What is it about?
This final chapter synthesizes insights from the entire book on how risks tied to identity—such as ethnicity, religion, and gender—fuel conflicts worldwide, from the Horn of Africa to refugee camps in Uganda and elections in Iraq. The editors review diverse case studies to illustrate patterns in how identities create tensions, how global events like COVID-19 amplify risks, and how responses such as peacekeeping or elections can either mitigate or exacerbate them. It emphasizes rethinking security beyond traditional models, focusing on human agency, local contexts, and transforming risks into opportunities for peace and improved societies.
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Why is it important?
These concluding remarks are significant because they connect the dots across global cases to reveal why identity-based risks are not just local problems, but are also linked by globalization, power struggles, and events like pandemics that disproportionately affect vulnerable groups. By highlighting how elites manipulate identities for conflict or control, it guides policymakers, researchers, and peacebuilders toward more effective strategies that foster trust and resilience, rather than further division. In a world of rising tensions, this framework helps spot early warnings and craft people-centered solutions to prevent violence and foster stability.
Perspectives
Co-writing these concluding remarks felt like a natural capstone to years of studying African conflicts, jihadism, and geopolitics, allowing me to weave global threads with the book's cases into a unified call for deeper analysis. It reinforced my belief that risks associated with identity are human-made and solvable through inclusive approaches, rather than force, drawing from my work in the Horn of Africa and Sahel. I aimed to inspire readers to move beyond stereotypes and toward practical paths for peace in fragile regions.
Professor Hamdy A. Hassan
Zayed University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Risk, Identity and Conflict: Some Concluding Remarks, January 2021, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-1486-6_15.
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