilding approaches to return - such as Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR); transitional justice (TJ); and psycho-social support (PSS) are relevant to people on the ground who negotiate conflict realities and their legacies on a daily basis. We will also investigate those ubiquitous processes that are persistently set aside by international actors, including customary spiritual practices of individual and collective healing and ideas associated with religious belief. We will go beyond merely documenting the manner of return to focus specifically on how processes of return shape and reshape public authority across our research sites, questioning any assumed linear transition to 'civilian life' and to 'peace'. Our in-depth, inter-discipinary study of return across the Central African region will help us better understand the conditions under which conflict-affected societies are able to move on peacefully and/or live productively in situations of acute social stress and also the conditions under which mutuality is simply not possible and violence becomes endemic and seemingly inescapable. We also hope to place current central African experience in wider comparative and historical contexts giving fellow scholars and policy makers a much clearer picture of how and when social repair becomes possible in situations characterized by such staggering levels of upheaval and suffering.