Violence in Sudan from Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach

VIOLENCE IN SUDAN FROM AMARTYA SEN’S CAPABILITIES APPROACH
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Violence in Sudan from Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach
           In a quest to understand human development beyond economic development, various authors have developed theories that provide insight into human development and what needs to be done to achieve human development without using human beings as the means to an end. One such author is Amartya Sen, an economics professor and philosopher. Sen has been recognized for his contributions to welfare economics, particularly how they apply to or affect the poorest people in society. Sen, and specifically, his theory of capabilities, will be the focus of this paper. Sen’s capability approach looks into how deprivation affects the wellbeing and development of human beings (Frediani 2007, p.136). Different scholars have built on his theory to understand economic welfare over the years. Others have also applied his theory in other fields to enhance their understanding of human development. In addition to Sen, Sudan will be used as a case study in this paper. Sudan is a diverse country that has always been split into two regions, namely the north and the south (Deng 2011, p.2). However, it has been characterized by ethnic tensions and leadership issues, especially between the two regions. Specific attention will be paid to the history of violence in Sudan and why the north and the south have always conflicted. Then, this paper will explore the fundamental ideas of Sen’s capabilities approach and apply them to the history of violence in Sudan to create a better understanding of violence in Sudan. Sen’s capability approach clarifies how freedom or lack of freedom contributes to violence in Sudan and explains why the people of Sudan often result to violence in pursuit of freedom to achieve a combination of functioning and capabilities to allow them to become whom they want to become.
Theoretical Perspective
           To better understand the history of violence in Sudan through Sen’s capabilities approach, it is important first to understand the theoretical underpinnings of this approach. In his Development as Freedom (1999), Sen theorizes capabilities as freedom and explains that capability is the freedom that an individual has to do and achieve different things that are meaningful to them (Sen 1999, p.75). Specifically, he considers capabilities as a combination of various functionings that encompass people being what they want to be and doing what they want to do. Sen believes that freedom helps in the assessment of progress and in the establishment of the free agency of the people in what he refers to as the evaluative and effectiveness roles of freedom, respectively (p.4). This is the best way of achieving human development.
           Sen’s capabilities approach has been applied in many areas of human development to help understand how freedom or the lack of freedom influences the well-being of human beings at different levels. The capabilities approach is an evaluative approach that provides a moral framework that can be used to assess different social groups based on what they have achieved. Sen believes that this approach can evaluate the realized functioning or the capability set of alternatives available to an individual (p.75). The realized functioning refers to the things that an individual can do, while the capability set of alternatives refers to the actual opportunities that the individual has. Rather than focus on the financial capabilities of individuals based on their income, Sen’s capabilities approach focuses on the freedom and choices accorded to the individuals (Frediani 2007, p.136). It asks what people can be able to do and what kind of people they can be (Robeyns 2017, p.9). These capabilities affect many aspects of human life, and Sen has linked their deprivation to issues such as high levels of illiteracy, premature mortality, and other issues. Sen even applied his capabilities approach to analyze and understand the phenomenon of missing women in a world where the population of men and women at birth is almost equal (Sen, 1990). He attributes this phenomenon to the deprivation of social services and medical care to women when compared to men. 
           Although Sen’s capability approach has been recognized as a sound theory in assessing human development, it has been criticized as an insufficiently specified approach (Robeyns 2017, p.10). For instance, while the approach identifies the need to examine the capabilities that an individual has, it does not provide a complete list of the capabilities that must be considered to establish that an individual has the freedom and can develop (Frediani 2007, p.137). However, not having a complete list of the capabilities or functioning is one advantage of the capabilities approach. As indicated earlier, capabilities are the freedom to achieve things that an individual considers valuable. One person may consider living to old age a valuable achievement, and another may not. As Frediani (2007, p.137) indicates, the capabilities approach recognizes individual differences when it comes to what is important, hence the lack of an incomplete list of capabilities and functioning. Everyone has a combination of functionings that are specific to them to make their capabilities set. 
           Some scholars have applied Sen’s approach to their areas of interest. For instance, Arambala (2019) has applied it to explore political violence and how it affects development by degrading human beings. Through applying this theoretical underpinning, Arambala (2019, p.109) concludes that political violence is irrational and deprives people of their political rights. In the end, it devalues human beings and limits their development since human development is linked to their ability to be what one wants to be. Other scholars, such as Robeyns (2017, p.9), have shared a more generalized capability approach that allows the capability theory in other areas outside of economics.
Case Study
           Sudan has been characterized by periods of persistent violence in t...