Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / Within the discourse of community development, the expression 'capacity development' stands out. Its common usage has somehow rendered it almost insignificant given the fact that those who use it tend to think of it in ways that hardly can be considered as having singular meaning. To be precise, there is no consensus as to its meanings; yet, it has not stopped its usage. The implication is that capacity development as a concept remains complex and has the tendency to erect difficulty in the attempt to operationalize it and apply it in evaluating development initiatives. However, this study presents an operational definition of capacity development in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria; levels of capacity development as well as dimensions used to evaluate on-going development projects/ policies in the region. The research method used to gather data was mixed. Quantitative method was more convenient due to the topography of the study area. However, qualitative method was introduced and utilized to guarantee the validity, authenticity and reliability of data collected. Mapping and an observation of government agencies/ organizations involved in capacity development in the study area (the Niger Delta region, by extension); questionnaires that spoke of practices supportive of capacity development in the region as well as resources available to Southern Ijaw LGA for capacity development; focused group discussions and in depth interviews that drew attention to factors affecting capacity development at all levels; individual, institutional and societal etc. these tools were means that efficiently helped in assessing the extent to which capacity development has been operationalized in post conflict Niger delta.

A post-conflict society tends to get locked in a history war. As the practice of history in its broad sense is a moral craft, representations of guilt and victimhood prevail in social memory. The representations are often bolstered by mythical references, wherefore deconstruction of myths is expected from history education for the purposes of post-conflict reconciliation. This article deals with the post-conflict uses of history in Finland, South Africa and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The three cases constitute examples of a class war, a race conflict and an ethno-religious armed clash. The memory politics and history curricula differ between the cases. Their comparison indicates, how far an imposition of one ´truth´, a dialogue of two ´truths´ and segregation of different memory communities are feasible strategies of post-conflict history education. The article suggests that history lessons can be an asset instead of a liability in the pursuit of reconciliation.

Thesis advisor: Paul Cichello / Liberia had two devastating civil wars 1989-2003. I am examining who benefitted from the large amounts of international aid and development programs that poured into the country during the post-war rebuilding period, in terms of school enrollment rates. With USAID’s Demographic and Health Surveys and Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s Georeferenced Event Dataset, I use probit and linear probability models to examine the determinants of being enrolled in school in 2007 and 2019. I find that females and kids living in rural areas had disproportionate recovery in the post-war period controlling for other explanatory variables. Household wealth was an important factor in determining enrollment. I also examine the concept of bounce-back, or rapid recovery in post-conflict contexts. I find that on a national level, there was significant recovery in enrollment rates, with about 51% of kids being enrolled in school in 2007 and about 81% being enrolled in 2019. I was unable to determine definitively whether or not this recovery was proportional to the amount of loss experienced due to the wars due to large standard deviations. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

Post-conflict army reconstruction is an important element of security sector reform (SSR), tracing its origins to at least 1980, before the SSR concept itself was formulated. Reconstruction of security forces is an important element in wider postconflict reconstruction, and for political reasons, an army has almost always deemed necessary. Since 1998, SSR itself has been increasingly conceptualized, with principles for SSR having been laid down by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) since 2004. Yet SSR faces a host of philosophical and practical problems, perhaps the greatest being the gap between theory and practice (Chanaa's 'conceptual-contextual divide'). To make SSR efforts more successful, the underlying principles need to be revised and amended. Post-conflict army reconstruction experience since 1980, and associated academic study, military doctrine, and work by international organizations (particularly the OECD) can provide a basis for such revision. This thesis aims to survey post-conflict army reconstruction activities since 1980, draw overall lessons from that review and field study in Liberia, and propose amendments to the SSR principles on that basis.

This thesis examines the paradigms of masculinities during and after Northern Ireland’s conflict to understand how societal transition from intrastate conflict impacts males’ identities and mental health. Focusing on fieldwork conducted predominately in Derry/Londonderry and applying masculinity theories, this thesis explores the experiences of males aged 29 to 40 who grew up during the 1990s’ peace process. Social and mental health professionals and community and youth workers have expressed concern for the mental health and well-being of this population of men, as well as young men born after the peace process. With this concern in mind, this thesis argues that the continuous presence of contested images of masculinity that existed prior to the conflict and that emerged during the conflict, along with the cultural practice of silence, has resulted in an ambiguous understanding of masculinity in the post-conflict era, and has had a negative impact on males’ mental health.

Includes bibliographical references / This study is set against the background of a continued lack of social engagement across difference in South African classrooms. It set out to explore the potential of a specific pedagogical intervention - digital storytelling - as a post-conflict pedagogy in a diverse pre-service teacher education classroom. Personal storytelling has long been used to unearth lived experiences of differently positioned students in the classroom. More recently, the use of digital technologies has made it easier to transform these personal stories into publishable, screenable and sharable digital resources. In general, digital storytelling is lauded in the literature for its potential to facilitate an understanding across difference, allowing empathy and compassion for the 'Other'. In this study, I question this potentially naive take on digital storytelling in the context of post-conflict pedagogies. I was interested in the emotions emerging - particularly in what I termed a potential sentimentality - in both the digital storytelling process and product. I looked at sentimentality in a specific way: as the tension between the centrality of emotions to establish an affective engagement between a storyteller and the audience, and digital stories' exaggerated pull on these emotions. This is seen, for example, in the difficulty that we have when telling stories in stepping out of normative, sentimental discourses to trouble the way we perform gender, race, class and sexuality, all of which are found in the actual stories we tell and the images we use. It is also found in the audience response to digital storytelling. Adopting a performative narrative inquiry research methodology, framed by theorists such as Butler, Ahmed, and Young, all three feminist authors interested in the politics of difference, working at the intersection of queer, cultural, critical race and political theory, I adopted three different analytical approaches to a narrative inquiry of emotions. I used these approaches to analyse stories told in a five-day digital storytelling train-the-trainer workshop with nine pre-service teacher-education students. Major findings of this study are: In everyday life stories, students positioned themselves along racial identities, constructing narratives of group belonging based primarily on their racialized identities. However, in some students' stories - particularly those that offer a more complex view of privilege, acknowledging the intersectionality of class, gender, age, sexuality and race - these conversations are broken up in interesting ways, creating connections between students beyond a racial divide. Looking at the digital story as a multimodal text with its complex orchestration of meaning-making through its different modes, it became clear to me that conveying authorial intent is difficult and that the message of a digital story can be compromised in various ways. The two storytellers I looked at in more detail drew from different semiotic histories and had access to different semiotic resources, such as different levels of critical media literacy, with this compromising their authorial intent to tell counterstories. Finally, the genre storytellers chose, the context into which their stories were told, along with their positioning within this context in terms of their privilege, affected the extent to which they could make themselves vulnerable. This consequently shaped the audience response, which was characterised by passive empathy, a sentimental attempt to connect to what makes us the 'same', rather than recognising systemic and structural injustices that characterise our engagements across difference.

The Acholi people have remained poor despite the existence of a legal regulatory framework to guarantee enjoyment of the right to development (RTD) in Uganda. The study, therefore, seeks to explore alternative approaches for the protection and attainment of the RTD for the Acholi; a society that recently emerged from a conflict that lasted over 20 years. The conflict stifled the Acholis’ development opportunities and stripped them of their culture, a corner-stone for development in their society, due to forced encampment. The broken cultural system had the effect of limiting access to development opportunities. In the absence of protection from cultural structures, access to land and other sources of livelihood, the Acholi were reduced to a life of abject poverty during and after the conflict. The objective of this study was two-fold. First, to contribute to the debate on justiciability of the RTD for the Acholi by questioning the efficacy of the legal, policy and institutional framework for the protection of developmental rights in the post-conflict setting. The study also sought to explore the use of alternative approaches, including a clan-based development model, to facilitate development of the Acholi. This is in line with the right to self-determination which recognises the right of all people to freely participate in their development. From a theoretical standpoint, despite its controversial nature, the study shows that the RTD is indeed recognised under the African Charter, and is, therefore, justiciable in Uganda by virtue of article 45 of the Uganda Constitution. However, the legal basis upon which the RTD can be claimed is weak given that the right is only justiciable at the African regional level, beyond the reach of an ordinary Acholi of limited means. Its justiciability alone has remained contentious not just in Africa but also in the international realm. The study advocates for the adoption of a clan-based development model to tap into the pre-conflict Acholi clan structure through which development could be communally attained. This process would be state-funded through public-private partnerships in a bid to facilitate sustainable and meaningful development in Acholiland. The study advances the need for legal and institutional reforms; including, constitutional reforms to give formal recognition of the RTD in the bill of rights. The recognition of the role of culture in development planning and peace processes is also advocated for as it is critical for ensuring sustainability of peace and development. / Thesis (LLD (Human Rights))--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Centre for Human Rights / LLD (Human Rights) / Unrestricted

No / A new casting of diasporas, exiles and returnees as potentially transformative agents in post-conflict polities is the topic of this article. ‘Return of Qualified Expatriates’ programmes have recently been launched by international agencies in a number of post-conflict countries in an attempt to promote better capacity-building within post-conflict states institutions. This article argues that the ostensible technical orientation of these programmes is misleading, and they have a political significance which is noted and contested locally. In political terms, they represent attempts to smuggle Western hierarchies of knowledge into post-conflict reconstruction efforts under the cover of ethnic solidarity, to the detriment of local participation and empowerment. The article argues further that this is always contested by interested parties locally, often by mobilising alternative capacities, labelled ‘authentic’, in opposition. As such, strategies that attempt to use ethnic ties to overcome this local contestation are placing a significant burden on ethnic categories that are slippery, malleable and contested in post-conflict contexts. These points are demonstrated with reference to the cases of Cambodia and Timor-Leste.

This thesis aims to study Colombia’s post-conflict processes and peacemaking politics. Over the years, the numerous attempts at peace lacked solutions prioritizing a sustainable process for peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. Yet since 2003, the government has implemented and prioritized a three-pronged policy known as Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) in an attempt to bundle the disparate elements that appear to be necessary components for long-term peace. Chapter one evaluates the turbulent history of peacemaking, focusing on the factors rendering peace elusive, examining the failed peace attempts, and chronologically arriving at DDR. Chapter two provides an in-depth analysis of the “R” in DDR through a theoretical framework of cooperation, its dimensions and logistics, and a compilation of narratives. It insists that Reintegration be more than a word or a theoretical concept. Chapter three analyzes the current peace negotiations and the winding road to a failed deadline through current events and political scandals. Taking into account the sociopolitical atmosphere into which DDR policies need to be implemented, the final chapter analyzes future scenarios and concludes: DDR processes are key to transition to peace; Reintegration is the most difficult and important aspect, as it
involves the cooperation from all segments of society and leads to a long-lasting peace; DDR must consider the nation’s politics to be successfully implemented; and finally, whether the peace attempt with the FARC is yet another elusive peace attempt or 
whether it initiates a road to peace, Colombia will be able to achieve peace through community archipelagos of peace.

New states are often born in a volatile environment, in which the survival of the new country is uncertain. While analysis of the nationalizing new governments exists, research focuses mainly on domestic politics. I argue that the treatment of minority that remains in the new states is a function of the interaction of the dual threat posed by the minority itself domestically on one hand and the international threat coming from the mother state to protect its kin abroad on the other hand. Specifically, I argue that there is a curvilinear relationship between domestic and international threat and the extent of discrimination against the politically relevant minority. Most discrimination takes place when domestic and international threats are moderate because in this case there is a balance of power between the government, the minority, and the rump state. With time-series-cross-sectional (TSCS) data analysis this dissertation systematically tests the treatment of Russian and Serbian minorities in all post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav states between 1991 and 2006 and finds statistically significant results for the curvilinear hypothesis. Territorial concentration of the minority and the ratio of national capabilities between the mother and the seceded states prove to be especially important predictors of minority treatment. In addition, with most similar systems (MSS), most different systems (MDS) design methods, and directed case studies I apply the curvilinear hypothesis to the Russian minority in the Baltic States and the Central Asian Republics, and also to the Serb minority in the countries of the former Yugoslavia to present a detailed analysis.