Yes / This paper develops a novel approach to understanding North Korea's nuclear policy on the basis of conflict transformation theory. By conceptualizing the situation on the Korean peninsula as a protracted conflict (either between the DPRK and the Republic of Korea or North Korea and the United States), new insights into the nature of the protracted cycle of engagement and conflict with North Korea can be developed. In this context, the role and trajectory of the nuclear program can be analyzed and both the failure of and the need for arms control negotiations understood. The paper shows that the use of conflict transformation theory provides an analytically coherent explanation of North Korean security policy and foreign policy behavior that fits the empirical evidence more closely than alternative approaches. The paper assesses the current policy of "strategic patience" vis-à-vis North Korea and demonstrates how it is based on false assumptions and involves risks that need to be addressed by the United States and the international community. This paper presents a novel approach to analyzing the puzzle of North Korean foreign policy behavior with important implications for understanding the nature of the conflict and possible conditions for its resolution. / This article was originally published in North Korean Review, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2017), by McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

This dissertation examines how conflicts between the Peruvian State and the indigenous Awajún people can be transformed and further escalation prevented by focusing on rights claims. This study analyses the Awajún’s main rights claims, their perspective on their relationship with the Peruvian State including the main causes of conflict and their views on what the key aspects of conflict transformation with the State should be. The research is focused on the perspective of the indigenous people, not only in the light of the research objectives but also because a decolonized approach that gives voice to the indigenous perspective is the most culturally appropriate approach for an outsider researcher to carry out research with indigenous people. In order to ensure a decolonized research design, one-on-one, in-depth interviews were selected for data collection since these allow a maximum input of the participants and provide the kind of detailed and rich information that is required for this study. Findings illustrate that a rights-based conflict transformation approach, which applies the typical aspects of a rights-based approach focusing on the specific collective rights claims of the Awajún as well as the main principles of conflict transformation focusing on improving relationships, offers the best prospects of preventing violent confrontations.

This thesis is a comparative case study which investigates both formal and nonformal peace education initiatives and situates them within the socio-political, cultural, and economic landscape of Cambodia. The research employs a participatory methodology with reflection and learning as key process components. Cambodian youth [ages 11 to 15] are the primary research subjects, and Cambodian youth [ages 18-25] are the co-researchers in this inquiry. Joint cooperation with local non-governmental organisations as the key stakeholders in this research ensure that the outcomes and findings are useful for praxis as well. Based in the ontology and epistemology of critical realism, the research investigates the practice of peace education in Cambodia. It posits the need for transpection as an analytical framework and a pedagogy which comprises retrospection [looking into the past], introspection [looking inward], extrospection [looking outward] and prospection [looking to the future]. The research describes the contextual factors that (dis)enable the practice of peace education and analyses the ways in which peace education contributes to conflict transformation at the personal, relational, structural, and cultural levels. The thesis argues that peace education in Cambodia makes a deeper impression on personal and relational conflict, but that via transformative agency and through the lens of both feminist discourse, can also make a contribution to cultural and structural conflict transformation as well. Peace education is effective insofar as it operates within an enabling environment where contexts align with mechanisms to catalyse positive change. The thesis proposes that critical peace education in Cambodia should be given greater attention and enfolded symbiotically into ongoing peacebuilding initiatives. Lastly, the model of peace education for Cambodia should be locally owned, focussed on modelling, hybrid (i.e. formal and non-formal), and transpective. That is, peace education should include study of the past, deep self-understanding, critical awareness and perspective taking, and futures thinking. / Peace Institute of Cambodia

Justice and reconciliation are both highly complex concepts that are often described as incompatible alternatives in the aftermath of violent conflicts, despite the fact that both are fundamental to peacebuilding in societies divided by the legacies of political violence, oppression and exclusion. This thesis examines the relationship between justice and reconciliation, pursued as essential ingredients of peacebuilding. After advancing an inclusive working conceptual framework in which seemingly competing conceptions regarding justice and reconciliation are reconceived to work compatibly for building peace, the thesis presents the results of an in-depth case study of Rwanda's post-genocide justice and reconciliation endeavour. The thesis focuses on Rwanda's justice and reconciliation efforts and their relationship to the ongoing challenge of reformulating Rwandans' social identities. A field research conducted for this study revealed that issues of victimhood, justice and reconciliation were highly contested among individuals and groups with varied experiences of the country's violent history. Resolving these conflicting narratives so that each Rwandan's narrative/identity is dissociated from the negation of the other's victimhood emerged as a paramount challenge in Rwanda's quest for justice and reconciliation. Rwanda's approach to justice and reconciliation can be seen as an innovative both/and approach that seeks to overcome dichotomous thinking by addressing various justice and reconciliation concerns in compatible ways. However, by limiting its efforts to the issues that arose from crimes committed under the former regimes, the justice and reconciliation endeavour of the Rwandan government fails to reconcile people's conflicting narratives of victimhood, which will be essential to transform the existing racialised and politicised ethnic identities of Rwandan people.

This thesis takes a gender-sensitive approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and asks whether and how Palestinian women’s different formal and informal political activism in ‘peacebuilding’ and ‘resistance’ can make a contribution to positive sustainable social and political change. Taking a bottom-up qualitative approach to conflict research, and deriving data mainly from in-depth interviews, participant observation and textual analyses, I problematise mainstream international conflict resolution and gender development approaches, revealing their mismatch with the Palestinian reality of prolonged occupation and settler colonialism on the ground. I critique in particular two aspects of mainstream gender and conflict approaches: Firstly, the essentialist feminist assertion that women are better ‘peacemakers’ than men due to their (alleged) more peaceful nature, and, secondly, the ‘liberal’ peace argument that dialogue is the best (and only) way to resolve conflict. These two claims are hardly applicable to the Palestinian context, and their implementation through policy programmes can even block genuine political and social change. Through their tendency to trace the roots of conflict in social gender relations and at the level of identity, they tend to give a distorted depoliticised picture of the conflict. Doing so, they risk alienating local constituencies and might even exacerbate social and political fragmentation. My analysis counters such (mostly western-originated) mainstream gender and conflict initiatives by starting from the local. Proposing a contextualised gender-sensitive approach to conflict transformation, which pays attention to intra-party dynamics such as ‘indigenous’ gender constructions and the political culture of resistance, I trace those forms of female political agency that are able to gain societal support and are conducive to sustainable social and political change. Bridging theoretical insights from the fields of conflict resolution and gender theory and questioning some of their widely held assumptions, I hope to contribute to knowledge in both fields.

ABSTRACT The use of the arts as a tool for conflict transformation, or what has been called arts based peacebuilding, is a new and emerging field. Yet, there is sparse empirical evidence on its outcomes. The Nile Project, a musical collaborative from East Africa that brings together musicians from all of the countries that border the Nile River, is aimed at finding a solution to the dire water conflict and crisis in the region. This study aims to explore how their collaborative process of creating and performing music despite their linguistic, cultural, musical, and political differences, can illuminate how music can be used to address conflict. Using a combination of collaborative qualitative and arts-informed research methodologies, original members of the collective as well as the co-founder were interviewed. Observations were also done of the musicians' rehearsals, performances, and classroom visits at a New England University and during a musical residency in Aswan, Egypt. Findings suggest that an outcome of the Nile Project's work is the development of relationships, deeper learning, particularly about other Africans, and that the process of making music with those from diverse musical traditions can act as a way to practice peacebuilding skills: creating unity, while honoring diversity. This study seeks to add to a limited amount of research documenting the arts in peacebuilding suggesting that music might be an effective tool for transforming conflict.

This research develops a new concept for people-to-people contacts, formulates a theoretical model to assess the impact of people-to-people contacts on peacebuilding, and draws theoretical modifications and explanations in the model on the basis of its empirical application on India-Pakistan conflict and Northern Ireland conflict. The new concept of interactive people-to-people contacts (IPPC) is developed and it is differentiated from the similar concepts in peace theory. Then ontological and epistemological foundations of IPPC are determined and the roots of IPPC in peace and conflict theories are traced. To empirically assess the role played by IPPC in building peace, the web approach model is developed from Lederach’s “pyramid” of peacebuilding as formulated in Building Peace (1997) and later improved in The Moral Imagination (2005). The web approach model is applied on Northern Ireland conflict to empirically test the web approach model and make improvements in the model learning from the practice of IPPC in Northern Ireland conflcit. Then web approach model is applied on two selected case studies of PIPFPD and Aman ki Asha to empirically asses the role played by IPPC in building peace between India and Pakistan. The web approach model is used to determine the stage/frame of the web process where IPPC based peacebuilding have reached so far in India-Pakistan conflict. Moreover, theoretical modifications in web approach model are drawn learning from the selected case studies and an attempt is made to find out a way forward for IPPC based peacebuilding in India-Pakistan conflict.

The study focuses on the north and south Sudan conflict and seeks to investigate the continuing threats to a return to war between the two parties since the 2005 Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and after the independence of South Sudan. The study critically analyses the CPA and investigates the dilemmas faced by the two Sudans and examines the conflict resolution/transformation process. This thesis relies on data generated from key informant interviews and archival data as primary sources; complemented by secondary sources of data obtained from books, journals, research documents and relevant literature on the area. The study analyses the background of the north-south Sudan conflict, analysis of the CPA, implications of the negotiation, mediation and the implementation processes of the CPA and the referendum, post-referendum, the post-independence issues and the conflict resolution efforts. These are discussed in order to find the reasons as to why the CPA emerged as it did and its effectiveness. The study uses the concept of the conflict resolution/transformation approaches and their methods (mediation, negotiation and peacebuilding), the Galtung ABC theory and the Liberal peace theory as tools to guide the study in order to measure the data collected from the field. The results of the analysis suggest that history, the mediation and the negotiation process viewed to have been narrow and non-inclusive, the content of the CPA itself, the problems of the previous processes before the referendum, the referendum of Southern Sudan and the Abyei referendum failure provided the basis of the origins of the post-referendum and the post-independence issues. These issues are responsible for the dilemmas faced by the two states and eventually the tensions and the threats to a return to war which exist up to the present. All these issues lie at the heart of the difficulties of the conflict resolution process and the relationship problem of North and South Sudan. However, the 2005 CPA had partial success in that it achieved partial negative peace which in turn led to the separation of north and south Sudan.

This thesis assesses the impact nonviolent protest has on structural conflicts when used by groups of people who are marginalized by repressive socio-economic institutions of society. Conflict Transformation focuses on changing the relationships between oppressive societal institutions and its people into just cooperative relationships through third party processes. Veronique Dudouet’s Contingent Conflict Transformation model focuses on the efforts of ‘ordinary people’ to address the destructive effects of structural violence. This model will be applied to a case study where two groups of women from the Niger Delta executed nonviolent campaigns against the Chevron oil company. The case study methodology is employed to analyze data to support the model’s confidence to effect change as well as offer considerations for improvement. The women of this study moved from a position of disenfranchisement to a position of empowerment when they negotiated an Agreement that reflected their demands in light of Chevron’s broken promises.

This thesis assesses the impact nonviolent protest has on structural conflicts when used by groups of people who are marginalized by repressive socio-economic institutions of society. Conflict Transformation focuses on changing the relationships between oppressive societal institutions and its people into just cooperative relationships through third party processes. Veronique Dudouet’s Contingent Conflict Transformation model focuses on the efforts of ‘ordinary people’ to address the destructive effects of structural violence. This model will be applied to a case study where two groups of women from the Niger Delta executed nonviolent campaigns against the Chevron oil company. The case study methodology is employed to analyze data to support the model’s confidence to effect change as well as offer considerations for improvement. The women of this study moved from a position of disenfranchisement to a position of empowerment when they negotiated an Agreement that reflected their demands in light of Chevron’s broken promises.