In over 20 years of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, there has been no significant progress towards a peaceful agreement. It has been argued that there is not enough incentive for leaders to agree to a compromise and that the citizens are not ready to accept one. In this context, the way the conflict and the enemy are described in public discourse is important not only because it represents the viewpoints of those producing the discourse but because it can have a real effect on public opinion. This paper examines discourse on Azerbaijan and the future of Nagorno-Karabakh in an official newspaper, showing that distrust of Azerbaijan and rigid expectations about the future of Nagorno-Karabakh are dominant.

La Protección al Consumidor en Perú a la fecha se reconoce a nivel Constitucional y es desarrollada en el Código de Protección y Defensa del Consumidor. Por otro lado, se reconoce como Política Pública, la garantía de mecanismos eficaces y expeditivos para la solución de conflictos entre proveedores y consumidores, para lo que se promueve el uso de mecanismos alternativos de solución de conflictos. La modificación introducida por el Decreto Legislativo N° 1308, privilegia también las soluciones a través del empleo de mecanismos alternativos de solución conflictos, reconociendo que los mismos pueden poner fin al procedimiento hasta antes de la emisión de la resolución de última instancia. Esto nos da un panorama favorable para la propuesta planteada en el presente trabajo de investigación. Actualmente se tiene una carga procedimental creciente en protección al consumidor, por lo que se hace necesario una reforma en el sistema, a fin de asegurar el acceso a la tutela efectiva y a obtener pronunciamientos fundados en derecho y oportunos. El presente trabajo plantea una modificación a nivel de requisitos de admisibilidad de los procedimientos iniciados de oficio por denuncia de parte, estableciendo como uno de ellos, agotar la búsqueda de solución del problema presentado a través del uso obligatorio de mecanismos alternativos de solución de conflictos. Ya existe una plataforma instalada en Indecopi, que es gratuita, lo que garantiza el acceso a la justicia y no genera ninguna traba. Con la modificación planteada, se logrará reducir la cantidad de procedimientos y los tiempos de tramitación. / Today, the consumer protection is recognized at Constitutional level and is developed through the Consumer Protection and Defense Code. On the other hand, the guarantee of efficient and expeditious mechanisms for the solution of conflicts between suppliers and consumers is recognized as a Public Policy, for which it promotes the use of alternative mechanisms for the solution of conflicts. Thus, the amendment introduced by Legislative Decree No. 1308, also privileges solutions through the use of alternative mechanisms of dispute resolution, recognizing that they can put an end to a procedure until the issuance of the resolution of last instance. All this gives us a favorable panorama for the proposal raised in the present research work. Currently the burden in consumer protection procedures, is increasing, so it is necessary to reform the system in order to ensure access to effective protection and to obtain pronouncements based on law and timely delivered. What the present work proposes is a modification at the level of requirements of admissibility of the procedures initiated by complaint of the party, establishing as one of them to exhaust the search for solution of the problem presented through the obligatory use of alternative mechanisms of solution of conflicts. There is already an installed platform at Indecopi, that is free, which guarantees access to justice and does not create any obstacles. The proposed modification will reduce the number of procedures and therefore the processing times. / Trabajo de investigación

From 1991 to 2002, the Sierra Leone government and the Revolutionary United Front waged war against each other, subjecting Sierra Leone to a civil war. This war devastated the nation and resulted in many human casualties. Although many researchers have investigated the role of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in counterinsurgency and conflict resolution, few studies have been conducted on the specific role of strategic processing tools used by ECOWAS during the Sierra Leone war to sustain a durable peace resolution in the country. Using Galula's conceptualization of counterinsurgency and conflict resolution as a guide, the purpose of this qualitative, I used an explanatory case study to determine the elements that made strategic processing tools effective. Data were collected through open ended interviews with 10 Sierra Leoneans that experienced the conflict, publicly available documents, and mass media reports related to the Sierra Leone civil war. All data were manually coded and then subjected to constant comparative analytic procedures. The key finding of this study was that conflict resolution was successful because intervention by ECOWAS was largely viewed by Sierra Leoneans favorably and legitimate. The ECOWAS use of force was vital for the peace process. However, there were occurrences of human rights violations that were not fully resolved through the procedural mechanisms in place at the time. The positive social change implications stemming from this study includes recommendations to ECOWAS to establish a disciplinary unit to oversee violations of international humanitarian law and other serious abuses by ECOWAS troops. These actions may advance peace among religions, political parties, and ethnic groups in the region.

Since conflict studies became its own independent field, it has developed rapidly. Some argue conflict researchers must demonstrate that while conflict occurs at different social levels (e.g., inter-personal to international), there must be sufficient common attributes to justify its existence as an independent field. This justification requires formal theory based on a multi-disciplinary approach. Since its introduction in 1964, the substantive Dual Concerns Model (DCM) and subsequent iterations, have provided the basis for instruments used to research conflict management, behavior, mode, and style outside the narrow scope of its original sample group of Caucasian male managers within a large American industrial plant. Instruments based on the DCM were used to represent conflict behavior within, between, and across cultures. An emic theory was expanded to etic theory and used in place of formal theory. Therefore, this theoretical dissertation fills this void and develops formal (etic) theory. This researcher used comparative analysis to examine 187 quantitative studies from a variety of disciplines, with a cumulative sample size from these studies of 63,619 individuals. These studies examined conflict resolution behavior individually or with 274 other variables to provide the framework for developing a formal theory. The finding of this research is the development of the Pierre-Louis Conflict Continuum Model (PCCM), which examines behavior through the dimensions of cultural values, as represented by individualism and collectivism, and legitimacy of power and ideology. This research contributes a new theoretical paradigm to the field of conflict studies.

The Afghan Women’s Writing Project (AWWP) emerged in 2009 as a platform through which Afghan women could express their lived experiences and perspectives on a range of culturally relevant issues while retaining their anonymity. The purpose of this research was to understand poetry as a conflict resolution tool that Afghan women are using to be active participants in the social, political and cultural dialogue that is determining their rights. This research focused on three questions: 1) How do Afghan women describe the state of womanhood in Afghanistan? 2) How do Afghan women describe the conflict they experience in their everyday lives? 3) How might poetry and narrative be used to manage the conflict that Afghan women are facing? This research presents a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of one hundred published poems from the AWWP poetry database. Data analysis included open coding, thematic analysis, and the use of van Dijk’s six-step CDA model to evaluate the semantic macrostructures, local meanings, linguistic markers, global and local discourse forms, linguistic realizations, analysis of context, and the researcher’s own interpretive analysis. The findings identify and explain the major themes derived from the study as well as describe how Afghan women feel about womanhood and conflict. The major themes included: child brides/forced marriage, hijab/burqa/niqab, women’s resistance, parents as protectors and/or perpetrators, the power of writing and stress as a result of conflict. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of implications for sustainable norm change using poetry, directions for future research, and recommendations for policy and programming.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the educational matriculation experiences of African American (AA) women in pursuance of postgraduate degree status from the pre-kindergarten to doctoral levels. This study used a transcendental phenomenological approach, guided by the following research questions: 1) What are the elements within academia that define and influence the educational experiences for post-graduate degreed AA women? 2) What (if any) challenges to post-graduate degree attainment, were experienced by the population; what meaning do they find in those experiences? And 3) What are the perceptions of this population regarding how their intersecting identities pertaining to race and gender informed their academic experience? To date, there exist exclusions of the African American feminist perspective from mainstream epistemologies and methodologies, and this study aims to fill this gap in research. The analysis of data illuminated “the concrete rose” as the essence of how this population, through their resilience, navigated their postgraduate matriculation experience. Further, the results of the analysis were elucidated through six major themes regarding participant educational experiences: 1) intersectional feminist standpoint, 2) perceptions of hegemony within academic pursuits, 3) motivational influencers, 4) the perspective of historically black colleges and universities and primarily white institutions, 5) notions of visibility, and 6) mentorship and support. The results of this study provide the field of conflict resolution studies a more robust and inclusive framework for understanding the specific needs and experiences of this population through an interdisciplinary lens. The study also provides recommendations for future research, institutional policy and practice for practitioners working with AA female students.

This study aims to explore children’s perspectives on conflict resolution within their peer groups. Children’s peer groups and cultures are a crucial setting for social and emotional development and can be reflective of broader peer cultures. This is an area of great importance within child studies and has been influenced by Corsaro’s ideas around children’s social worlds (Corsaro, 2009:321). More specifically, this study is built around the following research questions: 1) What do children perceive as positive ways to solve a conflict? 2) What do children perceive as negative ways to solve a conflict? 3) How do children perceive the role of adults in conflict resolution? Previous literature provides an insight into this topic that comes often through the adult lens (Jones, 2020: 479). This study aimed to include direct child participation in research, allowing agency and voice in the research made about them (Corsaro, 2009:321). To address the research questions, a qualitative study with twelve children in their second year of school, around the ages of seven and eight, was conducted. The children were given an opportunity to talk about their perspectives and viewpoints by engaging in discussions, by using arts-based methods and creating visual materials in the forms of mind-maps and lists as are common within Participation Visual Methods (PVM) research.The written data that was derived from the creative methods was analysed using thematic analysis, with the direct observations and visual drawings used to support our interpretations. The main themes that arose from this study can be explained using verbal, non-verbal and ambiguous strategies for resolving conflicts. Further subthemes such as displaying pro-social behaviours, apologising, compromising, and hostile expressions were identified through our data analysis. This study contributes to sociocultural research in child studies. This study grants insight into child-centred research about navigating conflicts as fundamental components of human relations.

Contemporary studies of Peace Journalism have yet to examine how photographs, as visual content captured by print media, fit within the model of Peace Journalism. In this research, a content analysis of press images was conducted using predefined methodology on newspaper coverage of the annual July 12th Drumcree Parades (Marching) in Portadown, Northern Ireland, during the pre-, intra-, and post-peace process that occurred between 1996 and 2000. In most newspapers, the proportions of both violent/aggressive and nonviolent/non-peaceful content were higher in the relatively peaceful period of 2000, as compared to their proportions in at least one of the other ‘violent’ years of 1996 and 1998. No overall trend in content was observed in relation to the level of violence across 1996 to 2000. During this period, media practice in Portadown, Northern Ireland did not support the publication of newspaper commensurate with actual level of violence in the Northern Ireland or the depictions of peace building and the peaceful resolution of conflict. The implications of these findings for the development of ‘Peace Photojournalism’ are explored.

[pt] Os conflitos armados contemporâneos vêm desafiando os estudos de Resolução de Conflitos no que tange aos meios e métodos empregados, dentre os quais a mediação é um dos mais utilizados na contemporaneidade. O presente trabalho discute a necessidade de mudança de paradigma no tocante ao enfoque da mediação internacional. Argumenta-se que, dadas as particularidades dos conflitos armados contemporâneos, envolvendo diversos atores, nacionais e internacionais, e variadas causas raízes, muitas delas originadas do colonialismo e do processo de descolonização, a mediação internacional, implementada, tradicionalmente de forma top-down, em torno das grandes mesas de negociações e envolvendo autoridades e mediadores internacionais, por si só, não se tem mostrado suficiente para a construção da paz sustentável. Neste diapasão, este estudo visa refletir sobre a chamada mediação local como meio alternativo de resolução pacífica de conflitos, principalmente, no contexto de disputas localizadas em Estados de grande fragilidade institucional. Ademais, no estudo de caso, discute-se o conflito na Líbia, país que atravessa uma crise de alcance transnacional e de proporções severas há mais de uma década, nos setores político, econômico-financeiro, social e de segurança, decorrentes de duas guerras civis sucessivas, iniciadas no contexto da Primavera Árabe. A partir do caso estudado, conclui-se que, em conflitos prolongados e complexos, a mediação local pode se constituir como meio mais adequado para iniciar um processo de construção da paz, servindo para fortalecer a mediação internacional de âmbito nacional, cujos acordos só conseguem ser implementados se houver adesão no nível subnacional. / [en] Contemporary armed conflicts have been challenging Conflict Resolution studies regarding the means and methods used, among which mediation is one of the most used in contemporary times. This paper discusses the need for a paradigm shift regarding the approach to international mediation. It is argued that, given the particularities of contemporary armed conflicts, involving various actors, national and international, and various root causes, many of them originating from colonialism and the decolonization process, international mediation, traditionally implemented in a top-down, around large negotiating tables and involving international authorities and mediators, by itself has not proved to be sufficient for the construction of sustainable peace. In this vein, this study aims to reflect on the so-called local mediation as an alternative means of peaceful conflict resolution, especially in the context of disputes located in States with great institutional fragility. In addition, the case study discusses the conflict in Libya, a country that has been going through a crisis of transnational scope and severe proportions for more than a decade, in the political, economic-financial, social and security sectors, resulting from two successive civil wars, initiated in the context of the Arab Spring. Based on the case studied, it is concluded that, in prolonged and complex conflicts, local mediation can be the most appropriate means of initiating a peacebuilding process, serving to strengthen international mediation at the national level, whose agreements can only be implemented if there is buy-in at the subnational level.

This thesis seeks to contribute to the literature exploring the prospects and obstacles to peace processes. The case study is based on the failed peace process between the Republic of Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) during 2009-2015. It offers a conceptual analysis of the changes in interests, attitudes and relationships that led to the emergence of a peace process but also which influenced its collapse. In doing so, the study draws from conflict resolution theories to analyse the case using the five transformers framework: context transformation, structural transformation, actor transformation, issue transformation, and personal and group transformation (Ramsbotham et al. 2005; 2016). The study found that the conflict became tractable not through external interventions or hurting stalemates as classical theories would hold, but through powerful intellectual leadership that moved beyond strict nationalist imaginaries to adopt different post-nationalist frameworks that emphasised solving the Kurdish question non-violently. Little is known about this type of endogenous peace process in the literature. Likewise, the study also found that, contrary to conventional wisdom on hurting stalemates, talks failed when parties reached near power parity following large and rapid shifts in the distribution of power in the region due to war in Syria and Iraq. A substantially empowered PKK emerged, causing great Turkish fears and uncertainty about implications to status quo, as well as PKK overconfidence and disinterest in settlement. Adversaries resumed war in order to weaken each other and gain more from future concessions.