Latin American politics in recent years has caused a stir worldwide. Amid social uprisings, power fluctuations between opposing political thoughts, cases of corruption, and human rights violations, one of the cases that stands out the most in the region is the Colombian one. Colombia is a country that has experienced an internal conflict for more than 50 years, where numerous human rights violations have been perpetrated, by different actors within the war. This conflict has created not an internal bilateral war between guerrillas and the government but a multilateral one where paramilitary groups, drug trafficking gangs, and criminal gangs attack the government and each other, contributing negatively to the conflict within the country.The Colombian government managed to sign a peace agreement with the largest guerrilla group in the country (FARC-EP) to end the country's armed conflict, and for the peace agreements to serve as an example for possible dialogues with other armed groups outside the law so that peace involves everyone in Colombia. However, the results afterward are not the most favorable. Human rights violations persist, and in some specific cases, they have increased from what was reported before the signing of the treaty. We will analyze what these internal and external factors are to the conflict that has generated and still generate the violation of human rights in Colombia, despite having signed a peace agreement and having sold it to the world as the most important political achievement in its history, but which in practice is overshadowed by the continuous crimes that continue to be committed in this country.

On Oct. 2, 2016, against all predictions, Colombian voters rejected a proposed peace deal with FARC rebels that would have marked the end of a 50-year-old internal conflict. Similar to what happened after the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump's election in the United States that same year, the unexpected results of the Colombian peace referendum resulted in a wave of media criticism. This study examines this body of criticism in the Colombian case through qualitative, critical thematic analysis of published media criticism that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the vote and semi-directed interviews with Colombian journalists who personally covered the referendum. The findings show that a metajournalistic discourse of media failure materialized following the vote, with potential implications for the local journalistic culture. Three dimensions are identified in the journalists' responses to this discourse. They acknowledge that errors and poor journalistic habits were present in the vote's coverage; they push back by identifying external pressures to journalism that caused systemic media failures; and they speak with ambivalence about persisting journalistic practices and norms, showing willingness to revisit some of them in their own practice. A discussion based on the findings links theoretical scholarship on the Brexit and Trump's cases to the Colombian vote by showing that the experience of covering the referendum, and the ensuing criticism that the media sustained, opened the door for journalists to engage in a debate over the merits of objectivity, just like the two other cases did in their respective contexts. A situated analysis that takes into account the local context of Colombia's journalistic culture proposes new angles to this debate. It suggests that internal changes in that culture, such as the demise of an organization that used to champion peace activism in journalism, has resulted in changes to how journalists understand and apply the objectivity norm when covering matters of conflict and peace. This raises the question of whether material conditions in any given journalistic context may influence how journalists understand and apply objectivity, thus contributing new insights to the ongoing debate on the merits of this norm not just in the Colombian context but globally as well.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the influence of the settlements on the peace process. It views the settlements as one of the problematic points of the permanent status. It also tries to outline the possibilities of future development of this problem regarding present situation. First part of the thesis presents historic moments that are important for this issue. The second part offers different views of the structure of settlements in the West Bank. The third part deals with the legal dimension of settlements, local administration, and the land-seizure methods. The fourth part is about political representation of the settlers, and also about anti-settler movements. The last part defines settlements as an obstacle in the peace process, and deals with perspectives of future disengagement possibilities.

Thesis advisor: Seth Jacobs / The Middle East was a tense place in 1976. In the past thirty years, Israel had fought four wars with its neighbors. President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger helped negotiate three partial settlements, two between Egypt and Israel and one between Syria and Egypt. But Israel maintained control of most of the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and most of the Sinai when Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976. One of his first actions as president was to embark on a course to attempt to bring peace to the region. He began with a plan for a comprehensive settlement between Israel and all its neighbors, but left office after only achieving a single peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. This thesis will examine the successes and failures of Carter’s foreign policy to bring peace to the Middle East. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: History Honors Program. / Discipline: History.

Já há mais de cinquenta anos, a Colômbia vem sendo palco de uma persistente luta armada. Porém, só no início dos anos 1980 foram iniciados processos de paz com as guerrilhas para tentar pôr fim ao conflito. Esta dissertação tem como objetivo comparar dois desses processos: o primeiro, durante o governo de Belisario Betancur (1982-1986); o segundo, no governo posterior de Virgilio Barco (1986-1990). Partindo de uma revisão da literatura sobre o tema, tentamos apontar para as limitações da mesma e, a partir disso, propor uma interpretação alternativa para o estudo das negociações. O problema central, portanto, é entender porque esses dois governos decidiram optar pela solução política do conflito em vez da solução militar. Para tanto, parte-se da análise dos principais regimes políticos na Colômbia durante o século XX, assim como do período conhecido como La Violencia e do surgimento das primeiras guerrilhas revolucionarias. Trata-se de entender a crise política dos anos 1980, cuja solução implicou recuperar o monopólio estatal da violência, desmobilizar as guerrilhas e possibilitar sua transformação em partidos políticos e sua participação em contendas eleitorais. O pano de fundo do processo é o desmonte da Frente Nacional e o início da abertura democrática do regime político. Ao inscrever as negociações em um contexto mais amplo de democratização e disputa política, é possível identificar mudanças do regime, oferecendo, com efeito, uma análise alternativa para os estudos acerca dos processos de paz. / Armed struggle in Colombia has existed for more than fifty years but it was only at the beginning of the 1980s when, in an attempt to end the conflict, peace negotiations with guerrillas were initiated. The goal of this dissertation is to compare two of those peace processes: the first, held under President Belisario Betancur\'s Administration (1982-1986), and the second one, under President Virgilio Barcos Administration (1986-1990). Upon reviewing existing literature on this subject, we have tried to highlight their limitations and, consequently, to propose an alternative interpretation for the study of peace negotiations. The key issue is then to understand why both Administrations chose a political solution to the conflict rather than a military one. Thus, the starting point is an analysis of the main political regimes in Colombia during the 20th century, as well as of the period of La Violencia and of the emergence of the first revolutionary guerrilla groups. The matter is to understand the political crisis of the 1980s, the solution of which meant recovering the state monopoly of violence, demobilizing the guerrillas and enabling their transformation into political parties and participation in competitive elections. The background of such process is the dismantling of the political regime known as Frente Nacional (National Front) and the beginning of the so-called democratic opening. By embedding the negotiations in such a broader context of democratization and political confrontation, it is possible to identify the regimes changes and alterations, thus providing an alternative reading for the study of peace processes.

Já há mais de cinquenta anos, a Colômbia vem sendo palco de uma persistente luta armada. Porém, só no início dos anos 1980 foram iniciados processos de paz com as guerrilhas para tentar pôr fim ao conflito. Esta dissertação tem como objetivo comparar dois desses processos: o primeiro, durante o governo de Belisario Betancur (1982-1986); o segundo, no governo posterior de Virgilio Barco (1986-1990). Partindo de uma revisão da literatura sobre o tema, tentamos apontar para as limitações da mesma e, a partir disso, propor uma interpretação alternativa para o estudo das negociações. O problema central, portanto, é entender porque esses dois governos decidiram optar pela solução política do conflito em vez da solução militar. Para tanto, parte-se da análise dos principais regimes políticos na Colômbia durante o século XX, assim como do período conhecido como La Violencia e do surgimento das primeiras guerrilhas revolucionarias. Trata-se de entender a crise política dos anos 1980, cuja solução implicou recuperar o monopólio estatal da violência, desmobilizar as guerrilhas e possibilitar sua transformação em partidos políticos e sua participação em contendas eleitorais. O pano de fundo do processo é o desmonte da Frente Nacional e o início da abertura democrática do regime político. Ao inscrever as negociações em um contexto mais amplo de democratização e disputa política, é possível identificar mudanças do regime, oferecendo, com efeito, uma análise alternativa para os estudos acerca dos processos de paz. / Armed struggle in Colombia has existed for more than fifty years but it was only at the beginning of the 1980s when, in an attempt to end the conflict, peace negotiations with guerrillas were initiated. The goal of this dissertation is to compare two of those peace processes: the first, held under President Belisario Betancur\'s Administration (1982-1986), and the second one, under President Virgilio Barcos Administration (1986-1990). Upon reviewing existing literature on this subject, we have tried to highlight their limitations and, consequently, to propose an alternative interpretation for the study of peace negotiations. The key issue is then to understand why both Administrations chose a political solution to the conflict rather than a military one. Thus, the starting point is an analysis of the main political regimes in Colombia during the 20th century, as well as of the period of La Violencia and of the emergence of the first revolutionary guerrilla groups. The matter is to understand the political crisis of the 1980s, the solution of which meant recovering the state monopoly of violence, demobilizing the guerrillas and enabling their transformation into political parties and participation in competitive elections. The background of such process is the dismantling of the political regime known as Frente Nacional (National Front) and the beginning of the so-called democratic opening. By embedding the negotiations in such a broader context of democratization and political confrontation, it is possible to identify the regimes changes and alterations, thus providing an alternative reading for the study of peace processes.

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This thesis explores the historical imaginations exhibited by the key political architects of the Northern Ireland Peace Process: Gerry Adams, John Hume and David Trimble. It compares and contrasts ways in which each has engaged the ideological resource of history throughout their respective biographies, exploring the various visions of history, both Irish and otherwise, that have intrigued them, and the environments and experiences that moulded their view of the past. Exploiting a wide range of archival sources, along with original interviews and conversations with the ‘peacemakers’ themselves, it considers how Adams, Hume and Trimble learnt about history; how they subsequently imagined and wrote about it, and how they ultimately applied it within their influential political thinking. It is a study of the relationship between historical and political imagination, delivering fresh and revealing intellectual profiles of the ‘peacemakers’. Significantly, it demonstrates how ideas and visions of history, commonly perceived as somehow to blame for conflict in Northern Ireland, were put to positive use by Adams, Hume and Trimble. It therefore considers how visions of history contributed to the ideological evolution of peace and political stability on the island.

Wasser ist rar im Nahen Osten. Die knappe Ressource wird immer häufiger zum Gegenstand politischer Konflikte in der ohnehin instabilen Region. Der Konflikt zwischen Israel und Palästina gilt als eines der gravierendsten Beispiele für diese Entwicklung: Wasser als umkämpftes Menschenrecht, Wasser als strategisches Mittel der Besetzungspolitik und Wasser als Gegenstand langwieriger Verhandlungen. Der Wasserkonflikt ist so alt wie der Nahostkonflikt selbst. Sogar mit Beginn des Oslo-Prozesses 1993 hat es weder einen grundlegenden Wandel im Wasserkonflikt, noch in der Aussicht auf Veränderung der Wasserknappheit gegeben. Immerhin können die Palästinenser in der momentanen Situation ihre eigene Wasserversorgung dort selbst verwalten, wo es ihnen laut der Übereinkünfte erlaubt ist. Jedoch ist diese Freiheit eine sehr begrenzte und eine endgültige Klärung dieses Streitpunktes wurde, zusammen mit Jerusalem, den Flüchtlingen, den Siedlungen und der Staatsbildung auf die Endstatusverhandlungen verschoben. Chadi Bahouth, Absolvent des Otto-Suhr-Instituts der Freien Universität Berlin, untersucht in seiner Doktorarbeit die Gründe für die ungelöste Wasserfrage. Er analysiert die historische und rechtliche Chronologie des Konfliktes, bietet Lösungsvorschläge für die Wasserkrise an und erklärt, warum die Region dennoch für Generationen nicht zur Ruhe kommen wird. / Water is rare at the Middle East and becomes more and more a matter of political conflicts in the already instable region. The conflict between Israel and Palestine is a serious noticeable example of this development: water as a hard-fought human right, water as a strategic mean of the politics of occupation and water as a matter of protracted negotiations. The battles for water are as old as the Middle East conflict itself. Even with the beginning of the Oslo-Process in 1993 there has not been a fundamental change containing the water conflict. After all, the Palestinians in the actual situation can administrate their own water supply, where they are allowed to concern the accords. But this freedom is strictly confined and a clarification of the controversial subject, together with Jerusalem, the refugees, the settlements and the building of the state were adjusted to the negotiations of the permanent status. Chadi Bahouth, alumnus of the Otto-Suhr-Institute (Free University Berlin), inspects in his doctoral thesis the reasons for the unsolved water politics. He analyses the historical and judicial chronology of the conflict, offers proposals for solution and explains, why the region will not be steadied for generations, nevertheless.

This dissertation explores the problem of violent ethnic conflict in ethnically polarized developing countries using the concept of social capital. Ethnically polarized developing countries typically have high levels of intra-ethnic social capital (social capital existing within groups) but low levels of inter-ethnic social capital (social capital existing between groups). Violent conflict can be averted by cultivating higher levels of inter-ethnic social capital. High levels of inter-ethnic social capital create incentives for elites to adopt moderate strategies. A civic compact emerges when the general population internalizes the norms of inter-ethnic social capital (the rule of law; the right to participation; and the right to continued physical and cultural existence). The civic compact is associated with a general expectation that elites will not pursue extra-institutional strategies such as violence to advance their interests. Peace processes that originate in “hurting stalemates” afford fragile opportunities to begin to cultivate inter-ethnic social capital. At such moments, elite incentive structures align in such a way as to overcome barriers to reform associated with path dependence. The cultivation of inter-ethnic social capital is initiated by integrating the norms of inter-ethnic social capital into the structure of the peace process, although eventually state institutions (which must incorporate these norms into their design) will also re-enforce these norms. Elites begin to internalize the norms of inter-ethnic social capital by repeatedly engaging with each other during the peace process in a manner that actualizes these norms into their experiences. I explore how the norms of inter-ethnic social capital can be integrated meaningfully into the peace process so that elites begin to absorb these norms and so that the institutions that emerge from the process are perceived to be legitimate. Inter-ethnic social capital is developed among the masses primarily through the interactions that the masses have with state institutions. The peace process must focus on rehabilitating the relationship between the masses and the state. This dissertation assesses how this relationship may be rehabilitated and how the norms of inter-ethnic social capital can be integrated into the process of rehabilitating this relationship so that the masses can begin to internalize these norms.