Conflict and land tenure in Rwanda

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the historical relation between conflict and land tenure in Rwanda, a country that experienced a harsh civil war and genocide in the mid-1990s. The victory of the Tutsi-led rebel, Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) at that time triggered a massive return of refugees and a drastic change in land tenure policy. These were refugees who had fled the country at around the time of independence, in 1962, due to the political turmoil and persecution (the "social revolution") and who shared the background of the core RPF members. The social revolution had dismantled the existent Tutsi-led political order, compelling many Tutsi families to seek refuge outside their homeland. Under the post-independence rule of a Hutu-led government, the Tutsi refugees were not allowed to return and the lands they left behind were often arbitrarily distributed by local authorities among Hutu peasants. After victory in the mid-1990s civil war, the newly established RPF-led government ordered the current inhabitants of the lands to divide the properties in order to allocate portions to the Tutsi returnees. Different patterns of land holding and land division will be explained in the paper from data gathered through the authors' fieldworks in the southern and eastern parts of Rwanda. Although overt resistance to land division has not been observed to date, the land rights of the Tutsi returnees must be considered unstable because their legitimacy depends primarily on the strength and political stability of the RPF-led government. If the authority of RPF were to weaken, the land rights will be jeopardized. Throughout Rwandan history, in which political exclusion has often led to serious conflict, macro-level politics have repeatedly influenced land holding. Promotion of an inclusive democracy, therefore, is indispensable to escape the vicious circle between political instability and land rights.

Development and institutionalization of communitarian thought in Thailand

In Thailand, communitarian ideas have been widely accepted and even institutionalized as a principle of national development plans and the Constitution of Thailand. This paper examines how and why the communitarian body of thought, described as "community culture thought," and originally created and shared within a small circle of social activists and academics in the early 1980s, came to be disseminated and authorized in Thai society. Contributors and participants, ways of expression, and avenues for disseminating this paradigm are the main topics in this paper. The paper reveals that these thoughts and concepts have been diversified and used as guiding principles by state elites, anti-state activists, and social reformists since the late 1980s. These people with such different political ideologies were connected through some key individuals. These critical connections networked them onto the same side for promoting communitarian thought in Thailand. When such leading advocates assumed key political positions, it was easy for them to push communitarian ideas into the guidelines and principles of state administration.

Gender-preferential intergenerational patterns in primary education attainment : a quantitative analysis of a case of rural Mindanao, the Philippines

The Philippines has achieved a relatively high standard of education. Previous researches, most of which deal with Luzon Island, have indicated that rural poverty alleviation began partly due to the increased investment in education. However, the suburban areas beyond Luzon Island have rarely been studied. This study examines a case from rural Mindanao, and investigates the determinants and factors associated with children's education, with a special focus on delays in schooling, which may be a cause of dropout and holdover incidences, as well as exploring gender-specific differential patterns. The result shows that after controlling other socioeconomic attributes, (1) delays in schooling, as well as years completed, are more favorable for girls than boys; (2) the level of maternal education is equally associated with the child(ren)’s education level regardless of their gender; and (3) paternal education is preferentially and favorably influential to the same-gender child(ren), i.e., son(s). To reduce the boy-unfriendly gender bias in primary education, this study suggests two future tasks, i.e., providing boy-specific interventions to enhance the magnitude of the father-son educational virtuous circle, and comparing the magnitude of gender-equal maternal education influence and boy-preferential paternal education influence to specify which effect is larger.