CIEA8 Congress + My Conference on the Liberian Timber Embargo

On the 14^th, 15^th, and 16^th of June 2012 I visited the bi-annual Iberian Congress on African studies (CIEA), this year hosted by the Autonomous University of Madrid, and directed by my thesis supervisor Itziar Ruiz Giménez.

The conference consisted of 43 different panels and 360 communications on different topics, all in some way related to Africa. Besides my own presentation in a panel called “Natural Resources: Social Movements and Organizations in Africa”, I saw several interesting communications in different panels. The panels I remember most vividly were those on “Western Aid and African Development”, “The BRIC States: Images and Prospects in Africa”, “African Political Systems”, and “The International Liberal Peace Building Agenda for Africa”.

In my own panel there were communications by Tom Kucharz (Ecologistas en Acción), Nuria del Viso Pabón (CIP-Ecosocial-FUHEM), María Molina Martín (Centro de Investigación RESET), Paulo Inglés (Centro de Estudios Africanos Lisboa), and myself. The panel was coordinated by Jesus García-Luengos (GEA-UAM) and Alicia Campos Serrano (GEA-UAM).

My communication regarded the post-conflict UN timber embargo imposed on Liberia between 2003 and 2006. Being the first time the UN ever imposed a sanction after a conflict, it made for an interesting case to discuss. I explained what the objective of the sanction was, which conditions the UN established for the lifting of the sanction, and the actions taken by the Liberian government towards building a more transparent timber sector that would lead to more revenues for the development of the country. For the full paper, open the pdf file at the end of this post.

The main criticisms were: (1) How can you be sure that the measures taken towards the lifting of sanctions were a result of the sanction itself? It could also be the case that the new president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf would have worked towards better governance anyway. (2) I explained the effects with regard to the institutionalization of the timber sector, but we don´t know anything about the side-effects the embargo might have had on the ground, either among loggers or the local population. Both of these criticisms will be taken into consideration, and hopefully I will be able to answer these questions after my fieldwork in Liberia.  

PDF Version of Paper: UN Commodity Sanctions in Peace Building Operations: The Role of the Post-Conflict Timber Embargo on Liberia