The aim of the study is to examine what upper secondary school students think that they themselves and their school can do to create a peaceful society. The study combine qualitative and quantitative methods based on questionnaires distributed among 328 students in three high schools in Sweden. The survey is a combination of multiple choice and open questions. For the analysis of quantitative responses the computer program SPSS was used producing frequency tables and response rate schemes. To analyze the questionnaire's qualitative part a narrative analysis method was used. The central theoretical framework of the study is research on peace, positive peace, peace education and racism. The conclusion of the study is that most students in the survey believe that the school plays an important role in establishing and supporting peaceful values, both with the students and in society at large. Students feel that school should take on more responsibility as a peacemaking force than it does today. They also expressed that the schools need to work more with anti-racism, harassment and bullying and that they think that the teachers ought to get more training in these subjects. According to the students, their most important role as individuals is to act in a way that promotes a peaceful society while also living by what they preach.  They underlined the importance that each individual must take upon themselves to play an active role in promoting a peaceful society and they also stressed the importance of working together to bring these changes.

This thesis identifies and analyses the major patterns of class-based structural violence (based on the differential access to class power) in some of the main areas of social organisation in Britain in the period from 1979 to 2010 (the period of neoliberal consolidation in Britain). It does this by pioneering the empirical operationalisation of a neo-Galtungian concept and typology of structural violence. Additionally, the thesis refines the theoretical lens on structural violence for the primary purpose of improving its ability to reach new insights in the process of the empirical analysis of class-based structural violence. These improvements are to a large extent based on a theoretical and typological synthesis of Galtung’s theory of structural violence with Amartya Sen’s conceptualisation of instrumental freedoms. To avoid a static examination of social structures, my work analyses the dynamics of various forms of structural violence in the analysed period understood as the dialectical interplay of structural and subjective agential factors. The extensive and sustained employment of the concept of class-based structural violence in this thesis through a number of specific case studies contributes to a more integrated understanding of the research problem and verifies the hypothesis about the existence of extensive and systemic class-based structural violence in Britain across several main dimensions of social life. My study also elucidates the character of this structural violence and some of the most prominent causal mechanisms by which it is reproduced. This initial cartography of class-based structural violence in Britain also identifies a number of new research questions in relation to the analysed topic.

Climate adaptive strategies seek to minimize harms of climate change. Scholarly research has yet to examine the impact of these strategies in post-conflict communities, especially with regard to whether they might contribute to fostering greater overall well-being, or positive peace. This thesis seeks to address this gap and adopts the research question, how does climate adaptation impact positive peace in post-natural resource conflict communities? I hypothesize that climate adaptation is likely to contribute to positive peace in post-natural resource conflict communities by reducing environmental stressors through strengthened natural resource management. Theoretically, climate adaptation provides the capacity for local communities to strengthen natural resource management, which enables them to cope with the effects of climate change. This in turn, reduces environmental stressors and allows communities to better meet local needs and foster positive peace. Using a qualitative method of structured focused comparison, I collect empirics from two districts in post-natural resource conflict Rwanda (after 2002) to test how climate adaptation impacts positive peace at the local level. Although findings show little evidence that climate adaptation drives positive peace, results indicate that such programs may be poised to contribute to lessened environmental stress through strengthened natural resource management.

Despite efforts to better understand and address the root causes of conflict, violence continues to affect nations and communities around the world, displacing millions and avoiding resolution. Global institutions, developed to promulgate a more cooperative and peaceful world order, have failed to adequately resolve conflicts, with many spanning multiple decades, regionalising, and involving an increasing number of non- state actors. Through historically situating the roots of liberal peacebuilding and analysing recent UN and AU approaches to peace consolidation and conflict resolution, this dissertation seeks to better understand the ways in which these institutions' pasts have influenced their present approaches. By bringing together historicist and sociological approaches to peace research, and following in a constructivist IR tradition, this dissertation traces norm formation at these institutions and contextualises calls for more "locally-led" approaches. I use historical research to situate the roots of UN and AU approaches and conduct thematic analysis to investigate norm shifts related to state sovereignty, protection of civilians, conflict prevention, gender, development, democracy, peacebuilding, and bottom-up approaches to peace. I find that while norms have shifted significantly in both...

Discussions about the utility of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping has been ongoing since its emergence in the late 1940s, and scholars have studied different peacekeeping missions from various perspectives. However, there is a gap in the research when it comes to evaluating the state of peace in countries that have experienced successful UN peacekeeping missions a few years after the mission is finished. The UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia (UNMIL) was deemed a success when it was finished. For that reason, this study investigates the state of peace in Liberia five years after the UN peacekeeping mission handed overall security-related responsibilities to the Liberian government in 2016. The state of peace in Liberia today will be analyzed using Johan Galtung’s definition of peace and violence. This study has been conducted as a qualitative desk and case study and has followed abductive reasoning. The data used in this study have been analyzed through text analysis. Findings show that the UN indeed succeeded in reaching their goals for the mission. But, when applying Galtung’s definition of peace and violence it is clear that the goals set by the UN can be categorized as negative peace, which means the absence of direct violence. Positive peace however, which means the absence of direct, structural and cultural violence, has not yet been achieved since there is still high levels of corruption and discrimination in the country. The conclusion includes a discussion about whether or not the UN can and/or shall aim for positive peace, or if negative peace is a realistic goal and then hand the process of achieving higher levels of positive peace to the host country, in this case Liberia.

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While it has often been argued to be connected, the climate-peace nexus is still understudied. Multiple reasons are underlying this, such as that the focus has been solely on the effects of climate change on negative peace and that a clear definition of what peace consists of is non-existent. This study therefore aims to fill these gaps by answering the question “Under which conditions does climate change affect positive peace?”. Based on research on peace, human security, and the climate-conflict nexus, a theoretical underpinning of positive peace is constructed. In this, it is argued that positive peace consists of three overarching factors, namely political, social, and economic stability. It is further argued that climate change, more specifically natural disasters, has a negative effect on this positive peace. Through conducting a worldwide quantitative study by employing multivariate multiple regressions it is shown that droughts, and hydrological natural disasters, namely floods, decrease multiple components of positive peace. Opposite to the hypothesis that rapid-onset climate change decreases positive peace, extreme temperatures, storms, and fires, as well as the meteorological natural disasters increase multiple of its components. Therefore, more research is warranted to understand the effects of rapid-onset climate change on positive peace.

Intergroup reconciliation involves a holistic change in attitudes and interactions between groups. However, sustainable reconciliation has often times been overlooked from previous research. This paper aims to contribute to the research gap by applying the well-tested contact hypothesis in the context of NGO structure. The positive results in change of reconciliation attitudes suggests thereby that NGOs should not only be evaluated by its external effects but also by its internal effects on its own members. No negative consequences could be found. Combining intergroup contact with youth, providing informal education and combining it with inter-faith projects within a faith-based institution have yielded the best results.

Doctoral thesis Regional Transition - From Conflict to Cooperation examines the transformation of world regions from non-cooperative to. It brings reconceptualization of the peaceful change, which it understands as a continuum - negative peace, positive peace, and security community. This understanding builds on the existing literature on peaceful change, yet the conceptualization of the stages is innovated. The main goal of this dissertation is to capture the dynamic process of transition from negative to positive peace, and from positive peace to the security community. It uses findings from the literature on peaceful changes and trust-building to build two comprehensive mechanisms of transition that are subsequently traced with the method of process-tracing in two cases of the region for each type of transition. The focus is on the entities and activities producing the qualitative change in the regional relations. For the transition from negative to positive peace, Western Balkans in the period from 1999 to 2011, and Southeast Asia from 1966 to 2003 are chosen. For the transition from positive peace to the security community, Western Europe (1957-2004) and North America (1940s- 2011) are chosen.