Peace and conflict studies arose as a response to the human experience of violence, with an intention towards finding possibilities for nonviolent ways of relating. These possibilities, however, tend to be preoccupied with social conflict, reconciliation, and recovery as taking place solely within the realm of human beings, thereby creating an ontology that renders nature silent. This thesis asks why it is so difficult to attend to natural contexts and the more-than-human world in peace and conflict studies. This research suggests that the shift in experience that comes through connection with nature opens possibilities for peacebuilding and recovery from conflict. Thus, while it explores responses to experiences of violence, this thesis also works to articulate an understanding of how conflict and peacebuilding take place within a shared, interconnected and interdependent global ecosystem. The core of this inquiry is experience-centred narrative research within the phenomenological interpretive framework provided by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This research explores the personal experience stories of veterans suffering from stress and post-traumatic distress from their military training and combat exposure. All of the veterans regard their personal recovery from stress and traumatic experiences as intimately tied to their nature experiences. These experiences are further illuminated by supporting interviews, personal narrative interludes, other stories from the edges of violence, and theories and praxis in ecology, ecopsychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Through exploring themes of sensory experience, safety, sense of purpose, relationships, basic needs, and regained humanity, this research culminates in the remembrance that as human beings, we are nature, and the insight that it is our (human) nature that impels and enables us to reach out and relate with others and with the more-than-human world. This central insight holds profound implications for peace and conflict studies, which focuses on peacebuilding through recognition of common humanity and conflict transformation through changed relationships. The thesis concludes by exploring possibilities and implications for bringing nature to consciousness in peace and conflict studies and for revising theoretical and practical frameworks to re-embed peace and conflict studies in the everyday world—the world beyond the boardroom or negotiating table, and the world that sustains all life on earth.

Nowhere in the world is the demand for peace more prominent and challenging than in Africa. From state collapse and anarchy in Somalia to protracted wars and rampant corruption in the Congo; from bloody civil wars and extreme poverty in Sierra Leone to humanitarian crisis and authoritarianism in Sudan, the continent is the focus of growing political and media attention. This book presents the first comprehensive overview of conflict and peace across the continent. Bringing together a range of leading academics from Africa and beyond, "Peace and Conflict in Africa" is an ideal introduction to key themes of conflict resolution, peacebuilding, security and development. The book's stress on the importance of indigenous Africa approaches to creating peace makes it an innovative and exciting intervention in the field.

This book focuses on the use of small arms in violence and attempts by the state to govern the use and acquisition of these weapons. It is likely that hundreds of thousands of people are killed every year as a result of armed violence ¿ in contexts ranging from war zones to domestic violence. This edited volume examines why these deaths occur, the role of guns and other weapons, and how governance can be used to reduce and prevent those deaths. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology through economics to peace and security studies, the book¿s main concern throughout is that of human security ¿ the causes and means of prevention of armed violence. The first part of the book concerns warfare, the second armed violence and crime, and the last governance of arms and their (mis)-use. The concluding chapter builds on the contributors¿ key findings and suggests priorities for future research, with the aim of forming a coherent narrative which examines what we know, why armed violence occurs, and what can be done to reduce it.

Security Sector Reform (SSR) has been established as a powerful tool in achieving sustainable peace in post-conflict countries, a belief which has strengthened since the events of September 11th 2001, and the subsequent war on terror which has seen both the UK and US heavily involved in peacebuilding operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. However there is a concern that following these experiences, SSR has become little more than a process of building the military capacity of recipient countries in order to meet the immediate security needs of donor states. If this is true, then it could be interpreted as a regression in security thinking, where policy makers are focusing once again on state-centric notions of security as opposed to a new security thinking which considers the human security of all. This Master thesis seeks to investigate the current security thinking behind the United Kingdom’s policies with regard to assisting foreign states in their attempts at Security Sector Reform. Research, in the form of a qualitative content analysis within a case study, was conducted in order to gain an understanding of the UK’s overall assistance strategy in a real world context by identifying specific actions carried out by the UK as part of their involvement in the new Libyan Governments SSR process. These findings were then compared to an internationally recognised standard built on a holistic and long-term understanding of SSR in an analytical process in order to make interpretations and draw conclusions. In conclusion, the UK’s assistance strategy can be considered holistic and long-term; centred on building strategic influence within the new Libyan Governments security apparatus in order to effectively advocate the implementation of democratic reform and a human rights based approach to future SSR. However, that the UK is actively providing arms to Libya, despite the concerns of potentially fuelling conflict, leaves one to question how far new security thinking has really permeated British policy making.

This thesis examines the role of local civil society organisations (CSOs) in representing and addressing local needs in hybridized peacebuilding processes in South Kivu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). To do so it examines how local CSOs contribute to peacebuilding efforts, as well as who and what influence those contributions. Further, it considers the potential reach of such interventions at the community, provincial and national levels. The research for this thesis examines three locally founded and operated civil society organisations in Bukavu, South Kivu, whose efforts directly respond to known local causes of conflict in the region. Its findings demonstrate how they translate the needs and knowledge of community-level actors to external and international partners, from whom they receive funding and knowledge that support their ability to deliver peacebuilding projects that respond to those community-level needs. While their external international partners were found to maintain material power in relation to these peacebuilding interventions, the local CSOs were shown to hold significant discursive power in this role of translators and intermediaries in these processes. These findings challenge homogenous constructions of the local presented by post-liberal peacebuilding literature. They recognize the diversity of the local including individuals or groups who have been directly impacted by an ongoing violent conflict in a fixed geographical location whose experiences of war are shaped by their identities, and who share long-term interests in potential peace. Understanding the local in this way acknowledges a spectrum of actors contributing to peacebuilding in South Kivu and invites a reconsideration of binary constructions of hybridity. Acknowledging the important role that civil society and other intermediaries play in peacebuilding offers a foundation of understanding hybridity as a process of translation rather than shock.

Previous research shows that there is a demand of enhancing our understanding about the local actor as a mechanism for peacebuilding, suggesting a need for further investigation about the phenomena amid the growing complexity and decentralization of scenes in conflict. The research in this study draws together empirical data on an informal local peace committee (LPC) conducted in Laikipia, northern Kenya; a county which have experienced a multitude of conflict dynamics recently involving state and non-state actors, to know more about their role as local peacebuilders. The case is analyzed through the analytical framework of Peace Formation that have been constructed via feasible ‘post-liberal peace’ components emphasizing local agency in relation to their socio-political environment in order to maintain sustainable processes of peace on the ground. Findings shows that the informal LPC have filled a conflict management and governance vacuum by emerging; and resting on; traditional structures and critical social networks, while at the same time adjusting its services to new landscapes of conflict through illiberal practices, in turn providing explanatory power to the conditions set forward by the analytical framework. Though, findings also reveal that the informal LPC faces several challenges enforced coercively through security forces, political interests by the Kenyan Government, and even the UN-backed peace infrastructure itself. Consequently, the informal LPC expressed retaliation through violence and became accordingly an actor that enforced cycles of conflict on several fronts, instead of just working for peace. Thus, the role of the local actor as a mechanism for peacebuilding remains uncertain in this research, due to the articulation of both peace and conflict activities. In this, a new concept is briefly highlighted for the reader that seeks to move beyond static views of locality, termed ‘grey peacebuilding’.

Toward the end of the Troubles, the notion of an Ulster-Scots ethnicity, culture, and language began to be pursued by certain unionists and loyalists more desirous of ‘something more racy of the soil’ (Dowling 2007:54). Peace-building in Northern Ireland had undergone something of a cultural turn: the armed struggle over constitutional and civil rights questions began in the eighties to be ‘ethnically framed’ (Brubaker 2004:166). With cultural identity politically potent, the conception of an Ulster-Scots ethnic group began to gain traction with a tiny but influential subsection of unionists and loyalists. Since the nineties, this movement has gained considerable ground. This thesis represents an intersectional investigation of the inclusion of Ulster-Scots education into schools in Northern Ireland. I contend that Ulster-Scots studies represents an ethnicisation of the conception of a discrete Protestant politico-religious “community” within Northern Ireland, holding considerable potential for the deepening of senses of intercommunal differentiation. Rather than presenting the potential for the deconstruction of ideas of difference, such a pedagogy of reifies, perpetuates, (re)constructs and even deepens such ideas of difference by grounding notions of difference in ethno-cultural and genealogical bases. Ulster-Scots is often described as a means of waging cultural war in post-conflict Northern Ireland (Mac Póilin 1999). Contrariwise, I contend that it represents neither the uncritical, sectarian, loyalist pedagogy of its critics nor the pragmatic and innocuous solution to a problem of durable collective identities of its protagonists. Rather, Ulster-Scots education is embedded in the politics of consociational peace. The logic of consociationalism explicitly entails the maintenance of stark boundaries of ethnic difference. This research does not merely critique of Ulster-Scots pedagogy, but calls into question the whole consociational logic in which it, and the Northern Irish peace process in general, has been embedded.

Peacebuilding projects continue to fall short in reaching their full potential. In order to find more effective approaches to ending cycles of violence locally driven peacebuilding projects are become increasingly popular. Despite the growing practical interest towards this approach, very little is known about the conditions around how to ensure local peacebuilders have what they need for this to occur, and in particular for domestic women peacebuilders. Research is showing in order to build durable peace women are a vital group to meaningfully include, however, they continue to be marginalized, left out all together and or given little agency in  peacebuilding work. This thesis contributes to this understudied field by exploring how partnership structures between international peacebuilding actors (IPAs) and domestic women peacebuilders (DWPBs) can affect the level of agency a DWPB has to develop and implement projects that will address most with her local conflict and cultural needs. I conduct a case study analysis of two individual DWPBs, in order to test a theoretical argument linking more equitable partnership structure between IPAs and DWPBs with a DWPBs higher level of agency. The empirical finding give support to the hypotheses tested, as the structure of relationships appears to affect the level of agency a DWPB does have when implementing a peacebuilding project. However, the empirical analysis also points towards other factors that potentially can possibly influence a DWPB’s level of agency.

Referred to as a graveyard for foreign aid and simultaneously a great example for progress in terms of implementing the New Deal for Engagements in Fragile States, Somalia is recovering from a protracted war, multi-dimensional fragility and deep mistrust. This research analyses how international actors contribute to peace, state and trust building in the Somali region by implementing the New Deal TRUST principles on a national level and by engaging in the peacebuilding process in Galkacyo, Central Somalia on a local level. Through a qualitative approach and case study design, the research relies on data collected through qualitative content analyses of reports, official documents and evaluations as well as data collected through key informant interviews. Informants involve persons working for the European Union, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme in New York and Somalia, the Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding, Interpeace Eastern and Central Africa Regional Office and the New York University with connection to the New Deal and or peace and statebuilding engagements in the Somali region. The findings, generated from the collected data, are analysed through a theoretical framework based on Wallensten’s (2015) theory on ‘Quality Peace’, Eriksen’s (2017) theory on Statebuilding and Barbalet’s (2009) and Eccles (2015) theory on trust building. The research finds that the implementation of the TRUST principles is scattered in terms of progress. ‘Use and strengthen country systems’ and ‘Strengthening capacities’ are the two principles delivering most progress according to the majority of the informants, whereas ‘Risk sharing’ and ‘Timely and predictable aid’ perform worse. The implementation of the first principle, ‘Transparency’, mainly referring to the sharing of documents, inclusive decision-making and reporting of aid to the Somali Aid Coordination Unit at the Prime Minister’s Office, has made moderate progress. At a local level, Interpeace engages in the Galkacyo peacebuilding process by providing strategic, financial and technical support to local structures, e.g. a joint Peace Committee and joint security force. The research identifies a tendency that the implementation of the New Deal TRUST principles has had limited impact on a local level. The development of the emerging FMSs has added an extra dynamic to the conflict in Galkacyo, a city divided by the two administrative regions Galmudug and Puntland. Furthermore, whether donor behaviour has changed in fragile states as an effect of the New Deal is debated. The engagements on a local level in Galkacyo tend to contribute to peace and trust building among clashing communities, however, limited impact can be identified on the statebuilding process and on peace and trust building vis-à-vis the Federal and State Governments.

The inclusion of gender equality in the guiding principles of peacebuilding operations led by the United Nations raises questions of effectivity. Indeed, while the commitment of the international community to gender equality is well defined and the importance of gender equality for durable peace has been widely demonstrated, there is no consistent research on the effects of the interventions of peacebuilding actors on dimensions of gender equality. The question leading this paper is “what is the effect of peacebuilding actors’ interventions on gender equality?” and this paper particularly seeks to research whether the influence of peacebuilding actors on power structures, that define unjust gendered relations of power, could improve gender equality overall. The theoretical underpinning of this paper identifies women’s political empowerment as a change in power structures with possible positive consequences. The theory is tested in a qualitative way with a comparison between case studies and through the method of Structured Focused Comparison. The results show partial support for the hypothesis. Indeed, the empirical assessment of Liberia and Rwanda seems to point to an increase in the international support of local women’s organisation as a successful strategy to challenge power structures and, consequently, gender inequality.