End Of Conflict Research Articles

Soils of the Southern Syria - A big database for the future land management planning.

As non-renewable natural resources, restoring Syrian soil quality is a vital issue for sustainable future planning after conflict ends. The data provided in this research exhibit features and physiochemical properties for soils from the southern part of Syria until the Jordanian border, which can provide decision-makers with sufficient information for rehabilitation stage after conflict in a regional scale. The data were collected from 107 representative soil profiles covering diverse agroecosystems throughout the area (i.e. Dara and Alswieda governorates). The most important data findings of this research included the first detection of Palygorskite {(Mg,Al)2Si4O10(OH)•4(H2O)} in Syrian soils, which is considered a strong evidence for the direct effects of the climate change on agroecosystem. Vertisols, Inceptisols, Entisols, Mollisols, and Aridisols were the most widespread soil types in the area. Overall, the database involves the field morphological characteristics, physicochemical, and mineralogical analyses.

ONE STEP TOWARDS RECONCILIATION IN CYPRUS: PERCEPTIONS OF THE ‘OTHER’ FOR THE FAMILIES OF MISSING PERSONS

By the end of the inter-ethnic conflict in 1974, there were over 2000 people who were reported as missing in Cyprus. Since 2005, with the efforts of the Committee of Missing Persons (CMP), 870 remains of the missing persons have been discovered, exhumed and returned back to their families. Although there exist several studies focusing on disappearances during violent conflicts, there is a dearth of academic research that investigates the reconciliation at the grassroots level, particularly for the families of the missing persons. The aims of this paper are twofold. Utilizing twenty two in-depth interviews with the families of Greek and Turkish Cypriots who experienced ‘ambiguous losses’ in the 1963 and 1974 conflicts in Cyprus, the paper firstly aims at improving the understandings of how disappearances shape the perceptions of ‘the other’ group in a post-conflict society. Secondly, the paper also aims to investigate the potential role of CMP on trust building and reconciliation efforts in Cyprus. The paper reveals that there is a subtle step forward for reconciliation among the families of missing persons, which were clear in the narratives of the families who started showing empathy towards the other. While both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots showed very little hatred towards each other and noted that there were no problems at the individual level, they continued to blame the politicians and radical groups for their losses. The opening of borders and the contributions of the Committee of Missing Persons (CMP) in reducing the pain of relatives and helping to bond relations in line with trust building and reconciliation efforts were also acknowledged by both sides.

Resolución de conflictos laborales: caso de negociación de un contrato colectivo en Codelco (Chile)

Codelco es una empresa estatal, principal productora de cobre del mundo, líder en reservas del mineral a nivel planetario y motor del desarrollo en Chile. Esta empresa se dedica a explotar recursos mineros, procesarlos para producir cobre refinado y subproductos derivados, para luego comercializarlos a clientes en todo el mundo. El
 principal mercado es Asia, seguido por Europa y Sudamérica. Este trabajo productivo se realiza a través de ocho divisiones mineras.
 El caso describe la resolución de conflictos laborales entre los ejecutivos de la empresa (en la división minera de Chuquicamata) y los dirigentes de los sindicatos de trabajadores en un proceso de negociación colectiva.
 El proceso de negociación colectiva tuvo diferentes etapas desde el petitorio de los sindicatos; la respuesta dada por la empresa a través de su “Oferta de Pronta Firma”, el paso por un proceso de “Mediación de Buenos Oficios”, el inicio de la Huelga Legal ante el fracaso de la mediación, las siguientes negociaciones hasta lograr finalmente el fin de la huelga y el acuerdo entre las partes. Este acuerdo de los sindicatos con la empresa a través de la “Oferta Final Mejorada”, implicó que luego de establecer un bono por fin de conflicto de 14,1 millones de pesos para cada uno de los afiliados y un reajuste salarial de 1,2 por ciento, los trabajadores debían retornar a sus trabajos, ya que el próximo proceso de negociación colectiva sería en 3 años más. Se realiza una contextualización y descripción del proceso de negociación colectiva en base a información periodística publicada sobre el caso y algunas fuentes de respaldo teórico y científico. Al final se plantean una serie de preguntas para generar discusión para una clase teórico-práctica de Gestión de Recursos Humanos.

Modernidad y progreso a través de la reconstrucción microhistórica literaria del noreste mexicano en Narcedalia piedrotas.

La centralidad cultural e institucional que ha acompañado el desarrollo de las regiones rurales y periféricas de México ha conllevado un prolongado y generalizado descuido hacia la narración historiográfica de la región norte. La reconstrucción de su dimensión social ha sido retomada por el trabajo de historiadores locales; entre otros Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo (1950-2013) se destaca por su obra narrativa, en la cual se expresa su trabajo historiográfico a través de una ficción cercana al relato microhistórico. El presente artículo propone, por lo tanto, una aproximación a la microhistoria del noreste entre el fin de las luchas revolucionarias y el surgimiento de las políticas neoliberales, siguiendo la línea expertamente marcada por la novela coral de Elizondo Narcedalia piedrotas (1993) y reconstruyendo de ahí la relación entre contexto histórico y narración literaria. Cultural and institutional centralism has characterized the development of rural and liminal regions of Mexico, entailing a prolonged and generalized neglect towards historiographic narration of the Northern region. The reconstruction of its social dimension has been picked up through the work of local historians; among a few, Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo (1950-2013) stands out thanks to his literary work, in which his historiographic research is conveyed through microhistory-related fiction. Thus, this research paper suggests an approximation to the Mexican Northwest microhistory between the end of the revolutionary conflicts and the rise of neoliberal politics, following the trace marked by Elizondo’s coral novel Narcedalia piedrotas (1993) and reconstructing the relation existing between historical context and literary narrative.

Explaining How Human Rights Protections Change After Internal Armed Conflicts

AbstractSocieties emerging from internal armed conflicts display surprising variation in the degree to which governments protect human rights. Employing new data on civilian victimization by both government and rebel forces, we find that the human rights climate of a post-conflict country is not simply a perpetuation of pre-conflict conditions, or the result of repressive regimes remaining in power. Instead, the treatment of civilians during conflict has an independent impact on post-conflict human rights protections (HRP). Analyses of ninety-six post-conflict periods (1960–2015) show that when governments systematically and extensively target civilians during counterinsurgency campaigns, post-conflict human rights conditions decline substantially compared to pre-conflict levels, even accounting for other predictors of human rights violations, including pre-conflict human rights conditions. This holds regardless of who is in power after conflicts end. These findings have implications for theoretical models of repression and conflict cycles, and for practitioners and policymakers aiming to restore and protect human rights after war.

The legacy of war: The effect of militias on postwar repression

How do wartime legacies affect repression after the conflict ends? Irregular forces support the government in many civil wars. We argue that if this link continues after the war, respect for human rights declines. As “tried and tested” agents they are less likely to shirk when given the order to repress. Governments might also keep the militias as a “fall-back option”, which results in more repression. Analyzing data from 1981 to 2014 shows that pro-government militias that were inherited from the previous conflict are consistently associated with worse repression, but newly created ones are not. Wartime pro-government militias target a broader spectrum of the population and are linked to worse state violence. New militias usually supplement wartime ones and use violence primarily against political opponents. This study highlights the detrimental impact of war legacies.

Drawing on the continuum: a war and post-war political economy of gender-based violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT Current understandings of why and how gender-based violence continues beyond the end of conflict remain siloed along theoretical and disciplinary lines. Recent scholarship has addressed the neglected structural dimension when examining the incidence and variation of post-conflict gender-based violence. In particular, continuum of violence and feminist political economy perspectives have offered accounts of gender-based violence during and after conflict. However, these approaches overlook how war and post-war economic processes interact over time and co-constitute the material basis for the continuation of gender-based violence. The war and post-war political economy perspective that we leverage examines critically the distinction, both in theory and practice, between global and local dynamics, and between formal and informal actors in post-conflict societies. Exposing these neglected structural and historical interconnections with evidence from post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina, we demonstrate that the material basis of gender-based violence is a cumulative result of political and socio-economic dynamics along the war-to-peace trajectory. Our findings point to the need to be attentive to the enduring material consequences of interests and incentives formed through war, and to the impact of post-war global governance ideologies that transform local conditions conducive to gender-based violence.

Political orders and peace-building: ending the Aceh conflict

ABSTRACTWhy did the 2005 Helsinki Agreement lead to peace in Aceh while the 2000 Humanitarian Pause and the 2002 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement floundered? This paper argues that a decidedly illiberal peace-building approach led to the cessation of hostilities and subsequent peace in the Indonesian province. Conflict termination in Aceh was premised on the transition from a wartime political order to a peacetime order. The shift from a wartime to peacetime political order entailed the assuaging and renegotiating of patronage, rent-seeking privileges and social hierarchies that existed during the conflict. The end of the Aceh conflict led to the perpetuation of the wartime elite’s stranglehold over the province’s political economy.

When Conflict Recurs: Classification of Conflict When Hostilities Break Out Anew

Conflict classification — including identifying when conflict ends — is essential for determining the application of the law of armed conflict and the concomitant protections for persons and obligations of the parties to the conflict or potential conflict. What happens, however, when a conflict ends or appears to end but then violence and hostilities bubble up again? The complexity of conflict identification and classification and the challenges of understanding and analyzing the facts and actors in such new rounds of violence raise interesting and often difficult questions regarding the appropriate approach in assessing whether such new violence constitutes an armed conflict and when. This chapter analyzes the appropriate analytical tools and thresholds for identifying the existence of and characterizing conflict in the face of a resurgence of hostilities. For conflicts between two states, the threshold for such international armed conflict is quite low, such that it could be hard to envision a quicker identification of armed conflict when violence recurs in the aftermath of an inter-state conflict. However, such scenarios pose challenging questions of whether actions by a proxy group or other entity could constitute an international armed conflict and, if so, whether the threshold or standard for such determination might be easier to satisfy if a recent conflict between the two states forms the backdrop for that analysis. In the context of non-international armed conflicts, one overarching question is whether the now-classical Tadic test with the factors of intensity and organization is the right approach in such situations of violence recurring after conflict, or whether some lower threshold or “accelerated analysis” could be more appropriate in these situations. Similarly, the nature of the armed group engaged in the resurgence of hostilities may be consequential, such that the thresholds or framework for hostilities recurring with the same group may not be the same as that for new or reconstituted groups, as well as the location and nature of the conflict. After a brief discussion of the basis for this inquiry and an introduction to the basic legal framework for identification and classification of armed conflict in the first section, the second section explores how the specific problem of violence recurring after the end of armed conflict poses interesting and challenging questions for the conflict classification schematic.

Risk of power — power of risk

The article is dedicated to the risk of power and power of risk analysis, definitions of risk and substantiation of its objective nature, which is determined by the system of ruling social relations. Criticism is presented of Luhmann’s and Beck’s views, which ignore the objective nature of risk and its definitions. The risk of power and power of risk are concepts that reflect the different summation of connections and relations, where risk acts as a means for maintaining a dominant relationship. Objectivity of risk stems from the fact that the prevailing relationship is not a product of independent initiatives by people, but it is a result of relations mediated by items and things in which the mediator transforms itself from an ordinary “panderer” into absolute power of influence over an individual. The mediator becomes objective power, in other words, subjectless power which eventually submits to human will and substantiates power-wielding actions and power-wielding decisions, which aspire to the subjectless power’s pole and is at risk for losing power. While rotating between subjectless power and the individual, the repulsion force from individuals’ interests surpasses the force of attraction towards them. Risk, being woven into dominant relations, separates into independent being as a means of preserving these relations, in the form of negating the positive prospects of individual being, shifting social risks onto the shoulders of individuals, and turning them into subjective risks whereby the individual bears fully responsibility when making wrong decisions. Metamorphoses of the reduction of objective risks, inherent in society, into subjective and individual risks and the reduction of individual risks into objective and public risks, through a complex system of relations and interdependencies, end in conflict. Within conflict, risk is objectified in actions, which demolish the opposition of negative prospects. Conflict asserts a relations’ system in which risk weakens and fades.

The Political Economy of Reconciliation: A Theoretical Primer

Conflicts end. Often though, the roots of future conflict remain in fertile soil. The process of reconciliation among erstwhile enemies may be a way to deter future conflagrations; we have witnessed a number of examples such as in Rwanda or South Africa. However, to be sustainable and effective, this process may require cultural change. We use evolutionary game theory to model this process of cultural change. We postulate three cultures in a population – Conciliatory, Non-conciliatory, and Reciprocative. We then use the replicator dynamic to identify evolutionary stable outcomes. People in our population are boundedly rational. They may, therefore, “belong” to a particular culture. However, they learn to adopt other cultures if it is beneficial. We find first that people can learn to be Non-conciliatory even when Conciliation provides very real benefits. However, a population can learn the reciprocative culture to facilitate reconciliation. Whether it does or not depends on the initial distribution of the population among the three cultures and how people feel about the future. These results are well known in the Evolutionary Game Theory literature. However, to our knowledge, this is the first time these results have been applied to provide insights into post-conflict reconciliation processes.

Troubles, transformation and tension: Education policy, religious segregation and initial teacher education in Northern Ireland

It is now over 20 years since the signing of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement and the ending ofconflict or the ‘troubles’, as the conflict is referred to in Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, as a postconflict society Northern Ireland remains deeply divided in social, cultural and religious terms. Thisdivision is reflected, if not sustained, by the continued segregated nature of the structures andinstitutions of education, including those related to initial teacher education. This article adopts acritical policy analysis, drawing on primary source survey data, to understand, explore and reflect onthe nature and existence of these divisions. Further, in reflecting on the Belfast (Good Friday)Agreement as a consociational settlement, the article considers the inherent tension of a peaceprocess built on the very religious ethno-national divisions, including those pertaining to education,it is ultimately seeking to integrate. The article concludes that any desired systemic change andinculcation of values associated with the building of harmony, tolerance and mutual respect, asreflected for example in student teacher competences, is discursively emasculated by policy andpractice still largely based on religious ethno-national division and segregation.

Family vs School: Where the Conflict Ends A Study of Families on the Court against School in Lombardia

Conflict between the school and the family has become a topic of high importance but rarely investigated. This study deals with this conflict in the Italian context, examining the legal processes in the region of Lombardia, thus the litigation between the family and the school which ended at the Administrative Court (TAR) between 2010 and 2018. This study is an exploratory preliminary research which intends to investigate the quantity of cases of litigation between the families and school and categorize the cases according to motivation for the legal action and type of the school. Although we assumed that most cases are connected to children with special needs, analysis showed that families with children without any kind of diagnosis are referring to the court more often than the families of children with special needs. There were more students from secondary schools than students from primary school and, interestingly, students of lyceums seem to be the most represented group in the litigation. The results are discussed, and new lines of research are depicted in order to recognize when and why the conflicts start and how it can be prevented.

PSYCHOLOGICAL FEATURES AND LEGAL PROTECTION OF CHILDREN DURING ARMED CONFLICTS

Research article is devoted to the study of the psychological characteristics of the socialization of children during an armed conflict. They are divided into three categories: children living under conditions of war; children of internally displaced persons, and not numerous, but also struck by the aftermath of the war group – children who, as a result of the Joint Forces Operation, have become half orphans. All of these categories of children are characterized by the problem of social deadaptation and desocialization, which is especially true for those, who have been living in the Joint Forces Operation zone for the fifth year already. Paper considers the influence of life-threatening situations on children of different ages living in war conditions, internally displaced persons and children living in families of dead and wounded soldiers of the Joint Forces Operation. Children living in the territory of the Joint Forces Operation are characterized by an early experience of death, cruelty, violence and a lack of sense of security. An important task of the protection of the children living in the territory of the Joint Forces Operation is to overcome psychological stress from hostilities, and to inform them about the safety of the environment. For children living in the families of dead and wounded soldiers of the Joint Forces Operation several displays of negative psychic responses are characteristic, especially in the first weeks of loss. During this period the child is most in need of love, understanding and support. For most of the children of internally displaced persons adaptation problems are typical – mainly those faced by most children who fall into the new collective. However, most of them still feel anxiety and other emotions (surprise, disgust, indignation), that arise as a result of cultural differences. The consequences of Joint Forces Operation, as a rule, have an extremely negative impact on the psyche of children. Post-traumatic stress and adaptation disorders are the most common and unfavorable forms of mental disabilities of children, who experienced life-threatening situations. The severity of the clinical displays of disorder adaptation depends on the age of the child, the level of involvement in the stressful event, and on the nature of the reaction of the closest relatives (first of all parents) to difficult life situations. Given this, it is important to ensure the legal protection of children. Legislatively, the rights of the child are protected by the Law of Ukraine «On the Protection of Childhood». It was amended accordingly to define children, who suffered from armed conflicts, but there is still no additional state support for the child, who has got the status of a victim as a result of hostilities. Unlike the status of the internally displaced person, the status of the victim of hostilities is granted for life and is not canceled when the conflict ends. Therefore, nowadays the children of war are no longer represented by the older generation, but by the generation, that is just passing the stages of socialization, formation of the inner self and the future external, collective «ourselves» (that is, the political and civic culture of society and the whole people).

Total war and the emergence of unemployment insurance in western countries

ABSTRACT Beginning with Richard Titmuss, several scholars argued that modern warfare left a major imprint on welfare state development. This article analyses the impact of both world wars on the introduction of unemployment insurance. From the outset, the provision of income support to the unemployed was politically controversial. This paper argues that total war, for various reasons, was a catalyst for the adoption of unemployment insurance. Using regression analysis and relying on a sample of 18 western countries, we show that a nation’s high exposure to the horrors of war facilitated the breakthrough of unemployment insurance, notably immediately after the end of military conflict.

Peace agreements and the institutionalisation of human rights: a multi-level analysis

ABSTRACT Parties to peace agreements have long considered human rights as central to the consolidation of peace and democracy in post-conflict settings. Yet, understanding of the formal institutional mechanisms that peace processes put in place to promote and protect human rights is rather limited. This article informs this gap using an original multi-level analysis of 126 peace agreements and three main categories of institutions involved in securing human rights implementation after conflict – international and regional institutions for promoting and protecting rights, as well as national human rights ombudsmen and commissions. We find that peace agreements localise human rights implementation after the end of conflict, relying more on national human rights institutions than international ones to monitor and implement human rights domestically and assist national executives with processes of transition away from conflict and toward liberal democracy. While regional and international institutions like the United Nations and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe are included in some peace agreements, their roles are much more limited and nearly exclusively aimed at offering support to new and existing national human rights commissions. We illustrate our analysis with two case studies of peace agreements in Cambodia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Afghanistan’s Business Environment: Huge Potential for Investment in an Uncertain Place

The article aims to present Afghanistan’s business environment and elaborates on the huge potential for investment in an uncertain place. A number of literatures has been reviewed from different international and government-related institutions and also quoted government high-level officials to identify these potentials and uncertainties. The review of the studies and research by international institutions suggests that the government of Afghanistan is actively working to prepare a business-friendly environment for domestic and foreign investors. However, political instability, lack of electricity, crime, theft and disorder, access to land and corruption still remains as the major constraints of doing business in Afghanistan. It is a fact that reviving Afghanistan’s business environment in this critical situation of conflict, declining international aid, and ongoing political chaos can be extremely difficult. However, reviving its business environment and utilizing the opportunities cannot wait for the end of the ongoing conflict and current political uncertainty. What Afghanistan needs to do is think creatively to recognize what can be done in the time of conflict and political uncertainty to take advantage from those opportunities. Although the extension of the article analysis requires more evidence to judge, the analysis challenges the general understanding of the business environment and points to important new avenues of research.

Retribution or Reconciliation? Attitudes Toward Rebel Collaborators in Iraq

Rebel groups require the cooperation of many civilians who are commonly perceived as “collaborators” after conflict ends. The limited empirical work in this area focuses on fighters, ignoring the need for more nuanced understandings of proportional justice for civilian collaborators. Through a survey experiment in an Iraqi city that experienced governance by the Islamic State, we find that social identity—expected to trigger in- group favoritism—is a weak determinant of preferences for punishment and forgiveness compared to the type of collaboration itself. Our results also fail to provide support for the hypothesis that exposure to violence drives a desire for revenge. Instead, the perceived volition behind an act is important, although its effect varies depending on the type of collaboration. Our research offers uniquely fine-grained data and insights into the factors that shape perceptions of individual rebel culpability, with important policy implications for balancing accountability with the need for reconciliation.

Children of societies transitioning to peace: an instance for moral recognition

ABSTRACTSocieties in transition aiming at positive peace have the crucial task of redefining the moral relationships among their members. Once a violent conflict ends, children are both members of the society who have suffered, and those who will inherit the results of the transition. Children are victims, witnesses and at times perpetrators of crimes, but also part of the moral community and potentially key actors in peace processes: which would be the morally right attitude towards children in post-conflict scenarios? I argue that exposure to violent conflict grounds a ‘special’ moral status that children are entitled to have recognized, while its impact on their lives results in severe denials of their moral worth. However, acknowledging their moral status and recognizing their past and present sufferings, through mechanisms of transitional justice in particular, has the potential to change their status within society without denying their moral worth. I thus suggest that the morally right attitude of societies in transition should be sensitive to children’s claims of moral ‘recognition’, where recognition can act as the informing principle behind the morally right attitude towards them, and ‘transitional justice’ as the set of theories and mechanisms to possibly translate that attitude into practice.

Voting for Victors: Why Violent Actors Win Postwar Elections

AbstractWhy do citizens elect political actors who have perpetrated violence against the civilian population? Despite their use of atrocities, political parties with deep roots in the belligerent organizations of the past win postwar democratic elections in countries around the world. This article uses new, cross-national data on postwar elections globally between 1970 and 2010, as well as voting, survey, archival, and interview data from El Salvador. It finds that belligerents’ varied electoral success after wars can be explained not by their wartime levels of violence or use of electoral coercion, but by the distribution of military power at the end of conflict. It argues that militarily stronger belligerents are able to claim credit for peace, which translates into a reputation for competence on the provision of security. This enables them to own the security valence issue, which tends to crosscut cleavages, and to appeal to swing voters. The stronger belligerents’ provision of security serves to offset and justify their use of atrocities, rendering their election rational. This article sheds light on political life after episodes of violence. It also contributes to understanding security voting and offers insights into why people vote in seemingly counterintuitive ways.