The image of a kufiyah-clad Palestinian teenage boy brandishing a stone laden slingshot, facing-off against an Israeli tank, has long pervaded images of Palestinian resistance around the globe. Notwithstanding the disparity in might, and the legitimate discussion around whether wielding a slingshot when faced by a tank should indeed be considered armed resistance in the first place, this dissertation explores the Orientalist shaping of Palestinian resistance and its repercussions for Palestinian men engaged in resistance. In the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, at an unprecedented rate, international aid flowed into Palestine under the pretexts of peacebuilding and statebuilding. Deeply embedded within the liberal peace paradigm, some of this funding went towards interventions targeting Palestinian civil society and the promotion of 'nonviolence'. We know from other examples around the world, donor interventions targeting the political, economic, and social spheres of recipient countries have profound impacts outside of their stated goals. And while this has been noted by scholars in Palestine and beyond, what remains underexplored is the way that these interventions, and the embedded frameworks, discourses, and ideologies, have shaped both the unarmed resistance movement within Palestine, and more specifically, the individual social and cultural lives of those engaged in resistance. There is no way to explore, debate, or even talk about armed and unarmed resistance without first asking how the terms are defined and positioned within a particular framework. Here I find Orientalism, critical feminist theory, and critical peacebuilding literature useful perspectives from which to survey the shifting terrain of Palestinian unarmed resistance in the post-Oslo era and the subsequent shaping of male identity within the resistance movement. This dissertation answers the calls of post-colonial academics for the need to engage in resistance research that aims to understand resistance from the perspective of those who are resisting. At the same time, this dissertation challenges straightjacketed links between representation and domination by expanding our understanding of the role of Orientalist narratives in the Palestinian resistance movement. It argues that Palestinian men engaged in resistance are not just screens on which donors and CSOs/NGOs project their narratives of violent Arabs in need of civilizing (through the adoption of nonviolence). Rather, Palestinians too represent themselves in different ways, conceiving a gendered sense of self in social, public and political spaces. Such contested practices of representation produce cracks and dislocations in understandings of identity, agency, structure, and power in conflict contexts.

The civil war in Mali and the perception of threat posed by Islamist Jihadists and Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists to international peace and security led to the French military intervention in January 2013 to end the terrorist take-over of Mali, prevent the collapse of the state and spread of insecurity and instability in the conflict-prone and fragile regions of West Africa and the Sahel as well as protect France’s strategic national interests. But what were the real reasons for France’s pre-emptive military intervention in Mali and what does the French and its allied UN, ECOWAS, African Union conflict stabilisation intervention say about donor-driven peacebuilding in Africa, often framed as Liberal peacebuilding intervention? / It will be published by Rienner later this year. David Francis said he would let us know when it is. - sm 05/01/2017 Emailed the publisher for permission 21/12/2016. 22/12/2016 - Lynne Rienner say they're not publishing this book!!! - emailed D Francis! - sm © 2017 Publishers. Reproduced with permission from the publisher. / The full text may be made available after publication and on receipt of permission from the publisher.

Liberal peacebuilding, the means by which transition societies can be reconfigured and reconstructed to bring about lasting peace, focussed on chieftaincy reform and decentralization as part of the peacebuilding package in Sierra Leone. The main focus of this research is to explore the efficacy of these structures as durable peacebuilding mechanisms in a transition society like Sierra Leone. The core argument is that liberal peacebuilding based on the reform of chieftaincy and decentralisation has failed to deliver effective peacebuilding mechanisms in Sierra Leone. Chieftaincy reform should have taken into consideration the specific context of the nature of chieftaincy in the country which in most cases transcends issues of leadership to one of collective identity. The decentralisation process is also fraught with a host of problems ranging from tension between the councils and the chiefs on the one hand, to the unwillingness on the part of central government to cede some of its powers to the local government. The control of central government over the councils and the decentralisation process is still very visible. The relevance of this research is that it enhances our understanding of key debates and policy intervention practices on post-war peacebuilding and state reconstruction in transition societies. It also contributes to the existing literature on post-conflict peacebuilding by positing that there is a huge challenge to the Liberal Peace paradigm in bringing about peace in war-torn societies. / Commonwealth Commission

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.

2 Abstract Thi di er a ion e plore he e of coercion in he EU liberal peaceb ilding frame ork in Palestine. Palestine has a long- anding hi or of foreign ac or in ol emen . Since he 1993 O lo Accord , he EU peaceb ilding role a one of Pale ine main financial donors has increased. There is scholarly disagreement and a lack of understanding on the role of coercion in peacebuilding practices. While scholars argue that coercion is a core element for human organisations, others do not recognise the negative impact of coercion in peacebuilding when this does not entail the use of force. Furthermore, the peacebuilding scholarship offers little to no conceptualisation of coercion. Therefore, this dissertation explores how coercion manifests in peacebuilding practices, looking at the case of the EU liberal peacebuilding activities in Palestine. In doing so, the research emphasises on how local Palestinian recipients perceive coercion. The current liberal approach of the EU is built upon the economic dependency of Palestinians, which essentially constitutes a coercive structure. The asymmetric power relations between different actors in the region allows space for the contestation of coercion. This dissertation argues that coercion in this context goes beyond its traditional understanding, and therefore requires...

What conditions lead to confidence among civil war combatants that they will not face accountability for perpetrating sexual violence? This study investigates the causes of impunity for sexual violence among armed actors. It develops a theoretical framework which identifies three explanations for armed group impunity for sexual violence, namely (1) flawed prohibitions inside an armed group; (2) negligent enforcement by its authorities; and (3) pardons in the form of amnesties during the peace process. Adopting a two-pronged approach, the study first explores the associations between amnesties arising from concluding peace agreements and post-settlement levels of sexual violence in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and South Africa. A small-scale, events-based dataset of sexual violence by governments and rebel groups in the first three years after war was constructed. The second and main part of the study is a comparison between two rebel groups in Burundi’s civil war (1994-2008), CNDD-FDD (National Council for the Defence of Democracy-Forces for the Defence of Democracy) and Palipehutu-FNL (Palipehutu-Forces for National Liberation) and their practices of prohibition and punishment of wartime sexual violence, taking into account also the possible influence of amnesties. Based on original data from 19 focus groups of ex-combatants from these rebel organisations, it is found that flawed prohibitions and negligent authorities are the main explanations for armed group impunity. The findings do not support amnesties as a cause of armed group impunity for sexual violence. Moreover, additional findings suggest that accountability for sexual violence is triggered by dependency on civilian support, while impunity is facilitated by an armed group’s ability to secure recruits, material and other resources without the help of local communities.

A growing literature on hybrid peace governance has showed the importance of taking into account the interactive nature of peacebuilding. However, this literature largely remains imprecise about how local-international interactions affect outcomes, and the hybrid turn has not produced much comparative empirical evidence. This study attempts to contribute to filling this research gap by developing a causal explanation for why micro-level local-international interactions produce within-country variations in post-war democratization. Based on scholarship on strategic bargaining, local ownership and legitimacy, it is hypothesized that a higher prevalence of legitimate local-international partnerships leads to higher adherence to good governance principles. The study uses key informant interviews and survey data to conduct a qualitative most-similar case study at the sub-national level. From the analysis of three municipalities in Kosovo, some support for the hypothesis is generated. The results show that with increased capacity from international support and legitimacy derived from closeness to citizens, local non-political actors can put pressure on political actors to reform. However, more studies are needed to refine the theory and test its applicability in other contexts.

Even if the messiness of peacebuilding has been recognized for some time, peacebuilding has still been viewed as quite linear, meaning there’s a transition from war to peace and that peacebuilding is a phase. Recently, other voices have been raised claiming we need a paradigm shift and to stop seeing peacebuilding as linear and instead see it as a never-ending constantly adapting practice. The question then arises, if it is possible to distinguish that peacebuilding connected to a specific conflict ends at some point and if society adapts to conduct peacebuilding for new tensions within society. That is what this thesis aims to find out, and it does so by mapping the activities of the civil society in a post-conflict country, as civil society constitutes an excellent indicator of what kind of peacebuilding is being done. The case studied is El Salvador, which ended a 12-year-long civil war with a peace agreement in 1992. The activities are mapped with the help of a framework for analyzing civil society peacebuilding. The study concludes that much of the peacebuilding activities connected to the civil war seem to have ended, except for when it comes to the rights of people who became disabled by the civil war, as well as trauma treatment activities addressing trauma from the civil war. Civil society also shows certain adaptation to the gang violence, by addressing it with trauma treatment activities and activities aiming at building a culture of peace.

This thesis critiques liberal peacebuilding in Africa, with a particular focus on Sierra Leone. In particular, it examines the interface between the liberal peace and the “local”, the forms of agency that various local actors are expressing in response to the liberal peace and the hybrid forms of peace that are emerging in Sierra Leone. The thesis is built from an emerging critical literature that has argued for the need to shift from merely criticising liberal peacebuilding to examining local and contextual responses to it. Such contextualisation is crucial mainly because it helps us to develop a better understanding of the complex dynamics on the ground. The aim of this thesis is not to provide a new theory but to attempt to use the emerging insights from the critical scholarship through adopting the concept of hybridity in order to gain an understanding of the forms of peace that are emerging in post-conflict zones in Africa. This has not been comprehensively addressed in the context of post-conflict societies in Africa. Yet, much contemporary peace support operations are taking place in these societies that are characterised by multiple sources of legitimacy, authority and sovereignty. The thesis shows that in Sierra Leone local actors – from state elites to chiefs to civil society to ordinary people on the “margins of the state” – are not passive recipients of the liberal peace. It sheds new light on how hybridity can be created “from below” as citizens do not engage in outright resistance, but express various forms of agency including partial acceptance and internalisation of some elements of the liberal peace that they find useful to them; and use them to make demands for reforms against state elites who they do not trust and often criticise for their pre-occupation with political survival and consolidation of power. Further, it notes that in Sierra Leone a “post-liberal peace” that is locally-oriented might emerge on the “margins of the state” where culture, custom and tradition are predominant, and where neo-traditional civil society organisations act as vehicles for both the liberal peace and customary peacebuilding while allowing locals to lead the peacebuilding process. In Sierra Leone, there are also peace processes that are based on custom that are operating in parallel to the liberal peace, particularly in remote parts of the country.