No abstract available. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / gm2014 / Centre for Human Rights / unrestricted

Detta examensarbete syftar till att beskriva de displacerade barnens situation ochde utmaningar de står inför på grund av displacement i Cali, Colombia. Detkommer att göras genom att studera de icke-statliga organisationernas arbete dåstaten på många delar i Colombia och Cali har låg närvaro. Många av dessa barntillhör afro-colombianska och inhemska folkgrupper och därför kommer dennastudie att göras utifrån ett intersektionellt perspektiv inom kategorierna etnicitetoch klass. Colombia har under de senaste åren varit det land med flestinternflyktingar i världen, och trots ett fredsavtal med de största rebellgruppernaär Colombia fortfarande ett land i toppen av den globala statistiken. Landetshistoria präglas av interna konflikter, olaglig arbetskraft och narkotikahandel. Deproblem Colombia står inför under denna pågående fredsprocess är komplexa ochpåverkar främst displacerade barn och deras familjer. Resultatet av denna studievisar att många displacerade barn har lägre levnadsstandard än andra barn.Majoriteten bor i ekonomiskt utsatta områden och tillhör minoritetsbefolkningen,de får sämre utbildning och blir ofta diskriminerade på grund av att de ärcolombianer men med en annan kultur och annat ursprung änmajoritetsbefolkningen i staden. Det finns olika typer av socialt arbete i Cali somarbetar med empowerment för att förhindra detta och för att stärka barnen; delsgenom utbildning och dels genom upprätthållande av kultur i form av musik ochdans. Socialarbetare i Cali arbetar oftast utan stöd av staten och är själva eller harvarit displacerade. Många upplever att displacerade barn ofta ses som en homogengrupp trots dennes heterogenitet. / This bachelor thesis seeks to describe the displaced children’s situation and thechallenges they face due to displacement in Cali, Colombia. Many of thesechildren belong to Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities and thereforethis study will be made through an intersectional perspective based on ethnicityand class. Colombia was during recent years the country with the most internallydisplaced people in the world, and today, despite a peace agreement with thebiggest guerrilla groups, it is still a country in the top of the global statistics. Thecountry’s history is characterized by internal conflicts, illegal labor and drugtrafficking and the problems they are facing during this peace progress arecomplex. This is affecting displaced children and their families. The humanitariancrisis in Colombia is unique in many ways and have been creating manychallenges for the government. Therefore, one of the main reasons to study non-governmental, social work is because these organizations fill an important gap inresponse to help, support and empower displaced children in areas around Caliwith little governmental presence. The result of this study shows that manydisplaced children in Cali have a lower standard of living than other children. Themajority live in low-income areas and belong to the minority population, theyreceive lower quality education and are often discriminated for being Colombiansbut with a different culture and other origin than the majority population in thecity. There are various types of social work in Cali that work with empowermentto prevent this and to strengthen the children; through education or by maintainingculture in the form of music and dance. Social workers in Cali usually workwithout the support of the state and are run by people who themselves have beendisplaced. Many of the social workers feel that displaced children often are seenas a homogeneous group despite its heterogeneity.

Over time, hundreds of peace agreements have been signed in different parts of the world. Most of those peace agreements have not brought sustainable peace. Studies show that only 50% of the peace agreements survive for 5 years. After undergoing civil war between the ethnic groups, Bosnia and Herzegovina ended the bloodiest conflict in European history since the second world war with a peace agreement with the official name The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also called the Dayton Peace Agreement. The main purpose of the Dayton Agreement was to bring peace and stability between the ethnic groups. Stability and peace would later democratize the country and bring it closer to the Western standards. 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Dayton Agreement. The Dayton peace agreement constitutes a big portion of the Bosnian constitution, outlining the structure of the new government and the division of power between the three ethnic groups in the country. Using the democratic pillar of the Liberal Peace concept as an analytical framework, this research investigates the impact of the Dayton peace agreement on the democratization process in Bosnia and Herzegovina and determines whether Liberal Peace has after all been achieved in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25 years after the signing of the peace agreement. The study is conducted as a qualitative case study. The findings present that the Dayton agreement has been based on the liberal peace principles. The latest development in BiH show that the country has moved beyond the Dayton peace agreement to the European integration and European Union membership. The liberal peacebuilding has therefore taken another shift and the country’s main focus nowadays relies on resolving the needed reforms that will bring the country closer to the EU. The impact of the Dayton peace agreement is still present within the political sphere in the country, where many of the obstacles to becoming a European Union member state are caused by the Dayton agreement. There is thus high interest by the political elite in the country to move beyond what has happened 25-years ago and focus on the future of the country.

Is the inclusion of social provisions in peace agreements influenced by the participation of women, and if so, why? It is suggested that if women participate in the negotiation, the agreement is likely to broaden with social provisions. But our understanding regarding why social provisions are shaped by the participation of women is still limited as previous research rarely looked at this phenomenon. By drawing on theories suggesting women’s participation will broaden the scope of the negotiation, and theories proposing women through the agency for being at the negotiation table would push for social provisions, this study hypothesizes that if women participate, the agreements are likely to broaden with more social provisions. A content analysis of the agreements reached on Liberia 2003, Sierra Leone 1999, Côte d’Ivoire 2003 and Niger 1995, and a supplementary in-depth comparative case study presents evidence suggesting women does influence peace agreements to become more holistic with more social provisions. At the same time, this study also highlights the essence of taking other factors that shape the scope of the agreements and the presence or absence of social provisions such as the context and duration of the conflicts and the belligerent actor’ will into consideration.

Recent empirical studies have suggested that the implementation of a comprehensive peace agreement is the primary predictor of whether or not peace will last after a civil war. However, it is less certain what factors that lead to high implementation rates of peace agreements. Qualitative research has suggested that state capacity is a necessary condition for peace agreement implementation. Quantitively the relationship between state capacity and peace agreement implementation has only been controlled for in two studies. In this paper it is argued that this relationship has not been studied in a sufficient manner in either of them. Consequently, this study measures the relationship between state capacity and peace agreement implementation rate, operationalizing state capacity as the extraction rate and political reach of the state. This relationship is tested on 34 comprehensive peace agreements during the years of 1989 to 2015. However, the hypothesis did not find support as extraction rate has a negative correlation while political reach has a positive correlation. These findings are significant as they further the study on peace agreement implementation rate; how best to measure state capacity and moreover these findings can become important for what policies to prioritize in order to increase the implementation rate concerning peace agreements.

The role of civil society in conflict resolution has moved from the margins to the core of analyses of peace processes. However, existing literature has put little attention on examining the contribution of civil society in the implementation of peace agreements in the immediate time upon their conclusion. I aim to fill this gap by asking “How does the mode of civil society inclusion during the pre-agreement stage influence the degree of civil society participation in the implementation of peace agreements?”. I argue that when civil society can directly influence the peace talks by having a seat at the negotiation table this can have downstream effects on how much they will be involved in the implementation of the agreed provisions. The research question is answered in the context of a qualitative study of the cases of the peace process in Mozambique and El Salvador, through the method of structured focused comparison. The findings do not support this expectation. The analysis rather indicates that direct participation is not enough for civil society actors to ensure continuity in their participation, and more substantive engagement and ownership might be needed.

Ideas matter. Thus, approaching peacebuilding efforts from an ideational perspective can contribute to a deeper understanding of their meanings and legacies. Traditionally, the liberal peace paradigm has been prevalent in peacebuilding, translating into programs, projects, actions, and agreements that model liberal norms, values, and practices. Among these sets of ideas, it is possible to identify beliefs about New Public Management (NPM), which affect how instruments like peace agreements are designed and codified. However, this relationship has not been thoroughly explored in the peacebuilding and public management literature, although both strive to achieve efficient and effective governance and peace. In response to this gap, this thesis examines, through text analysis, the degree to which the normative and bureaucratic legacies of NPM are present in the design of a comprehensive peace agreement. This required the selection of an empirical case that could deepen the understanding of what kind of public management NPM ideas are embedded and to what extent, hence the selection of the Colombian Peace Agreement, an example of the golden standard in comprehensive arrangements. The study systematically reviewed and codified the text of the agreement –578 provisions or stipulations– based on the presence and specificity of NPM-related doc-trines. The findings show the pervasiveness of bureaucratic legacies associated with strategic planning, performance audit of provisions, decentralisation, and the appointment of managers and high-level bodies to administer the implementation. However, ideas associated with financial control, competition and flexibilization of the public sector, were less relevant. The analysis also identified other ideas, which expand on the civilian input in the main bureaucratic doctrines. Thus, it provides a new insight to understanding peace in bureaucratic terms as the strategic expansion of institutional infrastructure with strong oversight mechanisms within peace agreements. This calls for a more careful review of the bureaucratic legacies and understandings present in peacebuilding efforts and how they could relate to other sets of ideas already reviewed in the literature, which could lead to further research shaping our understanding of peace through time and across contexts.

Twenty eight years ago there was a brutal war in Bosnia and Herzegovina between the three main ethnic groups in the country as a part of the bracke-up of Yugoslavia  (Balazs, 2008). This thesis analyses how the OHR has contributed to the reconciliation process in Bosnia and Herzegovina by looking at academic articles, information from local actors, analysing the local debate and semistructured interviews within the international community in BiH. Primarily, Bar-Tals conditions for reconciliation are used to measure how the OHR has contributed to the reconciliation process. It is clear that OHR has contributed positively to the reconciliation process however the process has been slow and some consider the reconciliation process to go in the wrong direction right now. To push the reconciliation process forward is explicitly not a part of the OHRs mandate however there is a lack of actors working with it and OHR has been a suitable actor to do so. However, the OHR have lost respect because they have not held people accountable when violating the OHR decisions. Additionally, the OHR is seen as anti-Serb by the Bosnian Serbs, even though it is unrightfully so this has resulted in there decisions occasionally leading to further polarisation between the ethnic groups. Thus, the OHR may not be the most suitable actor to push BiH forward in the reconciliation process in the future, however they are still needed to make sure that the peace agreement is followed to avoid another war. There is already extensive research on the reconciliation process in BiH and the OHR separately however there is very limited research on how the OHR have worked with the reconciliation process even though the research is relevant considering that there is an discussion on about how much influence the OHR should have in BiH and if they should remain in BiH (Hayat Media BiH, 2023). As well as to give the OHR an opportunity to learn from perilous mistakes and perfect their way of working with reconciliation.

In my thesis essay I have researched the impact of water management on the outcome of peace negotiation and treaty in the case of Israel and Syria. My research question was “How should the water resources of the Golan Heights be addressed in a coming peace treaty between Israel and Syria for this treaty to be sustainable?”. I emanated from the theory advocated by researchers Ohlsson, Homer-Dixon and Gleick, arguing that the detailed incorporation of water management in negotiations as well as in a final peace treaty between countries is crucial for these to be sustainable. I used this theory in analysing the extended data related to the two countries’ water resources and water policies, as well as two previous rounds of negotiation. I came to the conclusion that for any future negotiation to lead to a sustainable peace agreement between the two countries, it is crucial for them to establish very detailed stipulations on the shared water resources. Both Israel and Syria are in great need of accessing and controlling water resources, however Israel is much more dependent than Syria on the waters of the Golan Heights. When an internationally recognized borderline between the countries in the future will be established, it will by default be situated on or closely connected to vital water resources. Therefore the water management, including use of and withdrawal from these resources needs to be clearly regulated, otherwise conflict might rise again between the two countries. If water management would be included in the peace treaty in as thoroughly manner as the theorists suggests, this would enable the treaty to become sustainable, as well as make feasible the resolution of related conflicting matters.

In Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement brought with it a great deal of attention and initiatives to construct and increase intergroup contact and shared spaces in an effort to reconcile divided nationalist/Catholic and unionist/Protestant communities. In the time following this peace agreement, the Belfast Giants ice hockey team was established, and in their 16 years as a team they have become one of the most attended spectator activities in Belfast, trending away from the tribalism, single-space, single-class, and single-gender dynamics of modern sport in Northern Ireland. This thesis research followed the supporters of the Belfast Giants throughout the 2015-2016 ice hockey season to better understand the encounters across historical divisions that are occurring in the Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) Arena. The research of this PhD thesis is directed by the concepts of social capital, intergroup contact, and civility. These concepts, when placed within the context of divided society, contribute to the thesis' guiding analytical framework, which offers thematic guideposts in areas of prejudice and anxiety, tolerance and trust, space and identity. Influenced by in-depth qualitative research that seeks to access local voices, this research takes the conceptual and analytical guidance into the stands of the SSE Arena. In this way, the unique 'side-by-side' methodology, which involved conducting interviews with the person in the seat to my left or right at Belfast Giants ice hockey games while immersing myself in the supporter community, emerged as not only a contribution to unearthing new voices in this oft-studied region, but also as an innovative contribution to qualitative methodological literatures. Beyond the methodological contribution, this thesis makes two further contributions to existing academic literatures on post-peace agreement relationships. The first of these is through the clear relationship between identity and space that are evident in its findings. Between the poles of conflict and reconciliation are the complex and simple interactions, which when placed in the SSE Arena at a Belfast Giants game illustrate the multi-layered and fluid nature of identity. The thesis finds the hockey arena is a space where a shared identity, 'the hockey family', materialises and includes nationalist and unionist populations. This shared identity is deeply connected to a physical place and activity that are situated outside the all-encompassing nature of division in present-day Belfast. However, within the unusual setting of an ice hockey arena in Northern Ireland there emerges ordinariness in encounter across historical cleavage, and from these mundane interactions comes the final contribution 'side-by-sidedness'. Influenced by supporters' willingness to sit side-by-side those on the opposite side of a historical division who they may not be willing to live beside, this theme is framed as a lightened encounter that challenges assumptions inherent in post-peace agreement settings. The research findings frame the SSE Arena as a site of sanctuary from polarised sectarian identities and activities, as well as a site of resistance from overarching peace agendas that push shared space and seek reconciliation. Side-by-sidedness exists in the everyday between these two poles. In highlighting this space between, this theme challenges the assumptions of 'face-to-faceness' that are inherent across the three concepts informing this thesis and through utilising notions of everyday peace and everyday division to include the relational, the spatial and the metaphorical, this thesis' meta-theme frames a new way of 'getting on with it' in the shadows of conflict.