Post-conflict Situations Research Articles

Diplomacy with Memory: How the Past Is Employed for Future Foreign Policy

AbstractThis article suggests that there exists an alternative form of international political behavior between countries who share a common traumatic past: diplomacy with memory. Diplomacy with memory manifests itself as an official, diplomatic team performance that aims at conveying a certain historic image for the purpose of achieving rational aims on the international stage. In a first step, a theoretical and empirical framework is developed that highlights diplomacy with memory as a strategic diplomatic action that does not conform with mainstream IR models of state behavior. In a second step, the new theoretical model is tested on two selected postconflict scenarios: The bilateral negotiations between West Germany and Israel, and between Austria and Israel about eventual reparation payments to the Jewish state in the early 1950s. Extracting the core elements of the diplomacy with memory from these historical examples, this paper suggests amending the toolkit of traditional diplomatic strategies with memory in order to better explain state behavior in other postconflict situations as they emerge.

Wartime Violence and Post-Conflict Situation: The Nepalese Experience

The end of the war is about the restoration of peace, law and order, and respect for human rights including improvement of the socio-economic situation of the country. Providing justice to the victims of war in the post-conflict situation is very challenging. It may take years to recover wounds of war victims. The attempt of conflict settlement mostly depends upon the will and skill of the government. Unlike this, the Nepalese government is not so far rigorously engaged for justice delivery to the wartime victims. Even after the resolution of conflict, there are many tough political agendas and many serious issues to address. Furthermore, the country was witnessing total restructuration from base to the superstructure. Still, minor ethnic skirmishes in the Terai region of the country were broken out. Many dissatisfied and disgruntled groups raised different types of voices of dissonance. As a result, the government had to act with prudence to tackle those issues. In the government’s involvement in addressing those issues like pragmatic challenges of restructuration, ethnic upsurge and Madhesi movement, less attention was given by the government to work for redressing, allaying and soothing the lingering vestige of a war crime, trauma and pangs of displacement. Even in the transitional phase, none of the strong redemptive measures were taken to cope with the lingering impact of wartime crime, traumatic onslaught and the prolonged effect of getting exposed to violence in the past. Due to the political instability in the country and lack of political consensus between major political parties, less attention has been paid to people’s sufferings and pains. Psychosocial rehabilitation has been a neglected issue in post-conflict reconstruction. People have gone through multiple aspects of war violence impacts, displacement, and traumatic experiences in the post-conflict context.

Increasing Status of Criminal Gangs in Post-conflict Nepal: The Case of Kathmandu Valley

The paper has objectives: to explain the gang phenomenon in Kathmandu Valley, their causes of effectiveness, the politicization of criminal gangs in the post-conflict situation, and the counter-product of governmental intervention. It has discussed the present challenges that the Valley has been facing, and possibilities of future challenges it has to confront. Youths’ identity crisis, social opportunities, rapid urbanization and incorrect approaches to gangs’ suppression are the key frameworks to find out the causes behind the criminal gangs being increasingly active in Kathmandu Valley. Interestingly, marginalized and suppressed social members feel secure and protected in the gang. The researcher has identified that the criminal gangs are the social fact of the rapidly urbanized society of the Kathmandu Valley where prevention policies have been neglected a lot. As a result, suppression policies have failed, thus, the new forms of gang-related crimes have emerged and expanded far and huge.

Ethics of Archaeology

Ethics has abandoned its niche status to become a shared concern across archaeology. The appraisal of the sociopolitical context of archaeological practice since the 1980s has forced the discipline to take issue with the expanding array of ethical questions raised by work with living people. Thus, the original foci on the archaeological record, conservation, and scientific standards, which are behind most deontological codes, have been largely transcended and even challenged. In this line, this review emphasizes philosophical and political aspects over practical ones and examines some pressing ethical concerns that are related to archaeology's greater involvement with contemporary communities, political controversies, and social demands; discussion includes ethical responses to the indigenous critique, the benefits and risks of applied archaeology, the responsibilities of archaeologists in conflict and postconflict situations, vernacular digging and collecting practices, development-led archaeology, heritage, and the ethics of things.

Intersectionalities and access in fieldwork in postconflict Liberia: Motherland, motherhood, and minefields

This research note interrogates the varied ways in which researcher and research subjects’ intersectional identities complicate multiple levels of access to research participants, specifically with respect to research I conducted with refugee women who returned to Liberia after the end of the civil war in 2003. I argue that motherland (or nationality) and motherhood (or maternity) produce ‘minefields’ during fieldwork that a researcher has to navigate in achieving different levels of access to research subjects, particularly in postconflict situations. While the literature mostly discusses these issues from the perspective of non-Africans conducting fieldwork abroad, this essay analyses issues arising from being a young, female Nigerian conducting research with women, mostly mothers, in the same African sub-region. It explains how being a young, married, pregnant, and mothering Nigerian facilitated or obstructed access to research participants. This foregrounds the complexity of the insider/outsider debate for researchers conducting fieldwork in various contexts, and thereby contributes to the wider literatures on feminist methodologies and qualitative fieldwork.

Community engineering education: The case of post-conflict Rwanda

We argue for the need for and provide an example of a new form of community-based engineering education in Rwanda. We draw on Bourdieu’s theories of field and habitus to frame the arguments for an alternative to the current dominant engineering education model. The proposed community engineering education programme has three key facets including the development of critical thinking of students using critical theory, the students’ creation of alternative practices as a result of such critical thinking, and the appropriate pedagogy for delivering the programme. This model programme is aimed to address Rwanda’s endemic problems of economic development, poverty, environment, healthcare and energy. Specifically, it can allow students to develop very much needed, socially and environmentally just engineering systems as well as locally appropriate businesses, thus directly addressing the needs of the country and its people. The programme could apply to any post-conflict situation or indeed any development context.

The Complexity of Coexistence

Depuis la fin de la guerre civile en 2002, la population de Sierra Leone a bénéficié d’une paix relativement stable et on peut dire que civils et ex-combattants vivent en coexistence. Cependant, au cours de mon travail de terrain, j’ai été surprise de constater à quel point mes interlocuteurs parlaient d’une manière positive de la situation post-conflit. « On a oublié la guerre depuis longtemps » disaient certains, tandis que d’autres soutenaient qu’on leur avait demandé de « pardonner et d’oublier » et que, par conséquent, ils agissaient selon ce principe. D’autres personnes que j’ai rencontrées partagent cependant des sentiments négatifs à l’égard des ex-combattants, mais ils soutiennent en même temps qu’une telle coexistence est sans alternative. Alors que j’ai constaté dans plusieurs localités que les anciens combattants s’intègrent avec succès, ce label d’« ex-combattants » continue à disposer d’une connotation particulièrement négative. Intrigué par ces ambiguïtés, j’explore plus en détail dans cet article les différents modes de coexistence en Sierra Leone. Basé sur des données ethnographiques collectées durant un travail de terrain de huit mois, l’article décrit trois pratiques différentes de coexistence dans des régions rurales et urbaines du pays. L’accent mis sur la coexistence, à la différence d’autres termes normatifs tels que ceux de réconciliation et de réinsertion, couramment utilisés dans la littérature sur les contextes post-conflit, invite à réfléchir sur ces pratiques, plutôt qu'à évaluer ces différents arrangements du vivre ensemble.

The legitimisation of post-conflict intervention: Narrative frames of backwardness and progress

Much of the peace and conflict literature sustains the claim that, whilst intervention during war may require military and diplomatic tools, post-conflict peacebuilding intervention enables more locally-led and emancipatory approaches. This article focuses on the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) to ask whether a change in how international actors narratively frame their role vis-à-vis BiH confirms this assumed turning point between the conflict and post-conflict scenario. It first investigates the binary frame of ‘local backwardness’ and ‘international progressiveness’, which was promoted by the international community during the war and suggests that local actors were situated in an inferior time zone, in need of external help. Second, it analyses the European Union’s post-conflict intervention to find that there is a continued presence of the narrative frame of ‘backwardness vs progress’. Suggesting that the discursive framing of local actors as backwards serves as a legitimation of continued intervention, the article concludes that the alleged turning point between conflict and post-conflict situations is not clearly reflected in the interveners’ narratives on BiH.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND PEACE BUILDING: THE GENDER QUESTION IN OLAMMA BY TRACIE EZEAJUGH

The paper examines the strategic approaches adopted by women and the socio-cultural obstacles that impede women‟s active participation in conflict resolution and peace building process as seen in the play understudy. African nations have been ravaged by conflict, resulting in destabilization, displacement, and infrastructural destruction, all of which have gender-specific consequences. Women are often portrayed as victims of conflict; and in large part, they are. Yet they are largely neglected once peace occurs. Despite active role in war, women are often neglected in the post-conflict situation and in peace negotiations. Studies have shown that despite the fact that women play active roles in developing coalitions across fighting groups within and outside Nigeria, women are neither represented nor consulted in peace negotiations. Often discrimination against women in post-conflict land settlement buttresses this fact. This is essential for sustaining peace.

Women, Peace and Security in the SADC Region

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is a key part of the international, continental and regional programme for attaining sustainable and durable peace. Conflict and post-conflict situations have a different impact on women, men, boys and girls. During conflicts, women and children are more vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation, displacement, a change to household relations and poverty. There have been concerted efforts to identify and address the impact of conflict on women and children and to provide for more responsive, representative and inclusive peace and security structures and processes. SADC countries have made great strides in enacting gender sensitive legislations, representation of women in cabinet, parliament, local government, and security sector institutions. Women have not adequately been represented in mediation and peace-building efforts and most peace agreements lack gender sensitivity. Peace agreements do not include reference to specific needs or interests of women.

Depoliticisation as a securitising move: the case of the United Nations Environment Programme

AbstractCreated in 1972, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has a normative mandate to promote the protection of the environment at the international level. However, since 1999, the organisation has been conducting field assessments in postconflict situations and addressing the role of natural resources in conflict, framing the environment as a security issue. To do so, the programme insists on its neutrality as a technical and ‘apolitical’ actor within the UN system. Considering depoliticisation as a political act, this article unpacks the concrete practices by which international organisations (IOs) enact depoliticisation. It further argues that IOs can perform securitising moves through practices and techniques presented as outside of the political realm. It draws upon the recent work on depoliticisation at the international level and reinforces studies considering the links between (de)politicisation and securitisation.

Represión estatal y derechos humanos en sociedades de posguerra

This study analyzes the causes of state repression during post-civil war periods. For this purpose, it applies a multifactorial approach, considering armed conflict characteristics as well as the configuration of post-conflict societies as explanatory factors with regard to human rights violations committed by the State. From an empirical viewpoint, the work is based on a comprehensive database which includes all post-war periods registered between 1976 and 2012 and a total of 70 episodes that occurred in 56 different countries. The analysis shows the relevance of multiple variables, including the virulence of armed conflict, its ethnic dimension, the ruling post-war political regime, the presence of political opposition and population size, for explaining the status of human rights in post-conflict situations. The research also proposes a new viewpoint on the impact of state weakness on post-war repression. Thus, it suggests alternative lines of analysis and raises the need to explore the implementation of state-building policies as an additional tool to guarantee human rights in post-war scenarios.

History of the subject of Peace in the department of Cauca from 1962 to 2017, a proposal for its reinforcement and effective implementation

In this article we present a study about the reinforcement of the Peace subject under the Law No. 1732 of 2014 and in the Regulatory Decree No. 1038 of 2015 in Cauca state in the Colombian Republic and legislative which measures that contributes to the strengthening of education considering the post-conflict situation the country is facing. This socio-legal research uses a mixed method. The qualitative approach based on documentary analysis, the ethnography which used the interview as a technique and the quantitative approach which considered the underpinned statistics data which the government entities provided with The study focuses on the pre-school, elementary, middle and high school of the educational institutions in Cauca state by starting a historical compilation of the regulations to determine compliance with legislative guidelines. Notwithstanding, the guidelines of the National Authority of Education for the Peace and subject development in Cauca state the progress results in its enforcement are little and are centered in Popayán as the state capital city without any record of its development on the other remaining 41 towns in the state thus evidencing the absence of an effective monitoring and control of the competent authorities.

‘Seeing’ gender, war and terror

This article explores the questions posed for criminology when war and terror are seen through a gendered lens. Following Barberet this lens demands blurring the boundaries between peace-time, war-time and post-conflict situations. These boundaries frame the nomos of criminology and once challenged the connections to be made between the ‘callousness’ of femicide and the ‘callousness’ of environmental destruction are exposed. Using photographs as the vehicle through which such a challenge can be maintained, the gendered analysis that follows poses conceptual and methodological questions for the discipline which ultimately demands a reimagining of the contribution of criminology and victimology to understanding gendered violence(s).

COMMUNICATIVE SITUATIONS: THE STANDARD AND THE CONFLICT ONES

The study of communicative situations is one of the most important areas of research in domestic and foreign science. The interaction of people and their contacts often give rise to collisions caused by contradictions of goals, views, interests, points of view etc., which, unfortunately, can lead to a conflict situation. If to talk about the standard communicative situation, it should be noted that most researchers pick out five or six its components, but often the same components get different names in different interpretations. Also it has repeatedly been emphasized that understanding between communicants is necessary for successful communication. Understanding occurs when interlocutors use the same linguistic code, if the communication channel is not blocked, and the communicators have the ability to encode and decode the information correctly, that is, they have the same system of codification and decoding of speech signs and signals. Thus, the processes of verbalization and understanding play a leading role in the implementation of the communicative act and, therefore, directly belong to its structure as the dominant components. The model of the standard communicative situation shows that the communicator (the addresser) with his/her own communicative goals communicates with the other communicator (the addressee), which also has certain communicative and practical goals, and implements the communicative text, using the appropriate code in certain circumstances. If communicants have similar ideas of the communicative goals of each other or towards the distribution of communicative roles, communication is realized in the form of cooperation. If the communicant chooses the wrong line of behaviour, the communicants’ intentions will lose their mutual agreement, and if they can not neutralize the negative impact of their actions on the communicative act, the latter may end up in a communicative failure (either complete or incomplete) and this leads to the emergence of communicative conflicts. In such a way, in live communicative situations the communicant simultaneously: a) perceives and accordingly evaluates information from the partner in the communication, b) calculates the type of relationships, which might be established with the partner in the communication. That is why both communicative failures and conflicts are not so rare. The conflict communicative situation is characterized by structural and dynamic characteristics. Structural characteristics include, as a rule, communicative discomfort, communicative failure, communicative inconsistency, communicative misunderstanding, communicative disputing, etc. These characteristics are explicated at the stages of the development of conflict situation. Stages of conflict situation consist of the pre-conflict stage (origin, maturation, incident), the stage of the conflict itself (conflict, conflict development), and the stage of the consequences of a conflict situation (or post-conflict situation). Dynamic characteristics of the conflict include, as a rule, the conditions and circumstances of the communication, the contradiction between the communicative and practical goals of the communicants, the results of communication, personal characteristics of the subjects of communication, as well as the situations of cognitive dissonance and “conflict-genes”, the violation of processes of verbalization and understanding, differences in social status of communicators, etc. From a practical point of view, the typology of conflict situations is very important, since it allows us to navigate through specific manifestations of conflict and, therefore, helps to assess possible ways of resolving them and achieving consensus.

The Cost of Belonging to a Minority Group and the Role of Human Rights Law: The Case of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar

A broad examination of the legal and institutional setups working on the rights of minorities in light of the practice on the ground shows that there is a high level of divergence between what the role of human rights is in protection of minorities and what it ought or assumed to be. We can observe the very minimal role played by IHRL in protecting minority rights at stages of pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict situations that starts to be more engaging as we go up through these stages, when the situation should be otherwise. In this paper, examination of the role played by IHRL in protection of minority rights at every stage, starting from pre-conflict realization of their rights to post-conflict settlements; repatriation and reconciliation is made by using the Rohingya case as a parameter to measure its sufficiency and effectiveness. The paper discusses the legal and institutional frameworks to the protection of minority rights; it reviews the level of adherence of national laws of Myanmar to the existing international norms; mentions the lack of sufficient recognition of minority rights in international norms and the failure of the state of Myanmar to live up to those existing international norms and finally pints out the need to improve minority rights protection at national and international arena in light of the legal and institutional setup.

Protecting Yazidi cultural heritage through women: An international feminist law analysis

Abstract The purpose of this article is to consider, from an international law perspective, the relationship existing between violence, gender, and culture, referring to the specific situation of women belonging to the Yazidi minority, who have been abducted, raped, and sold by the Islamic State. I will demonstrate that women can be those who, despite huge suffering, will be able to preserve the unique culture of this minority during post-conflict situations. From an international law perspective, I will investigate the possibility that the crimes committed against the Yazidis are brought before the International Criminal Court, and I will recommend that a women's tribunal be established in order to give voice to the victims/survivors. I will demonstrate that the participation of women during the negotiations for peace in post-conflict situations is essential, and that the protection of intangible cultural heritage through women could be achieved learning the lesson from preceding successful experiences.

El mercado de capitales en el posconflicto

El conflicto interno colombiano ha afectado al país de diferentes formas y los acuerdos de paz pueden generar aún más cambios que el conflicto; sin embargo, no se sabe a ciencia cierta qué va a pasar después de la firma de estos acuerdos de paz. Por ello, en este artículo se aborda la posible incidencia que pueden tener estos cambios sobre el mercado de capitales, a través de la realización de un estado del arte, que se estructura de la siguiente manera: en la primera parte, se revisa cómo puede el mercado de capitales afectar una situación de posconflicto; en la segunda, se revisa la importancia la importancia o prioridad de la inversión en el mercado de capitales en situaciones de posconflicto y por último, se estudia qué ocurre con la inversión e n el mercado de capitales en las situaciones de posconflicto.

Legal Pluralism in Theory and Practice

Legal pluralism has vast policy and governance implications. In developing countries, for instance, non-state justice systems often handle most disputes and retain substantial autonomy and authority. Legal pluralism's importance, however, is rarely recognized and dramatically under theorized. This article advances scholarly understanding of legal pluralism both theoretically and empirically. It proposes a new typological framework for conceptualizing legal pluralism through four distinct archetypes – combative, competitive, cooperative, and complementary – to help clarify the range of relationships between state and non-state actors. It posits five main strategies used by domestic and international actors in attempts to influence the relationship between state and non-state justice systems: bridging, harmonization, incorporation, subsidization, and repression. As post-conflict situations are fluid and can feature a wide range of relationships between state and non-state actors, they are particularly instructive for showing how legal pluralism archetypes can be shifted over time. Case studies from Timor-Leste and Afghanistan highlight that selecting an appropriate policy is vital for achieving sustainable positive outcomes. Strategies that rely on large scale spending or even the use of substantial military force in isolation are unlikely to be successful. The most promising approaches are culturally intelligible and constructively engage non-state justice networks of authority and legitimacy to collectively advance the judicial state-building process. While the case studies focus on post-conflict states, the theory presented can help understand and improve efforts to promote the rule of law as well as good governance and development more broadly in all legally pluralist settings.

Knowledge production on conflict early warning at the African Union

ABSTRACTHow does the African Union (AU) generate knowledge about on-going violent conflict as well as post-conflict situations? This article offers an analysis of the multiple sites and sources in the construction of conflict-related knowledge. It also reflects on the various institutional ways this knowledge is filtered into the activities of a wide range of AU actors, starting with the AU Commission, the AU Commission Chairperson and the Peace and Security Council. Emphasis is on the development of the Continental Early Warning System and some of its limitations, the latter partly related to the specific organisational culture of the African Union.