Ethical predicaments: Advocating security for mobile pastoralists in weak states (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate) |
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| Authors: | Mark Moritz Paul Scholte |
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| Institution: | 1. Assistant professor in anthropology at Ohio State University. His current research on African pastoral systems focuses on the management of common‐pool resources and the ecology of infectious diseases and has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. His email is mark. moritz@gmail.com.;2. Director of the Kitabi College of Conservation and Environmental Management (Rwanda). He trains mid‐career conservation professionals in community conservation and protected‐area planning. In the 1990s, he conducted fieldwork with pastoralists and others in the Lake Chad Basin, looking at floodplain rehabilitation and protected‐area management. His email is pault.scholte@gmail.com. |
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| Abstract: | Some have argued that anthropologists have a moral responsibility to advocate on behalf of research subjects suffering from structural and other forms of violence. However, advocacy is not without its problems; action taken on behalf of one's research subjects may have adverse consequences for others. This is our current predicament. Violence and insecurity have always been major themes in our work with mobile pastoralists in the Far North Region of Cameroon, who have suffered deadly cattle raids for decades. More recently, pastoralists have been subject to child kidnappings and extortion by criminal gangs. As researchers working with these people, we have repeatedly informed development projects, NGOs and government authorities about these and other insecurity problems. The difficulty is that the government response, in particular the use of paramilitary forces, has created another kind of insecurity which has adverse effects on others. |
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