INTRODUCTION
Conflict occurs between people in all kinds of human relationships and in all social settings. Because of the wide range of potential differences among people, the absence of conflict usually signals the absence of meaningful interaction. Conflict by itself is neither good nor bad. However, the manner in which conflict is handled determines whether it is constructive or destructive (Deutsch & Coleman, 2000).
Conflict is defined as an incompatibility of goals or values between two or more parties in a relationship, combined with attempts to control each other and antagonistic feelings toward each other (Fisher, 1990). The incompatibility or difference may exist in reality or may only be perceived by the parties involved. Nonetheless, the opposing actions and the hostile emotions are very real hallmarks of human conflict.
Conflict has the potential for either a great deal of destruction or much creativity and positive social change (Kriesberg, 1998). Therefore, it is essential to understand the basic processes of conflict so that we can work to maximize productive outcomes and minimize destructive ones.
Conflict Reduction
In the unfortunate event where conflict will have taken place, the task will involve reducing or moderating the escalation of conflict. The standard procedures will involve the adoption of specific strategies. Among the key strategies are:
• To institute consultation projects
Key Parties to the conflict must be identified and their demands or positions clarified.
• Promote Public awareness and protests to end violence
• Offer support to non-and semi-partisan local actors
• Undertake negotiations
At the stage of negotiations, ideally, it would have been more meaningful should the parties to the conflict have been able to enter into such negotiations by themselves. Experience however shows that this is usually not the case. Under such a situation, negotiations can only take place under a facilitator. Often the facilitator has to be a person of high standing, agreeable to parties to the conflict and one who does not harbor any other interest in the conflict than to resolve it. The key institutions for the negotiations are peace commissions and Peace Roundtable's.
Conflict Resolution
Conflict resolution is much broader process. It addresses all aspects of life and not merely a case of conflict that may have taken place. Accordingly, the steps towards conflict resolution will entail both negotiation and mediation strategies. In more concrete terms Conflict Resolution is a step towards the conclusion of the management of conflict. By and large conflict resolution goes through a series of tasks and undertakings. These tasks include:
• Rehabilitation and Trauma Healing,
Conflict can be injurious and parties to the conflict can physically and psychologically become traumatized as a result of the conflict. Programs that are intended to put the conflict behind and look forward to amore rewarding future are underlined by this task different councilors can be consulted to help, especially those who are psychologically wounded.
• Education for peace programs,
This activity entails, among other things demobilization and civilization of hardened and militarized political and structures. Among the activities along this task is to undertake social reconstruction and conduct reconciliation workshops for militants from the parties to the conflict.
Other activities are more straightforward. These activities include community building initiatives, confidence building projects, and offer Support for Power Sharing efforts. There is no standard sequence for the implementation of the strategies above. Rather, depending on the situation on the ground, each task of conflict resolution will be affected in response to specific demands. Other activities can run parallel to the others until stability and peace are restored while the others can terminate in between.
Methods of Conflict Resolution:
Regardless of the level of conflict, there are differing approaches to deal with the incompatibilities that exist. Conflict can result in destructive outcomes or creative ones depending on the approach that is taken. If we can manage conflict creatively, we can often find new solutions that are mutually satisfactory to both parties. Sometimes this will involve a distribution of resources or power that is more equitable than before, or in creating a larger pool of resources or forms of influence than before. Creative outcomes are more probable when the parties are interdependent, that is, each having some degree of independence and autonomy from which to influence the other, rather than one party being primarily dependent on the other.
Given interdependence, three general strategies have been identified that the parties may take toward dealing with their conflict; win-lose, lose-lose, and win-win (Blake, Shepard & Mouton, 1964).
Win-lose approach
The win-lose approach is all too common. People learn the behaviors of destructive conflict early in life – competition, dominance, aggression and defense permeate many of our social relationships from the family to the school playground. The “fixed pie” assumption is made, often incorrectly, that what one party gains, the other loses. The strategy is thus to force the other side to capitulate. Sometimes, this is done through socially acceptable mechanisms such as majority vote, the authority of the leader, or the determination of a judge. Sometimes, it involves secret strategies, threat, innuendo – whatever works is acceptable, i.e., the ends justify the means. There is often a strong we-they distinction accompanied by the classic symptoms of inter group conflict. The valued outcome is to have a victor who is superior, and a vanquished who withdraws in shame, but who prepares very carefully for the next round. In the long run, everyone loses.
Lose - lose strategy
The lose - lose strategy is exemplified by smoothing over conflict or by reaching the simplest of compromises. In neither case is the creative potential of productive conflict resolution realized or explored. Disagreement is seen as inevitable, so therefore why not split the difference or smooth over difficulties in as painless a way as possible? Sometimes, this is indeed the reality of the situation, and the costs are less than in the win-lose approach, at least for the loser. Each party gets some of what it wants, and resigns itself to partial satisfaction. Neither side is aware that by confronting the conflict fully and cooperatively they might have created a more satisfying solution. Or the parties may realistically use this approach to divide limited resources or to ore stall a win-lose escalation and outcome.
Win-win approach
The win-win approach is a conscious and systematic attempt to maximize the goals of both parties through collaborative problem solving. The conflict is seen as a problem to be solved rather than a war to be won. The important distinction is we (both parties) versus the problem, rather than we (one party) versus they (the other party). This method focuses on the needs and constraints of both parties rather than emphasizing strategies designed to conquer. Full problem definition and analysis and development of alternatives precede consensus decisions on mutually agreeable solutions. The parties work toward common and super ordinate goals that are ones that can only be attained by both parties pulling together. There is an emphasis on the quality of the long term relationships between the parties, rather than short term accommodations. Communication is open and direct rather than secretive and calculating. Threat and coercion are proscribed, for example posing a threat that the country will be excluded from a certain organization, or it will not receive any humanitarian help fro any country. The assumption is made that integrative agreements are possible given the full range of resources existing in the relationship. Attitudes and behaviors are directed toward an increase of trust and acceptance rather than an escalation of suspicion and hostility. The win-win approach requires a very high degree of patience and skill in human relations and problem solving.
International Approach to conflict resolution.
1. Using the International Law.
Under this approach theorists believe that there is and should be one legal system around the world. This method seemed to have the weakness that it is not possible to have one legal system around the world because the context differs because of culture or interests.
2. One World Government/State
Theorists look to conflict as governmental issues (uniformity) and not as an individual because sometimes people fight because of the system. Under this approach resource use and control problem will not be available. In this approach it is emphasized that the rule of law must be exercised properly and not to go beyond by abusing human rights. For example shooting people the case of Zombe in Tanzania. This method has some limitations which include
Culture: It become difficult to put people together and obey the same stand.
There will be a struggle for power.
3. Regional International
Organizations such as SADC, EAC, Great Lakes Region, AU, ECOWAS may be used to intervene. The limitations found under this approach include the following:
Discrimination (some rebel groups fighting)
Resources power – Mediators should be powerful in terms of resources.
Personal integrity of those people in the region.
4. Balance of Power (weapons)
Two conflicts parties must have equal power. Using peace keeping process (force) intervene by neutral force (which can be formed by military from sure that all parts have equal a runs etc. Volunteers can be sent for discipline keeping for example polices. For example, political crisis in Tanzania from 2005 to 2007. Intervention can be in the form of requesting, they may come: - Security Council are allowed to intervene and they can come by using another part who are the peace keeper for example in Somalia, Liberia, Congo, and Sierra Leone.
6. Diplomacy (Third part)
They use of the embassies of the countries which fight or can come outside the groups. For example when the Kenyan fought in 2008 Koffi Annan came to solve the problem. The only weaknesses found in diplomacy are that they have to be accepted. For example President Mugabe in Zimbabwe refused to meet with some of the teams
7. Disarmament
Taking away, destroying the weapons groups which are good in peace keeping which come from Humanitarian instruments such as FAO, WHO, NGOs like Red Cross and others.
Local/African Methods/Applications in Conflict Resolution
According to the Local or African Approach point of view, Internanational approach are based on the use of force for example armament, use of groups, no negotiations and they mostly use command. Critics of the International approach in the Africa context is that command are not acceptable in the African countries and the use of force does not work in the African conflicts.
African approaches:
In the African context there are two-Belief
(1) Change the attitude
Under the African approach it is believed that before you intervene you must change the attitudes of the fighting parties by educating the conflicting parts, change their mind setting and also change their Beliefs. For example the Tutsi and Hutu war in Rwanda
(2) Use negotiation (agreement)
Make them understand the causes, impacts and soon. After making them understand (changing their mindset) then use negotiation the two parties may reconcile. Negotiations can be undersized by using laws so that there will be uniformily in resolving some conflicts. We can also borrow some ideas of/from big philosophers (Read UTU by Nyerere) the book insisted about African dignity love etc.
(3) Mandela’s Approach – Forgiveness comments: The approach insisted on how to end or avoid war by forgiving the other parties who mistreated the other party. Though it was also criticized that it requires more thinking, it is more psychological/spiritual understanding and thus insist people to “Think before do”. He also added that It we really need peace in African countries; we need love, spiritual, humanity and no revenge.
Criticism of the African Approaches:
African approaches are criticized for being too slow as there is too much delay and wastage of resources. The use of third parties dialogue also seemed to be a problem because sometimes the parties do not accept the person chosen.
Recommendations and Conclusion
The African leaders has to be commited for their people and not for self interests. When leaders are more committed affairs may reduce some misunderstanding as many African countries wars are caused by poor distribution of resources.
When a leader or a certain community take everything for themselves, it always end up with problems. For example construction of schools and hospitals should be equally distributed to all region not only to those region which are represented by large number of ministers.
Some of the third party who come to intervene have their interest in one side (basing on resources or other sources) seems to be biased to one side which causes more hate between the two parties.
Conclusively, Conflict in many ways shows its negative impacts to be the world, development and relationship in general. Different method of resolving conflict have been discussed above which have been used to resolve many conflicts. But it is very unfortunate that to some countries the war have never been stopped, for example in Somalia, Sudan and many others in the world, the diplomacy have to find what is the real source of the war, and then give the very strong reasons as to why they have to stop fighting without being biases to any side.
Conflict is an inevitable fact of human existence. If we work to understand and manage it
effectively, we can improve both the satisfaction and productivity of our social relationships.
Refferences
(1) Blake, R.R., Shepard, H.A., & Mouton, J. S. (1964), Managing intergroup conflict in industry: : Gulf, Houston, Texas
(2) Deutsch, M. and Coleman, P. (eds.).( 2000) The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice: Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
(3) Fisher, R.J.(1990) The social psychology of inter group and international conflict resolution. Springer-Verlag, New York
(4) Kriesberg, L. (1998) Constructive conflict: From escalation to resolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman &Littlefield.
SOUTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE UNIVERSITY
AND
OPEN UNIVERSITY
NAME: MKWAZU CHANGWA M.
SUBJECT: DEVELOPMENT AS A TOOL FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION
CODE: ICD 721
INSTRUCTOR: Dr. SINDA
CLASS: II
CENTRE: DAR ES SALAAM
TOPIC: CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Individual assignment
Sunday, February 15, 2009
CONFLICT THEORIES
INTRODUCTION
This paper will briefly describe some common theories of conflict. Different sholars will be identified and their views to conflict sources will be discussed. The levels of social interaction at which conflict occurs and the general strategies of approaching conflict that are available will also be discussed.
What is conflict
Conflict can be defined as a disagreement or misunderstanding or no ompromise that can lead to fighting, blood sheds, civil wars, and world wars. At its very early stages the war can easily compromised. Sometimes war can have a silent characteristics like the cold war.
Sources of conflict:
Early reviews in the field of conflict resolution identified a large number of schemes for
describing sources or types of conflict (Fink, 1968; Mack & Snyder, 1958). One of the early theorists on conflict, Daniel Katz (1965), created a typology that distinguishes three main sources of conflict: economic, value, and power.
Natural theory
Aristotles, Plato and the Socrates believe that conflict is a natural event given by god. Aristotle did a research trying to answer the ‘question why conflicts occur’ and found that animals (wild and domestic) are always have conflicts. He also found that man also fight for different reasons. For example the Kings and Queens are always engage in fighting for land. Because of that it was concluded that conflicts are natural phenomena as far as there are conflicts not only to man but also to animals. Natural resources have been identified as the main source of conflicts.
Natural resources conflicts occur at various levels and involve a variety of actors. They range from conflicts among local men and women over the use of trees, to conflicts among neighbouring communities disputing control over woodland, to villages, community-based organizations, domestic and multinational businesses, governments, international development agencies and NGOs in conflict over the use and management of large forest tracts. Most conflicts are characterized by the presence of multiple stakeholders who themselves may have subgroups with varying interests.
The ways in which people (even those from the same community) respond to natural resource conflicts vary considerably. All communities have their own ways of handling conflicts. These mechanisms may be formal or informal, violent or peaceful, equitable or not. Although the specific strategies may vary, people generally rely on the same basic procedural modes to handle conflicts: avoidance, coercion, negotiation, mediation, arbitration and adjudication. People involved in natural resource conflicts take courses of action based on their preferences, their understanding of their options, their perceived likelihood for success and their relationship with an opponent. Not all people have equal access to all options gender, class, age and other factors may restrict the options of certain groups and individuals. Seasonality, through its influence on labour patterns and income flow, can affect the ability of people to act. Finally, the nature of the conflict itself may prescribe the use of certain legal procedures.
Natural resources policy, programmes and projects offer significant means of addressing many of the needs and concerns that propel resource-related conflicts. Ironically, policies, programmes and projects themselves can serve as sources or arenas of conflict, even though their intention is to ameliorate such conflicts. This situation generally arises when there is inadequate local participation in all phases of interventions, and when insufficient consider-ation is given to anticipating conflicts that might emerge.
Natural resources policy and interventions are often formulated without the active and sustained participation of communities and local resource users. For example, some governments have long relied on centralized management strategies based on centralized control by administrative units and technical experts. These policies and practices frequently fail to take into account local rights to, and practices regarding, natural resources. For example, the intro-duction of new policies and interventions without local input may end up supplanting, under-mining or eroding community institutions governing resource use. Some reasons why conflicts may arise during policy, programme and project implementation include: policies imposed without local participation, lack of harmony and coordination between bodies of law and legal procedures, poor identification of and inadequate consultation with stakeholders, uncoordinated planning, inadequate or poor information sharing, limited institutional capacity, inadequate monitoring and evaluation of programmes, lack of effective mechanisms for conflict management
Most countries are characterized by legal pluralism, the operation of different bodies of formal and informal laws and legal procedures within the same socio-political space.These legal orders may be rooted in the nation-state, religion, ethnic group, local custom, international agreements or other entities. They often overlap resulting in different legal bodies that can be complementary, competitive or contradictory. Resource conflicts sometimes emerge because there is a lack of harmony and coordination among these different legal orders, particularly when policies, programmes and projects fail to consider local situations. Community forestry Lack of harmony and coordination between bodies of law and legal procedures.
Stakeholders are people who possess an economic, cultural or political interest in, or influence over, a resource. The stakeholders may need the resource for subsistence, large and small commercial activities, conservation, tourism or for cultural reasons such as use of sacred sites. The concept is complex and dynamic because stakeholders are not generally homogeneous but can be further divided into subgroups according to their specific interests. Conflicts can occur because planners and managers identify stakeholders inadequately, or they refuse to acknowledge a group’s interest in a resource. Many policies and interventions face challenges in defining exactly what constitutes a community because of the limited ability of planners to identify the range of interests within it. When planners and managers fail to identify and consult with the full spectrum of stake-holders, they limit their understanding of these groups’ diverse needs and priorities and their indigenous knowledge of the situation. This increases the likelihood of Conflicts emerging.
Poor identification of and inadequate consultation with stakeholders may also cause conflicts among men. For example, a conservation warden negotiated a memorandum of understanding with two local groups to provide their livestock with seasonal access to water sources within a national park. The memorandum specified who received access, the number of cattle allowed and the responsibilities of community members. However, this agreement has been unsuccessful for several reasons. Outsiders migrated into the area to gain access to the water sources, and residents listed in the memorandum brought in cattle belonging to other communities. In addition, some community members and park staff allowed people who were not part of the agreement to use the corridor for access to grazing areas.
Conflicts arose at different levels. Households that upheld the agreement resented those who broke it. Park officials committed to the project’s success were pitted against park officials who colluded with local community members to break the rules. The difficulty of defining “community” in this instance, coupled with the inability of park officials to regulate resource access, contributed to the failure of this innovative project.
Darwin’s theory
There is an ideological foundation underlying all the wars, strife, chaos and conflict of the 20th century and the hatred and enmity incited among human beings. That ideology has totally ignored such virtues representing the essence of religious moral values as solidarity, altruism, protecting the poor and weak and regarding all human beings as equal. Instead, it propagated the lie that life is a battleground, that it is legitimate for the weak, the poor, or anyone regarded as a supposed "inferior race" to be oppressed or even annihilated, that the "fittest" will survive while others are eliminated in that merciless struggle, and that this is how mankind will "progress." The basis of that ideology is Darwin's theory of evolution.
Darwin’s theory deals with the former transfer to human society. Darwin’s doctrine of the evolution of species, according to which each individual has to fight the rest in order to survive, and only the fittest to do so will leave in this world successfully. Darwin theory is a biological version of bourgeois philosophy which is expressed in economic terms by the doctrine of free enterprises; to the struggle for life corresponds to satisfy needs. For example, different species of animals struggle to survive in the environment.
With his theory of evolution, Charles Darwin sought to apply this philosophy of selfishness to the natural sciences. Ignoring the examples of solidarity and cooperation created by God in nature, he maintained that all living things were engaged in a ruthless struggle for survival. On the basis of no scientific evidence whatsoever, he even claimed that this same ruthlessness applied to human societies. When his theory of evolution was applied to human society, social Darwinism appeared on the scene.Some people suggest that Social Darwinism was born in the second half of the 19th century and lost its influence during the second half of the 20th. But this theory has had far more permanent and damaging adverse effects. A twisted world view, in complete contradiction to religious moral values, has spread, alleging that life is a "struggle for survival," and that people need to compete in order to succeed in that struggle, or at the very least to survive. New lifestyles emerged that were the source of totalitarian and bloody ideologies like communism and fascism, ferocious capitalism that ignores social justice; racism, ethnic conflicts, moral degeneration, and many more disasters that inflicted catastrophes on humanity.
All of a sudden, Social Darwinism imparted an alleged scientific validity to existing evils, ruthless policies and practices. Adopting that trend, which lacks any scientific basis whatsoever, many people failed to live by religious moral values and began to regard ruthlessness, savagery and cruelty as unexceptional. They ignored the fact that religious moral values require virtues such as compassion, affection, understanding, self-sacrifice, solidarity and mutual support between individuals and societies. Perpetrators claimed a scientific foundation to their cruelty, and that therefore, the savagery they inflicted could be regarded as justified. These false claims and suppositions were of course a terrible deception.
Throughout, we shall be emphasizing that the model proposed by the theory of evolution, regarding human beings as a species of animal, is an error based on ruthlessness, loveless ness, selfishness and self-interest. Darwinism seeks to construct a world where humans live and behave like animals. Social Darwinism's teachings and practices make this quite clear. According to its twisted views, it is perfectly acceptable for an elderly, needy person to be dragged out of his home and taken away to be killed; or for handicapped people to be rounded up and left to die in concentration camps. According to this distorted thinking, those in the "inferior" classes can be ruthlessly persecuted, exploited and eliminated. Those who believe that human society can progress only when these savage policies are implemented regard such slaughter, genocide, cruelty and ruthlessness as a kind of success. They maintain that individuals and societies-indeed, entire cultures and nations-unable to achieve that success, must be done away with.
Without doubt, that is a most perverted and dangerous way of thinking. Perceiving this danger is of the greatest importance for those who oppose the theory and the ideologies based on it. Societal models based on Darwin and Darwinism are models that will lead to the most dreadful catastrophes. On the other hand, the moral values that God commands to humanity and reveals in the Qur'an will always bring with them peace and well-being.
2. Racialists/Ethical Determinism
Racialist theories originated in the middle ages, when Christian sovereigns wanted to seize the property of the Jewish bankers. They spread during the sixteenth century, when the Spanish and Portuguese used African slaves to develop their American colonies, but they only become really important politically in the nineteenth century. Levy did his study in Africa and concluded that African has less brain than and inferiority, where Europeans have more brains and superiority; where Hegel said that conflict was caused by the difference brain people have.
What is racism?
Descriptive: refers to certain attitudes and actions that single out certain people on the basis of their racial–or, in some cases, ethnic–heritage and disadvantage them in some way on this basis. Where ethnicity refers primarily to social and cultural forms of identification and self identification
The Invisibility Thesis: Racism is often invisible to the majority for several reasons such as; They suffer less from it, They don’t attribute their misfortune to race, They don’t always see the suffering that people of color endure.(Lawrence M. Hinman ;11/8/2005)
Overt racism: intended to discriminate against one or more groups on the basis of race. Example: covenants in deeds preventing property from being sold to people of color.
Institutional racism: social and institutional structures that, as a matter of fact, disadvantage certain racial groups. For example, do standardized aptitude and achievement tests disadvantage some groups?
Racialism believes that some races are inferior to others in ability and, in particular are incapable of organizing and maintaining modern forms of society. Left to their own devices, they would only reach a fairly low level of social evolution. However some races would reach a higher level than others, there are different degree of inferiority.
The question of race continues to divide our societies. We have widely divergent views on whether a problem even exists. For example most African Americans see racism as a problem and many feel it has gotten worse. The majority of white Americans see racism as disappearing and as no longer a significant problem in the United States. For a example, in 2009 the first African American was elected in America and become the first African American president in America.
Race distinction is undeniably a major cause of political strife. In some countries such as South Africa and various Latin Americans countries they dominate the whole political life. But the conflicts is not caused by the biological factors, or by the psychological nature of different races, but by the public image that attached to these races and by the kind of behaviour thus provoked.
The Civil Rights Movement
Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of a society beyond racism. Initially, the civil rights movement centered around injustices to African Americans. The Movement Expanded and Two additional civil rights movements emerged into the public eye: Rights for Mexican Americans and Rights for native Americans Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Russell Means first national director of AIM Racial categories appear biological, but their significance is often social. Racial categories in the United States often appear mutually exclusive, but may in fact be overlapping. The 2000 census was the first that allowed individuals to claim multiple racial affiliations, for example African American and Native American.
Racialists were criticized as being scientifically false. Certainly there are races which have been defined, biologically, according to the statistical predominance among their constituents members of some genetic factors such as skin colour, hair texture blood groups and soon. For all that it has never been proved that these genetic differences give rise to differences in intellectual capacity or social and political ability. Racialists arguments based on differences on races in the level of development attained by various races are just as invalid. Differences in development and behaviors are the result of the material and sociological conditions of life, and not of any so called inferiority.
Political economy (greed and grievances)
Two phenomena have been recently utilised to explain conflict onset among rational choice analysts: greed and grievance. The former reflects elite competition over valuable natural resource rents. The latter argues that relative deprivation and the grievance it produces fuels conflict. Central to grievance are concepts of inter-ethnic or horizontal inequality. Identity formation is also crucial to intra-state conflict, as it overcomes the collective action problem. Conflict can rarely be explained by greed alone, yet, the greed versus grievance hypotheses may be complementary explanations for conflict. The greed explanation for conflict duration and secessionist wars works best in cross-country studies, but has to make way for grievance-based arguments in quantitative country-case studies. Grievances and horizontal inequalities may be better at explaining why conflicts begin, but not necessarily why they persist. Neither the presence of greed or grievance is sufficient for the outbreak of violent conflict, something which requires institutional breakdown which we describe as the failure of the social contract. The degradation of the social contract is more likely in the context of poverty and growth failure.
Economic conflict involves competing motives to attain scarce resources. Each party wants to get the most that it can, and the behavior and emotions of each party are directed toward maximizing its gain. Union and management conflict often has as one of its sources the incompatible goals of how to slice up the “economic pie”.
Power conflict occurs when each party wishes to maintain or maximize the amount of influence that it exerts in the relationship and the social setting. It is impossible for one party to be stronger without the other being weaker, at least in terms of direct influence over each other. Thus, a power struggle ensues which usually ends in a victory and defeat, or in a “stand-off” with a continuing state of tension. Power conflicts can occur between individuals, between groups or between nations, whenever one or both parties choose to take a power approach to the relationship. Power also enters into all conflict since the parties are attempting to control each other.
It must be noted that most conflicts are not of a pure type, but involve a mixture of sources. For example, union-management conflict typically involves economic competition, but may also take the form of a power struggle and often involves different ideologies or political values. The more sources that are involved, the more intense and intractable the conflict usually is. Another important source of conflict is ineffective communication. Miscommunication and misunderstanding can create conflict even where there are no basic incompatibilities. In addition, parties may have different perceptions as to what are the facts in a situation, and until they share information and clarify their perceptions, resolution is impossible. Self-centeredness, selective perception, emotional bias, prejudices, etc., are all forces that lead us to perceive situations very differently from the other party. Lack of skill in communicating what we really mean in a clear and respectful fashion often results in confusion, hurt and anger, all of which simply feed the conflict process.
The theory of greed
The greed motivation behind civil war has been popularised by empirical work on the causes of civil war where a cross-section of conflicts in different nations is analyzed together econometrically, and greed is proxied by the availability or abundance of capturable natural resource rents. In Collier and Hoeffler (2004) civil wars stem from the greedy behaviour of a rebel group in organising an insurgency against the government. Greed is about opportunities faced by the rebel group. The opportunities can be disaggregated into three components: financing, recruitment and geography. The most common sources of rebel finance are the appropriation of natural resources, donations from sympathetic diasporas residing abroad, contributions from foreign states (hostile to the government) or multinational companies interested in the region. Natural resource wealth is the chief among the three in terms of its relative importance. Recruitment is about the opportunity to induct fighting manpower; something made easier when there is a high proportion of young unemployed males in population, in a setting of endemic poverty and poor education. Geographical situations favorable to rebel groups are mountainous terrain and other safe havens for insurgents. In short, greed simply means the ‘economic opportunity’ to fight, and should be distinguished from socio-political grievances.
The econometric models purporting to establish the empirical validity of the greed hypothesis, however, are atheoretical, in the sense of not having a formal economic model based on optimising behaviour by economic agents to explain why greed may cause conflict. If economic agents (homo economicus) are actuated only by self- interest, we must demonstrate why they choose war over other alternatives. Therefore, any theorising about greed must be based on the economic motivations for violence and criminality. Belligerents in the wars of natural-resource rich countries could be acting in ways close to what Olson (1996) referred to as 'roving bandits' who have no encompassing interest in preserving the state or its people but are simply intent on loot than to 'stationary' bandits who take control of the state and seek to maximise their own profit by encouraging stability and growth in their new domain. Civil wars motivated by the desire to control natural resource rents could also mirror “warlord competition”, a term that owes its origins to the violent competition between leaders attempting to control economic resources in the context of medieval Europe, Skaperdas (2002).
Both these models, however, neglect the destructiveness of war (collateral damage), and its capacity to ravage productive capacity, additional to direct military expenditure. These models employ intermediate inputs, and not factors of production, which can be costlessly shifted between fighting and production. Secondly, there is no growth in these models, something which would raise the opportunity costs of war. A similar effect could arise from complementarities in production between groups and/or economies of scale, which would make mergers between groups or cooperation in each group’s self-interest. Thirdly, the possibilities of peaceful exchange need to be limited in order to rationalise conflict. In traditional economics the gains from trade arise mainly from differences in tastes, technology and endowments, and these gains from trade need to be minimised in order to make conflict an optimal choice. Violent means are attractive when the intention is to extract resources (as in the case of colonial plantations and mines) or accumulate surpluses at the expense of others (mercantilism). Fourthly, these models imply full information. In the presence of asymmetric information, misperceptions about contest success, the opposition’s intentions and so on, wars that do not maximise expectedutility under full information may break out, akin to problems associated with moral hazard and adverse selection. Fifthly, such theorising is broadly blind to institutions (despite ruling out the existence of property rights and between-group contracts), and the presence of transactions costs that breed mutual mistrust. Wars can also reflect the absence of institutions which facilitate negotiation and peaceful exchange.
Despite these limitations, there is much in this models that can explain the greedy behaviour as analyzed by the empirical exponents of the greed hypothesis. The presence of readily capturable natural resource based rents may make conflict more attractive when compared to peaceful production, as can a shortage of intermediate inputs due to population pressure. These resources are best regarded as a non-produced ‘prize’ such as oil or diamonds (which apart from extraction costs are like manna from heaven), whose ownership is violently contested. Secondly, contributions Even in societies with property rights, there still may be violent or non-violent competition over resources which have, as yet, unassigned ownership. from a sympathetic diaspora (or aid from a super-power in the cold war era) can raise the probability of victory of a potential rebel group against the state. Thirdly, the inability of the state to act as a Stackelberg leader in a potentially divided nation may raise the chances of war between groups in a manner similar to the weak state capacity mechanism favoured by some political scientists (like James Fearon). For example, in the Hirshleifer (1995) model where different groups are in a state of anarchy vis-à-vis one another, the ability of one group to behave as a Stackelberg leader reduces equilibrium fighting levels and raises each side’s per-capita income. The leader, however, gains relatively less compared to followers, creating an incentive for each side to be a follower. If one group is strong and militarily more effective it will dominate other groups, and there will be no fighting in the equilibrium. This may lead to state formation, which may or may not lead to the re-configuration of group identities. If inter-group rivalries persist, state disintegration occurs when the dominant group can no longer control other groups.
Finally, war implies the absence of contract, and warring parties may enter into contracts that make their interactions more peaceful. This will be all the more true, if war causes substantial collateral damage. Groups may also decide to merge in order to reap economies of scale in production. If they do not do so when it is clearly in their mutual self-interest we have to resort to explanations based on misperceptions, mistrust or the lack of institutions that enforce contracts. Alternatively, the institutions that once bound groups together may have disintegrated. We now return to the empirical hypotheses that buttress cross-country econometric studies of civil war, which are dominated by various forms of a greed (or modified greed) and state failure hypotheses.
Theories of Grievance
Central to grievances are identity and group formation. An individual’s utility may be related to his identity, specifically the relative position of the group he identifies with in the social pecking order; ( Akerlof and Kranton 2000). An individual may derive utility from certain normative forms of behaviour appropriate to his identity but considered deviant by other groups, and may even face sanctions from like-minded group members if he deviates from them. This type of behavioural paradigm may be related to solving the collective action problems (Olson, 1965), without which organised large-scale violence is impossible, even if we believe conflict is primarily motivated by greed. As noted in the introduction, some appropriate definition of ethnicity may be a superior basis for group formation compared to social class in an ethnically homogenous society. We sub-divide theories of grievance into relative deprivation, polarization and horizontal inequality. While it is important to differentiate them, some overlap among the three definitions is inevitable.
Relative deprivation
The notion of relative deprivation dates back to the work of Ted Gurr (1970) who defines it as the discrepancy between what people think they deserve, and what they actually believe they can get; in short the disparity between aspirations and achievements. Thus, educational achievements may raise the aspirations of young people, but they will become frustrated if unemployed, occasionally venting their feelings in mass political violence. Gurr puts forward the following hypothesis, ‘the potential for collective violence varies strongly with the intensity and scope of relative deprivation among members of a collectivity’. This lays down the notion of relative deprivation as the micro-foundation for conflict. Relative deprivation is considered to be a major cause of civil war, as well as sectarian and routine violence. The applications vary across ethno-communal lines, regional boundaries, societal class, or just the feeling of being relatively deprived vis-à-vis the general situation. In the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku, the traditionally privileged Christians group felt relatively deprived against the rising Muslim community economically and politically, which resulted in the bloodiest Muslim-Christian conflict in the country’s history (Tadjoeddin, 2003). Similar statements centring around unemployment could be made about the Catholic-Protestant cleavage in Northern Ireland. In Nepal, the lack of development in remote rural districts of the country fuelled the Maoist insurgency (Murshed and Gates, 2005).
Polarisation
Polarisation occurs when two groups exhibit great inter-group heterogeneity combined with intra-group homogeneity. Economic polarisation (along with high vertical income inequality) can occur in societies that are culturally homogenous (Esteban and Ray, 1994). In their original and seminal concept of polarisation, Esteban and Ray focus on the identification and alienation framework. They said that polarisation is related to the alienation that groups of people feel from one another, and such alienation is fuelled by the feeling of within-group identity. Furthermore, Esteban and Ray argue that the traditional measures of inequality are only concerned with interpersonal alienation, but fail to capture the dimension of group identity. It is important to note that ethnic polarisation requires two or a few ethnicities. When a society has a very large number of identities, then the term ethnic fractionalisation is more appropriate. Therefore, polarization is what may matter for conflict, rather than fractionalisation and/or overall vertical (inter-individual) inequality. Few studies have empirically demonstrated the existence of such an argument. Montalvo and Reynal-Querol (2005) find that ethnic polarisation is a significant explanatory variable for civil war onset, while ethnic fractionalisation is not.
Horizontal inequality
The notion of horizontal inequalities between groups, classified by ethnicity, religion, linguistic differences, tribal affiliations etc., is thought to be an important cause of contemporary civil war and sectarian strife, but not routine violence. The idea of horizontal inequality may overlap with the notion of relative deprivation and polarisation as will be indicated by alternative measures discussed below. The expression, horizontal inequality, originates in the work of Frances Stewart; (Stewart 2000), and should be distinguished from vertical inequality, which is the inequality within an otherwise homogenous population. Four sources of horizontal inequality may be highlighted:
Discrimination in Public Spending and Taxation
Discrimination in the allocation of public spending and unfair tax burdens, lead to serious unrest.(Grossman, 1991) develops a theoretical model of insurrection against the state by the peasantry reacting to over taxation, where the state is a tax-farmer interested in maximising the income of the rentier class. Discrimination in the allocation of public employment is particularly resented in societies in which public employment represents the principal avenue for personal advance, as in Burundi. In addition, the over taxation of smallholders encourages insurrection, and indigenous peoples often face discrimination in access to schooling, health care, and public-sector jobs; many of these factors are present in Nepal’s current civil war, (Murshed and Gates, 2005). Where there are inter-group fiscal transfers, which may take the form of spending on education and health for disadvantaged groups, or including them in government employment, commitment to the transfer by those in power may be imperfect. This lack of credibility can eventually lead to civil war.
High Asset Inequality.
Agrarian societies with high inequality,for example El Salvador, Guatemala, Nepal, the Philippines, and Zimbabwe have high asset inequality, and are very prone to conflict, (Russet, 1964) for an early view on this. Asset redistribution such as land reform to lessen inequality is more difficult than public finance reform. (Besançon , 2005), however, points out that purely ethnic conflicts, as opposed to revolutions and genocides, are more likely when a greater degree of income equality has been achieved between contending ethnic groups. Inclusion in the political process is more crucial to preventing this type of conflict, which are not usually civil wars, as the state is not involved.
Economic Mismanagement and Recession.
In Africa, Latin America and the former Soviet Union conflict ridden countries have also suffered prolonged economic mismanagement and growth collapse. Successive IMF and World Bank supported adjustment programmes in DRC-Zaire, Somalia and elsewhere not only proved incapable of promoting economic recovery, but given the level of corruption within the state, themselves became targets for capture by elite groups. Economic mismanagement is often associated with an uneven and unfair distribution of the burdens of subsequent adjustment; public spending benefiting the elite and the military is protected, often favouring particular ethnic groups, with the burden of adjustment placed on expenditures of value to the poor and disadvantaged groups. Also, as Rodrik (1999) emphasises, countries with weak institutions of conflict management, as well as high income inequality are less able to withstand economic shocks and experience growth failure. They are also more prone to the risk of civil strife and war, since their weak institutions, which are further weakened by shocks and lower growth, are unable to contain the resulting social pressure and distributional conflict.
Grievances Related to Resource Rents:
Natural resource rents can by themselves become a source of grievance, if local populations feel that they are not getting a fair share of these, as in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It can also cause secessionist tendencies amongst relative rich regions, who no longer want to subsidise their fellow countrymen, as in the case of Aceh in Indonesia, (Tadjoeddin et. al.2003).
With regard to incentives faced by rulers in developing countries, it has to be remembered that until the end of the cold war most developing countries were ruled by strong men. Some promoted development, others did not. Dunning (2005) makes an argument, based on a two period-two agent-two sector game theoretic model, about choices by rulers regarding the future growth path of the economy in the context of natural resource abundance. He compares Mobutu’s Zaire (1965-1997) to Suharto’s Indonesia (1965-98) and Botswana during the same period. In Botswana, revenues from Kimberlite diamonds were very stable, due to Botswana’s unique relationship with De Beers and its important position as a major supplier. It did not need to diversify it economy. But it chose a developmental path because of the mature nature of political elites there. In Indonesia and Zaire resource flows were volatile. In one case the dictator (Suharto) chose diversification and growth enhancing strategies, as well as policies aimed at equalisation and poverty reduction to contain political opposition. Development in Indonesia was impressive, and may have led, at least partially, to endogenous demands for democracy (Lipset, 1960). In the other case (Zaire, now DRC), Mobutu did not, because he felt that diversification and investment in infrastructure would loosen his grip on power and strengthen political opposition to him based on ethnicity. Zaire or the DRC has perhaps the poorest post-1960 growth record on the planet. Perhaps, in East Asia greater fears of communism strengthened benevolence in dictators (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia), whereas in Africa a certain type of factionalism dominated policies and politics, retarding growth-enhancing economic diversification and infrastructural development. Turning to the all-encompassing importance of growth in promoting peaceful economic interaction and the social contract, it is worthwhile examining a few of the broad stylized facts regarding conflict across developing countries since about 1960. To get an empirical feel for some of these macro-channels, a descriptive look at the data may be in order.
It is discernable that India, Sri Lanka and Colombia are the stable democracies in the
post 1960 era that have had civil wars, including high intensity conflict. Many of the
transitions in regime type from autocracy to anocracy to democracy (during 1960-2000) are described in Murshed (2006). Multiple switches in all directions are possible, and not just from autocracy to democracy. Nevertheless, only 5 out of the seventeen nations with a high conflict incidence have ever been democracies with a democracy score over 4. Democracy, even stable democracy, does not guarantee the absence of armed conflict, both of the secessionist and rebel varieties, as the examples of India, Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and others indicate. Autocracies also fall into conflict, nevertheless, stable autocracies such as China and Singapore have avoided civil war, as did Taiwan and South Korea which became democracies recently. Despite prominent outliers such as India, Colombia, and Saudi Arabia, most conflict prone countries are neither stable democracies nor autocracies, lending support to the Hegre et. al. (2001) finding that conflict risk is greatest when regime types are in transition, say from autocracy to democracy.
Conclusion:
Natural resources conflicts have always been with us, due in part to the multiple and competing demands on resources. conflicts can arise if user groups are excluded from participating in natural resource management. They also occur if there are: contradictions between local and introduced management systems; misunderstandings and lack of information about policy and programme objectives; contra- dictions or lack of clarity in laws and policies; inequity in resource distribution; or poor policy and programme implementation. Conflict will always exist to some degree in every community, but it can often be managed and resolved.
The form and intensity of conflicts vary widely by place, and over time within any community. conflicts manifest themselves in many ways, ranging from breaking rules to acts of sabotage and violence. Sometimes conflicts remain hidden or latent. People may allow grievances to smoulder because of fear, distrust, peer pressure, financial constraints, exclusion from certain conflict resolution procedures, or for strategic reasons. Because some societies encourage their members to avoid public confrontations, a lack of public disputes does not mean there is no conflict.
Despite growing recognition of the need for integrated approaches to natural resource management, many governmental and other agencies still rely on sectoral approaches with limited cross-sectoral planning and coordination. For example, the agricultural service may promote cash crop expansion in forests to raise incomes without recognizing its adverse effects on other resource users. Overlapping and competing jurisdictions and activities among agencies may result in their inability to reconcile the needs and priorities of various stakeholders.
Effective sharing of information on policies, laws, procedures and objectives can enhance the success of programmes and reduce conflicts. In contrast, lack of information on the intention of the planning agencies may lead to suspicion and mistrust.
Encourage participation by community, have been supplanted by courts and administrative members and respect local values and laws. Customs are more accessible because of their low, are often inaccessible to people on the basis of cost, their flexibility in scheduling and gender, class, caste and other factors. Procedures, and their use of the local language encourage decision-making.
Conflict is an inevitable fact of human existence. If we work to understand and manage it
effectively, we can improve both the satisfaction and productivity of our social relationships. In order to reduce it occurrence in future the government may apply the following strategies:
Governments should plan to have compensatory programs. Compensatory programs are a way of responding to past injustices. They are justified up until the point at which the earlier wrong has been compensated for. Rests on a notion of compensatory justice the country may owe compensation for officially sanctioned racism. For example actions against Native Americans and actions against JapaneseAmericans in WWII. Enslavement of Africans brought to America (Hinman, Lawrence M. 2005)
Backward looking
Do not presume that the present state of recipients of compensation is necessarily impoverished. Important symbolic value in recognizing that a wrong occurred
and expressing sorrow or regret
Future oriented Models
This differ from compensatory models, which look to past injustices. Depends on one’s notion of an ideal society, the means acceptable to achieving that society. The government should have an affirmative Action. Four Senses of Affirmative Actions which include:
Weak senses of affirmative action:
• 1. Encouraging the largest possible number of minority applications in the applicant pool, and then choosing the best candidates regardless of gender, race, etc.
• 2. When the two best candidates are equally qualified and one is a minority candidate, choosing the minority candidate.
Strong senses of affirmative action:
• 3. From a group of candidates, all of whom are qualified, choosing the minority candidate over better qualified nonminority ones.
• 4. Choosing an unqualified minority candidate over a qualified nonminority one.
REFFERENCES
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Houston, Texas: Gulf, 1964.
Katz, D.(1965) Nationalism and strategies of international conflict. In H.C. Kelman (ed.), International behavior: A social psychological analysis. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, , pp. 356-390.
Kriesberg, L. Constructive conflict: From escalation to resolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman &Littlefield, 1998.
Mack, R.W. & Snyder,( 1957) R.C. The analysis of social conflict toward an overview and synthesis. Journal of conflict resolution.
S Mansoob Murshed & Mohammad Zulfan Tadjoeddin,( 2007); Reappraising the greed and Grievance Explanations for Violent Internal Conflict MICROCON Research Working Paper 2 September
Chandrasekharan, D.(1997). Proceedings: Electronic Conference on Addressing natural Resource conflict through Community Forestry, January-May 1996. Community Forestry/FTPP Conflict Management Series. Rome, FAO.
FAO. 1997. Compilation of Discussion Papers Made to the Electronic Conference on Addressing natural Resource conflict through Community Forestry, January-May 1996. Community Forestry/FTPP Conflict Management Series. Rome.
Lawrence M. Hinman (2005), Compensatory Programs
This paper will briefly describe some common theories of conflict. Different sholars will be identified and their views to conflict sources will be discussed. The levels of social interaction at which conflict occurs and the general strategies of approaching conflict that are available will also be discussed.
What is conflict
Conflict can be defined as a disagreement or misunderstanding or no ompromise that can lead to fighting, blood sheds, civil wars, and world wars. At its very early stages the war can easily compromised. Sometimes war can have a silent characteristics like the cold war.
Sources of conflict:
Early reviews in the field of conflict resolution identified a large number of schemes for
describing sources or types of conflict (Fink, 1968; Mack & Snyder, 1958). One of the early theorists on conflict, Daniel Katz (1965), created a typology that distinguishes three main sources of conflict: economic, value, and power.
Natural theory
Aristotles, Plato and the Socrates believe that conflict is a natural event given by god. Aristotle did a research trying to answer the ‘question why conflicts occur’ and found that animals (wild and domestic) are always have conflicts. He also found that man also fight for different reasons. For example the Kings and Queens are always engage in fighting for land. Because of that it was concluded that conflicts are natural phenomena as far as there are conflicts not only to man but also to animals. Natural resources have been identified as the main source of conflicts.
Natural resources conflicts occur at various levels and involve a variety of actors. They range from conflicts among local men and women over the use of trees, to conflicts among neighbouring communities disputing control over woodland, to villages, community-based organizations, domestic and multinational businesses, governments, international development agencies and NGOs in conflict over the use and management of large forest tracts. Most conflicts are characterized by the presence of multiple stakeholders who themselves may have subgroups with varying interests.
The ways in which people (even those from the same community) respond to natural resource conflicts vary considerably. All communities have their own ways of handling conflicts. These mechanisms may be formal or informal, violent or peaceful, equitable or not. Although the specific strategies may vary, people generally rely on the same basic procedural modes to handle conflicts: avoidance, coercion, negotiation, mediation, arbitration and adjudication. People involved in natural resource conflicts take courses of action based on their preferences, their understanding of their options, their perceived likelihood for success and their relationship with an opponent. Not all people have equal access to all options gender, class, age and other factors may restrict the options of certain groups and individuals. Seasonality, through its influence on labour patterns and income flow, can affect the ability of people to act. Finally, the nature of the conflict itself may prescribe the use of certain legal procedures.
Natural resources policy, programmes and projects offer significant means of addressing many of the needs and concerns that propel resource-related conflicts. Ironically, policies, programmes and projects themselves can serve as sources or arenas of conflict, even though their intention is to ameliorate such conflicts. This situation generally arises when there is inadequate local participation in all phases of interventions, and when insufficient consider-ation is given to anticipating conflicts that might emerge.
Natural resources policy and interventions are often formulated without the active and sustained participation of communities and local resource users. For example, some governments have long relied on centralized management strategies based on centralized control by administrative units and technical experts. These policies and practices frequently fail to take into account local rights to, and practices regarding, natural resources. For example, the intro-duction of new policies and interventions without local input may end up supplanting, under-mining or eroding community institutions governing resource use. Some reasons why conflicts may arise during policy, programme and project implementation include: policies imposed without local participation, lack of harmony and coordination between bodies of law and legal procedures, poor identification of and inadequate consultation with stakeholders, uncoordinated planning, inadequate or poor information sharing, limited institutional capacity, inadequate monitoring and evaluation of programmes, lack of effective mechanisms for conflict management
Most countries are characterized by legal pluralism, the operation of different bodies of formal and informal laws and legal procedures within the same socio-political space.These legal orders may be rooted in the nation-state, religion, ethnic group, local custom, international agreements or other entities. They often overlap resulting in different legal bodies that can be complementary, competitive or contradictory. Resource conflicts sometimes emerge because there is a lack of harmony and coordination among these different legal orders, particularly when policies, programmes and projects fail to consider local situations. Community forestry Lack of harmony and coordination between bodies of law and legal procedures.
Stakeholders are people who possess an economic, cultural or political interest in, or influence over, a resource. The stakeholders may need the resource for subsistence, large and small commercial activities, conservation, tourism or for cultural reasons such as use of sacred sites. The concept is complex and dynamic because stakeholders are not generally homogeneous but can be further divided into subgroups according to their specific interests. Conflicts can occur because planners and managers identify stakeholders inadequately, or they refuse to acknowledge a group’s interest in a resource. Many policies and interventions face challenges in defining exactly what constitutes a community because of the limited ability of planners to identify the range of interests within it. When planners and managers fail to identify and consult with the full spectrum of stake-holders, they limit their understanding of these groups’ diverse needs and priorities and their indigenous knowledge of the situation. This increases the likelihood of Conflicts emerging.
Poor identification of and inadequate consultation with stakeholders may also cause conflicts among men. For example, a conservation warden negotiated a memorandum of understanding with two local groups to provide their livestock with seasonal access to water sources within a national park. The memorandum specified who received access, the number of cattle allowed and the responsibilities of community members. However, this agreement has been unsuccessful for several reasons. Outsiders migrated into the area to gain access to the water sources, and residents listed in the memorandum brought in cattle belonging to other communities. In addition, some community members and park staff allowed people who were not part of the agreement to use the corridor for access to grazing areas.
Conflicts arose at different levels. Households that upheld the agreement resented those who broke it. Park officials committed to the project’s success were pitted against park officials who colluded with local community members to break the rules. The difficulty of defining “community” in this instance, coupled with the inability of park officials to regulate resource access, contributed to the failure of this innovative project.
Darwin’s theory
There is an ideological foundation underlying all the wars, strife, chaos and conflict of the 20th century and the hatred and enmity incited among human beings. That ideology has totally ignored such virtues representing the essence of religious moral values as solidarity, altruism, protecting the poor and weak and regarding all human beings as equal. Instead, it propagated the lie that life is a battleground, that it is legitimate for the weak, the poor, or anyone regarded as a supposed "inferior race" to be oppressed or even annihilated, that the "fittest" will survive while others are eliminated in that merciless struggle, and that this is how mankind will "progress." The basis of that ideology is Darwin's theory of evolution.
Darwin’s theory deals with the former transfer to human society. Darwin’s doctrine of the evolution of species, according to which each individual has to fight the rest in order to survive, and only the fittest to do so will leave in this world successfully. Darwin theory is a biological version of bourgeois philosophy which is expressed in economic terms by the doctrine of free enterprises; to the struggle for life corresponds to satisfy needs. For example, different species of animals struggle to survive in the environment.
With his theory of evolution, Charles Darwin sought to apply this philosophy of selfishness to the natural sciences. Ignoring the examples of solidarity and cooperation created by God in nature, he maintained that all living things were engaged in a ruthless struggle for survival. On the basis of no scientific evidence whatsoever, he even claimed that this same ruthlessness applied to human societies. When his theory of evolution was applied to human society, social Darwinism appeared on the scene.Some people suggest that Social Darwinism was born in the second half of the 19th century and lost its influence during the second half of the 20th. But this theory has had far more permanent and damaging adverse effects. A twisted world view, in complete contradiction to religious moral values, has spread, alleging that life is a "struggle for survival," and that people need to compete in order to succeed in that struggle, or at the very least to survive. New lifestyles emerged that were the source of totalitarian and bloody ideologies like communism and fascism, ferocious capitalism that ignores social justice; racism, ethnic conflicts, moral degeneration, and many more disasters that inflicted catastrophes on humanity.
All of a sudden, Social Darwinism imparted an alleged scientific validity to existing evils, ruthless policies and practices. Adopting that trend, which lacks any scientific basis whatsoever, many people failed to live by religious moral values and began to regard ruthlessness, savagery and cruelty as unexceptional. They ignored the fact that religious moral values require virtues such as compassion, affection, understanding, self-sacrifice, solidarity and mutual support between individuals and societies. Perpetrators claimed a scientific foundation to their cruelty, and that therefore, the savagery they inflicted could be regarded as justified. These false claims and suppositions were of course a terrible deception.
Throughout, we shall be emphasizing that the model proposed by the theory of evolution, regarding human beings as a species of animal, is an error based on ruthlessness, loveless ness, selfishness and self-interest. Darwinism seeks to construct a world where humans live and behave like animals. Social Darwinism's teachings and practices make this quite clear. According to its twisted views, it is perfectly acceptable for an elderly, needy person to be dragged out of his home and taken away to be killed; or for handicapped people to be rounded up and left to die in concentration camps. According to this distorted thinking, those in the "inferior" classes can be ruthlessly persecuted, exploited and eliminated. Those who believe that human society can progress only when these savage policies are implemented regard such slaughter, genocide, cruelty and ruthlessness as a kind of success. They maintain that individuals and societies-indeed, entire cultures and nations-unable to achieve that success, must be done away with.
Without doubt, that is a most perverted and dangerous way of thinking. Perceiving this danger is of the greatest importance for those who oppose the theory and the ideologies based on it. Societal models based on Darwin and Darwinism are models that will lead to the most dreadful catastrophes. On the other hand, the moral values that God commands to humanity and reveals in the Qur'an will always bring with them peace and well-being.
2. Racialists/Ethical Determinism
Racialist theories originated in the middle ages, when Christian sovereigns wanted to seize the property of the Jewish bankers. They spread during the sixteenth century, when the Spanish and Portuguese used African slaves to develop their American colonies, but they only become really important politically in the nineteenth century. Levy did his study in Africa and concluded that African has less brain than and inferiority, where Europeans have more brains and superiority; where Hegel said that conflict was caused by the difference brain people have.
What is racism?
Descriptive: refers to certain attitudes and actions that single out certain people on the basis of their racial–or, in some cases, ethnic–heritage and disadvantage them in some way on this basis. Where ethnicity refers primarily to social and cultural forms of identification and self identification
The Invisibility Thesis: Racism is often invisible to the majority for several reasons such as; They suffer less from it, They don’t attribute their misfortune to race, They don’t always see the suffering that people of color endure.(Lawrence M. Hinman ;11/8/2005)
Overt racism: intended to discriminate against one or more groups on the basis of race. Example: covenants in deeds preventing property from being sold to people of color.
Institutional racism: social and institutional structures that, as a matter of fact, disadvantage certain racial groups. For example, do standardized aptitude and achievement tests disadvantage some groups?
Racialism believes that some races are inferior to others in ability and, in particular are incapable of organizing and maintaining modern forms of society. Left to their own devices, they would only reach a fairly low level of social evolution. However some races would reach a higher level than others, there are different degree of inferiority.
The question of race continues to divide our societies. We have widely divergent views on whether a problem even exists. For example most African Americans see racism as a problem and many feel it has gotten worse. The majority of white Americans see racism as disappearing and as no longer a significant problem in the United States. For a example, in 2009 the first African American was elected in America and become the first African American president in America.
Race distinction is undeniably a major cause of political strife. In some countries such as South Africa and various Latin Americans countries they dominate the whole political life. But the conflicts is not caused by the biological factors, or by the psychological nature of different races, but by the public image that attached to these races and by the kind of behaviour thus provoked.
The Civil Rights Movement
Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of a society beyond racism. Initially, the civil rights movement centered around injustices to African Americans. The Movement Expanded and Two additional civil rights movements emerged into the public eye: Rights for Mexican Americans and Rights for native Americans Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Russell Means first national director of AIM Racial categories appear biological, but their significance is often social. Racial categories in the United States often appear mutually exclusive, but may in fact be overlapping. The 2000 census was the first that allowed individuals to claim multiple racial affiliations, for example African American and Native American.
Racialists were criticized as being scientifically false. Certainly there are races which have been defined, biologically, according to the statistical predominance among their constituents members of some genetic factors such as skin colour, hair texture blood groups and soon. For all that it has never been proved that these genetic differences give rise to differences in intellectual capacity or social and political ability. Racialists arguments based on differences on races in the level of development attained by various races are just as invalid. Differences in development and behaviors are the result of the material and sociological conditions of life, and not of any so called inferiority.
Political economy (greed and grievances)
Two phenomena have been recently utilised to explain conflict onset among rational choice analysts: greed and grievance. The former reflects elite competition over valuable natural resource rents. The latter argues that relative deprivation and the grievance it produces fuels conflict. Central to grievance are concepts of inter-ethnic or horizontal inequality. Identity formation is also crucial to intra-state conflict, as it overcomes the collective action problem. Conflict can rarely be explained by greed alone, yet, the greed versus grievance hypotheses may be complementary explanations for conflict. The greed explanation for conflict duration and secessionist wars works best in cross-country studies, but has to make way for grievance-based arguments in quantitative country-case studies. Grievances and horizontal inequalities may be better at explaining why conflicts begin, but not necessarily why they persist. Neither the presence of greed or grievance is sufficient for the outbreak of violent conflict, something which requires institutional breakdown which we describe as the failure of the social contract. The degradation of the social contract is more likely in the context of poverty and growth failure.
Economic conflict involves competing motives to attain scarce resources. Each party wants to get the most that it can, and the behavior and emotions of each party are directed toward maximizing its gain. Union and management conflict often has as one of its sources the incompatible goals of how to slice up the “economic pie”.
Power conflict occurs when each party wishes to maintain or maximize the amount of influence that it exerts in the relationship and the social setting. It is impossible for one party to be stronger without the other being weaker, at least in terms of direct influence over each other. Thus, a power struggle ensues which usually ends in a victory and defeat, or in a “stand-off” with a continuing state of tension. Power conflicts can occur between individuals, between groups or between nations, whenever one or both parties choose to take a power approach to the relationship. Power also enters into all conflict since the parties are attempting to control each other.
It must be noted that most conflicts are not of a pure type, but involve a mixture of sources. For example, union-management conflict typically involves economic competition, but may also take the form of a power struggle and often involves different ideologies or political values. The more sources that are involved, the more intense and intractable the conflict usually is. Another important source of conflict is ineffective communication. Miscommunication and misunderstanding can create conflict even where there are no basic incompatibilities. In addition, parties may have different perceptions as to what are the facts in a situation, and until they share information and clarify their perceptions, resolution is impossible. Self-centeredness, selective perception, emotional bias, prejudices, etc., are all forces that lead us to perceive situations very differently from the other party. Lack of skill in communicating what we really mean in a clear and respectful fashion often results in confusion, hurt and anger, all of which simply feed the conflict process.
The theory of greed
The greed motivation behind civil war has been popularised by empirical work on the causes of civil war where a cross-section of conflicts in different nations is analyzed together econometrically, and greed is proxied by the availability or abundance of capturable natural resource rents. In Collier and Hoeffler (2004) civil wars stem from the greedy behaviour of a rebel group in organising an insurgency against the government. Greed is about opportunities faced by the rebel group. The opportunities can be disaggregated into three components: financing, recruitment and geography. The most common sources of rebel finance are the appropriation of natural resources, donations from sympathetic diasporas residing abroad, contributions from foreign states (hostile to the government) or multinational companies interested in the region. Natural resource wealth is the chief among the three in terms of its relative importance. Recruitment is about the opportunity to induct fighting manpower; something made easier when there is a high proportion of young unemployed males in population, in a setting of endemic poverty and poor education. Geographical situations favorable to rebel groups are mountainous terrain and other safe havens for insurgents. In short, greed simply means the ‘economic opportunity’ to fight, and should be distinguished from socio-political grievances.
The econometric models purporting to establish the empirical validity of the greed hypothesis, however, are atheoretical, in the sense of not having a formal economic model based on optimising behaviour by economic agents to explain why greed may cause conflict. If economic agents (homo economicus) are actuated only by self- interest, we must demonstrate why they choose war over other alternatives. Therefore, any theorising about greed must be based on the economic motivations for violence and criminality. Belligerents in the wars of natural-resource rich countries could be acting in ways close to what Olson (1996) referred to as 'roving bandits' who have no encompassing interest in preserving the state or its people but are simply intent on loot than to 'stationary' bandits who take control of the state and seek to maximise their own profit by encouraging stability and growth in their new domain. Civil wars motivated by the desire to control natural resource rents could also mirror “warlord competition”, a term that owes its origins to the violent competition between leaders attempting to control economic resources in the context of medieval Europe, Skaperdas (2002).
Both these models, however, neglect the destructiveness of war (collateral damage), and its capacity to ravage productive capacity, additional to direct military expenditure. These models employ intermediate inputs, and not factors of production, which can be costlessly shifted between fighting and production. Secondly, there is no growth in these models, something which would raise the opportunity costs of war. A similar effect could arise from complementarities in production between groups and/or economies of scale, which would make mergers between groups or cooperation in each group’s self-interest. Thirdly, the possibilities of peaceful exchange need to be limited in order to rationalise conflict. In traditional economics the gains from trade arise mainly from differences in tastes, technology and endowments, and these gains from trade need to be minimised in order to make conflict an optimal choice. Violent means are attractive when the intention is to extract resources (as in the case of colonial plantations and mines) or accumulate surpluses at the expense of others (mercantilism). Fourthly, these models imply full information. In the presence of asymmetric information, misperceptions about contest success, the opposition’s intentions and so on, wars that do not maximise expectedutility under full information may break out, akin to problems associated with moral hazard and adverse selection. Fifthly, such theorising is broadly blind to institutions (despite ruling out the existence of property rights and between-group contracts), and the presence of transactions costs that breed mutual mistrust. Wars can also reflect the absence of institutions which facilitate negotiation and peaceful exchange.
Despite these limitations, there is much in this models that can explain the greedy behaviour as analyzed by the empirical exponents of the greed hypothesis. The presence of readily capturable natural resource based rents may make conflict more attractive when compared to peaceful production, as can a shortage of intermediate inputs due to population pressure. These resources are best regarded as a non-produced ‘prize’ such as oil or diamonds (which apart from extraction costs are like manna from heaven), whose ownership is violently contested. Secondly, contributions Even in societies with property rights, there still may be violent or non-violent competition over resources which have, as yet, unassigned ownership. from a sympathetic diaspora (or aid from a super-power in the cold war era) can raise the probability of victory of a potential rebel group against the state. Thirdly, the inability of the state to act as a Stackelberg leader in a potentially divided nation may raise the chances of war between groups in a manner similar to the weak state capacity mechanism favoured by some political scientists (like James Fearon). For example, in the Hirshleifer (1995) model where different groups are in a state of anarchy vis-à-vis one another, the ability of one group to behave as a Stackelberg leader reduces equilibrium fighting levels and raises each side’s per-capita income. The leader, however, gains relatively less compared to followers, creating an incentive for each side to be a follower. If one group is strong and militarily more effective it will dominate other groups, and there will be no fighting in the equilibrium. This may lead to state formation, which may or may not lead to the re-configuration of group identities. If inter-group rivalries persist, state disintegration occurs when the dominant group can no longer control other groups.
Finally, war implies the absence of contract, and warring parties may enter into contracts that make their interactions more peaceful. This will be all the more true, if war causes substantial collateral damage. Groups may also decide to merge in order to reap economies of scale in production. If they do not do so when it is clearly in their mutual self-interest we have to resort to explanations based on misperceptions, mistrust or the lack of institutions that enforce contracts. Alternatively, the institutions that once bound groups together may have disintegrated. We now return to the empirical hypotheses that buttress cross-country econometric studies of civil war, which are dominated by various forms of a greed (or modified greed) and state failure hypotheses.
Theories of Grievance
Central to grievances are identity and group formation. An individual’s utility may be related to his identity, specifically the relative position of the group he identifies with in the social pecking order; ( Akerlof and Kranton 2000). An individual may derive utility from certain normative forms of behaviour appropriate to his identity but considered deviant by other groups, and may even face sanctions from like-minded group members if he deviates from them. This type of behavioural paradigm may be related to solving the collective action problems (Olson, 1965), without which organised large-scale violence is impossible, even if we believe conflict is primarily motivated by greed. As noted in the introduction, some appropriate definition of ethnicity may be a superior basis for group formation compared to social class in an ethnically homogenous society. We sub-divide theories of grievance into relative deprivation, polarization and horizontal inequality. While it is important to differentiate them, some overlap among the three definitions is inevitable.
Relative deprivation
The notion of relative deprivation dates back to the work of Ted Gurr (1970) who defines it as the discrepancy between what people think they deserve, and what they actually believe they can get; in short the disparity between aspirations and achievements. Thus, educational achievements may raise the aspirations of young people, but they will become frustrated if unemployed, occasionally venting their feelings in mass political violence. Gurr puts forward the following hypothesis, ‘the potential for collective violence varies strongly with the intensity and scope of relative deprivation among members of a collectivity’. This lays down the notion of relative deprivation as the micro-foundation for conflict. Relative deprivation is considered to be a major cause of civil war, as well as sectarian and routine violence. The applications vary across ethno-communal lines, regional boundaries, societal class, or just the feeling of being relatively deprived vis-à-vis the general situation. In the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku, the traditionally privileged Christians group felt relatively deprived against the rising Muslim community economically and politically, which resulted in the bloodiest Muslim-Christian conflict in the country’s history (Tadjoeddin, 2003). Similar statements centring around unemployment could be made about the Catholic-Protestant cleavage in Northern Ireland. In Nepal, the lack of development in remote rural districts of the country fuelled the Maoist insurgency (Murshed and Gates, 2005).
Polarisation
Polarisation occurs when two groups exhibit great inter-group heterogeneity combined with intra-group homogeneity. Economic polarisation (along with high vertical income inequality) can occur in societies that are culturally homogenous (Esteban and Ray, 1994). In their original and seminal concept of polarisation, Esteban and Ray focus on the identification and alienation framework. They said that polarisation is related to the alienation that groups of people feel from one another, and such alienation is fuelled by the feeling of within-group identity. Furthermore, Esteban and Ray argue that the traditional measures of inequality are only concerned with interpersonal alienation, but fail to capture the dimension of group identity. It is important to note that ethnic polarisation requires two or a few ethnicities. When a society has a very large number of identities, then the term ethnic fractionalisation is more appropriate. Therefore, polarization is what may matter for conflict, rather than fractionalisation and/or overall vertical (inter-individual) inequality. Few studies have empirically demonstrated the existence of such an argument. Montalvo and Reynal-Querol (2005) find that ethnic polarisation is a significant explanatory variable for civil war onset, while ethnic fractionalisation is not.
Horizontal inequality
The notion of horizontal inequalities between groups, classified by ethnicity, religion, linguistic differences, tribal affiliations etc., is thought to be an important cause of contemporary civil war and sectarian strife, but not routine violence. The idea of horizontal inequality may overlap with the notion of relative deprivation and polarisation as will be indicated by alternative measures discussed below. The expression, horizontal inequality, originates in the work of Frances Stewart; (Stewart 2000), and should be distinguished from vertical inequality, which is the inequality within an otherwise homogenous population. Four sources of horizontal inequality may be highlighted:
Discrimination in Public Spending and Taxation
Discrimination in the allocation of public spending and unfair tax burdens, lead to serious unrest.(Grossman, 1991) develops a theoretical model of insurrection against the state by the peasantry reacting to over taxation, where the state is a tax-farmer interested in maximising the income of the rentier class. Discrimination in the allocation of public employment is particularly resented in societies in which public employment represents the principal avenue for personal advance, as in Burundi. In addition, the over taxation of smallholders encourages insurrection, and indigenous peoples often face discrimination in access to schooling, health care, and public-sector jobs; many of these factors are present in Nepal’s current civil war, (Murshed and Gates, 2005). Where there are inter-group fiscal transfers, which may take the form of spending on education and health for disadvantaged groups, or including them in government employment, commitment to the transfer by those in power may be imperfect. This lack of credibility can eventually lead to civil war.
High Asset Inequality.
Agrarian societies with high inequality,for example El Salvador, Guatemala, Nepal, the Philippines, and Zimbabwe have high asset inequality, and are very prone to conflict, (Russet, 1964) for an early view on this. Asset redistribution such as land reform to lessen inequality is more difficult than public finance reform. (Besançon , 2005), however, points out that purely ethnic conflicts, as opposed to revolutions and genocides, are more likely when a greater degree of income equality has been achieved between contending ethnic groups. Inclusion in the political process is more crucial to preventing this type of conflict, which are not usually civil wars, as the state is not involved.
Economic Mismanagement and Recession.
In Africa, Latin America and the former Soviet Union conflict ridden countries have also suffered prolonged economic mismanagement and growth collapse. Successive IMF and World Bank supported adjustment programmes in DRC-Zaire, Somalia and elsewhere not only proved incapable of promoting economic recovery, but given the level of corruption within the state, themselves became targets for capture by elite groups. Economic mismanagement is often associated with an uneven and unfair distribution of the burdens of subsequent adjustment; public spending benefiting the elite and the military is protected, often favouring particular ethnic groups, with the burden of adjustment placed on expenditures of value to the poor and disadvantaged groups. Also, as Rodrik (1999) emphasises, countries with weak institutions of conflict management, as well as high income inequality are less able to withstand economic shocks and experience growth failure. They are also more prone to the risk of civil strife and war, since their weak institutions, which are further weakened by shocks and lower growth, are unable to contain the resulting social pressure and distributional conflict.
Grievances Related to Resource Rents:
Natural resource rents can by themselves become a source of grievance, if local populations feel that they are not getting a fair share of these, as in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It can also cause secessionist tendencies amongst relative rich regions, who no longer want to subsidise their fellow countrymen, as in the case of Aceh in Indonesia, (Tadjoeddin et. al.2003).
With regard to incentives faced by rulers in developing countries, it has to be remembered that until the end of the cold war most developing countries were ruled by strong men. Some promoted development, others did not. Dunning (2005) makes an argument, based on a two period-two agent-two sector game theoretic model, about choices by rulers regarding the future growth path of the economy in the context of natural resource abundance. He compares Mobutu’s Zaire (1965-1997) to Suharto’s Indonesia (1965-98) and Botswana during the same period. In Botswana, revenues from Kimberlite diamonds were very stable, due to Botswana’s unique relationship with De Beers and its important position as a major supplier. It did not need to diversify it economy. But it chose a developmental path because of the mature nature of political elites there. In Indonesia and Zaire resource flows were volatile. In one case the dictator (Suharto) chose diversification and growth enhancing strategies, as well as policies aimed at equalisation and poverty reduction to contain political opposition. Development in Indonesia was impressive, and may have led, at least partially, to endogenous demands for democracy (Lipset, 1960). In the other case (Zaire, now DRC), Mobutu did not, because he felt that diversification and investment in infrastructure would loosen his grip on power and strengthen political opposition to him based on ethnicity. Zaire or the DRC has perhaps the poorest post-1960 growth record on the planet. Perhaps, in East Asia greater fears of communism strengthened benevolence in dictators (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia), whereas in Africa a certain type of factionalism dominated policies and politics, retarding growth-enhancing economic diversification and infrastructural development. Turning to the all-encompassing importance of growth in promoting peaceful economic interaction and the social contract, it is worthwhile examining a few of the broad stylized facts regarding conflict across developing countries since about 1960. To get an empirical feel for some of these macro-channels, a descriptive look at the data may be in order.
It is discernable that India, Sri Lanka and Colombia are the stable democracies in the
post 1960 era that have had civil wars, including high intensity conflict. Many of the
transitions in regime type from autocracy to anocracy to democracy (during 1960-2000) are described in Murshed (2006). Multiple switches in all directions are possible, and not just from autocracy to democracy. Nevertheless, only 5 out of the seventeen nations with a high conflict incidence have ever been democracies with a democracy score over 4. Democracy, even stable democracy, does not guarantee the absence of armed conflict, both of the secessionist and rebel varieties, as the examples of India, Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and others indicate. Autocracies also fall into conflict, nevertheless, stable autocracies such as China and Singapore have avoided civil war, as did Taiwan and South Korea which became democracies recently. Despite prominent outliers such as India, Colombia, and Saudi Arabia, most conflict prone countries are neither stable democracies nor autocracies, lending support to the Hegre et. al. (2001) finding that conflict risk is greatest when regime types are in transition, say from autocracy to democracy.
Conclusion:
Natural resources conflicts have always been with us, due in part to the multiple and competing demands on resources. conflicts can arise if user groups are excluded from participating in natural resource management. They also occur if there are: contradictions between local and introduced management systems; misunderstandings and lack of information about policy and programme objectives; contra- dictions or lack of clarity in laws and policies; inequity in resource distribution; or poor policy and programme implementation. Conflict will always exist to some degree in every community, but it can often be managed and resolved.
The form and intensity of conflicts vary widely by place, and over time within any community. conflicts manifest themselves in many ways, ranging from breaking rules to acts of sabotage and violence. Sometimes conflicts remain hidden or latent. People may allow grievances to smoulder because of fear, distrust, peer pressure, financial constraints, exclusion from certain conflict resolution procedures, or for strategic reasons. Because some societies encourage their members to avoid public confrontations, a lack of public disputes does not mean there is no conflict.
Despite growing recognition of the need for integrated approaches to natural resource management, many governmental and other agencies still rely on sectoral approaches with limited cross-sectoral planning and coordination. For example, the agricultural service may promote cash crop expansion in forests to raise incomes without recognizing its adverse effects on other resource users. Overlapping and competing jurisdictions and activities among agencies may result in their inability to reconcile the needs and priorities of various stakeholders.
Effective sharing of information on policies, laws, procedures and objectives can enhance the success of programmes and reduce conflicts. In contrast, lack of information on the intention of the planning agencies may lead to suspicion and mistrust.
Encourage participation by community, have been supplanted by courts and administrative members and respect local values and laws. Customs are more accessible because of their low, are often inaccessible to people on the basis of cost, their flexibility in scheduling and gender, class, caste and other factors. Procedures, and their use of the local language encourage decision-making.
Conflict is an inevitable fact of human existence. If we work to understand and manage it
effectively, we can improve both the satisfaction and productivity of our social relationships. In order to reduce it occurrence in future the government may apply the following strategies:
Governments should plan to have compensatory programs. Compensatory programs are a way of responding to past injustices. They are justified up until the point at which the earlier wrong has been compensated for. Rests on a notion of compensatory justice the country may owe compensation for officially sanctioned racism. For example actions against Native Americans and actions against JapaneseAmericans in WWII. Enslavement of Africans brought to America (Hinman, Lawrence M. 2005)
Backward looking
Do not presume that the present state of recipients of compensation is necessarily impoverished. Important symbolic value in recognizing that a wrong occurred
and expressing sorrow or regret
Future oriented Models
This differ from compensatory models, which look to past injustices. Depends on one’s notion of an ideal society, the means acceptable to achieving that society. The government should have an affirmative Action. Four Senses of Affirmative Actions which include:
Weak senses of affirmative action:
• 1. Encouraging the largest possible number of minority applications in the applicant pool, and then choosing the best candidates regardless of gender, race, etc.
• 2. When the two best candidates are equally qualified and one is a minority candidate, choosing the minority candidate.
Strong senses of affirmative action:
• 3. From a group of candidates, all of whom are qualified, choosing the minority candidate over better qualified nonminority ones.
• 4. Choosing an unqualified minority candidate over a qualified nonminority one.
REFFERENCES
Blake, R.R., Shepard, H.A., & Mouton, J. S. Managing intergroup conflict in industry.
Houston, Texas: Gulf, 1964.
Katz, D.(1965) Nationalism and strategies of international conflict. In H.C. Kelman (ed.), International behavior: A social psychological analysis. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, , pp. 356-390.
Kriesberg, L. Constructive conflict: From escalation to resolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman &Littlefield, 1998.
Mack, R.W. & Snyder,( 1957) R.C. The analysis of social conflict toward an overview and synthesis. Journal of conflict resolution.
S Mansoob Murshed & Mohammad Zulfan Tadjoeddin,( 2007); Reappraising the greed and Grievance Explanations for Violent Internal Conflict MICROCON Research Working Paper 2 September
Chandrasekharan, D.(1997). Proceedings: Electronic Conference on Addressing natural Resource conflict through Community Forestry, January-May 1996. Community Forestry/FTPP Conflict Management Series. Rome, FAO.
FAO. 1997. Compilation of Discussion Papers Made to the Electronic Conference on Addressing natural Resource conflict through Community Forestry, January-May 1996. Community Forestry/FTPP Conflict Management Series. Rome.
Lawrence M. Hinman (2005), Compensatory Programs
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
SECURITY OF TENURE
This paper is going to discuss about Security of Tenure, starting with a short Historical back ground and then definition /literature review and then the policies and conclusion. Expansion of the informal settlements has been a major concern for the governments and local authorities in the region. Many countries are in efforts to upgrade and regularize these informal settlements and promote security of tenure to millions of people. Such effort included recognizing full ownership right as well as putting into place flexible land tenure arrangements, such as facilitating users’ right (for instance Namibia has developed a flexible tenure system to run parallel to the formal system). There is concern understanding that security of tenure can be promoted also by addressing issues such as access to basic services, credit, employment generation and by assisting people in their own housing initiatives. Addressing gender inequalities in ownership and inheritance rights is deemed as one of the most fundamental steps in this regard. Efforts in Botiama to increase house owner ship by female – headed households are a good example for such approaches.
Several countries in the region are in the process of in alimenting informal settlement programmes. However, only few countries have reported that they have implemented projects which combine upgrading of informal settlements with the provision of security of tenure. This may be due to the fact that implementation of land regularization programmes are often confronted with difficulties, some of the due to the customary land tenure system found in many countries. Furthermore, the machinery needed to affect massive land registration/regularization programmes requires strong administrative control that may be largely missing. I addition, there are several other difficulties in promoting secure tenure that must be confroted.
What is Secure Tenure
Land tenure security is the situation in which landholders consider their continued occupancy rights to be guaranteed whether by virtue of formal rights, customary rules or some other form of assurance. Roth and Hazell suggested that there are three components of security. These are: -
Breadth, which considers what rights are held (use, transfer, exclusion.
Duration, which refers to the length of time during which the rights are valid and
Assurance, which concern the certainly of the rights.
While (1959) defined land tenure as “the right of individuals or groups over arable, grazing and residential land, how such rights are acquired, what the consist of, how they operate in the holding, transfer and in heritance of land and how they may be extinguished”
“a person or household can be said to have secure tenure when they are promoted from involuntary removal from their land or residence except in exceptional circumstances, and then only by mans of a known and agreed legal procedure, which ,must itself be objective, equally applicable, contestable and independent (Global Campaign for secure Tenure, Implementing the Habitat Agenda: Adequate shelter for all).
POLICY
Evolution of Land Tenure in Tanzania before Tanzania was colonized by the German and then the British, the general structure of land holdings was based on traditional law and culture of each respective tribe in an area. The individual as a member of a family, clan or tribe acquired rights of use in the arable land he and his family could clear, activate and manage. However, when the land showed signs of exhaustion, then shifting cultivation was practiced.
In many of these areas, there was and there is still communal land for grazing and forest lands for cutting firewood. This type of extensive cultivation was acceptable and viable under conditions of low population densities, abundance of land and substance agriculture.
Initially each tribe had chiefs and elders or Headmen who controlled and allowed land to individuals (i.e members of that tribe) on behalf of the tribe in a fiduciary capacity. This system was continued ever during German and British colonial rule of Tanzania. However, following the abolition of chieftaincy by the African Chiefs Ordinance Act. No. 13 of 1963 (cap. 51) after Tanzania obtained independence in 1961, the controlling was rendered obsolete. When land was held under family tenure, each member of land heard of that family had a definite shave of that property. Each member could not dispose part of his shave without either getting the consent of other family members and a right of preemption to other heirs. Similarly where land was held in a clan, the owner could not dispose of it to a non clan member without first getting the permission of the clan elders.
The introduction and promotion of plantation agriculture under German administration introduced different land tenure system in the country where by land mainly prime agricultural land was allocated in freeholds, mostly to settlers. Alienation of land, save that which was in private ownership or possessed by chiefs or indigenous communities, was facilities by the passing of the Imperial Decree “Regarding Creation.
Acquisition and conveyance of Crown Land in 1895 which dectaved all land as Grown Land in the German Empire. This was indeed the beginning of nationalization of land. Transfer of crown land could only be affected through the governor either by conveyance of ownership or lease. In order to protect the land rights of natives, although in practice it failed to stop land grabbing, the Degree stated that transfer of ownership or lease of township land, by natives to non-natives for a period exceeding fifteen years, could not take place without the consent of the governor.
Under the British Administration, the system of land holding continued to change. Following the enactment of the land Tenure Ordinance Number 3 of 1923. The ordinance introduced the concept of “right of occupancy” in the country.
Under this new land tenure system rights over or in land were placed under the control of the Governor to be held, used or disposed of as rights of occupancy for the benefit of the indigenous people of Tanzania. In an attempt to protect native rights in land in native community lawful using or occupying land in accordance with customary law”
In 1961 free hold Titles were converted into lease holds under the free hold Titles (conversion) and Government lease Act (Cap. 523) of 1963 and were later changed into rights of occupancy under the Government lease holds Act. No. 44.
Land use in rural Africa, which refers to the refers to the usage under which any given piece of land may be put for a given period of times under prevailing environment and technology conditions, has under gone an evolutionary transformation, from the simple hunting and gathering to the more complex sedentary or permanent and commercial cultivation system.
In Tanzania land is a major and basic resources on which the bulk of the population especially rural women depend as the sole, livelihood and source of income.
Tanzania has different land tenure system covering clan, village land and public and urban land. The land tenure system has undergone changes since colonial times, the most profound of which included the declaration that all land is to be publicly owned by the head of state in trust for the whole nation with different legal regimes applying to rural and urban areas.
In 1991, a presidential commission on land Matters was appointed to study report on the land problem. Following the submissions report and recommendation well know as Shivji Report, the Ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development prepared a National Land Policy in June, 1995. On the basis of the policy a team of consultants drafted the Land Bill which was later passed as two separate Acts, the land Act and Village Land Act. No. 4 and 5 of 1999.
The presidential Commission Report Generated a vigorous debate over land and gender issue. They included the proper balance among security of tenure through tithing to attract foreign investment, protection of rural communities from land less ness and equitable, gender – sensitive allocation and management of land.
The commission pointed out that there was an absence of coherent land policy, unequal access to land, unstable policies and legislation, arbitrary decision and uncertain land rights.
The National Land Policy
The National Land Policy sought to promote equitable distribution of and access to land by all citizens. It’s major thrust was to be the conversion of land into an economic asset to which all citizens should have equal access to. The policy also sought to recognize, clarity and secure in law the existing right in land especially customary rights of small holders.
The ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development held several workshop to discuss the policy document with various stakeholders. Finally the policy declared on several issues amongst which are the following : -
(i) Access to land, that all citizens shall have equal and equitable access to land.
(ii) Women access to land, that, “In order to enhance and guarantee women’s access to land and security of tenure, women will be entitled to acquire land in their own right not only through purchase but also through allocation.
(iii) Disposition, that Regulation will be drafted to protect risk groups such as displaced persons, children and lower income people.
(iv) Land Registration, that land Registry offices will be gradually decentralized.
(v) Implementation, that apart from: - Ministries public institution and private institutions whose functions are associated with land development, local authorities, Non-government and community based development etc will be encouraged to participate in effective utilization of land.
The New Land Laws.
As it was in the formulation of National Land Policy, stockholders participated in a National Workshop to discuss Draft Land Law and they went further even to make presentations to Parliamentary Hearings when the Land Bills were debated. The key issues in debating and passing the two new land laws in 1998-99 were that discriminatory customary laws should be explicitly illegal and that administration organs with equal female representation.
Since land is one of the four pillars of Tanzania’s development philosophy which are people, land, good policies and good leadership, concerted implementation of the above policy statement will promote the best use of land so that land as an investment resources can make the maximum contribution to the country’s development process.
Implementation of the policy will help ensure that land is held and used effectively and efficiently and not boarded for speculative motives.
Likewise by creating efficient institutional frame work or structure for land administration which is also transparent, this policy should help streamline and simplify the procedures for getting land rather than make them cumbersome as they are at present thus reduce public complaints on land administration.
Forth, Tanzanians sound land tenure system has played a big role in promoting peace and national unity which are essential to development. Therefore, implementation of this policy which has retained the positive virtues of the existing land tenure system will further enhance peace and national unity
Also, by ensuring and promoting an equitable distribution of and access to land by all citizens, this policy and its accompanying legislation and implementation strategies to be formulated, will play a big role in shaping the type and nature of the Tanzania society this country wants to build in future. Tanzania is a country made up largely of small peasants, pastoralists and a few big farmers. Concerted implementation of this policy will make sure that the numerous small peasants and pastoralists who constitute the majority of the country is population are not made landless.
Women in the villages can now own land in their own right or jointly with men regardless of customary and religious restrictions. This gives them a stake in the development of their own village and enhancing their role as major producers on the land. Also customary systems of land management which is discriminative will therefore gradually be replaced with more secure individual tenure which provides incentives for agricultural investment and increase output.
Land can be used a collateral for Commercial Bank lending and mortgage transactions. There fore land Title deeds registered under women’s personal names will constitute a guarantee for women’s equal access to secure loan and credit.
The new land laws provide for decentralization of land services to order levels in local government authorities and village councils which in dudes allocation, adjudication and registration of land titles.
Women’s effectives participation in land matters have been entrenched in the new land laws. Women shall be members in Land Allocation Committees and in the National Land Advisory Council.
There is adequate participation of the people in dispute settlement. The New Land Laws provide for new dispute settlement machinery which has been affected though not yet in operation, by The Land Disputes Courts Act No. 2, 2002. Dispute Settlement Tribunals under this new law shall have seven assessors, three of whom, shall be women.
The New Law required Public awareness and education. Therefore Ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development in collaboration with Local Government Authorities is conducting education campaign to sensitize the public to the provision of the new land Acts regarding legal and physical access to land. This is being done through radio, newspaper, television etc.
The land administration system is presently creating awareness among the officials that women are disadvantage in a non-acceptable manner and that their situation can be strengthened through registered rights. The legal system give both men and women equal rights to land and demands on mutual consents of the parties for a transaction of the property to a third party. Otherwise the administrative procedures, under the new land Laws are simple and transparent therefore they allow the involvement of women in land administration processes. For example, out of 71 employees in the department of lands development, 34 are women.
Generally the equality arguments for women rights to land, concerns women’s position relative to men, that is, they hinge on gender relations and the ability of women to confront male oppression with the home and in society. This puts women’s in very difficult positions of whether to pursue equal right to land, get divorce or leave the family of the husband where the husband passes away.
However, in Tanzania women’s rights to land is gaining social legitimacy as a result of struggle by individual women and by women’s groups, therefore, they are not ready, even under pressure of relative, to give up their claim for example, to an inherited piece of land after death of a husband.
WOMEN ACCESS TO LAND IN THE CONTEXT OF POVERTY REDUCTION AND THE AIDS PANDEMIC.
Women comprise 51% of the country’s total population, head 14% of the households and also comprise 54% of the economically active population in rural areas. Despite this fact almost 60% of the rural population is poor compared to 39% of the urban population which means that women’s are proper than men. The major cause of this problems is women’s vulnerability and lack of land ownership. Therefore, by enabling women to own and control land they cultivate, women will be able to raise the productivity of land by investing in technological improvement and control the products of the land.
Women landlessness is also the reason for their inability to escape abuse or oppression relationship. However the ownership of a resources such as land increases the bargaining power of women and increases their ability within the household and society in general. Therefore, with effective rights to land, Tanzania women will be in a position to provide for their own needs as well as of house of their families, which are major contributing factors in the AIDS pandemic.
CONCLUSION.
Security of tenure is one of the most important catalyst in stabilizing communities, improving shelter conditions, reducing social exclusion and improving access urban services (UNCHS, 1999).
When a person has got a title deed can be able to use the land for mortgage when they need a loan to invest into some business, increase investment in land based assets, mobilize credit facilities and activate land markets, in the hopes of encouraging agricultural development and growth. The land right can offer real security for landholders, potential investors and credit suppliers. However, more recent analyses confirm that many indigenous tenure systems do in fact confer secure rights of tenure to landholders, which are sufficient to stimulate investment and longer term land improvements.
Security of tenure reduces social exclusion as women were excluded to own land; but according to the new land; and thus be in included.
When people owns land with a title deed, they plots are always surveyed and thus it is easy for the government to provide some sevices.
REFFERENCES
1. Mrs. Mlole Bahati, Land Policy Challenges for policy makers Tanzania experience Ministry of Land ad Human Settlements Development.
2. Regional Africa Ministerial Conference on the implementation of the Habitat Agenda (Instanbul + 5) (200); Review of the Implementation of the Habitat Agenda in Africa; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
3. Kajoba Gear M. ( ) land use and land Tenure in Africa; towards an evolutionary conceptual frame work, Zambia.
4. Lamba Antony 0(2005) Land Tenure Management system in informal settlements, A case study in Nairobi.
This paper is going to discuss about Security of Tenure, starting with a short Historical back ground and then definition /literature review and then the policies and conclusion. Expansion of the informal settlements has been a major concern for the governments and local authorities in the region. Many countries are in efforts to upgrade and regularize these informal settlements and promote security of tenure to millions of people. Such effort included recognizing full ownership right as well as putting into place flexible land tenure arrangements, such as facilitating users’ right (for instance Namibia has developed a flexible tenure system to run parallel to the formal system). There is concern understanding that security of tenure can be promoted also by addressing issues such as access to basic services, credit, employment generation and by assisting people in their own housing initiatives. Addressing gender inequalities in ownership and inheritance rights is deemed as one of the most fundamental steps in this regard. Efforts in Botiama to increase house owner ship by female – headed households are a good example for such approaches.
Several countries in the region are in the process of in alimenting informal settlement programmes. However, only few countries have reported that they have implemented projects which combine upgrading of informal settlements with the provision of security of tenure. This may be due to the fact that implementation of land regularization programmes are often confronted with difficulties, some of the due to the customary land tenure system found in many countries. Furthermore, the machinery needed to affect massive land registration/regularization programmes requires strong administrative control that may be largely missing. I addition, there are several other difficulties in promoting secure tenure that must be confroted.
What is Secure Tenure
Land tenure security is the situation in which landholders consider their continued occupancy rights to be guaranteed whether by virtue of formal rights, customary rules or some other form of assurance. Roth and Hazell suggested that there are three components of security. These are: -
Breadth, which considers what rights are held (use, transfer, exclusion.
Duration, which refers to the length of time during which the rights are valid and
Assurance, which concern the certainly of the rights.
While (1959) defined land tenure as “the right of individuals or groups over arable, grazing and residential land, how such rights are acquired, what the consist of, how they operate in the holding, transfer and in heritance of land and how they may be extinguished”
“a person or household can be said to have secure tenure when they are promoted from involuntary removal from their land or residence except in exceptional circumstances, and then only by mans of a known and agreed legal procedure, which ,must itself be objective, equally applicable, contestable and independent (Global Campaign for secure Tenure, Implementing the Habitat Agenda: Adequate shelter for all).
POLICY
Evolution of Land Tenure in Tanzania before Tanzania was colonized by the German and then the British, the general structure of land holdings was based on traditional law and culture of each respective tribe in an area. The individual as a member of a family, clan or tribe acquired rights of use in the arable land he and his family could clear, activate and manage. However, when the land showed signs of exhaustion, then shifting cultivation was practiced.
In many of these areas, there was and there is still communal land for grazing and forest lands for cutting firewood. This type of extensive cultivation was acceptable and viable under conditions of low population densities, abundance of land and substance agriculture.
Initially each tribe had chiefs and elders or Headmen who controlled and allowed land to individuals (i.e members of that tribe) on behalf of the tribe in a fiduciary capacity. This system was continued ever during German and British colonial rule of Tanzania. However, following the abolition of chieftaincy by the African Chiefs Ordinance Act. No. 13 of 1963 (cap. 51) after Tanzania obtained independence in 1961, the controlling was rendered obsolete. When land was held under family tenure, each member of land heard of that family had a definite shave of that property. Each member could not dispose part of his shave without either getting the consent of other family members and a right of preemption to other heirs. Similarly where land was held in a clan, the owner could not dispose of it to a non clan member without first getting the permission of the clan elders.
The introduction and promotion of plantation agriculture under German administration introduced different land tenure system in the country where by land mainly prime agricultural land was allocated in freeholds, mostly to settlers. Alienation of land, save that which was in private ownership or possessed by chiefs or indigenous communities, was facilities by the passing of the Imperial Decree “Regarding Creation.
Acquisition and conveyance of Crown Land in 1895 which dectaved all land as Grown Land in the German Empire. This was indeed the beginning of nationalization of land. Transfer of crown land could only be affected through the governor either by conveyance of ownership or lease. In order to protect the land rights of natives, although in practice it failed to stop land grabbing, the Degree stated that transfer of ownership or lease of township land, by natives to non-natives for a period exceeding fifteen years, could not take place without the consent of the governor.
Under the British Administration, the system of land holding continued to change. Following the enactment of the land Tenure Ordinance Number 3 of 1923. The ordinance introduced the concept of “right of occupancy” in the country.
Under this new land tenure system rights over or in land were placed under the control of the Governor to be held, used or disposed of as rights of occupancy for the benefit of the indigenous people of Tanzania. In an attempt to protect native rights in land in native community lawful using or occupying land in accordance with customary law”
In 1961 free hold Titles were converted into lease holds under the free hold Titles (conversion) and Government lease Act (Cap. 523) of 1963 and were later changed into rights of occupancy under the Government lease holds Act. No. 44.
Land use in rural Africa, which refers to the refers to the usage under which any given piece of land may be put for a given period of times under prevailing environment and technology conditions, has under gone an evolutionary transformation, from the simple hunting and gathering to the more complex sedentary or permanent and commercial cultivation system.
In Tanzania land is a major and basic resources on which the bulk of the population especially rural women depend as the sole, livelihood and source of income.
Tanzania has different land tenure system covering clan, village land and public and urban land. The land tenure system has undergone changes since colonial times, the most profound of which included the declaration that all land is to be publicly owned by the head of state in trust for the whole nation with different legal regimes applying to rural and urban areas.
In 1991, a presidential commission on land Matters was appointed to study report on the land problem. Following the submissions report and recommendation well know as Shivji Report, the Ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development prepared a National Land Policy in June, 1995. On the basis of the policy a team of consultants drafted the Land Bill which was later passed as two separate Acts, the land Act and Village Land Act. No. 4 and 5 of 1999.
The presidential Commission Report Generated a vigorous debate over land and gender issue. They included the proper balance among security of tenure through tithing to attract foreign investment, protection of rural communities from land less ness and equitable, gender – sensitive allocation and management of land.
The commission pointed out that there was an absence of coherent land policy, unequal access to land, unstable policies and legislation, arbitrary decision and uncertain land rights.
The National Land Policy
The National Land Policy sought to promote equitable distribution of and access to land by all citizens. It’s major thrust was to be the conversion of land into an economic asset to which all citizens should have equal access to. The policy also sought to recognize, clarity and secure in law the existing right in land especially customary rights of small holders.
The ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development held several workshop to discuss the policy document with various stakeholders. Finally the policy declared on several issues amongst which are the following : -
(i) Access to land, that all citizens shall have equal and equitable access to land.
(ii) Women access to land, that, “In order to enhance and guarantee women’s access to land and security of tenure, women will be entitled to acquire land in their own right not only through purchase but also through allocation.
(iii) Disposition, that Regulation will be drafted to protect risk groups such as displaced persons, children and lower income people.
(iv) Land Registration, that land Registry offices will be gradually decentralized.
(v) Implementation, that apart from: - Ministries public institution and private institutions whose functions are associated with land development, local authorities, Non-government and community based development etc will be encouraged to participate in effective utilization of land.
The New Land Laws.
As it was in the formulation of National Land Policy, stockholders participated in a National Workshop to discuss Draft Land Law and they went further even to make presentations to Parliamentary Hearings when the Land Bills were debated. The key issues in debating and passing the two new land laws in 1998-99 were that discriminatory customary laws should be explicitly illegal and that administration organs with equal female representation.
Since land is one of the four pillars of Tanzania’s development philosophy which are people, land, good policies and good leadership, concerted implementation of the above policy statement will promote the best use of land so that land as an investment resources can make the maximum contribution to the country’s development process.
Implementation of the policy will help ensure that land is held and used effectively and efficiently and not boarded for speculative motives.
Likewise by creating efficient institutional frame work or structure for land administration which is also transparent, this policy should help streamline and simplify the procedures for getting land rather than make them cumbersome as they are at present thus reduce public complaints on land administration.
Forth, Tanzanians sound land tenure system has played a big role in promoting peace and national unity which are essential to development. Therefore, implementation of this policy which has retained the positive virtues of the existing land tenure system will further enhance peace and national unity
Also, by ensuring and promoting an equitable distribution of and access to land by all citizens, this policy and its accompanying legislation and implementation strategies to be formulated, will play a big role in shaping the type and nature of the Tanzania society this country wants to build in future. Tanzania is a country made up largely of small peasants, pastoralists and a few big farmers. Concerted implementation of this policy will make sure that the numerous small peasants and pastoralists who constitute the majority of the country is population are not made landless.
Women in the villages can now own land in their own right or jointly with men regardless of customary and religious restrictions. This gives them a stake in the development of their own village and enhancing their role as major producers on the land. Also customary systems of land management which is discriminative will therefore gradually be replaced with more secure individual tenure which provides incentives for agricultural investment and increase output.
Land can be used a collateral for Commercial Bank lending and mortgage transactions. There fore land Title deeds registered under women’s personal names will constitute a guarantee for women’s equal access to secure loan and credit.
The new land laws provide for decentralization of land services to order levels in local government authorities and village councils which in dudes allocation, adjudication and registration of land titles.
Women’s effectives participation in land matters have been entrenched in the new land laws. Women shall be members in Land Allocation Committees and in the National Land Advisory Council.
There is adequate participation of the people in dispute settlement. The New Land Laws provide for new dispute settlement machinery which has been affected though not yet in operation, by The Land Disputes Courts Act No. 2, 2002. Dispute Settlement Tribunals under this new law shall have seven assessors, three of whom, shall be women.
The New Law required Public awareness and education. Therefore Ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development in collaboration with Local Government Authorities is conducting education campaign to sensitize the public to the provision of the new land Acts regarding legal and physical access to land. This is being done through radio, newspaper, television etc.
The land administration system is presently creating awareness among the officials that women are disadvantage in a non-acceptable manner and that their situation can be strengthened through registered rights. The legal system give both men and women equal rights to land and demands on mutual consents of the parties for a transaction of the property to a third party. Otherwise the administrative procedures, under the new land Laws are simple and transparent therefore they allow the involvement of women in land administration processes. For example, out of 71 employees in the department of lands development, 34 are women.
Generally the equality arguments for women rights to land, concerns women’s position relative to men, that is, they hinge on gender relations and the ability of women to confront male oppression with the home and in society. This puts women’s in very difficult positions of whether to pursue equal right to land, get divorce or leave the family of the husband where the husband passes away.
However, in Tanzania women’s rights to land is gaining social legitimacy as a result of struggle by individual women and by women’s groups, therefore, they are not ready, even under pressure of relative, to give up their claim for example, to an inherited piece of land after death of a husband.
WOMEN ACCESS TO LAND IN THE CONTEXT OF POVERTY REDUCTION AND THE AIDS PANDEMIC.
Women comprise 51% of the country’s total population, head 14% of the households and also comprise 54% of the economically active population in rural areas. Despite this fact almost 60% of the rural population is poor compared to 39% of the urban population which means that women’s are proper than men. The major cause of this problems is women’s vulnerability and lack of land ownership. Therefore, by enabling women to own and control land they cultivate, women will be able to raise the productivity of land by investing in technological improvement and control the products of the land.
Women landlessness is also the reason for their inability to escape abuse or oppression relationship. However the ownership of a resources such as land increases the bargaining power of women and increases their ability within the household and society in general. Therefore, with effective rights to land, Tanzania women will be in a position to provide for their own needs as well as of house of their families, which are major contributing factors in the AIDS pandemic.
CONCLUSION.
Security of tenure is one of the most important catalyst in stabilizing communities, improving shelter conditions, reducing social exclusion and improving access urban services (UNCHS, 1999).
When a person has got a title deed can be able to use the land for mortgage when they need a loan to invest into some business, increase investment in land based assets, mobilize credit facilities and activate land markets, in the hopes of encouraging agricultural development and growth. The land right can offer real security for landholders, potential investors and credit suppliers. However, more recent analyses confirm that many indigenous tenure systems do in fact confer secure rights of tenure to landholders, which are sufficient to stimulate investment and longer term land improvements.
Security of tenure reduces social exclusion as women were excluded to own land; but according to the new land; and thus be in included.
When people owns land with a title deed, they plots are always surveyed and thus it is easy for the government to provide some sevices.
REFFERENCES
1. Mrs. Mlole Bahati, Land Policy Challenges for policy makers Tanzania experience Ministry of Land ad Human Settlements Development.
2. Regional Africa Ministerial Conference on the implementation of the Habitat Agenda (Instanbul + 5) (200); Review of the Implementation of the Habitat Agenda in Africa; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
3. Kajoba Gear M. ( ) land use and land Tenure in Africa; towards an evolutionary conceptual frame work, Zambia.
4. Lamba Antony 0(2005) Land Tenure Management system in informal settlements, A case study in Nairobi.
HOUSING AND SECURITY OF TENURE IN TANZANIA
SECURITY OF TENURE
This paper is going to discuss about Security of Tenure, starting with a short Historical back ground and then definition /literature review and then the policies and conclusion. Expansion of the informal settlements has been a major concern for the governments and local authorities in the region. Many countries are in efforts to upgrade and regularize these informal settlements and promote security of tenure to millions of people. Such effort included recognizing full ownership right as well as putting into place flexible land tenure arrangements, such as facilitating users’ right (for instance Namibia has developed a flexible tenure system to run parallel to the formal system). There is concern understanding that security of tenure can be promoted also by addressing issues such as access to basic services, credit, employment generation and by assisting people in their own housing initiatives. Addressing gender inequalities in ownership and inheritance rights is deemed as one of the most fundamental steps in this regard. Efforts in Botiama to increase house owner ship by female – headed households are a good example for such approaches.
Several countries in the region are in the process of in alimenting informal settlement programmes. However, only few countries have reported that they have implemented projects which combine upgrading of informal settlements with the provision of security of tenure. This may be due to the fact that implementation of land regularization programmes are often confronted with difficulties, some of the due to the customary land tenure system found in many countries. Furthermore, the machinery needed to affect massive land registration/regularization programmes requires strong administrative control that may be largely missing. I addition, there are several other difficulties in promoting secure tenure that must be confroted.
What is Secure Tenure
Land tenure security is the situation in which landholders consider their continued occupancy rights to be guaranteed whether by virtue of formal rights, customary rules or some other form of assurance. Roth and Hazell suggested that there are three components of security. These are: -
Breadth, which considers what rights are held (use, transfer, exclusion.
Duration, which refers to the length of time during which the rights are valid and
Assurance, which concern the certainly of the rights.
While (1959) defined land tenure as “the right of individuals or groups over arable, grazing and residential land, how such rights are acquired, what the consist of, how they operate in the holding, transfer and in heritance of land and how they may be extinguished”
“a person or household can be said to have secure tenure when they are promoted from involuntary removal from their land or residence except in exceptional circumstances, and then only by mans of a known and agreed legal procedure, which ,must itself be objective, equally applicable, contestable and independent (Global Campaign for secure Tenure, Implementing the Habitat Agenda: Adequate shelter for all).
POLICY
Evolution of Land Tenure in Tanzania before Tanzania was colonized by the German and then the British, the general structure of land holdings was based on traditional law and culture of each respective tribe in an area. The individual as a member of a family, clan or tribe acquired rights of use in the arable land he and his family could clear, activate and manage. However, when the land showed signs of exhaustion, then shifting cultivation was practiced.
In many of these areas, there was and there is still communal land for grazing and forest lands for cutting firewood. This type of extensive cultivation was acceptable and viable under conditions of low population densities, abundance of land and substance agriculture.
Initially each tribe had chiefs and elders or Headmen who controlled and allowed land to individuals (i.e members of that tribe) on behalf of the tribe in a fiduciary capacity. This system was continued ever during German and British colonial rule of Tanzania. However, following the abolition of chieftaincy by the African Chiefs Ordinance Act. No. 13 of 1963 (cap. 51) after Tanzania obtained independence in 1961, the controlling was rendered obsolete. When land was held under family tenure, each member of land heard of that family had a definite shave of that property. Each member could not dispose part of his shave without either getting the consent of other family members and a right of preemption to other heirs. Similarly where land was held in a clan, the owner could not dispose of it to a non clan member without first getting the permission of the clan elders.
The introduction and promotion of plantation agriculture under German administration introduced different land tenure system in the country where by land mainly prime agricultural land was allocated in freeholds, mostly to settlers. Alienation of land, save that which was in private ownership or possessed by chiefs or indigenous communities, was facilities by the passing of the Imperial Decree “Regarding Creation.
Acquisition and conveyance of Crown Land in 1895 which dectaved all land as Grown Land in the German Empire. This was indeed the beginning of nationalization of land. Transfer of crown land could only be affected through the governor either by conveyance of ownership or lease. In order to protect the land rights of natives, although in practice it failed to stop land grabbing, the Degree stated that transfer of ownership or lease of township land, by natives to non-natives for a period exceeding fifteen years, could not take place without the consent of the governor.
Under the British Administration, the system of land holding continued to change. Following the enactment of the land Tenure Ordinance Number 3 of 1923. The ordinance introduced the concept of “right of occupancy” in the country.
Under this new land tenure system rights over or in land were placed under the control of the Governor to be held, used or disposed of as rights of occupancy for the benefit of the indigenous people of Tanzania. In an attempt to protect native rights in land in native community lawful using or occupying land in accordance with customary law”
In 1961 free hold Titles were converted into lease holds under the free hold Titles (conversion) and Government lease Act (Cap. 523) of 1963 and were later changed into rights of occupancy under the Government lease holds Act. No. 44.
Land use in rural Africa, which refers to the refers to the usage under which any given piece of land may be put for a given period of times under prevailing environment and technology conditions, has under gone an evolutionary transformation, from the simple hunting and gathering to the more complex sedentary or permanent and commercial cultivation system.
In Tanzania land is a major and basic resources on which the bulk of the population especially rural women depend as the sole, livelihood and source of income.
Tanzania has different land tenure system covering clan, village land and public and urban land. The land tenure system has undergone changes since colonial times, the most profound of which included the declaration that all land is to be publicly owned by the head of state in trust for the whole nation with different legal regimes applying to rural and urban areas.
In 1991, a presidential commission on land Matters was appointed to study report on the land problem. Following the submissions report and recommendation well know as Shivji Report, the Ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development prepared a National Land Policy in June, 1995. On the basis of the policy a team of consultants drafted the Land Bill which was later passed as two separate Acts, the land Act and Village Land Act. No. 4 and 5 of 1999.
The presidential Commission Report Generated a vigorous debate over land and gender issue. They included the proper balance among security of tenure through tithing to attract foreign investment, protection of rural communities from land less ness and equitable, gender – sensitive allocation and management of land.
The commission pointed out that there was an absence of coherent land policy, unequal access to land, unstable policies and legislation, arbitrary decision and uncertain land rights.
The National Land Policy
The National Land Policy sought to promote equitable distribution of and access to land by all citizens. It’s major thrust was to be the conversion of land into an economic asset to which all citizens should have equal access to. The policy also sought to recognize, clarity and secure in law the existing right in land especially customary rights of small holders.
The ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development held several workshop to discuss the policy document with various stakeholders. Finally the policy declared on several issues amongst which are the following : -
(i) Access to land, that all citizens shall have equal and equitable access to land.
(ii) Women access to land, that, “In order to enhance and guarantee women’s access to land and security of tenure, women will be entitled to acquire land in their own right not only through purchase but also through allocation.
(iii) Disposition, that Regulation will be drafted to protect risk groups such as displaced persons, children and lower income people.
(iv) Land Registration, that land Registry offices will be gradually decentralized.
(v) Implementation, that apart from: - Ministries public institution and private institutions whose functions are associated with land development, local authorities, Non-government and community based development etc will be encouraged to participate in effective utilization of land.
The New Land Laws.
As it was in the formulation of National Land Policy, stockholders participated in a National Workshop to discuss Draft Land Law and they went further even to make presentations to Parliamentary Hearings when the Land Bills were debated. The key issues in debating and passing the two new land laws in 1998-99 were that discriminatory customary laws should be explicitly illegal and that administration organs with equal female representation.
Since land is one of the four pillars of Tanzania’s development philosophy which are people, land, good policies and good leadership, concerted implementation of the above policy statement will promote the best use of land so that land as an investment resources can make the maximum contribution to the country’s development process.
Implementation of the policy will help ensure that land is held and used effectively and efficiently and not boarded for speculative motives.
Likewise by creating efficient institutional frame work or structure for land administration which is also transparent, this policy should help streamline and simplify the procedures for getting land rather than make them cumbersome as they are at present thus reduce public complaints on land administration.
Forth, Tanzanians sound land tenure system has played a big role in promoting peace and national unity which are essential to development. Therefore, implementation of this policy which has retained the positive virtues of the existing land tenure system will further enhance peace and national unity
Also, by ensuring and promoting an equitable distribution of and access to land by all citizens, this policy and its accompanying legislation and implementation strategies to be formulated, will play a big role in shaping the type and nature of the Tanzania society this country wants to build in future. Tanzania is a country made up largely of small peasants, pastoralists and a few big farmers. Concerted implementation of this policy will make sure that the numerous small peasants and pastoralists who constitute the majority of the country is population are not made landless.
Women in the villages can now own land in their own right or jointly with men regardless of customary and religious restrictions. This gives them a stake in the development of their own village and enhancing their role as major producers on the land. Also customary systems of land management which is discriminative will therefore gradually be replaced with more secure individual tenure which provides incentives for agricultural investment and increase output.
Land can be used a collateral for Commercial Bank lending and mortgage transactions. There fore land Title deeds registered under women’s personal names will constitute a guarantee for women’s equal access to secure loan and credit.
The new land laws provide for decentralization of land services to order levels in local government authorities and village councils which in dudes allocation, adjudication and registration of land titles.
Women’s effectives participation in land matters have been entrenched in the new land laws. Women shall be members in Land Allocation Committees and in the National Land Advisory Council.
There is adequate participation of the people in dispute settlement. The New Land Laws provide for new dispute settlement machinery which has been affected though not yet in operation, by The Land Disputes Courts Act No. 2, 2002. Dispute Settlement Tribunals under this new law shall have seven assessors, three of whom, shall be women.
The New Law required Public awareness and education. Therefore Ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development in collaboration with Local Government Authorities is conducting education campaign to sensitize the public to the provision of the new land Acts regarding legal and physical access to land. This is being done through radio, newspaper, television etc.
The land administration system is presently creating awareness among the officials that women are disadvantage in a non-acceptable manner and that their situation can be strengthened through registered rights. The legal system give both men and women equal rights to land and demands on mutual consents of the parties for a transaction of the property to a third party. Otherwise the administrative procedures, under the new land Laws are simple and transparent therefore they allow the involvement of women in land administration processes. For example, out of 71 employees in the department of lands development, 34 are women.
Generally the equality arguments for women rights to land, concerns women’s position relative to men, that is, they hinge on gender relations and the ability of women to confront male oppression with the home and in society. This puts women’s in very difficult positions of whether to pursue equal right to land, get divorce or leave the family of the husband where the husband passes away.
However, in Tanzania women’s rights to land is gaining social legitimacy as a result of struggle by individual women and by women’s groups, therefore, they are not ready, even under pressure of relative, to give up their claim for example, to an inherited piece of land after death of a husband.
WOMEN ACCESS TO LAND IN THE CONTEXT OF POVERTY REDUCTION AND THE AIDS PANDEMIC.
Women comprise 51% of the country’s total population, head 14% of the households and also comprise 54% of the economically active population in rural areas. Despite this fact almost 60% of the rural population is poor compared to 39% of the urban population which means that women’s are proper than men. The major cause of this problems is women’s vulnerability and lack of land ownership. Therefore, by enabling women to own and control land they cultivate, women will be able to raise the productivity of land by investing in technological improvement and control the products of the land.
Women landlessness is also the reason for their inability to escape abuse or oppression relationship. However the ownership of a resources such as land increases the bargaining power of women and increases their ability within the household and society in general. Therefore, with effective rights to land, Tanzania women will be in a position to provide for their own needs as well as of house of their families, which are major contributing factors in the AIDS pandemic.
CONCLUSION.
Security of tenure is one of the most important catalyst in stabilizing communities, improving shelter conditions, reducing social exclusion and improving access urban services (UNCHS, 1999).
When a person has got a title deed can be able to use the land for mortgage when they need a loan to invest into some business, increase investment in land based assets, mobilize credit facilities and activate land markets, in the hopes of encouraging agricultural development and growth. The land right can offer real security for landholders, potential investors and credit suppliers. However, more recent analyses confirm that many indigenous tenure systems do in fact confer secure rights of tenure to landholders, which are sufficient to stimulate investment and longer term land improvements.
Security of tenure reduces social exclusion as women were excluded to own land; but according to the new land; and thus be in included.
When people owns land with a title deed, they plots are always surveyed and thus it is easy for the government to provide some sevices.
REFFERENCES
1. Mrs. Mlole Bahati, Land Policy Challenges for policy makers Tanzania experience Ministry of Land ad Human Settlements Development.
2. Regional Africa Ministerial Conference on the implementation of the Habitat Agenda (Instanbul + 5) (200); Review of the Implementation of the Habitat Agenda in Africa; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
3. Kajoba Gear M. ( ) land use and land Tenure in Africa; towards an evolutionary conceptual frame work, Zambia.
4. Lamba Antony 0(2005) Land Tenure Management system in informal settlements, A case study in Nairobi.
This paper is going to discuss about Security of Tenure, starting with a short Historical back ground and then definition /literature review and then the policies and conclusion. Expansion of the informal settlements has been a major concern for the governments and local authorities in the region. Many countries are in efforts to upgrade and regularize these informal settlements and promote security of tenure to millions of people. Such effort included recognizing full ownership right as well as putting into place flexible land tenure arrangements, such as facilitating users’ right (for instance Namibia has developed a flexible tenure system to run parallel to the formal system). There is concern understanding that security of tenure can be promoted also by addressing issues such as access to basic services, credit, employment generation and by assisting people in their own housing initiatives. Addressing gender inequalities in ownership and inheritance rights is deemed as one of the most fundamental steps in this regard. Efforts in Botiama to increase house owner ship by female – headed households are a good example for such approaches.
Several countries in the region are in the process of in alimenting informal settlement programmes. However, only few countries have reported that they have implemented projects which combine upgrading of informal settlements with the provision of security of tenure. This may be due to the fact that implementation of land regularization programmes are often confronted with difficulties, some of the due to the customary land tenure system found in many countries. Furthermore, the machinery needed to affect massive land registration/regularization programmes requires strong administrative control that may be largely missing. I addition, there are several other difficulties in promoting secure tenure that must be confroted.
What is Secure Tenure
Land tenure security is the situation in which landholders consider their continued occupancy rights to be guaranteed whether by virtue of formal rights, customary rules or some other form of assurance. Roth and Hazell suggested that there are three components of security. These are: -
Breadth, which considers what rights are held (use, transfer, exclusion.
Duration, which refers to the length of time during which the rights are valid and
Assurance, which concern the certainly of the rights.
While (1959) defined land tenure as “the right of individuals or groups over arable, grazing and residential land, how such rights are acquired, what the consist of, how they operate in the holding, transfer and in heritance of land and how they may be extinguished”
“a person or household can be said to have secure tenure when they are promoted from involuntary removal from their land or residence except in exceptional circumstances, and then only by mans of a known and agreed legal procedure, which ,must itself be objective, equally applicable, contestable and independent (Global Campaign for secure Tenure, Implementing the Habitat Agenda: Adequate shelter for all).
POLICY
Evolution of Land Tenure in Tanzania before Tanzania was colonized by the German and then the British, the general structure of land holdings was based on traditional law and culture of each respective tribe in an area. The individual as a member of a family, clan or tribe acquired rights of use in the arable land he and his family could clear, activate and manage. However, when the land showed signs of exhaustion, then shifting cultivation was practiced.
In many of these areas, there was and there is still communal land for grazing and forest lands for cutting firewood. This type of extensive cultivation was acceptable and viable under conditions of low population densities, abundance of land and substance agriculture.
Initially each tribe had chiefs and elders or Headmen who controlled and allowed land to individuals (i.e members of that tribe) on behalf of the tribe in a fiduciary capacity. This system was continued ever during German and British colonial rule of Tanzania. However, following the abolition of chieftaincy by the African Chiefs Ordinance Act. No. 13 of 1963 (cap. 51) after Tanzania obtained independence in 1961, the controlling was rendered obsolete. When land was held under family tenure, each member of land heard of that family had a definite shave of that property. Each member could not dispose part of his shave without either getting the consent of other family members and a right of preemption to other heirs. Similarly where land was held in a clan, the owner could not dispose of it to a non clan member without first getting the permission of the clan elders.
The introduction and promotion of plantation agriculture under German administration introduced different land tenure system in the country where by land mainly prime agricultural land was allocated in freeholds, mostly to settlers. Alienation of land, save that which was in private ownership or possessed by chiefs or indigenous communities, was facilities by the passing of the Imperial Decree “Regarding Creation.
Acquisition and conveyance of Crown Land in 1895 which dectaved all land as Grown Land in the German Empire. This was indeed the beginning of nationalization of land. Transfer of crown land could only be affected through the governor either by conveyance of ownership or lease. In order to protect the land rights of natives, although in practice it failed to stop land grabbing, the Degree stated that transfer of ownership or lease of township land, by natives to non-natives for a period exceeding fifteen years, could not take place without the consent of the governor.
Under the British Administration, the system of land holding continued to change. Following the enactment of the land Tenure Ordinance Number 3 of 1923. The ordinance introduced the concept of “right of occupancy” in the country.
Under this new land tenure system rights over or in land were placed under the control of the Governor to be held, used or disposed of as rights of occupancy for the benefit of the indigenous people of Tanzania. In an attempt to protect native rights in land in native community lawful using or occupying land in accordance with customary law”
In 1961 free hold Titles were converted into lease holds under the free hold Titles (conversion) and Government lease Act (Cap. 523) of 1963 and were later changed into rights of occupancy under the Government lease holds Act. No. 44.
Land use in rural Africa, which refers to the refers to the usage under which any given piece of land may be put for a given period of times under prevailing environment and technology conditions, has under gone an evolutionary transformation, from the simple hunting and gathering to the more complex sedentary or permanent and commercial cultivation system.
In Tanzania land is a major and basic resources on which the bulk of the population especially rural women depend as the sole, livelihood and source of income.
Tanzania has different land tenure system covering clan, village land and public and urban land. The land tenure system has undergone changes since colonial times, the most profound of which included the declaration that all land is to be publicly owned by the head of state in trust for the whole nation with different legal regimes applying to rural and urban areas.
In 1991, a presidential commission on land Matters was appointed to study report on the land problem. Following the submissions report and recommendation well know as Shivji Report, the Ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development prepared a National Land Policy in June, 1995. On the basis of the policy a team of consultants drafted the Land Bill which was later passed as two separate Acts, the land Act and Village Land Act. No. 4 and 5 of 1999.
The presidential Commission Report Generated a vigorous debate over land and gender issue. They included the proper balance among security of tenure through tithing to attract foreign investment, protection of rural communities from land less ness and equitable, gender – sensitive allocation and management of land.
The commission pointed out that there was an absence of coherent land policy, unequal access to land, unstable policies and legislation, arbitrary decision and uncertain land rights.
The National Land Policy
The National Land Policy sought to promote equitable distribution of and access to land by all citizens. It’s major thrust was to be the conversion of land into an economic asset to which all citizens should have equal access to. The policy also sought to recognize, clarity and secure in law the existing right in land especially customary rights of small holders.
The ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development held several workshop to discuss the policy document with various stakeholders. Finally the policy declared on several issues amongst which are the following : -
(i) Access to land, that all citizens shall have equal and equitable access to land.
(ii) Women access to land, that, “In order to enhance and guarantee women’s access to land and security of tenure, women will be entitled to acquire land in their own right not only through purchase but also through allocation.
(iii) Disposition, that Regulation will be drafted to protect risk groups such as displaced persons, children and lower income people.
(iv) Land Registration, that land Registry offices will be gradually decentralized.
(v) Implementation, that apart from: - Ministries public institution and private institutions whose functions are associated with land development, local authorities, Non-government and community based development etc will be encouraged to participate in effective utilization of land.
The New Land Laws.
As it was in the formulation of National Land Policy, stockholders participated in a National Workshop to discuss Draft Land Law and they went further even to make presentations to Parliamentary Hearings when the Land Bills were debated. The key issues in debating and passing the two new land laws in 1998-99 were that discriminatory customary laws should be explicitly illegal and that administration organs with equal female representation.
Since land is one of the four pillars of Tanzania’s development philosophy which are people, land, good policies and good leadership, concerted implementation of the above policy statement will promote the best use of land so that land as an investment resources can make the maximum contribution to the country’s development process.
Implementation of the policy will help ensure that land is held and used effectively and efficiently and not boarded for speculative motives.
Likewise by creating efficient institutional frame work or structure for land administration which is also transparent, this policy should help streamline and simplify the procedures for getting land rather than make them cumbersome as they are at present thus reduce public complaints on land administration.
Forth, Tanzanians sound land tenure system has played a big role in promoting peace and national unity which are essential to development. Therefore, implementation of this policy which has retained the positive virtues of the existing land tenure system will further enhance peace and national unity
Also, by ensuring and promoting an equitable distribution of and access to land by all citizens, this policy and its accompanying legislation and implementation strategies to be formulated, will play a big role in shaping the type and nature of the Tanzania society this country wants to build in future. Tanzania is a country made up largely of small peasants, pastoralists and a few big farmers. Concerted implementation of this policy will make sure that the numerous small peasants and pastoralists who constitute the majority of the country is population are not made landless.
Women in the villages can now own land in their own right or jointly with men regardless of customary and religious restrictions. This gives them a stake in the development of their own village and enhancing their role as major producers on the land. Also customary systems of land management which is discriminative will therefore gradually be replaced with more secure individual tenure which provides incentives for agricultural investment and increase output.
Land can be used a collateral for Commercial Bank lending and mortgage transactions. There fore land Title deeds registered under women’s personal names will constitute a guarantee for women’s equal access to secure loan and credit.
The new land laws provide for decentralization of land services to order levels in local government authorities and village councils which in dudes allocation, adjudication and registration of land titles.
Women’s effectives participation in land matters have been entrenched in the new land laws. Women shall be members in Land Allocation Committees and in the National Land Advisory Council.
There is adequate participation of the people in dispute settlement. The New Land Laws provide for new dispute settlement machinery which has been affected though not yet in operation, by The Land Disputes Courts Act No. 2, 2002. Dispute Settlement Tribunals under this new law shall have seven assessors, three of whom, shall be women.
The New Law required Public awareness and education. Therefore Ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development in collaboration with Local Government Authorities is conducting education campaign to sensitize the public to the provision of the new land Acts regarding legal and physical access to land. This is being done through radio, newspaper, television etc.
The land administration system is presently creating awareness among the officials that women are disadvantage in a non-acceptable manner and that their situation can be strengthened through registered rights. The legal system give both men and women equal rights to land and demands on mutual consents of the parties for a transaction of the property to a third party. Otherwise the administrative procedures, under the new land Laws are simple and transparent therefore they allow the involvement of women in land administration processes. For example, out of 71 employees in the department of lands development, 34 are women.
Generally the equality arguments for women rights to land, concerns women’s position relative to men, that is, they hinge on gender relations and the ability of women to confront male oppression with the home and in society. This puts women’s in very difficult positions of whether to pursue equal right to land, get divorce or leave the family of the husband where the husband passes away.
However, in Tanzania women’s rights to land is gaining social legitimacy as a result of struggle by individual women and by women’s groups, therefore, they are not ready, even under pressure of relative, to give up their claim for example, to an inherited piece of land after death of a husband.
WOMEN ACCESS TO LAND IN THE CONTEXT OF POVERTY REDUCTION AND THE AIDS PANDEMIC.
Women comprise 51% of the country’s total population, head 14% of the households and also comprise 54% of the economically active population in rural areas. Despite this fact almost 60% of the rural population is poor compared to 39% of the urban population which means that women’s are proper than men. The major cause of this problems is women’s vulnerability and lack of land ownership. Therefore, by enabling women to own and control land they cultivate, women will be able to raise the productivity of land by investing in technological improvement and control the products of the land.
Women landlessness is also the reason for their inability to escape abuse or oppression relationship. However the ownership of a resources such as land increases the bargaining power of women and increases their ability within the household and society in general. Therefore, with effective rights to land, Tanzania women will be in a position to provide for their own needs as well as of house of their families, which are major contributing factors in the AIDS pandemic.
CONCLUSION.
Security of tenure is one of the most important catalyst in stabilizing communities, improving shelter conditions, reducing social exclusion and improving access urban services (UNCHS, 1999).
When a person has got a title deed can be able to use the land for mortgage when they need a loan to invest into some business, increase investment in land based assets, mobilize credit facilities and activate land markets, in the hopes of encouraging agricultural development and growth. The land right can offer real security for landholders, potential investors and credit suppliers. However, more recent analyses confirm that many indigenous tenure systems do in fact confer secure rights of tenure to landholders, which are sufficient to stimulate investment and longer term land improvements.
Security of tenure reduces social exclusion as women were excluded to own land; but according to the new land; and thus be in included.
When people owns land with a title deed, they plots are always surveyed and thus it is easy for the government to provide some sevices.
REFFERENCES
1. Mrs. Mlole Bahati, Land Policy Challenges for policy makers Tanzania experience Ministry of Land ad Human Settlements Development.
2. Regional Africa Ministerial Conference on the implementation of the Habitat Agenda (Instanbul + 5) (200); Review of the Implementation of the Habitat Agenda in Africa; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
3. Kajoba Gear M. ( ) land use and land Tenure in Africa; towards an evolutionary conceptual frame work, Zambia.
4. Lamba Antony 0(2005) Land Tenure Management system in informal settlements, A case study in Nairobi.
POVERTY IN TANZANIA
INTRODUCTION
This paper is going discuss about poverty in Tanzania and how do Tanzanians and the Government of Tanzania struggle to eradicate poverty.
Poverty is ability to attain a minimum standard of living Elements of poverty is such as poor infrastructure, un/employment, hunger. lack of balance diet. Diseases, life expectancy. Dependant economy, poor social services (water, schools an hospital) and poor health (disturbed by different diseases).
Causes of poverty
The causes of poverty are grouped into two parts, those which are internally rooted and those which are externally rooted. Burkely Stan (1993) mentioned some internal causes of poverty which are such as:-
Physical limitations-Many areas subject to long periods of drought; rain, when it comes tend to come all at once causing flooding and water loggings; soil are thin and very delicate and other natural disasters.
Dependency of third world countries – The third world countries are dependant of the developed countries for capital, technology and markets.
The rich countries set the interest rates, the terms of trade, the tariffs, and important barriers and generally, through their economic power, drain off the surpluses produce in the poor countries.
Lack of modern look – Poor people are said to resist change because they are ignorant, superstitious, fatalistic and traditional. They have a limited world view and are unable to see the advantage of modernization. They lack innovativeness and are unable to see the advantage of “investing to day fro a better tomorrow”. They have limited aspirations an are unable to defer today’s gratification to the future.
Lack of good leader – committed that encourage innovation with creating ideas. A leader that inspire others to share in common vision. Sets a good example and support others.
Poor Education – In family planning, lack o skills, land is not fully utilized, lack of technology.
Others reasons are such as lack of capital, difficult for people to self employed, poor essential services for example health and education, low economic productivity, poor balance diet causing malnutrition, lack of investment and lack of good policy. People also in some tribes are lazy; the are not working hard to remove poverty.
The sources which are externally caused, Walter (year) talked about slave trade; colonialism that African countries were colonized by different colons. For example Tanzania was under the Germany and British. They used the people to produce for the raw materials which they sent back to their countries and left Africa at the point of start. It also caused unequal distribution of development sources such as industries; they also took raw material for their industries.
Neocolonialism as a cause of poverty; IMF and WORLD BANK causes (i) Redundancy, they suggested to reduce number of workers; law payment – they set a limit on how to pay workers, multiparty, and privatize, the developed countries encourages internal war by selling and giving instrument for war.
The establishment of multiparty democracy is externally oriented, had no internal roots and came hand with Structure Adjustment Programmer initiated by World Bank and IMF.
Loans and aids with pressure conditions and big interest from the World Bank and IMF. “We have loans with big interest we cant pay this these loans in the expenses our child”. This is true because poor countries can not pa such loans with such big interest, when they fail to pay their debts increases.(Nyerere;)
Theoretical literature review.
The theory of poverty can be derived from ideas of the classical school, which focused on the laws that govern the distribution of factors incomes, and were later incorporated into the surplus model. According to this approach, development is defines in terms of the growth of the modern sector, which expand at the expense in inequality and (especially relative) poverty in the initial stages of development and a reduction in inequality and poverty at a later stage (Lewis, 1954 and Fei and Raws, 1964.
The neoclassical school which became dominance in the second half of the nineteenth century postulates that in a perfect market, prices of factors and goods are simultaneously determined competitively and depending on their scarcity and productivity. In spite the limitation arising from assumption of perfect competition a theory can be derived from such approach, as household incomes will be determined by the factor incomes receives by the households; that is the earnings from house hold labor and property.
Concept of Poverty.
A practical and commonly used definition of absolute poverty is the inability to attain a specific (minimum) standard of living (World Bank 1990). The definition focuses on the absolute economic well-being of the poor, in isolation from the welfare distribution of the entire society. It implies knowledge of the minimum standard of living, commonly referred to as the poverty live
The estimated total population of Africa in 1995 was 580m of these.
291m people had average income of below one dollar per day in 1998.
124m o those up to age 39yrs were at risk of dying before 40.
43m children were stinted as result of malnutrition in 1995.
205m were estimated to be without access to heal services in 1990 – 95.
249m were without safe drinking water in 1990 – 95.
More than 2m infants die animally before reading their first birthday.
139 million youth and adults were illiterate in 1995.
World Bank categorized poverty in 3 categories.
The destitute – many of whom are dependents such as elderly (particularly woman whose assets are taken when they become widowed) and disabled, count amongst the chronically poor.
Another group are being vulnerable to spell o poverty on account of either personally specific shocks such as illness or theft or more general shocks such as conflict, drought or economic crisis.
POLICE REVIEW
Soon after independence in 1961, Tanzania declared war against three closely related evils – poverty, ignorance and disease. Extensive programmes related to poverty eradication were initiated which included, inter alia, programmes to expand education, health services and water supply as well as improvement of physical infrastructure and development of agriculture and the economy as a whole. People have always been at the centre of the governments efforts in pursuit of poverty eradication. In spite of some implementation shortcoming, considerable achievements were made in improving human welfare in the first twenty years of independence.
In Tanzania Poverty can be conceived as a state of deprivation prohibitive of decent human life. This is caused by lack of recourses and capabilities to a acquire basic human needs as seen in many, but often mutually reinforcing parameters which include malnutrition, ignorance, prevalence of diseases, squalid surroundings, high infant, child and maternal mortality, low life expectancy, low per capital income, poor quality housing, in adequate clothing, low technological utilization, environmental degradation, unemployment rural-urban migration and poor migration.
Extent of Poverty
There are many individual used to measure poverty and its manifestation. The indicators used here are those that reflect the realities of poverty in Tanzania.
Illiteracy
One of the signs of poverty in the country are those low level literacy and numeracy. The literacy level is now estimated to be 68% down from 90% achieved n the 1980s. This testifies to the worsening trend of poverty and to the reversal of gains made earlier in human development efforts. Among low income families the literacy rate is 59% which lower than the national average. Gross enrollment rate for primary school pupils 77.8% (1996), down from 90% in the 1980s.
Inadequate clean and safe water supply
Availability of clean and safe water supply and sanitation services is one of the basic indicators of human development. Water for the majority of Tanzania is not within easy reach. Only about 11% of households have water services at the door. About 38% percent have to walk up to 15 minutes in order to reach water sources; while about 27% of households spend up to 30 minutes to get to a source of water. Woman and girls children are the most adversely affected by lack of water because culturally and traditionally they have the role of fetching water.
Poor Health Services
Inadequate health services reflect the extent of poverty of the country. For example, according to health statistical Abstract (1997) the ration of population per health facility is 7,421; there is one hospital bed per 1000 people and one physician per 23,188 people, while about 30% of the people live more than 5 kilometers from the nearest health centre.
High Mortality Rate
According to the Health Statistical Abstract 1997, the average life expectancy of 77 year in developed countries and 62 years in other developing countries. The infant rate mortality rate (IMR) is 96 per 1,000 live birth compared to 7 in developed countries. The under-five mortality rate of per 1,000 and maternal mortality rate is 95 per 100,000 live birth. These mortality rates for Tanzania are clear expression of poverty.
Malnutrition
Many Tanzanian suffer from malnutrition particularly under nutrition. Also many are affected by micro nutrient deficiencies due to nutritional illiteracy especially as it relates to best use of fruits and vegetables and proper methods of planning cereal based diets. According to Tanzania Demographical Health Survey (1996), malnutrition among under-fives shows the prevalence of stunting to be 43.4% underweight 30.6% and wasting 7.2% Adult malnutrition especially maternal malnutrition is widespread. Indicative of maternal malnutrition is the high prevalence of low birth weight.
Environment Degradation
Environment degradation which is caused by over exploitation of land perpetuates poverty. Poverty has led to small holder farm house holds and pastoral groups to intensify exploitation of land with the aim to survive. This has led to widespread soil erosion. Furthermore, in the absence of alternative energy source, firewood remains the dominant sources of domestic fuel all over the country. Cutting trees for fuel wood has led to widespread deforestation and drought, hence increasing the danger of desertification.
Unemployment
High incidence of unemployment is among key distinguishing features of poverty. Largely because of poverty, the economy can not generate enough employment opportunities to meet the needs of the labour force. Poor living conditions of the rural areas serve centripetal force to push the youth to urban areas where most of them remain unemployed. The near 30% of youth unemployment reflects, in part, the ability of the economy to create sufficient employment opportunities for the growing population, but also the inability of the rural areas to create gainful employment opportunities and incentives to retain youth after graduation from primary education. Alongside this situation is the growing problem of street children who are a manifestation of worsening poverty.
Low Incomes
Another manifestation of poverty is low level of income. Estimates show that the poverty line for Tanzania is Tshs. 73,877 (1955) per annum. More than 50% of the population in Tanzania has incomes below the poverty line. Although the ecomonomy has been growing at an average animal rate of 4% since mid 1980s this rate of growth is insufficient to generate an income level considered adequate to meet basic needs.
Homeless and Poor Housing
Many Tanzanian live in poor quality houses. A survey conducted in 1995 had shown that 70% of the population in Dar es salaam city live in squatter settlements. Arusha and Mbeya municipalities have 70% of their population living in similar situation. Mwanza had 40% of its population living in squatter settlements.
Tanzania women are poorer than men despite the fact that women are the major actors in productive and reproductive activities. Of the total population, approximately 51.6% (1995) are woman. They comprise about 54% of the economically active population in rural areas are engaged in agriculture, producing about 60% to 80% of all domestic food supplies and cash crops, and shouldering most domestic work. Despite their contribution to society, Tanzania women do not receive adequate remuneration for their work. Traditional and cultural barriers still block women access to and control of land and other property. Although women contribute most of the labour in productive activities, they have little access to the income generated as men continue to dominate decision making not only within the household but also at national level.
Tanzania women have limited access to employment opportunities in the formal sector. As a result, many have had to adopt survival strategies through the informal sector where many operate without support of extension services or credit. Many of the activities in the informal sector have increased the burden of women.
In education, the girl child has limited opportunities to pursue education. Despite special focus on girls’ education, enrollment in primary schools is still lower than that of male pupils because of parental preference for boys’ education. Only 27.3% of form five (v) students and 24.3 of form six (vi) student are women. This lower representation of women continues up to University level.
Causes of Poverty
In Tanzania poverty is caused by both internal and external factors. Where the internal causes can be clustered into economic and social factors, the external causes relate to international trade, the debt burden and the refugee problem.
Internal Causes o Poverty
Internal causes of poverty include all factors that adversely affect economic growth with equity. Some of the factors are outline hereunder: -
(i.) Economic Policies.
For many yeas the country pursued fiscal and monetary policies which, though promoted equity, did not promote economic growth.
(ii) Insufficient Support to the Agricultural Sector
Though agriculture is the backbone of the economy, the support given to the sector over the years has not been commensurate with its relative importance. This is reflected in poor rural infrastructure and lack of modernization of the sector. Smallholder farmers who dominate the sector remain virtually inaccessible to credit and other forms of relevant support to improve productivity. The inability to modernize the technologies used in the sector, poor rural infrastructure, the non availability of critical farm inputs, the inefficiency of the marketing system and significant post harvest losses have all contribute towards the poor performance of the agricultural sector, hence towards the poverty of the country.
(iii) Inadequate Support to Rural Industries.
The establishment in rural areas of small scale, agro-based industries could have complemented the agricultural sector in the utilization of slack labour, in adding value to agricultural commodities and providing a basis for technological development. By not developing small scale and cottage industries in the rural areas, the rural sector has had to continue to depend on peasant farming system, hence perpetuating poverty.
(iv) Disruption of Local Institution Structures.
The erosion of democratic institution such as local councils and cooperative denied the participation of the people in the management of the economy and in the process their contribution to development activities were marginalized. Even with the reintroduction of the local government and co-operative societies, lack of capacity and inappropriate set up of the cooperatives limited their contribution to development effort in general.
(v) Low level of Technology
The use of poor inappropriate technology leading to low productivity in all sectors has also contributed perpetuation of poverty.
(vi) Poor Gender Division of Labour
Poor division of labour between men and women at the family level especially in rural areas is also another cause of poverty. Women are the ones who shoulder most of the work, a situation which leads to low income hence perpetuating poverty. It has been observed that in work places. Many women are employed in low paid position.
(vii) Laziness and Irresponsibility.
Lack of self-motivation to perform one’s duties due to laziness and being irresponsible contributes to poverty. If every person could do productive work and strive for self-motivation, poverty would be eradicated. Loitering and misuse of time is prevalent in urban areas where many people are either unemployed or irresponsible.
(viii) Diseases
Tanzania is still struggling with common and communicable diseases which have been eradicated in many places in the world. These diseases include malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, and anemia. These are the main causes of deaths in Tanzania especially for under-fives. Explosion of disease such as cholera and typhoid which have been occurring frequently has impact in Government expenditure both on curative and preventive measures, hence intensifying poverty in the country.
HIV/AIDS epidemic has also contributed to the incidence of other diseases such as TB, skin disease etc. HIV/AIDS incidence fall more on youth who are the main labour force in the economy. It is estimated that up to December 1995 Tanzania had about 1.2million people with HIV/AIDS. If this trend continued to the year 2000, people with HIV/AIDS will reach 3.6million. Despite contributing to communicable disease, HIV/AIDS also increases the extent of poverty in the communities. Many families have been rendered poor through loss of bread-winners. The epidemic has created the problem of orphans both in the rural and urban areas estimated at 200,000 by December 1995. This number is expected to increase to 800,000 or more by the year 2000.
In terms of gender, women bear the brunt of the problem. They have the main responsibilities of taking care of the sick in the family, thus denying them opportunities to generate income and raise their living standards.
(ix) Big Families.
Having many children in one family shows that there are more dependants relative to those who are to work. Such a situation increases the burden of the family in overcoming poverty.
External Causes of Poverty
Several external factors have limited the ability of the country to combat mass poverty. These factors include the debt burden, unequal exchange in international trade and of late the refugee problem.
(i) Debt Burden
One of the major factors that contribute to perpetuate poverty is the debt burden which has continued to drain resources from poor countries to the rich countries. In Tanzania debt servicing is currently about 39 percent of the recurrent budget. This is so huge that inhibits the Government ability to adequately provide social and other services to the public.
(ii) Unequal Exchange in International Trade.
Unequal exchange in international trade has limited the ability of developing countries to break out of the poverty cycle. The country has continued to rely on unprocessed agricultural commodities as the main export crops. But the prices of agricultural products in comparison to those of industrial products have remained unfavourable. This trade relationship has put a severe limit on the ability of the country to break out of the poverty cycle.
(iii) Refugees.
For year Tanzania has been receiving refugees from neighbouring countries. These have been in manageable proportions. However, with the recent ethnic turmoil in Rwanda and Burundi, the country has experienced an influx of refugees never seen before. The two regions of Kagera and Kigoma are now hosting a refugee population of over 700,000 people. The refugee problem has resulted in the depletion of natural resources like water and trees, and the destruction of social infrastructures like dispensaries and schools which were used to host them. The refugee problem has aggravated poverty in the two regions by accelerating environmental degradation and the depletion of food and natural resources.
PREVIOUS EFFORTS IN ERADICATING POVERTY IN TANZANIA
After independence, Tanzania inherited an economic structure which grossly neglected the social welfare of the local population and one which was sternly poised to serve external internal interests set up by the colonial regime. Employment opportunities were extremely limited. About 5 percent of the population was employed but mainly as labourers in foreign-owned plantation estates. Another 5 percent were employed in urban areas as clerks, nurses and housekeepers. A majority about 90 percent of the population, worked on their own land as subsistence farmers. The manufacturing sector was small, foreign-owned and its products were mainly processed primary commodities for export. The health sector was under-developed and poorly served; and most government hospitals were urban based. Education opportunities were limited.
Thus, soon after independence, dramatic state interventions were initiated to reduce economic and social inequalities in resources distribution and control. National campaign “Uhuru na Kazi” and “Uhuru ni Kazi” were launched to extol the virtues of work as a basis for development and self dignity. It was also a strategy of enhancing employment opportunities.
To increase rural incomes and ensure food security, the government embarked on policies and various slogans for promoting agriculture. The slogans accompanying those policies include “Siasa ni Kilimo”, “Chakula ni Uhai”, Kilimo cha Kisasa”, “Kilimo cha umwagiliaji” and soon. Plans were implemented aimed at improving small holder agriculture through better farm management practices and the use of improved technologies. Emphasis was placed on expanding and improving the delivery of services to the agricultural sector. These included the provision of extension services, increasing the availability and use of agricultural inputs, improving the crop marketing system and increasing access to agricultural finance. These efforts could not be sustained due to lack of the necessary infrastructure and absence of institution like local government and co-operatives which would have managed the services.
Also, the Government implemented various policies in the social services sectors for promoting education, health and water. These policies included Universal Primary Education (UPE), Education for self-reliance, Adult Literacy Education, “Mtu ni Afya”, Primary Health Care for All, Water is Life, Water for All, and others. Successes were recorded in implementing these policies. In education, several indicators showed that Tanzania had made tremendous progress in eradicating illiteracy. For example, over 90 percent of school-age going children were able to enter Standard I in primary school and literacy rate of 90 percent was achieved. Success in the health sectors included the increased number of rural and urban health centers, construction of regional and district hospital in most regions and construction of regional and district hospital in most regions and constructions of training centers for medical and health staff. Mother and child health care services also increased. In the water sector, various donor agencies co-operated with the government in delivering water supply services, especially in the rural areas. These services included provision of clean piped water, construction of shallow and deep-water wells and construction of dips for livestock.
However, these gains could not last long, among other things, due to the following shortcomings:-
Poor involvement of people themselves at different stages of planning led to most of the project being unsustainable after completion.
Lack of capital for most of the rural people
Lack o skills to run these programmes/projects especially technical skills, environmental management and protection, evaluation as well as finance management.
All these initiatives were top-down in their nature, thus lacked people’s support.
Previous efforts to eradicate poverty were of `campaign type and not part of socio-economic development plans and programmes. Therefore, they could not be sustained after the campaigns.
Many stakeholders such as government ministries, NGOs and donors implemented their programmes in accordance to their individual perception and priority. There was no guidance and coordination of these efforts.
The National Poverty Eradication Strategy aims at providing a guidance for stakeholders and the poor themselves to identify, implement and evaluate their own programme, and enable different stakeholders to put poverty eradication programmes as part of their overall development plans and programmes.
Tanzania through the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (MKUKUTA) has been trying hard to focus on poverty reduction and country’s development agenda. The NSGRP is informed by the aspirations of Tanzania Development Vision (vision 2025) for high and shared growth, high quality livelihood, peace, stability and unity, good governance high quality education and international competitiveness. Vision 2025 lays out the long term development goals and perspectives against which the strategy for poverty alleviation (NPES) was formulated. The TAS is the result of a mutually felt need by the Government of Tanzania and its international partners for a comprehensive development agenda, around which issues pertaining to ongoing activities can be regularly discussed and assessed. As such, the TAS covers all the development areas that have characteristically been supported by the international partners, both within and outside the framework of the central Government budget. It is hoped that the TAS will provide a useful framework for organizing periodic consultations and dialogue among all development partners. The PRSP is an integral part of the HIPC process, focusing mainly on poverty alleviation, and budget to a relatively hard (Central Government) budget constrains, starting financial year 2000/2001. Nevertheless, the PRSP encompasses poverty-oriented extra-budget-any activities, various non financial considerations that have an important bearing on poverty reduction.
It is committed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGS), as internationally agreed target for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women by 2015. It strive to widen the space for country ownership and effective participation of civil society, private sector development and commitment to regional and other international initiatives for social and economic development.
The poverty reduction strategy is based on three considerations. First the strategy is viewed as an instrument for channeling national efforts towards broadly agreed objectives and specific inputs and outputs. The elaboration and implementation of the strategy are fundamentally ongoing processes. While a wide variety of key intervention has already been launched, the preparation of strategies for certain sectors, such as agriculture and education are still underway. Moreover, the implementations of reforms aimed at shifting the responsibilities for formulating, implementing and monitoring poverty reduction intervention by the districts, municipalities, and communities at the grassroots has started, but it will take some time to complete. The overall strategy of poverty reduction will, therefore, need to be managed flexibly, to accommodate additional action play and activities emanating from the going work.
Second, the poverty reduction strategy is to a large extent, an integral part of ongoing macroeconomic and structural reforms that are being supported by Tanzania multilateral and bilateral partners. The Government has chosen, as detailed below to accelerate selected reforms that are likely to have a major impact on poverty reduction. Finally in keeping with concerns of stakeholders, and guided by the overarching orientation of vision 2025 and the NPES. The focus of the poverty reduction strategy concentrates on effects aimed at reducing income poverty, improving human capabilities, survival and social wellbeing and containing extreme vulnerability among the poor
As per PRSP the Government had to take into account seven basic considerations. First, pending the completion of the above – noted key tasks (notably in the ministries of agriculture and education, and in regard to the LGRP) the estimated financing for the poverty reduction programme will be kept under review and up dated to reflect the impact of more thoroughly coasted interventions.
Second, while it is certain that the financing of the poverty reduction programme will derive principal from domestic sources, notably the central government budget an assessment of the revenue impact of ongoing improvement in tax enforcement and administration is fraught with uncertainty.
Third the financial of the poverty alleviation efforts will, as in the past depend substantially on external funded, the availability of which could differ from the project path.
Forth, on the basic of insights MTEF and PER exercises, it is evident that the poverty reduction programme will be constrained severed by available resources. Because of this, the government has opted for a slight deterioration in the fiscal balance, and will also place special emphasis on the cost effectiveness of intended poverty reduction initiatives.
Fifth, the government will strategically support cost-sharing co-financing, and other initiatives aimed at catalyzing deeper involvement by communities and other stakeholders in well – conceived poverty reduction programmes.
Sixth, the government is envisaging that there will be significant changes in the finacing modalities for the poverty reduction programme.
Finally, the government, guided by finding from the stakeholders workshops will continue its financial intervention mostly to
(i) Education
(ii) Health
(iii) Agriculture (search and extension)
(iv) Roads
(v) Water
(vi) Judiciary and
(vii) HIV/AIDS
The Government of Tanzania has recently established a poverty Monitoring system to provide timely, reliable data to inform its Poverty Reduction strategy (PRS) and other policy initiatives. The system incorporates both participatory and survey based research methodologies.
As part of this system, routine Participatory Assessments (PPAS) are being implemented in two year cycles. Though the main purpose is to improve medium and long term development planning, stakeholders also hoped that the PPAS would lead to timely, direct benefits at the local level.
The advantage of this is that data analysis does not depend on speculation by privileged professionals about the conditions people face and instead it is the result of ordinary people reflecting on, theorizing about debating and explaining the world in which they live. Also, participatory research can contribute to social democratization by engaging citizen in policy making process.
On the basis of these characteristics, the Government of Tanzania has decided to make Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPAS) a routine part of its integrated Poverty Monitoring System. PPA provides information to stakeholders to discuss and translate into policies reflecting their institutions unique mandates capacities and circumstances. In other words, these PPA are intended to facilitate making information – based decisions about how to help people get out, and stay out, of poverty.
The Tanzania Participatory Assessment process is being implemented by a multi- sectoral consortium of institutions in two – year cycles timed to feed into the revision of the Governments Poverty Reduction Strategy. Each of these cycles will focus on specific priority information gap. The first cycle began in January 2002 and is taking in depth look at people “vulnerability" to becoming poor or poorer.
As a result of its forward looking approach influencing the Tanzania Participatory Poverty Assessment (TZPPA), quickly began to have an impact in national fora. Some of the best example of positive change set in motion by the TZPPA comes from Ilala District, Dar es Salaam Region. The Municipal Council Economic Planners spent two and a half weeks as par of team conducting participatory research in Mtambani B Ward. Afterwards, the Municipal Management Team assigned responses to issues raised by the study. To date, this has culminated in the:- provision of counseling services to drug users at the district hospital and an appropriate clinic, and formation of new sensitization strategies encouraged equal schooling for girl an boy children. These strategies, unlike those in the past, begin from an understanding of local ideas about gender and education, creation by community members of transparent criteria for extending priority support to especially poor local household.
Status report (2006) show that there is an improvement in different sector. For example overall, the available data sourced from the basic data series of the Ministry of Education and Vocation Training (MoEVT) show positive trends. Net enrolment rats are higher in pre primary, primary and secondary schools, the pupil; teacher ration in primary schools falling; the percentage of pupils passing the primary school leavers Examination is increasing and the percentage of standard seven (vii) pupils going on to secondary school is also raising.
On study done in six district Kilosa, Ilala, Bagamoyo, Mwanza, Moshi and Iringa shows that; In primary education there was immense growth in school enrolment from year 2000 to 2003, enrolment was close to 10% in all six case councils. This case can be attributed to the abolition of school fees in 2001, and to the primary Education Development programme. The pass rate also increased in all case councils, although the majority of grade 7 student were still failing to pass in year 2003. These were some clear signs of progress in the quality of education, measured by indicators such as pupils per classroom, pupils per desk, and pupils per textbook.(Braathen E.&Mwambe G;2003;)
However, the main quality indicators, like pupils per teacher and have a qualified teachers, did not show progress for many of the council. The lack of teacher threatens the sustainability of the reduction reform and tends to widen the gap between advance and backlogging councils.
In basic health services there was significant progress reported from all six council regarding the public situation. The infant mortality rate decreased, and the immunization rate rose to well above 80% in all council. However, problems existed, linked to the health facilities (dispensaries and centres). Although there was progress in accessibility from 2000, around one third of the population in Iringa, Kilosa and Bagamoyo were still without access to health centres in 2003. And despite an improvement in the number of health workers (nurse) and average waiting times for patients at dispensaries, the problem of affordability made the majority of population dissatisfied (more so with health centres than Dispensaries).
The Poverty and Human Development report (2005) provides a similar picture for Tanzania as a whole. There has been a positive reduction of infant mortality from 99 to 68 per 1000 birth and of under five mortality from 147 to 112 per 1000 birth.
In domestic water supply there supply there was no significant progress reported o accessibility, with particular exception of Mwanza. In three districts, around half of the population was not covered by adequate water supply services.
In education the progress report noted the continued impressive expansion of the primary system; enrollments for 2003 again exceed PRS targets. The progress report rightly places increase emphasis on quality; some improvements have been cited, but more needs to be done to improve completion rates. The primary Education Development Program has been successfully implemented, and the Public Expenditure Tracking Study shows that about 95 percent of funds allocated to school were used for the intended purposes.
SUGGESTION
Many efforts have been observed done by the Government of Tanzania to reduce poverty in its people. Among them the Government through PRS has made a difference in Education b:
i. Abolishing fees for primary education and encouraging enrollment of all children who reach the appropriate age for primary school, we expect once they are enrolled, stays at school, study in a positive learning environment, do well in their examination and have an opportunity to continue into secondary Education.
ii. Reduce the infant under five mortality and maternal death by abolishing hospital charges for children’s under five and pregnant women.
iii. Improved source of drinking water in rural areas; many people in the rural areas get clean water for drinking.
There is no policy which hinder people to move / go out of the country with huge amount of money to go there and do business without even the government awareness in such business; This means people can use Tanzania money out side the country and bring home nothing as many Tanzania business people have a little knowledge of making or doing business. For example, a country like South / North Korea do not allow its people to go and invest else where without the ministry responsible for investment acknowledge the transfer of that amount of money and also prove if it is true that there is really such business going on.
But we also have a problem of corruption, if people in the system will be careful enough to make sure people who take loans do they real use them for investing and not doing business; As some people take big loans from banks and use them for spending with their families and for/or with the “Nyumba Ndogos” (meaning having affairs with other women leaving their families suffering).
Sometime they take loans by mortgaging their houses where there family lives; unfortunately when the man die the banks took the houses and live the family without a house to live, leave the family more poor than ever which arises to another problem of children leaving schools and become beggars.
Though the government have been trying hard to conduct seminars on how to do business, more education have to be provided so that they do not use loan for other activities than investing the money into produce activities.
Also the government have been working had to eradicate poverty, their very much concern is on policy making and researches, may be it is because these activities pay then a lot of money; but if you come to implementation.
Though many efforts taken by the Government of Tanzania to improve the standard of living to its people, but some more changes should be consideration in the following areas.
The government should modify the education system to rain agriculture product and introduce handcraft products for example woodwork, hand craft, iron smothery and brick making. The government should also direct powers to rural areas by providing loans.
The government must build capacity of its people. This can be done by providing technology which can be give information’s about different issues. Technology can help people access information’s which can also help to change some people altitude, value and rigid cultures and tradition which persisted for a long time. Through Technology people get exposure different world without even going there people can understand their position and decide to change, as it is very possible that some people do not even know that they are poor, as far as they leave in villages they what they get, they wear toned clothes and don’t even notice that they are almost half faked.
New Technology also has some problem so the government need to aware on that. People may learn things which are not allowed in our African and Tanzania culture.
Poverty is in it self a barrier to equal educational opportunity. A hungry of malnourished child is unlikely to be good at concentrating on school work. The lack of a quite room in which to study at home (and, in area singly a computer) makes homework unattractive and difficult. The government has to formulate strong strategies which can make people improve their agriculture and thus have enough food for their families hence improve their performance in schools.
The opportunity to get fair trial is closed to those who cannot afford high quality legal representation in the absence of a well funded system of legal aid .The government have to practice good governance to reduce corruption.
Social solidarity means a sense of fellow feeling that extent beyond people with whom one is in personal contact, Tanzanian need to have it so that they will be able to help one another..
What they write in books is not seen to be serious. For example, people who live in rural areas depend much on agriculture activities, I think that if a person really want to help them better help them improve the results of their effort. For example the government can make or prepare a way through which different villages will be given tractors in form of loans or whatever so that they improve their productions and also increase the number of hence they take case.
By improving the agriculture section people will not suffer from hunger, and also they can get surplus which will help them to sell and get money which will help them buy other needs pay fees for their children an thus improve their education and standard of living.
In other words we can say that the government should invest much in the rural areas especially in Agriculture by providing education, materials and other related services like water and electricity; put more investment industries in urban area sand small scale industries in rural areas; Bolstering farms by providing the with fair loans from the government, NGO, and other organization; Reduce tax especially in small scale group; Distribute essential services equally such as improving education system and health service Use appropriate technology for example irrigation scheme Increase food production; building people capacity.
The aids which is given by different countries should be handled well and make sure they are used according to the aim of the donors; for example money to fund the HIV/AIDS programs, there are many NGOS which are assigned with huge amount of money, the government has to make sure that the funds reaches the targeted person.
Strong strategies, policies, laws, rules and regulations has to be made to make sure that all revenue that was supposed to collected is collected and used for the benefit of the whole nation not some people
References
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Dar es Salaam University Press, DSM – Tanzania.
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University Press New York.
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(2002), PRACTICE IN POVERTY REDUCTION, USA.
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YEARS AFTER INDEPENDENT? UDSM Commotion, Dar es Salaam
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Polity Options ILO Publications, International Labour Office, GENEVA 22
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Government printer Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
This paper is going discuss about poverty in Tanzania and how do Tanzanians and the Government of Tanzania struggle to eradicate poverty.
Poverty is ability to attain a minimum standard of living Elements of poverty is such as poor infrastructure, un/employment, hunger. lack of balance diet. Diseases, life expectancy. Dependant economy, poor social services (water, schools an hospital) and poor health (disturbed by different diseases).
Causes of poverty
The causes of poverty are grouped into two parts, those which are internally rooted and those which are externally rooted. Burkely Stan (1993) mentioned some internal causes of poverty which are such as:-
Physical limitations-Many areas subject to long periods of drought; rain, when it comes tend to come all at once causing flooding and water loggings; soil are thin and very delicate and other natural disasters.
Dependency of third world countries – The third world countries are dependant of the developed countries for capital, technology and markets.
The rich countries set the interest rates, the terms of trade, the tariffs, and important barriers and generally, through their economic power, drain off the surpluses produce in the poor countries.
Lack of modern look – Poor people are said to resist change because they are ignorant, superstitious, fatalistic and traditional. They have a limited world view and are unable to see the advantage of modernization. They lack innovativeness and are unable to see the advantage of “investing to day fro a better tomorrow”. They have limited aspirations an are unable to defer today’s gratification to the future.
Lack of good leader – committed that encourage innovation with creating ideas. A leader that inspire others to share in common vision. Sets a good example and support others.
Poor Education – In family planning, lack o skills, land is not fully utilized, lack of technology.
Others reasons are such as lack of capital, difficult for people to self employed, poor essential services for example health and education, low economic productivity, poor balance diet causing malnutrition, lack of investment and lack of good policy. People also in some tribes are lazy; the are not working hard to remove poverty.
The sources which are externally caused, Walter (year) talked about slave trade; colonialism that African countries were colonized by different colons. For example Tanzania was under the Germany and British. They used the people to produce for the raw materials which they sent back to their countries and left Africa at the point of start. It also caused unequal distribution of development sources such as industries; they also took raw material for their industries.
Neocolonialism as a cause of poverty; IMF and WORLD BANK causes (i) Redundancy, they suggested to reduce number of workers; law payment – they set a limit on how to pay workers, multiparty, and privatize, the developed countries encourages internal war by selling and giving instrument for war.
The establishment of multiparty democracy is externally oriented, had no internal roots and came hand with Structure Adjustment Programmer initiated by World Bank and IMF.
Loans and aids with pressure conditions and big interest from the World Bank and IMF. “We have loans with big interest we cant pay this these loans in the expenses our child”. This is true because poor countries can not pa such loans with such big interest, when they fail to pay their debts increases.(Nyerere;)
Theoretical literature review.
The theory of poverty can be derived from ideas of the classical school, which focused on the laws that govern the distribution of factors incomes, and were later incorporated into the surplus model. According to this approach, development is defines in terms of the growth of the modern sector, which expand at the expense in inequality and (especially relative) poverty in the initial stages of development and a reduction in inequality and poverty at a later stage (Lewis, 1954 and Fei and Raws, 1964.
The neoclassical school which became dominance in the second half of the nineteenth century postulates that in a perfect market, prices of factors and goods are simultaneously determined competitively and depending on their scarcity and productivity. In spite the limitation arising from assumption of perfect competition a theory can be derived from such approach, as household incomes will be determined by the factor incomes receives by the households; that is the earnings from house hold labor and property.
Concept of Poverty.
A practical and commonly used definition of absolute poverty is the inability to attain a specific (minimum) standard of living (World Bank 1990). The definition focuses on the absolute economic well-being of the poor, in isolation from the welfare distribution of the entire society. It implies knowledge of the minimum standard of living, commonly referred to as the poverty live
The estimated total population of Africa in 1995 was 580m of these.
291m people had average income of below one dollar per day in 1998.
124m o those up to age 39yrs were at risk of dying before 40.
43m children were stinted as result of malnutrition in 1995.
205m were estimated to be without access to heal services in 1990 – 95.
249m were without safe drinking water in 1990 – 95.
More than 2m infants die animally before reading their first birthday.
139 million youth and adults were illiterate in 1995.
World Bank categorized poverty in 3 categories.
The destitute – many of whom are dependents such as elderly (particularly woman whose assets are taken when they become widowed) and disabled, count amongst the chronically poor.
Another group are being vulnerable to spell o poverty on account of either personally specific shocks such as illness or theft or more general shocks such as conflict, drought or economic crisis.
POLICE REVIEW
Soon after independence in 1961, Tanzania declared war against three closely related evils – poverty, ignorance and disease. Extensive programmes related to poverty eradication were initiated which included, inter alia, programmes to expand education, health services and water supply as well as improvement of physical infrastructure and development of agriculture and the economy as a whole. People have always been at the centre of the governments efforts in pursuit of poverty eradication. In spite of some implementation shortcoming, considerable achievements were made in improving human welfare in the first twenty years of independence.
In Tanzania Poverty can be conceived as a state of deprivation prohibitive of decent human life. This is caused by lack of recourses and capabilities to a acquire basic human needs as seen in many, but often mutually reinforcing parameters which include malnutrition, ignorance, prevalence of diseases, squalid surroundings, high infant, child and maternal mortality, low life expectancy, low per capital income, poor quality housing, in adequate clothing, low technological utilization, environmental degradation, unemployment rural-urban migration and poor migration.
Extent of Poverty
There are many individual used to measure poverty and its manifestation. The indicators used here are those that reflect the realities of poverty in Tanzania.
Illiteracy
One of the signs of poverty in the country are those low level literacy and numeracy. The literacy level is now estimated to be 68% down from 90% achieved n the 1980s. This testifies to the worsening trend of poverty and to the reversal of gains made earlier in human development efforts. Among low income families the literacy rate is 59% which lower than the national average. Gross enrollment rate for primary school pupils 77.8% (1996), down from 90% in the 1980s.
Inadequate clean and safe water supply
Availability of clean and safe water supply and sanitation services is one of the basic indicators of human development. Water for the majority of Tanzania is not within easy reach. Only about 11% of households have water services at the door. About 38% percent have to walk up to 15 minutes in order to reach water sources; while about 27% of households spend up to 30 minutes to get to a source of water. Woman and girls children are the most adversely affected by lack of water because culturally and traditionally they have the role of fetching water.
Poor Health Services
Inadequate health services reflect the extent of poverty of the country. For example, according to health statistical Abstract (1997) the ration of population per health facility is 7,421; there is one hospital bed per 1000 people and one physician per 23,188 people, while about 30% of the people live more than 5 kilometers from the nearest health centre.
High Mortality Rate
According to the Health Statistical Abstract 1997, the average life expectancy of 77 year in developed countries and 62 years in other developing countries. The infant rate mortality rate (IMR) is 96 per 1,000 live birth compared to 7 in developed countries. The under-five mortality rate of per 1,000 and maternal mortality rate is 95 per 100,000 live birth. These mortality rates for Tanzania are clear expression of poverty.
Malnutrition
Many Tanzanian suffer from malnutrition particularly under nutrition. Also many are affected by micro nutrient deficiencies due to nutritional illiteracy especially as it relates to best use of fruits and vegetables and proper methods of planning cereal based diets. According to Tanzania Demographical Health Survey (1996), malnutrition among under-fives shows the prevalence of stunting to be 43.4% underweight 30.6% and wasting 7.2% Adult malnutrition especially maternal malnutrition is widespread. Indicative of maternal malnutrition is the high prevalence of low birth weight.
Environment Degradation
Environment degradation which is caused by over exploitation of land perpetuates poverty. Poverty has led to small holder farm house holds and pastoral groups to intensify exploitation of land with the aim to survive. This has led to widespread soil erosion. Furthermore, in the absence of alternative energy source, firewood remains the dominant sources of domestic fuel all over the country. Cutting trees for fuel wood has led to widespread deforestation and drought, hence increasing the danger of desertification.
Unemployment
High incidence of unemployment is among key distinguishing features of poverty. Largely because of poverty, the economy can not generate enough employment opportunities to meet the needs of the labour force. Poor living conditions of the rural areas serve centripetal force to push the youth to urban areas where most of them remain unemployed. The near 30% of youth unemployment reflects, in part, the ability of the economy to create sufficient employment opportunities for the growing population, but also the inability of the rural areas to create gainful employment opportunities and incentives to retain youth after graduation from primary education. Alongside this situation is the growing problem of street children who are a manifestation of worsening poverty.
Low Incomes
Another manifestation of poverty is low level of income. Estimates show that the poverty line for Tanzania is Tshs. 73,877 (1955) per annum. More than 50% of the population in Tanzania has incomes below the poverty line. Although the ecomonomy has been growing at an average animal rate of 4% since mid 1980s this rate of growth is insufficient to generate an income level considered adequate to meet basic needs.
Homeless and Poor Housing
Many Tanzanian live in poor quality houses. A survey conducted in 1995 had shown that 70% of the population in Dar es salaam city live in squatter settlements. Arusha and Mbeya municipalities have 70% of their population living in similar situation. Mwanza had 40% of its population living in squatter settlements.
Tanzania women are poorer than men despite the fact that women are the major actors in productive and reproductive activities. Of the total population, approximately 51.6% (1995) are woman. They comprise about 54% of the economically active population in rural areas are engaged in agriculture, producing about 60% to 80% of all domestic food supplies and cash crops, and shouldering most domestic work. Despite their contribution to society, Tanzania women do not receive adequate remuneration for their work. Traditional and cultural barriers still block women access to and control of land and other property. Although women contribute most of the labour in productive activities, they have little access to the income generated as men continue to dominate decision making not only within the household but also at national level.
Tanzania women have limited access to employment opportunities in the formal sector. As a result, many have had to adopt survival strategies through the informal sector where many operate without support of extension services or credit. Many of the activities in the informal sector have increased the burden of women.
In education, the girl child has limited opportunities to pursue education. Despite special focus on girls’ education, enrollment in primary schools is still lower than that of male pupils because of parental preference for boys’ education. Only 27.3% of form five (v) students and 24.3 of form six (vi) student are women. This lower representation of women continues up to University level.
Causes of Poverty
In Tanzania poverty is caused by both internal and external factors. Where the internal causes can be clustered into economic and social factors, the external causes relate to international trade, the debt burden and the refugee problem.
Internal Causes o Poverty
Internal causes of poverty include all factors that adversely affect economic growth with equity. Some of the factors are outline hereunder: -
(i.) Economic Policies.
For many yeas the country pursued fiscal and monetary policies which, though promoted equity, did not promote economic growth.
(ii) Insufficient Support to the Agricultural Sector
Though agriculture is the backbone of the economy, the support given to the sector over the years has not been commensurate with its relative importance. This is reflected in poor rural infrastructure and lack of modernization of the sector. Smallholder farmers who dominate the sector remain virtually inaccessible to credit and other forms of relevant support to improve productivity. The inability to modernize the technologies used in the sector, poor rural infrastructure, the non availability of critical farm inputs, the inefficiency of the marketing system and significant post harvest losses have all contribute towards the poor performance of the agricultural sector, hence towards the poverty of the country.
(iii) Inadequate Support to Rural Industries.
The establishment in rural areas of small scale, agro-based industries could have complemented the agricultural sector in the utilization of slack labour, in adding value to agricultural commodities and providing a basis for technological development. By not developing small scale and cottage industries in the rural areas, the rural sector has had to continue to depend on peasant farming system, hence perpetuating poverty.
(iv) Disruption of Local Institution Structures.
The erosion of democratic institution such as local councils and cooperative denied the participation of the people in the management of the economy and in the process their contribution to development activities were marginalized. Even with the reintroduction of the local government and co-operative societies, lack of capacity and inappropriate set up of the cooperatives limited their contribution to development effort in general.
(v) Low level of Technology
The use of poor inappropriate technology leading to low productivity in all sectors has also contributed perpetuation of poverty.
(vi) Poor Gender Division of Labour
Poor division of labour between men and women at the family level especially in rural areas is also another cause of poverty. Women are the ones who shoulder most of the work, a situation which leads to low income hence perpetuating poverty. It has been observed that in work places. Many women are employed in low paid position.
(vii) Laziness and Irresponsibility.
Lack of self-motivation to perform one’s duties due to laziness and being irresponsible contributes to poverty. If every person could do productive work and strive for self-motivation, poverty would be eradicated. Loitering and misuse of time is prevalent in urban areas where many people are either unemployed or irresponsible.
(viii) Diseases
Tanzania is still struggling with common and communicable diseases which have been eradicated in many places in the world. These diseases include malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, and anemia. These are the main causes of deaths in Tanzania especially for under-fives. Explosion of disease such as cholera and typhoid which have been occurring frequently has impact in Government expenditure both on curative and preventive measures, hence intensifying poverty in the country.
HIV/AIDS epidemic has also contributed to the incidence of other diseases such as TB, skin disease etc. HIV/AIDS incidence fall more on youth who are the main labour force in the economy. It is estimated that up to December 1995 Tanzania had about 1.2million people with HIV/AIDS. If this trend continued to the year 2000, people with HIV/AIDS will reach 3.6million. Despite contributing to communicable disease, HIV/AIDS also increases the extent of poverty in the communities. Many families have been rendered poor through loss of bread-winners. The epidemic has created the problem of orphans both in the rural and urban areas estimated at 200,000 by December 1995. This number is expected to increase to 800,000 or more by the year 2000.
In terms of gender, women bear the brunt of the problem. They have the main responsibilities of taking care of the sick in the family, thus denying them opportunities to generate income and raise their living standards.
(ix) Big Families.
Having many children in one family shows that there are more dependants relative to those who are to work. Such a situation increases the burden of the family in overcoming poverty.
External Causes of Poverty
Several external factors have limited the ability of the country to combat mass poverty. These factors include the debt burden, unequal exchange in international trade and of late the refugee problem.
(i) Debt Burden
One of the major factors that contribute to perpetuate poverty is the debt burden which has continued to drain resources from poor countries to the rich countries. In Tanzania debt servicing is currently about 39 percent of the recurrent budget. This is so huge that inhibits the Government ability to adequately provide social and other services to the public.
(ii) Unequal Exchange in International Trade.
Unequal exchange in international trade has limited the ability of developing countries to break out of the poverty cycle. The country has continued to rely on unprocessed agricultural commodities as the main export crops. But the prices of agricultural products in comparison to those of industrial products have remained unfavourable. This trade relationship has put a severe limit on the ability of the country to break out of the poverty cycle.
(iii) Refugees.
For year Tanzania has been receiving refugees from neighbouring countries. These have been in manageable proportions. However, with the recent ethnic turmoil in Rwanda and Burundi, the country has experienced an influx of refugees never seen before. The two regions of Kagera and Kigoma are now hosting a refugee population of over 700,000 people. The refugee problem has resulted in the depletion of natural resources like water and trees, and the destruction of social infrastructures like dispensaries and schools which were used to host them. The refugee problem has aggravated poverty in the two regions by accelerating environmental degradation and the depletion of food and natural resources.
PREVIOUS EFFORTS IN ERADICATING POVERTY IN TANZANIA
After independence, Tanzania inherited an economic structure which grossly neglected the social welfare of the local population and one which was sternly poised to serve external internal interests set up by the colonial regime. Employment opportunities were extremely limited. About 5 percent of the population was employed but mainly as labourers in foreign-owned plantation estates. Another 5 percent were employed in urban areas as clerks, nurses and housekeepers. A majority about 90 percent of the population, worked on their own land as subsistence farmers. The manufacturing sector was small, foreign-owned and its products were mainly processed primary commodities for export. The health sector was under-developed and poorly served; and most government hospitals were urban based. Education opportunities were limited.
Thus, soon after independence, dramatic state interventions were initiated to reduce economic and social inequalities in resources distribution and control. National campaign “Uhuru na Kazi” and “Uhuru ni Kazi” were launched to extol the virtues of work as a basis for development and self dignity. It was also a strategy of enhancing employment opportunities.
To increase rural incomes and ensure food security, the government embarked on policies and various slogans for promoting agriculture. The slogans accompanying those policies include “Siasa ni Kilimo”, “Chakula ni Uhai”, Kilimo cha Kisasa”, “Kilimo cha umwagiliaji” and soon. Plans were implemented aimed at improving small holder agriculture through better farm management practices and the use of improved technologies. Emphasis was placed on expanding and improving the delivery of services to the agricultural sector. These included the provision of extension services, increasing the availability and use of agricultural inputs, improving the crop marketing system and increasing access to agricultural finance. These efforts could not be sustained due to lack of the necessary infrastructure and absence of institution like local government and co-operatives which would have managed the services.
Also, the Government implemented various policies in the social services sectors for promoting education, health and water. These policies included Universal Primary Education (UPE), Education for self-reliance, Adult Literacy Education, “Mtu ni Afya”, Primary Health Care for All, Water is Life, Water for All, and others. Successes were recorded in implementing these policies. In education, several indicators showed that Tanzania had made tremendous progress in eradicating illiteracy. For example, over 90 percent of school-age going children were able to enter Standard I in primary school and literacy rate of 90 percent was achieved. Success in the health sectors included the increased number of rural and urban health centers, construction of regional and district hospital in most regions and construction of regional and district hospital in most regions and constructions of training centers for medical and health staff. Mother and child health care services also increased. In the water sector, various donor agencies co-operated with the government in delivering water supply services, especially in the rural areas. These services included provision of clean piped water, construction of shallow and deep-water wells and construction of dips for livestock.
However, these gains could not last long, among other things, due to the following shortcomings:-
Poor involvement of people themselves at different stages of planning led to most of the project being unsustainable after completion.
Lack of capital for most of the rural people
Lack o skills to run these programmes/projects especially technical skills, environmental management and protection, evaluation as well as finance management.
All these initiatives were top-down in their nature, thus lacked people’s support.
Previous efforts to eradicate poverty were of `campaign type and not part of socio-economic development plans and programmes. Therefore, they could not be sustained after the campaigns.
Many stakeholders such as government ministries, NGOs and donors implemented their programmes in accordance to their individual perception and priority. There was no guidance and coordination of these efforts.
The National Poverty Eradication Strategy aims at providing a guidance for stakeholders and the poor themselves to identify, implement and evaluate their own programme, and enable different stakeholders to put poverty eradication programmes as part of their overall development plans and programmes.
Tanzania through the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (MKUKUTA) has been trying hard to focus on poverty reduction and country’s development agenda. The NSGRP is informed by the aspirations of Tanzania Development Vision (vision 2025) for high and shared growth, high quality livelihood, peace, stability and unity, good governance high quality education and international competitiveness. Vision 2025 lays out the long term development goals and perspectives against which the strategy for poverty alleviation (NPES) was formulated. The TAS is the result of a mutually felt need by the Government of Tanzania and its international partners for a comprehensive development agenda, around which issues pertaining to ongoing activities can be regularly discussed and assessed. As such, the TAS covers all the development areas that have characteristically been supported by the international partners, both within and outside the framework of the central Government budget. It is hoped that the TAS will provide a useful framework for organizing periodic consultations and dialogue among all development partners. The PRSP is an integral part of the HIPC process, focusing mainly on poverty alleviation, and budget to a relatively hard (Central Government) budget constrains, starting financial year 2000/2001. Nevertheless, the PRSP encompasses poverty-oriented extra-budget-any activities, various non financial considerations that have an important bearing on poverty reduction.
It is committed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGS), as internationally agreed target for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women by 2015. It strive to widen the space for country ownership and effective participation of civil society, private sector development and commitment to regional and other international initiatives for social and economic development.
The poverty reduction strategy is based on three considerations. First the strategy is viewed as an instrument for channeling national efforts towards broadly agreed objectives and specific inputs and outputs. The elaboration and implementation of the strategy are fundamentally ongoing processes. While a wide variety of key intervention has already been launched, the preparation of strategies for certain sectors, such as agriculture and education are still underway. Moreover, the implementations of reforms aimed at shifting the responsibilities for formulating, implementing and monitoring poverty reduction intervention by the districts, municipalities, and communities at the grassroots has started, but it will take some time to complete. The overall strategy of poverty reduction will, therefore, need to be managed flexibly, to accommodate additional action play and activities emanating from the going work.
Second, the poverty reduction strategy is to a large extent, an integral part of ongoing macroeconomic and structural reforms that are being supported by Tanzania multilateral and bilateral partners. The Government has chosen, as detailed below to accelerate selected reforms that are likely to have a major impact on poverty reduction. Finally in keeping with concerns of stakeholders, and guided by the overarching orientation of vision 2025 and the NPES. The focus of the poverty reduction strategy concentrates on effects aimed at reducing income poverty, improving human capabilities, survival and social wellbeing and containing extreme vulnerability among the poor
As per PRSP the Government had to take into account seven basic considerations. First, pending the completion of the above – noted key tasks (notably in the ministries of agriculture and education, and in regard to the LGRP) the estimated financing for the poverty reduction programme will be kept under review and up dated to reflect the impact of more thoroughly coasted interventions.
Second, while it is certain that the financing of the poverty reduction programme will derive principal from domestic sources, notably the central government budget an assessment of the revenue impact of ongoing improvement in tax enforcement and administration is fraught with uncertainty.
Third the financial of the poverty alleviation efforts will, as in the past depend substantially on external funded, the availability of which could differ from the project path.
Forth, on the basic of insights MTEF and PER exercises, it is evident that the poverty reduction programme will be constrained severed by available resources. Because of this, the government has opted for a slight deterioration in the fiscal balance, and will also place special emphasis on the cost effectiveness of intended poverty reduction initiatives.
Fifth, the government will strategically support cost-sharing co-financing, and other initiatives aimed at catalyzing deeper involvement by communities and other stakeholders in well – conceived poverty reduction programmes.
Sixth, the government is envisaging that there will be significant changes in the finacing modalities for the poverty reduction programme.
Finally, the government, guided by finding from the stakeholders workshops will continue its financial intervention mostly to
(i) Education
(ii) Health
(iii) Agriculture (search and extension)
(iv) Roads
(v) Water
(vi) Judiciary and
(vii) HIV/AIDS
The Government of Tanzania has recently established a poverty Monitoring system to provide timely, reliable data to inform its Poverty Reduction strategy (PRS) and other policy initiatives. The system incorporates both participatory and survey based research methodologies.
As part of this system, routine Participatory Assessments (PPAS) are being implemented in two year cycles. Though the main purpose is to improve medium and long term development planning, stakeholders also hoped that the PPAS would lead to timely, direct benefits at the local level.
The advantage of this is that data analysis does not depend on speculation by privileged professionals about the conditions people face and instead it is the result of ordinary people reflecting on, theorizing about debating and explaining the world in which they live. Also, participatory research can contribute to social democratization by engaging citizen in policy making process.
On the basis of these characteristics, the Government of Tanzania has decided to make Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPAS) a routine part of its integrated Poverty Monitoring System. PPA provides information to stakeholders to discuss and translate into policies reflecting their institutions unique mandates capacities and circumstances. In other words, these PPA are intended to facilitate making information – based decisions about how to help people get out, and stay out, of poverty.
The Tanzania Participatory Assessment process is being implemented by a multi- sectoral consortium of institutions in two – year cycles timed to feed into the revision of the Governments Poverty Reduction Strategy. Each of these cycles will focus on specific priority information gap. The first cycle began in January 2002 and is taking in depth look at people “vulnerability" to becoming poor or poorer.
As a result of its forward looking approach influencing the Tanzania Participatory Poverty Assessment (TZPPA), quickly began to have an impact in national fora. Some of the best example of positive change set in motion by the TZPPA comes from Ilala District, Dar es Salaam Region. The Municipal Council Economic Planners spent two and a half weeks as par of team conducting participatory research in Mtambani B Ward. Afterwards, the Municipal Management Team assigned responses to issues raised by the study. To date, this has culminated in the:- provision of counseling services to drug users at the district hospital and an appropriate clinic, and formation of new sensitization strategies encouraged equal schooling for girl an boy children. These strategies, unlike those in the past, begin from an understanding of local ideas about gender and education, creation by community members of transparent criteria for extending priority support to especially poor local household.
Status report (2006) show that there is an improvement in different sector. For example overall, the available data sourced from the basic data series of the Ministry of Education and Vocation Training (MoEVT) show positive trends. Net enrolment rats are higher in pre primary, primary and secondary schools, the pupil; teacher ration in primary schools falling; the percentage of pupils passing the primary school leavers Examination is increasing and the percentage of standard seven (vii) pupils going on to secondary school is also raising.
On study done in six district Kilosa, Ilala, Bagamoyo, Mwanza, Moshi and Iringa shows that; In primary education there was immense growth in school enrolment from year 2000 to 2003, enrolment was close to 10% in all six case councils. This case can be attributed to the abolition of school fees in 2001, and to the primary Education Development programme. The pass rate also increased in all case councils, although the majority of grade 7 student were still failing to pass in year 2003. These were some clear signs of progress in the quality of education, measured by indicators such as pupils per classroom, pupils per desk, and pupils per textbook.(Braathen E.&Mwambe G;2003;)
However, the main quality indicators, like pupils per teacher and have a qualified teachers, did not show progress for many of the council. The lack of teacher threatens the sustainability of the reduction reform and tends to widen the gap between advance and backlogging councils.
In basic health services there was significant progress reported from all six council regarding the public situation. The infant mortality rate decreased, and the immunization rate rose to well above 80% in all council. However, problems existed, linked to the health facilities (dispensaries and centres). Although there was progress in accessibility from 2000, around one third of the population in Iringa, Kilosa and Bagamoyo were still without access to health centres in 2003. And despite an improvement in the number of health workers (nurse) and average waiting times for patients at dispensaries, the problem of affordability made the majority of population dissatisfied (more so with health centres than Dispensaries).
The Poverty and Human Development report (2005) provides a similar picture for Tanzania as a whole. There has been a positive reduction of infant mortality from 99 to 68 per 1000 birth and of under five mortality from 147 to 112 per 1000 birth.
In domestic water supply there supply there was no significant progress reported o accessibility, with particular exception of Mwanza. In three districts, around half of the population was not covered by adequate water supply services.
In education the progress report noted the continued impressive expansion of the primary system; enrollments for 2003 again exceed PRS targets. The progress report rightly places increase emphasis on quality; some improvements have been cited, but more needs to be done to improve completion rates. The primary Education Development Program has been successfully implemented, and the Public Expenditure Tracking Study shows that about 95 percent of funds allocated to school were used for the intended purposes.
SUGGESTION
Many efforts have been observed done by the Government of Tanzania to reduce poverty in its people. Among them the Government through PRS has made a difference in Education b:
i. Abolishing fees for primary education and encouraging enrollment of all children who reach the appropriate age for primary school, we expect once they are enrolled, stays at school, study in a positive learning environment, do well in their examination and have an opportunity to continue into secondary Education.
ii. Reduce the infant under five mortality and maternal death by abolishing hospital charges for children’s under five and pregnant women.
iii. Improved source of drinking water in rural areas; many people in the rural areas get clean water for drinking.
There is no policy which hinder people to move / go out of the country with huge amount of money to go there and do business without even the government awareness in such business; This means people can use Tanzania money out side the country and bring home nothing as many Tanzania business people have a little knowledge of making or doing business. For example, a country like South / North Korea do not allow its people to go and invest else where without the ministry responsible for investment acknowledge the transfer of that amount of money and also prove if it is true that there is really such business going on.
But we also have a problem of corruption, if people in the system will be careful enough to make sure people who take loans do they real use them for investing and not doing business; As some people take big loans from banks and use them for spending with their families and for/or with the “Nyumba Ndogos” (meaning having affairs with other women leaving their families suffering).
Sometime they take loans by mortgaging their houses where there family lives; unfortunately when the man die the banks took the houses and live the family without a house to live, leave the family more poor than ever which arises to another problem of children leaving schools and become beggars.
Though the government have been trying hard to conduct seminars on how to do business, more education have to be provided so that they do not use loan for other activities than investing the money into produce activities.
Also the government have been working had to eradicate poverty, their very much concern is on policy making and researches, may be it is because these activities pay then a lot of money; but if you come to implementation.
Though many efforts taken by the Government of Tanzania to improve the standard of living to its people, but some more changes should be consideration in the following areas.
The government should modify the education system to rain agriculture product and introduce handcraft products for example woodwork, hand craft, iron smothery and brick making. The government should also direct powers to rural areas by providing loans.
The government must build capacity of its people. This can be done by providing technology which can be give information’s about different issues. Technology can help people access information’s which can also help to change some people altitude, value and rigid cultures and tradition which persisted for a long time. Through Technology people get exposure different world without even going there people can understand their position and decide to change, as it is very possible that some people do not even know that they are poor, as far as they leave in villages they what they get, they wear toned clothes and don’t even notice that they are almost half faked.
New Technology also has some problem so the government need to aware on that. People may learn things which are not allowed in our African and Tanzania culture.
Poverty is in it self a barrier to equal educational opportunity. A hungry of malnourished child is unlikely to be good at concentrating on school work. The lack of a quite room in which to study at home (and, in area singly a computer) makes homework unattractive and difficult. The government has to formulate strong strategies which can make people improve their agriculture and thus have enough food for their families hence improve their performance in schools.
The opportunity to get fair trial is closed to those who cannot afford high quality legal representation in the absence of a well funded system of legal aid .The government have to practice good governance to reduce corruption.
Social solidarity means a sense of fellow feeling that extent beyond people with whom one is in personal contact, Tanzanian need to have it so that they will be able to help one another..
What they write in books is not seen to be serious. For example, people who live in rural areas depend much on agriculture activities, I think that if a person really want to help them better help them improve the results of their effort. For example the government can make or prepare a way through which different villages will be given tractors in form of loans or whatever so that they improve their productions and also increase the number of hence they take case.
By improving the agriculture section people will not suffer from hunger, and also they can get surplus which will help them to sell and get money which will help them buy other needs pay fees for their children an thus improve their education and standard of living.
In other words we can say that the government should invest much in the rural areas especially in Agriculture by providing education, materials and other related services like water and electricity; put more investment industries in urban area sand small scale industries in rural areas; Bolstering farms by providing the with fair loans from the government, NGO, and other organization; Reduce tax especially in small scale group; Distribute essential services equally such as improving education system and health service Use appropriate technology for example irrigation scheme Increase food production; building people capacity.
The aids which is given by different countries should be handled well and make sure they are used according to the aim of the donors; for example money to fund the HIV/AIDS programs, there are many NGOS which are assigned with huge amount of money, the government has to make sure that the funds reaches the targeted person.
Strong strategies, policies, laws, rules and regulations has to be made to make sure that all revenue that was supposed to collected is collected and used for the benefit of the whole nation not some people
References
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