Sarah Phillips argues that the lack of aid and international intervention meant that Somaliland was given a rare opportunity to work out their own way to a fragile but enduring peace.
By Phillip Adams on Late Night Live
Having gained its independence from Britain on June 26, 1960, Somaliland was an independent nation before voluntarily entering into a failed union with Somalia on July 1, 1960. However following violations and massacres it had endured by the collapsed military regime in the same year in Somalia, it withdrew from the union and reclaimed its independence on 18 May 1991, but there has never been any international recognition as a nation-state.
In the decades that followed Somaliland managed to negotiate peace among the clans while neighboring Somalia descended into violence and chaos.
Sarah Phillips argues that the lack of aid and international intervention meant that Somaliland was given a rare opportunity to work out their own way to a fragile but enduring peace.
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Sarah’s book When There Was No Aid: War and Peace in Somaliland has been awarded the 2020 Crisp Prize by the Australian Political Studies Association.
The Crisp Prize is awarded to Sarah Phillips (University of Sydney) for her 2020 book "When There Was No Aid: War and Peace in Somaliland", published by Cornell University Press.https://t.co/v3KTkeBDsc
— APSA Australia (@AusPSA) September 29, 2020
Duration: 17min 57sec
Broadcast: Tue 29 Sep 2020, 10:20pm
Guests
- Sarah Phillips
Associate Professor, Department of Government and International Relations, The University of Sydney
Publications
- When There Was No Aid: War and Peace in Somaliland by Sarah Phillips, Cornell University Press
Crisp Prize
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- Judging panel: Associate Professor Paul Fawcett (Chair), Dr Peter Tangney (Flinders), and Professor Louise Chappell (UNSW)
- APSA 2020 Crisp Prize Winner: Sarah Phillips (University of Sydney)2020, When There Was No Aid: War and Peace in Somaliland, Cornell University Press
Judging panel comments: Sarah Phillips’s book is a remarkable study that is an example of some of the very finest research and scholarship to emerge from political science and international relations in recent years. Theoretically sophisticated, beautifully written, and drawing on in-depth and sustained fieldwork conducted over many years, Phillips draws on an impressive array of literature to challenge longstanding presumptions about violence and poverty in the global South.
Crafted around a central case study of war and peace in Somaliland, Phillips draws important comparative insights that convincingly debunk longstanding notions that intervention by actors in the global North is self-evidently useful in ending violence and poverty and that the quality of a country’s governance institutions necessarily determines the level of peace and civil order that the country experiences.
Her argument shows how Somaliland’s post-conflict peace is grounded less in the constraining power of its institutions than in a powerful discourse about the country’s structural, temporal, and physical proximity to war to such a degree that even the inability of institutions to provide reliable security can stabilize a prolonged period of peace.
Phillip’s argument is marshaled into an extremely readable and accessible text, making this book appealing to both experts and non-experts alike. Already receiving well-justified praise and a wide readership, When There Was No Aid: War and Peace in Somaliland is destined to become a landmark text in the fields of development, international affairs, peace, conflict, and security studies.
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