Conflict-affected Societies Research Articles

Digital transformation strategy for developing higher education in conflict-affected societies

Armed conflict is an evolution in reverse that significantly damages infrastructure, displaces students and faculty, and limits access to resources, necessitating innovative solutions. This research uses Syria as a case study to investigate the potential of a digital transformation strategy to revitalize the higher education system in war-ravaged regions. It proposes a digital transformation framework utilizing a mixed-method approach, including literature reviews, expert interviews, and case analysis, to identify critical challenges faced by Syrian higher education institutions. The framework focuses on developing digital infrastructure, capacity building for educators, e-learning platforms, digital content, and public-private partnerships that increase education access, foster collaboration, enable remote learning and enhance global competitiveness in war-torn areas. The e-learning platforms component explores the potential of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Learning Management Systems (LMS), and blended learning approaches to enhance the quality and accessibility of higher education. The digital content component highlights the importance of open educational resources, digital libraries, and virtual labs to support learning. Finally, the capacity building component addresses the need for training and upskilling educators and administrators to implement digital solutions effectively. The proposed framework is a roadmap for policymakers, educators, and international organizations to develop and implement digital solutions supporting long-term recovery and growth in conflict-affected areas.

Under Construction: Toward a Theory and Praxis of Queer Peacebuilding

This article explores what queer as a concept brings to peacebuilding, presenting a guiding framework and introduction for a special issue on queer peacebuilding. It offers an initial approach to the topic, which means to center queer and trans perspectives of peace and bring queer epistemologies to bear on how peace is constituted so as to rearticulate the concept both in theory and praxis. In doing so, it addresses an unexamined gap in peacebuilding efforts to achieve gender justice and inclusive security in conflict-affected societies, namely the unique experiences of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer) individuals and their collective efforts to achieve social justice in these contexts. The authors approach the topic of queer peacebuilding through three questions: What is queer peacebuilding?, ‘Why is queer peacebuilding important? and What can queer peacebuilding contribute? While the impacts of queer peacebuilding in sites of contentious politics around the globe are visible, it remains an emergent and somewhat elusive concept, still under construction within peace and security scholarship and practice. By presenting a conceptualization of the notion of queer peacebuiling, the authors seek to further academic efforts to construct and analyze queer peace.

Conflict and Covid-19: exploring the effects on women

What happens when conflicts collide with major disease pandemics? Weak or fragmented institutions, contested legitimacy of authorities, overstretched or destroyed health sector, crowded refugee camps and population flows are but some of the characteristics of conflict-affected societies rendering them vulnerable to pandemics such as Covid-19. Importantly, societal crises are deeply gendered; women and men experience conflicts and are affected by them in profoundly different ways. Focusing on the ‘first wave’ of Covid-19 in 2020, I map out the gendered impacts of Covid-19 in conflict-affected societies with particular focus on women. I situate their experience of the dual crisis in the context of ‘vulnerability multipliers’ that limit the ability of individuals to manage societal crises. I find that the pandemic and policy responses to it exacerbated multiple forms of gendered insecurity. They include physical, economic and health insecurities as well as increasing political marginalisation. All this points to multiple, overlapping insecurities operating simultaneously, leading to ‘layered violence’ whereby the pre-existing violence against women and girls escalates, subjecting them to more intense forms of harm.

Dismantling Myths and Teaching Controversial Issues in Conflict-Affected Societies: Insights From Cyprus

In this short piece we argue that although theoretically in times of war and protracted conflict, it is particularly crucial for teachers to engage with controversial issues, doing so in praxis is fraught with ethical, practical, political, contextual and emotional dilemmas and challenges. Informed by our research on and teaching of the Cyprus conflict (and the associated peacebuilding process) as a controversial issue itself, we posit that merely replacing ‘war education’ with ‘peace education’ can fail at best and be counterproductive or solidify essentialist positions at worst. Instead of focusing primarily on replacing one form of knowledge with another and on developing fixed skillsets as part of peace education manuals, we argue that meaningful engagement with difficult conversations requires new modes of being that can only materialise through long-term processes of self-reflection, affective engagement and enactment of critical pedagogies: here, we focus on three such pedagogies, namely, ‘pedagogies of discomfort’; ‘pedagogies of desecuritisation’ and ‘pedagogies of empathy’.

Occupying Space in the Kirkuk Bazaar: an intersectional analysis

ABSTRACT Scholars have long argued that gender impacts how space can be occupied in traditional locations, such as bazaars. However, in deeply divided societies an added factor of privilege in relation to ethnosectarian identity has to be considered. This article uses an intersectional lens to understand how people occupy space in the bazaar in Kirkuk, Iraq. It pays particular attention to the intersection of ethnosectarian identity (Kurd, Sunni Arab, Turkmen) and gender. The article contributes to the understanding of how the layers of symbolic violence that people face (or do not face) in their daily lives affect their attitudes and behaviours in the public space. Theoretically, it builds on the traditional forms of intersectional analysis and applies them to deeply divided societies, adding unique insight into how intersectionality can be used to identify power structures and how these in turn influence interactions in the everyday, with implications for peace and conflict. It thus explores the different experiences people have based on both gender and ethnosectarian identity, in order to shed light on the often-ignored heterogeneous nature of group actions analysed in conflict-affected societies.

Higher education peacebuilding in conflict-affected societies: beyond the good/bad binary

PurposeThis comparative case study looks towards the diverse approaches of higher education to support peacebuilding, from policy and philosophy to pedagogical practices, in conflict-affected and post-conflict settings. The achievement of global development goals is dependent on addressing access to quality education in conflict-affected contexts, including higher education. However, in settings affected by conflict, higher education is often perceived to be a luxury, not a necessity. This study, then, explores whether and how higher education might support peace and development through the unique perspective of the “three faces” of higher education in conflict contexts.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is designed as a qualitative comparative case study. The research examines the work of university educators in two institutions in Afghanistan and Somaliland, highlighting the challenges and opportunities they face working in conflict-affected societies and their pedagogical responses to conflict. Data for the research were collected through in-depth interviews, documents, and digital artifacts with 12 university educators across the two institutions. The faculty teach a wide variety of subjects in the social sciences and humanities, subjects including and in addition to those specific to peace and development studies. To strengthen the interpretation of data, multiple coders were involved and intercoder reliability was conducted.FindingsFindings indicate a number of challenges and opportunities that university lecturers and their institutions face in teaching for peace in conflict-affected contexts, particularly as it relates to the “three faces” of higher education to support, impede, or reveal the complicated nuances of peacebuilding in conflict settings. Member-checking was employed with participants to enhance the reliability of the analysis.Originality/valueIn the end, the paper contributes new empirical insights into higher education in conflict-affected contexts, particularly from the standpoint of faculty. Critical perspectives and implications for curriculum, pedagogy and research are offered.

The role of violence perpetration in driving externalizing problems and offending behavior among youth from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Youth in conflict-affected regions are exposed to a multitude of traumatic events. These individuals often witness violence; experience it firsthand; and, in some cases, become perpetrators. The interplay of events shapes systematic trauma histories that may have unique implications for youths' mental health. In a cross-sectional study conducted in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), we interviewed 295 war-affected youth (63.4% boys, Mage = 16.70 years), including former child soldiers (n = 171), regarding their traumatic experiences and mental health. Using latent class analysis, we identified four common trauma history classes categorized by (a) low exposure, (b) medium exposure, (c) high exposure, and (d) high exposure/perpetration. Across the sample, gradual increases in trauma load corresponded with increased vulnerability to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, ηp 2 = .36, and internalizing problems, ηp 2 = .12; however, only youth from the high exposure/perpetration class differed significantly from other youth in their levels of externalizing problems, ηp 2 = .13, and offending behaviors, ηp 2 = .17. A longer time in armed groups was related to a higher risk of both experiencing and perpetrating violence. The results indicate that it is not child soldier status, per se, but the perpetration of violence that reinforces a cycle of violence in conflict-affected societies by contributing to increased externalizing problems and offending behaviors. In conflict regions, integrated approaches are needed to address both trauma and externalizing problems of war-affected youth.

The impact of climate variability on children: The recruitment of boys and girls by rebel groups

Environmental changes place severe pressure on individuals and societies. Vulnerable segments of the population, especially children, are likely to be first affected. We examine the impact of climate variability on the recruitment of children by rebel groups during conflict. We argue that changes in climate patterns increase both the supply of children willing to work as soldiers and rebel groups’ demand for them. To empirically examine this association, we combine global data on temperature and precipitation shocks with information on child soldier recruitment by rebel groups. Our findings suggest that climate variability shapes child soldier recruitment in systematic and significant ways. Additionally, we show that this relationship is not gender-neutral: it has a strong impact on the level of girls recruited by rebel groups. This research has important implications for our understanding of how climate variability can influence conflict dynamics, how environmental changes may worsen the circumstances of the most vulnerable individuals of conflict-affected societies, and how a non-gender-neutral effect of climate change may materialize.

Why incumbents perpetrate election violence during civil war

Civil conflict increases incumbents’ vulnerability, expands their coercive capacity, enervates public good provision, and stifles public opposition. Consequently, we expect that elections held during civil conflict will feature more incumbent-perpetrated election violence. We test our argument with disaggregated data on election violence, generating two principal findings. First, elections held during civil conflict are more likely to feature violent coercion by incumbents. Second, this effect does not depend on the conflict's intensity or political salience, but is endemic to conflict-affected societies as a class. This raises questions about the nature of elections in conflict-affected societies and the relationship between forms of political violence.

Three-faced: The conflicting roles of citizenship education in conflict-affected societies – A comparison of Northern Ireland and Israel

The purpose of this article is to compare teachers’ and students’ interpretations of citizenship education (CE) across different communities in conflict-affected societies. By drawing on qualitative research that was conducted in four different schools in Northern Ireland and Israel (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian), we show what may be universal and particular about teaching and learning CE in these different contexts and why variations occur. Despite being a compulsory subject with a common curriculum in both jurisdictions, CE was subject to multiple and competing interpretations by teachers and students. It was variously deemed to be an empowering subject that teaches critical thinking and is relevant to students’ lives, a political tool that both stirs and silences controversies, and a subject that focuses on performance and whose importance was routinely underplayed. The findings illustrate the complex entanglement of CE with the particular political and community context that shapes its interpretations.

Women's Judicial Representation in Haiti: Unintended Gains of State-Building Efforts

AbstractAlthough women's representation in Haiti is generally very low, the number of women judges has increased since the demise of authoritarianism and violent conflict in the 1990s. This case study explores why. I find that “gender-neutral” judicial reforms aimed at strengthening the judiciary have done more for women's judicial representation than explicitly gender-targeted policies, which still lack implementation. Donor-supported reforms have introduced more merit-based and transparent appointment procedures for magistrates (judges and public prosecutors) based on competitive examinations. This has helped women circumvent the largely male power networks that previously excluded them from the judiciary. The judiciary remains understudied in the scholarship on women's access to decision-making in fragile and conflict-affected societies; this article contributes to this emerging literature.

The economic local turn in peace and conflict studies: economic peacebuilding interventions and the everyday

ABSTRACT This article calls for a better integration of economic and socio-economic aspects of peacemaking efforts into critical peace and conflict scholarship and can be read as a corrective to the predominance of top-down and state-centric lenses in the examination of post-war economic recovery. As of yet, academic debates surrounding peace interventions have not adequately integrated the economic with the political, in particular at the level of the everyday. Most theories in International Relations that engage with the connection between economics and politics during and after conflict – as well as the original notions of liberal peace – are based on the idea that international trade and market liberalisation reduce the chances of war between states. This neglects the sub-state level, and does not pay attention to the quality of peace that results. Considering the shift to intra-state conflicts, this article discusses the epistemological consequences of neglecting the economic everyday in conflict-affected societies and its implications for peacemaking, for both international and domestic actors. Shifting the level of analysis to the sub-state level and using an intersectional and inter-disciplinary approach broadens our understanding of peace and peacemaking, and how different segments of the populations experience them.

Police, clans and cash in Somalia

This article explores the ways in which emergent police forces in conflict-affected Southern societies are shaped by cultural practices operating through social phenomena. It uses the record of the prototypical police forces found in the Somali cities of Kismayo and Baidoa, 2014-2017, to explore the ways in which culture, power relations and local realities — in this case, clan-based calculations, Somali and international politics, and physical insecurity — influence police development. It draws on the cities' experience of a donor-funded 'basic policing' programme to identify the motivating forces shaping police evolution in a society familiar with many aspects of conventional policing operations and vocabulary but positioned at the opposite end of the technical and institutional spectrum to those shaping police studies' canonical literature.

Women organising in fragility and conflict: lessons from the #BringBackOurGirls movement, Nigeria

ABSTRACT Public protests, including women-led struggles, are increasingly gaining a foothold in many parts of the world in response to multiple crises and growing exclusion, in a context of fragility. In the global South, most public protests involve temporary, informal coalitions where people come together and participate in a one-off event. The fluid nature of political space makes sustaining protests elusive because of protest fatigue. Yet, the #BringBackOurGirls (#BBOG), a women-led movement, headed a long-term protest that focused on the rights of the girl child to education – a direct response to Boko Haram’s gendered terror tactics, in which girls were abducted, forced to abandon school, and get married. This article examines when and how movements crystallise into long-term programmes of action in fragile and conflict-affected societies where state–society relations are weak and government is considered to be unresponsive. We use the case of the #BBOG movement, one of Nigeria’s intense social media-driven and women-led action, to examine the mix of pressures it faced, its characteristics, and strategies in situations of fragility, conflict, and closed political spaces. We identify four key strategies that the #BBOG has deployed to keep members coming, garner international support and sympathy, keep pressure on the elite in a safe manner for the movement members, and ensure an independent funding regime for durability and impact. This article finds that #BBOG was able to navigate fragility and the closing civic space in Nigeria by challenging the failure of government to address insecurity in the country, transcending societal barriers including gender, religion, and political class, transnationalising their movement, self-funding, and using social media strategically.

Children's outgroup giving in settings of intergroup conflict: The developmental role of ingroup symbol preference.

Understanding when children develop a sense of group boundaries has implications for conflict and its resolution. Integrating social identity development theory and the developmental peace-building model, we investigated whether preferences for ethno-religious ingroup symbols mediate the link from child age to outgroup prosocial giving among 5- to 11-year-old children from both majority and minority backgrounds in three settings of protracted intergroup conflict (N = 713, M = 7.97, SD = 1.52, 52.6% female). Participants represented the conflict rival ethno-religious groups in each setting (Northern Ireland [n = 299]: 48.5% Protestant, 51.5% Catholic; Kosovo [n = 220]: 54.1% Albanian, 45.9% Serbian; Republic of North Macedonia [RNM; n = 194]: 45.9% Macedonian, 54.1% Albanian) and were largely from lower- to middle-class families; 4% of participants from other ethnic backgrounds were excluded from the current analyses. Multiple-group, bias-corrected bootstrapped mediation found that ingroup symbol preference mediated the link from child age to outgroup prosocial giving; that is, older children expressed higher ingroup symbol preference, which was linked with lower outgroup giving. Across Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and the RNM, there was some significant variation in the strength of specific paths; however, there was a significant indirect effect in all three settings. The findings advance cross-cultural understanding of how age relates to ingroup symbol preferences and outgroup prosocial giving across the elementary school years, with implications for children's long-term peace-building contributions in three conflict-affected societies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Social justice, education and peacebuilding: conflict transformation in Southern Thailand

ABSTRACT Education is increasingly becoming central to debates about how to promote peace in conflict-affected societies. Equitable access to quality learning, promotion of social justice through educational reforms and conflict-sensitive curricular and pedagogical approaches are viewed as peace supporting educational interventions. Drawing upon the existing body of literature in the area of education, conflict and peace in Southern Thailand and reflecting on Nancy Fraser’s theory of social justice and applying the 4Rs framework, this paper provides a critical analysis of inequalities, cultural repression and epistemic domination through education. The paper argues that the 4Rs framework usefully exposes underlying structural tensions in education but does little to show avenues for rupturing unequal power relations and hegemonies that reproduce systems of domination and social exclusion at the macro level. The real hope, however, lies in the potential use of the 4Rs as a tool for grassroots political socialisation.

The role of school-based contact in reducing social distance: qualitative insights from Northern Ireland and the Republic of North Macedonia

ABSTRACT Education plays an important role in bridging divisions and promoting positive intergroup relations. A number of initiatives aimed at improving relations in conflict-affected societies have been based on the contact hypothesis. However, very little attention has been devoted to the potential of such interventions to reduce social distance between groups. Moreover, the voices of the young people involved in such programmes have rarely been taken into consideration. This paper tries to address these gaps using a qualitative methodology. It presents the views and experiences of post-primary pupils involved in planned educational contact encounters in two countries that have experienced interethnic violence: Northern Ireland and the Republic of North Macedonia. The findings suggest that planned contact can be effective in reducing social distance. However the programmes need to provide opportunities for more frequent meetings, more personalized communication between pupils, and the sensitive exploration of contentious issues to ensure long-lasting changes.

Journalism in conflict-affected societies: Professional roles and influences in Cyprus

Covering a conflict for journalists when they are members of one of the conflicting parties has some professional and moral dilemmas. It creates tensions between their professionalism and sense of belonging to their community. This article, focusing on journalism on both sides of Cyprus, explores how journalists think of their role in conflict-affected societies. Based on semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with journalists from the Turkish Cypriot media and Greek Cypriot media, it explores journalists’ self-reflection of their roles and the forces they believe that affect their work when reporting on the Cyprus conflict. The findings show journalists do not have a fixed identity but a changeable one. They renegotiate and reproduce the meaning and role of journalism in society, and move between professional and ethnic identities depending on the state of the conflict.

Assessing Context-Specific Peacebuilding Approaches in Contemporary Armed Conflicts: From High-Level Mediation to Middle-Out Linkage in Syria and from Adaptive Mediation to Nationally-Owned Peacebuilding in Mozambique

As contemporary armed conflicts become increasingly complex, peacebuilding actors have been unable to prevent or respond effectively to related crises. Considering the policy trends evoked by the United Nations sustaining peace agenda and context-specific peacebuilding theories, this article examines peacebuilding initiatives amid complex contexts in Syria and Mozambique. It argues that the adaptive approaches of the National Agenda for the Future of Syria and the architecture of the negotiations surrounding the new peace process in Mozambique represent examples of context-specific, innovative, and non-linear peacebuilding methods that foster the self-organization capabilities of the respective conflict-affected societies. It concludes by asserting that through pragmatism, local and national ownership, and process facilitation, there is an increased potential for the effectiveness of peacebuilding interventions in complex conflict-affect situations.

The dynamics of prototypical police forces: lessons from two Somali cities

Abstract Sooner or later, donor-led discussions of state- and institution-building in conflict-affected societies with low literacy rates address the role of police forces, which are to be developed in the light of community-oriented policing. However, the implementation of a basic policing programme in the Somali cities of Kismayo and Baidoa in 2014 raises important questions about the applicability of this approach. It suggests that, rather than police in the western sense of the word, Somali forces are part of an endemic power structure that accommodates and normalizes instability. Focusing on what police officers actually do and on what local residents expect from them, this article uses three practical indicators to explore the factors at work: recruitment, reward (i.e. stipends) and, importantly, retention. This pragmatic approach allows an analytical and empirical exploration of a prototypical form of police and policing in a society lacking meaningful state-based institutions and processes. Specifically, Kismayo's and Baidoa's experience helps to identify the minimal requirements needed for formal policing in unstable societies. It suggests that militia-style policing is residual, rather than novel, and its dynamics are best understood as reflecting a series of social and political influences within unequal fields of power, with the emphasis on exploitation and survival.