Building peace and preventing the emergence of new and existing conflicts is one of the fundamental objectives of the United Nations, seen as deep down as in the charter of the organization. As the United Nations has existed for some time their peacebuilding framework has changed on several occasions, with the most recent change taking place in 2016. This paper is concerned with how this new United Nations approach to peace from 2016 has changed the way in which the United Nations understands peacebuilding. As this paper is focused on peacebuilding, this study applies the theoretical lenses of Liberal peace theory, critical peacebuilding and Scandinavian peace theory to critically examine the current United Nations approach as well as the previous approach to peacebuilding. The use of the ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach allows for the identification of how the peace frameworks of the United Nations problematizes peacebuilding, the underlying assumptions as well as the effects. From this, it is determined that the new/current United Nations approach to peacebuilding has not significantly changed. Both frameworks are characterized by state-centricity with a focus on the necessity of liberal-democratic values being in place in order for sustainable peace to be achieved. The findings did show that the new approach emphasizes more interaction with local actors in the peace process however this emphasis was underpinned with a focus on peace through the state and not through the local.

Traditionally, war and peace have been approached as incompatible entities; where war and violence are present, peace has been assumed to be absent. Recent studies of peace in conflict have started to undermine this assumption, since expressions of peace and attempts at building peace have been found among individuals and communities entangled in violent conflicts.   This thesis explores peace in war via democratic confederalism, an ideology that is being implemented in northern Syria. An ideational analysis is used to approach the ideology, which is later compared with an analytical framework developed from liberal and critical peacebuilding to explore democratic confederalism’s similarities and deviations in regard to the two theories. Afterwards, the findings are analysed in the context of northern Syria.  The study shows that there are several intersections between aspects of critical peacebuilding and democratic confederalism. Discussed through the war in northern Syria and it is argued that the self-defence part of democratic confederalism has taken a prominent and necessary role, but one that might obscure the aspects of democratic confederalism that are peace-conducive. The research paper concludes that while this might make democratic confederalism as a whole appear less peaceful, it should be understood through the context of war and aspects that contribute to peace should be interpreted as expressions of peace in violent conflict.