Why Organisms Feed: Silencing the Guns Through “Starvation” of Structures, Systems and Cycles of Violence
摘要
Silencing the Guns (STG) by 2020, a flagship project aligned with Aspiration 4 of Agenda 2063, has been extended to 2030. The prognosis based on current realities suggests that the timeline will be extended again because fulfilling the project by 2030 is unrealistic. A key existential challenge responsible for this likely extension is the gap between the intention that informed its creation and what it eventually pursues. The underlying cause is that existing approaches do not deal with structures, systems, and cycles of violence as an interactive coalesced whole as existing policy and academic literature neither acknowledges all three nor present suggestions for addressing them as such. Ergo, this chapter discusses structures, systems, and cycles of violence as an organism and explores why organisms feed and the possibility of starvation (of an organism) as a strategy for redress. Organisms feed. If they feed, they can starve. Weakness, incapacitation, or death are outcomes of their starvation, as they will be deprived of the benefits that keep them active, functional, and alive. Consequently, we may explore the possibility of inducing starvation to weaken, hinder, or facilitate the death of structures, systems, and cycles of violence. The chapter triangulates primary and secondary data sources in an exploratory context. It concludes that the African Union and other relevant stakeholders should consider mainstreaming the logic of starvation in its Agenda 2063 roadmap.