Belonging, nationality and citizenship

Résumé du document

This essay is based on the article of Lalli Metsola (2009): The Special Field Force and Namibian ex-combatant ?reintegration'. In Jensen and Jefferson (eds): State Violence and Human Rights: State Officials in the South. This article focuses on the study of organized violence in the contemporary Namibia. Thanks to the description of two inhabitants of this country, we are provided with a study of the links between structural and experimental violence. The life of the two men is interesting because it illustrates a specific mileage in the Namibian society: after the war, both of them have been recruited in the paramilitary Special Fielf Force unit of the Namibian Police. The objective of the article is to give structural explanations of the decisions and the itineraries of these two men. However, we also get evidences that the life of those men has been strongly affected by the political context of the time and this context must be understood with the structural explanations. In post-independence Namibia, the State and the society were facing an: ''uncomfortable coexistence of a structural legacy of violence alongside attempts at liberal, human rights-oriented reform''.

Extraits

[...] Belonging, nationality and citizenship This essay is based on the article of Lalli Metsola (2009): The Special Field Force and Namibian ex-combatant ‘reintegration'. In Jensen and Jefferson State Violence and Human Rights: State Officials in the South. This article focuses on the study of organized violence in the contemporary Namibia. Thanks to the description of two inhabitants of this country, we are provided with a study of the links between structural and experimental violence. The life of the two men is interesting because it illustrates a specific mileage in the Namibian society: after the war, both of them have been recruited in the paramilitary Special Fielf Force unit of the Namibian Police. [...]

[...] In one case it comes from misleading conceptions of citizenship in the other one it comes from the complexity of any post war context. But in every case we see that the States are responsible for the classifications of their populations and this role is really essential because it can shape completely a population. If the State succeed to control the consequences of this perspective in can provide it with benefits (Namibia found their its faithful police) but if not it can lead to civil war periods as we have seen in Ivory Coast. [...]

[...] But they also use violence because they are employed by a State that has the possession of the Weberian monopoly of violence. The government didn't try to erase violence but has pushed it in the margins of the State by using the ex-combatants as units of border patrolling. What are the consequences of their behavior for the State? However, those human rights violations have been considered as incidents and nothing was done to reorganize the SSF. As a consequence those forces were considered as useless and as a danger. [...]

[...] However, after the war, the aims were to provide citizens with an effective and useful service. This transition and this complete change were of course impossible to organize without any difficulties that were condamned by international human right organizations as transgressions. One of those transgressions directly concerns the two men here given the fact that it deals with the status of the ex-combatants. The ex-combatants of the two sides of the war (pro South African ones and liberation movement ones) were integrated in the security forces, the SSF unit, the police and the army. [...]

[...] Here the State is the one that has to decide who is who. On that sense, we can make a link between this situation in Namibia and the context in contemporary Ivory Coast. In that country, we see that the problem of ethnicity is really problematic because it gives roots to the definition of citizenship. In that country, citizenship is not defined thanks to positive law but thanks to the territorial autochthony of people. That means that to be considered as an Ivorian citizen you have to belong to a certain territory and a particular ethnic group. [...]