ABSTRACT
The question about the justification and regulation of war has tended to focus on the impact of the use of force on human lives, human societies, and the civilization they have built. Given the irreversibility of lives that are lost during armed conflicts, it is understandable why the preponderance of normative reflection, among ethicists and legal theorists alike, has centered on the “human” question—interests, status, and fate. Yet, this anthropocentric focus has eclipsed the need for an adequate consideration of how non-human entities are also implicated in war, not just as factors that may precipitate a resort to war but also as objects of concern in decisions about how to properly conduct war. A study of contemporary Africa’s wars reveals the critical importance of this neglected dimension, as most of them revolved around disputes and conflicts over resources—land, mining products, oil, cattle, water, among others—notwithstanding the visibility and ostensible mobilization of ideational systems such as religion in these wars. How to conceptualize the “value” of these non-human entities is not often clear in the literature on Africa’s wars and conflicts. Do they have intrinsic worth for which war may be undertaken, or is their worth merely relative and instrumental that must be balanced against interests of higher and greater value? In engaging these questions, this chapter brings African normative reflections on war into dialogue with representative work in just war tradition for comparative insights and illumination.
