APPLETON, WIS. — Drawing upon her extensive personal experiences in Kenya, a Columbia University political scientist examines the growing problem of internally displaced people in the third installment of Lawrence University’s Povolny International Studies Lecture Series “Africa Today: Problems and Solutions.”
Jacqueline Klopp, assistant professor of international and public affairs at Columbia, presents “Violence, Land and Dispossession: The Problems of International Displacement in Africa” Tuesday, April 10 at 7 p.m. in Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
Fueled by civil war and political instability, the numbers of internally displaced people (IPDs) in recent years has surged past the number of refugees worldwide. From an estimated five million displaced persons in the 1970s, that number had mushroomed to 25 million by 2002. With at least 13 million, Africa alone accounts for more IPDs than the rest of the world combined according to a report by the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Klopp, who spent several months working as an advocate with the Kenyan IPD Network in 2002, will address the root causes and dynamics associated with human displacement. She also will examine the gaps between new international ideas on responsibilities towards the displaced and actual actions by international agencies, governments, local civil society and the IDPs themselves to fight against violent displacement.
While both groups suffer from coerced displacement, because IPDs, unlike refugees, stay within the boundaries of their own countries, Klopp says “they have, even in theory, no international legal protection. Displacement is most often linked to violence by precisely the state actors who are tasked with protecting citizens, which deeply complicates the problem of how to assist and protect the displaced.”
Klopp, who has visited Kenya seven times since 1988, including a two-year stay on a Michael Rockefeller Fellowship, has written widely on political issues confronting Kenya, including the chapter “Kenya’s Internally Displaced: Managing Civil Conflict in Democratic Transitions” in the 2006 book “East Africa and the Horn: Confronting Challenges to Good Governance.”
She has taught at Columbia since 2001 and currently serves as the interim director of the economic and political development concentration at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
In 2003, Klopp was invited to participate in the Kenya Support Group, a network of judges, journalists and scholars, as part of the Robert Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and a master’s and doctorate degree in political science from Toronto’s McGill University.
John Roome, operations director with the World Bank, will conclude the series May 14 with the address “The World Bank’s Role in Development.”
The “Africa Today: Problems and Solutions” lecture series is sponsored by the Mojmir Povolny Lectureship in International Studies. Named in honor of long-time Lawrence government professor Mojmir Povolny, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on issues of moral significance and ethical dimensions.
