- University News Archive - 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock /news-archive/tag/london-school-of-economics-and-political-science/ 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Tue, 12 Jun 2018 14:53:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock professor investigates Syrians鈥 pursuit of peace and justice in the midst of war /news-archive/2018/06/12/syrian-civil-war/ Tue, 12 Jun 2018 14:53:53 +0000 /news/?p=70742 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock professor investigates Syrians鈥 pursuit of peace and justice in the midst of war]]> A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor visited Syrian refugees and activists in Turkey and Lebanon in May in the last of four trips to war-affected countries by an 18-member international research team investigating how peace can be achieved in societies emerging from conflict.聽 Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, assistant professor in the 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, traveled to the region as part of the. Due to the unresolved state of war in some areas of Syria, the group was unable to meet in Syria as they originally hoped. Before the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, the country had an estimated prewar population of 22 million. The United Nations Human Rights Council estimates that 5.6 million Syrians are now living as refugees in foreign countries. The countries that house the most refugees are Turkey with more than 3.5 million refugees and Lebanon with nearly 1 million refugees. 鈥淭he goal of this trip was to meet with Syrian refugees and activists as well as other people working with the United Nations and non-government organizations,鈥 Wiebelhaus-Brahm said. 鈥淲e sought to examine how the world can hold people accountable for mass atrocities while simultaneously building peace and providing justice for victims who have suffered as a result of the war. Circumstances on the ground make this especially challenging. There are some parts of the country where there is peace because Assad鈥檚 government has imposed order. Elsewhere, there are many communities in rebel-held territory where local councils have been set up to provide order because the state doesn鈥檛 exist.鈥 The international team investigated some of the major barriers to recovery and development in Syria, including rebuilding homes and infrastructure and educating displaced children and youth. 鈥淭o rebuild the damage that has been done to Syria will take billions of dollars for 聽infrastructure that is no longer there. When it comes to education and health, many facilities have been destroyed. In some areas, Assad鈥檚 forces purposely targeted schools and hospitals,鈥 Wiebelhaus-Brahm said. 鈥淲ith education, for example, you have thousands of children who have missed out on years of schooling. That is going to have long-term development consequences for the country. When it comes to land, there are also issues where property ownership may not be clear, where people may not have clear titles to their property.鈥 The conflict will also have major consequences for women, especially those who have become the sole providers for their families due to the loss of their husbands and other male relatives through war, imprisonment, or displacement. 鈥淚t鈥檚 more likely that it will be men who will go out to fight. It鈥檚 also the case that, when the government is trying to clamp down on opponents, it will typically be males,鈥 Wiebelhaus-Brahm said. 鈥淭here are thousands of people who are political prisoners in Syrian jails. Their absence has consequences for the families. The male is typically the breadwinner in the family, so how does that family survive?鈥 In an article titled Martin Clutterbuck of the Norwegian Refugee Council described the challenges women in Syria face in asserting their property rights. 鈥淚n Syria, as in many other countries, laws, norms and practices around ownership, inheritance and decision favour men,鈥 Clutterbuck said. 鈥淔or example, a woman鈥檚 registered legal identity in the Syrian civil registration system both prior to the conflict and today is linked to that of her husband or father, and women often relinquish their inheritance rights to a male family member.鈥
Photo of the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, provided by Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm.

Photo of the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, provided by Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm.

The high point of the trip for Wiebelhaus-Brahm was a trip to the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. The refugee camp was originally set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross for Palestinian refugees in 1949. It remains home to thousands of Palestinian refugees. Since the start of the Syrian Civil War, the camp has swollen in size and become the home to thousands of Syrian refugees as well. The refugee camp is unique in that it has permanent structures because it has been around so long. However, the camp does not have water or sewer infrastructure. Electricity comes from generators. The camp, which is one square kilometer in size, houses one community center and two schools. 鈥淲e went to the Shatila refugee camp, which was an amazing experience,鈥 he said. 鈥淭here continues to be roughly 20,000 Palestinians living in the area, and there are also 20,000-25,000 Syrian refugees that have come over the past seven years. The Lebanese government hopes the refugees will return home eventually, which is why they have not created the infrastructure for the camp. That is not unique. Countries don鈥檛 want to make refugees feel too welcome because they don鈥檛 want them to stay. It鈥檚 a difficult situation.鈥 The research team met with Basmeh and Zeitooneh, a Syrian non-governmental organization working with the refugees. They provide skills training, life skills, and training in literacy, English, and how to use computers and social media, among other services. 鈥淭he Syrian refugees seemed very happy and grateful for that support, but they want to get back home,鈥 he said. Wiebelhaus-Brahm said many of the refugees were reluctant to talk to researchers because they feared that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad鈥檚 regime would eventually find out that they had spoken out against the Syrian government. 鈥淭here is this belief among Syrians that the intelligence arm of the al-Assad regime is long. If these people want to go back home, they may need to reconcile themselves to the fact the government may win the war. If they want to go back to Syria to live and work, being on record as a critic or even being suspected is dangerous.鈥 The goal of the is to understand how peace can be achieved in countries affected by conflict through the study of justice initiatives and economic development in four countries: Colombia, Sri Lanka, Syria, and Uganda. The trip to Syria was the last of four planned visits. The network visited Colombia in April 2017, Uganda in July 2017, and Sri Lanka in January 2018. The project is headed by Kirsten Ainley, director of the at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Additional members of the network include professors from around the world, government officials, and members of nonprofit and activist organizations. The project is funded by the, which awarded the network a grant in 2016 worth approximately 150,000 British pounds, largely to develop relationships that bridge academics and practitioners from developed and developing countries and to fund travel for members of the network to research the four countries. The network recently submitted a larger grant to continue its research in additional countries.]]> 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock professor headed to Sri Lanka to investigate justice and economic development /news-archive/2017/12/19/eric-wiebelhaus-brahm-sri-lanka/ Tue, 19 Dec 2017 15:00:36 +0000 /news/?p=68907 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock professor headed to Sri Lanka to investigate justice and economic development]]> A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor is part of an 18-person international research network visiting Sri Lanka in January to investigate how peace can be achieved in a post-conflict region.聽 Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, assistant professor in the 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock School of Public Affairs, will head to Sri Lanka Jan. 5-14 as part of the. The network鈥檚 goal is to understand how peace can be achieved in countries affected by conflict through the study of justice initiatives and economic development in four countries: Colombia, Sri Lanka, Syria, and Uganda. The upcoming trip to Sri Lanka is the third of four planned visits. The network visited Colombia in April and Uganda in July. 鈥淲e are looking at societies deeply affected by civil war,鈥 Wiebelhaus-Brahm said. 鈥淭his project is trying to understand what have been the effects of conflict and what are the justice and economic development needs of these societies that, with the exception of Syria, are emerging from conflict.鈥 In Sri Lanka, network members will meet in the capital, Colombo, and then visit places deeply affected by the conflict. Sri Lanka was engulfed in a civil war between the government, dominated by the Sinhalese majority, and the Tamil minority in the country鈥檚 north and northeast from 1983 to 2009. Government forces seized the last area controlled by the Tamil Tiger rebels in May 2009. The country has been trying to rebuild and heal from the conflict for the past eight years. 鈥淥ne of the challenges has been that the government鈥檚 military victory has led it to largely ignore the economic and political marginalization that led some Tamils to take up arms in the first place. Moreover, the civil war itself created new justice and development needs that are as yet unmet. Yet, these groups share a country and need to find a way to coexist,鈥 Wiebelhaus-Brahm said. 鈥淚n the northern part of the country, there are tremendous issues that still need to be worked out. During our visit, we will try to understand the continuing consequences of the war in an economic, social, and political sense. 鈥淲e want to better understand what has been done to deal with the effects of the conflict. The government, in recent years, has pledged they will prosecute people in the military who engaged in war crimes that targeted civilians. There has been very little progress, however. There are people who lost their livelihoods. How are they rebuilding?鈥 Another issue facing the people of Sri Lanka is deciding how displaced people can return to their homes. 鈥淚n societies that have experienced civil war, we often see issues about land ownership. People may have owned land, and they had to flee or abandon the property, possibly forced to sell it on the cheap,鈥 Wiebelhaus-Brahm said. 鈥淟and ownership often becomes highly concentrated. With the war over, people want to go back to their communities and their land, but someone else is on the land now. It鈥檚 often difficult for the poorer families to reacquire land ownership. The wealthy owners have often turned it into commercial agricultural operations, often leaving not enough land to grow food.鈥 The project is headed by Kirsten Ainley, director of the at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Additional members of the coalition include professors from around the world, government officials, and members of nonprofit and activist organizations. The project is funded by the, which awarded the network a grant in 2016 worth approximately 拢150,000 British pounds, largely to fund travel for members of the network to research the four countries. The network recently submitted a larger grant to continue their research in additional countries. ]]>