Following state-building campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the UK has increasingly eschewed large-scale intervention in favour of local proxy forces. Whilst this strategy might appeal to the war-weary and cash strapped interventionist, frequent use of military capacity building as a tool of foreign policy inevitably raises questions about the accountability of those local forces being trained. This thesis examines the exportation of Western concepts of civil-military relations into the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF), carried out by the British-led International Military Advisory and Training Team (IMATT) during intervention and post-conflict stabilisation in Sierra Leone. It argues that external interventionists can reshape local military culture, to promote both democratic civil-military norms and professional military effectiveness, but only through extensive institutional change. In Sierra Leone, IMATT attempted to change the organisational culture of the RSLAF by reforming its institutional mechanisms for socialisation, training, education and promotion. By inculcating a new normative ethos in a cohort of junior RSLAF officers, IMATT sought to promulgate cultural change throughout the military via a structured process of intra-service competition and generational replacement. This novel blend of internal and external processes of military change challenges existing scholarship on military innovation and adaptation, advancing our understanding of the relationship between military culture, military change, and external intervention. However, this process of institutional redevelopment and cultural change in the RSLAF proved to be both heavily contested and deeply political, ultimately leading to partial results. Consequently, IMATT’s experience of RSLAF reform holds important implications for the study of civil-military relations and security sector reform, and with it, the conduct of contemporary military capacity building and liberal intervention.

Magister Legum - LLM (Criminal Justice and Procedure) / Transitional justice mechanisms have become commonplace as a tool for recovery for societies emerging from conflict and repressive regimes. The extent to which women's rights concerning development and long-term economic advancement in the arena of transitional justice is dealt with is almost negligible. The significance of including development as a means of protecting marginalised groups such as women has been mostly disregarded in the transitional justice context. Currently, the discourse on gender justice has placed civil and political rights as well as sexual crimes against women at the centre stage. Transitional justice mechanisms have failed to give effect to long-term sustainable and substantive change in women's lives following conflict and periods of repressive rule. The core aims of transitional justice are prosecution of offenders, reconciliation and reparations for the victims of gross human rights abuses. Reparations are usually used as a medium through which restitution and compensation for the harm suffered by victims are made possible. Reparations are also deemed as an essential element for the healing and recovery of the individual victim and the society affected by egregious human rights violations.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is a major landmark in the development of international accountability. Its preamble affirms “that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished and that their effective prosecution must be ensured by taking measures at the national level and by enhancing international cooperation”. Thus the signatory states were “determined to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of these crimes and thus to contribute to the prevention of such crimes”. The ICC contributes to the fight against impunity and the establishment of the rule of law by punishing violations of international legal norms. Accountability is important for the past and the future of societies. The ICC needs the support and cooperation of the states to effectively perform its mandate. So without ratification and implementation of the Rome Statute the ICC will not have jurisdiction over non-member states, unless referred by the UN Security Council. The Rome Statute does not only create the ICC but it also creates the national jurisdiction of its States Parties as these states have the primary responsibility to investigate and prosecute Rome Statute crimes. With only five Arab states to date being State Parties to the Rome Statute, it is obvious that the region is underrepresented at the ICC. Despite their positive role played in the creation of the ICC, not ratifying the Rome Statute raises several questions, especially that the majority of states that voted against the Statute were from the Arab region. Ratifying and implementing the Rome Statute will strengthen the Arab states criminal justice system, enabling them to prosecute international crimes domestically and will deter any individual from committing them in the future, regardless his official position. It will also allow the Arab states to have the primary jurisdiction over international crimes and reinforces the entire judicial system. This research will examine the issue of ratification and implementation of the Rome Statute by the Arab states by analysing the reasons, challenges and obstacles of the Arab states for not becoming part of the international criminal justice system.

Scholars have in the recent decades actively been searching for answers for why actors of war sometimes choose - and other times choose not - to direct violence against civilians. However, their focus has been largely on one-sided violence during wartime, and much less on post-conflict occurrences. This study aims to fill this research gap by examine in what way wartime livels of casualties affect post-conflict levels of one-sided violence. A total of 164 conflict episodes and their post-conflict periods between 1989 and 2016 show that there is a significant positive correlation between wartime one-sided violence intensity and post-conflict one-sided violence intensity. A similar correlation is not found between battle-related deaths and post-conflict one-sided violence, although the result shows that rebel groups are more prone to direct violence against civilians after high levels of wartime battle-related deaths than after low levels.

The aim of this thesis is to provide theoretical evidence that a disaster risk reduction perspective within peacebuilding programmes, particularly in countries where disasters and conflict overlap, can contribute positively to the transformation of conflict into sustainable peace. An increasing number of disasters in fragile states and countries affected by armed conflict has brought the attention to know in which way disasters and conflicts collide when they come to occur in the same area, and how disasters can influence on-going peace processes. In order to demonstrate that argument the thesis draws the evolution of the disaster risk management models and peacebuilding frameworks along the last decades and make use of a comprehensive theoretical background to support the subsequent analysis. This thesis contributes to the academic literature and humanitarian reports of studies describing the relation between disasters and conflict but, more concretely, it aims to fill the gap in research studying the links between a disaster risk reduction strategy and peacebuilding programmes. The conclusions of the thesis are that disaster risk reduction initiatives contribute positively in several ways to the different key areas of peacebuilding programmes either as concrete initiatives or as a crosscutting issue. / El objeto de esta tesis es proporcionar sustento teórico a la idea de que una perspectiva de reducción de riesgos de desastre en el marco de programas de construcción de paz puede contribuir positivamente a transformar el conflicto en una paz sostenible, particularmente en países donde desastres naturales y conflicto confluyen. Un número creciente de desastres naturales que acontecen en estados frágiles o países afectados por conflicto armado atrae la atención de profesionales y académicos del ámbito humanitario con el fin de conocer mejor el modo en que conflicto y desastre natural se influyen mutuamente. Esta tesis describe la evolución en las últimas décadas de los modelos de gestión de riesgos de desastre y los marcos operacionales de construcción de paz, además, se sustenta en una amplia base teórica para llevar a cabo el análisis pertinente. La intención es contribuir modestamente a la literatura académica que se ocupa de estudiar la ayuda humanitaria, así como tratar de colaborar en encontrar posibles vínculos entre una estrategia de reducción de riesgos de desastre y los programas de construcción de paz. Las conclusiones de esta tesis indican que las iniciativas de reducción de riegos de desastre contribuyen positivamente en distintos aspectos de las áreas de trabajo de los programas de construcción de paz, ya sea como actividades concretas o como un eje transversal a todo el programa.

La question de l’Etat de droit se pose de plus en plus avec beaucoup d’acuité en Afrique en général et en Afrique de l’ouest en particulier. Le déficit observable d’Etat de droit dans certains pays de cette sous région, est une des causes fondamentales de situations de belligérance et de crise avec leurs conséquences dramatiques : violation des droits de l’homme, désinstitutionnalisation, refus d’alternance démocratique, impunité, pauvreté, insécurité etc.La Côte d’Ivoire, la Mauritanie, le Liberia et la Sierra Léone n’échappent pas à ce constat. Ces pays se caractérisent par des situations particulières au regard des crises qu’ils connaissent et ont connu, ainsi que par des enjeux communs dans la longue et difficile quête de l’établissement de l’Etat de droit.Ce processus, émaillé d’obstacles majeurs, donne naissance à une production normative réelle avec les interventions combinées des communautés sous régionales, panafricaine et internationale. Et pour autant, des « conflits de normativité » ne sont pas à exclure. D’où la nécessité d’envisager des perspectives d’harmonisation normative dans les dynamiques de gestion et de règlement des crises, en vue d’établir l’Etat de droit en Afrique de l’ouest. / The question of the Rule of law arises more and more with much acuity in Africa in general and in West Africa in particular. The observable deficit of Rule of law in certain countries of this region is one of the root causes of belligerence and crisis with dramatic consequences: violation of Human rights, desinstitutionalization, refusal of democratic alternation, impunity, poverty, insecurity, etc…Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritania, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are not immune to this. These countries are characterized by particular situations in the light of the crisis they encounter and have encountered, as well as common issues in the long and difficult quest for the establishment of the Rule of Law. This process, with major obstacles, gives rise to a real normative production with the combined intervention of the regional, pan African and international communities. And provided, the “conflict of norms” are not to be excluded. Hence the need to consider prospects for resolving crises, to establish the Rule of law in West Africa.

The master thesis deals with the role of NGOs in post-conflict reconstruction, the case study is applied to the post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. The post-conflict reconstruction goes on since the end of the civil war in 1995 there. The aim of this work is to evaluate the fulfillment of the four pillars of the post-conflict reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first chapter follows the theory of peacekeeping operations and theoretical classification of the post-conflict reconstruction. In the second chapter, there is an application of the Dayton Peace Agreement on the four pillars of the post-conflict reconstruction. The third chapter deals with activities of NGOs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and presents some major projects and the overall assessment of their impact. For the methodology was chosen qualitative and quantitative evaluation and analysis and synthesis of data.

The Stolpersteine memorial art project commemorates individual Holocaust victims by placing small brass plates outside the last known place they freely lived or worked. To date around 70,000 of these ‘stones’ have been laid across 24 countries, making it the largest decentralised monument in the world. The work grows by virtue of community action from relatives, neighbours and activists. This paper examines how the memorial form functions in a specific context. An ‘unofficial' version has been running in Vienna since 2005, termed Stones of Remembrance. It shares key characteristics with Stolpersteine but the approach in the Austrian capital is distinctly different, with local interpretations. This case study into the Vienna experience investigates public response to these stones drawing on research material that includes interviews with specific stakeholders and the general public who encounter them on a day to day basis. It highlights Austria’s role in the Holocaust, and struggle to belatedly come to terms with its complicity in what happened on local streets. Key questions are whether placing history at a neighbourhood level engages the public more actively than centralised state actions? How do people understand and engage with these pieces and are they effective sites of memory, reflection or imagining? Public response in Vienna suggests that memorial stones might be valuable communication tools not only for remembering the past, but for the present too - as reminders of past abuses that can serve as warnings for the future. As an example of a participatory approach to memory work Stones of Remembrance / Stolpersteine can have relevance as a communication for development and social change tool, with potential application in other post conflict contexts.

This essay deals with analysis of the phenomenon of EU's police missions as an integral part of civilian crisis management within European Security and Defense Policy. It outlined the development and evaluation of EU's operational civilian capabilities. The focus of the work is an analysis and comparison of selected police missions in terms of conditions that the EU can not influence to such an extent and that still deeply affect the course of implementation of the mission. The study also deals with the evaluation of concrete operations in terms of successful fulfillment of their mandates. Our research question relates to the external conditions of a total of five realized EU's police missions. Our presumption is the claim that socio-economic context of a country deeply influence the course of EU's action and therefore has an impact on the fulfillment of the mandate of police missions. Considerations to what extent is EU itself responsible for the success or failure of each mission and how external factors affect the mission objectives led us to the choice of topic.

The systematic variation in arrests of former wartime leaders (including political/military leaders and those with commanding positions from both sides of conflict among other high-level wartime actors) in post-conflict countries have rarely been recognized and studied. Building on past literature that interlinks transitional justice with domestic politics, this study argues that the variation in arrests of former wartime leaders can be explained by elections and electoral manipulation theory. Amid the costs and opportunities associated with elections in general, I argue that incumbents also opt for arrests of former wartime leaders as an electoral manipulation strategy to eliminate political opponents and consolidate power in the guise of justice and, at the same time, minimize the costs associated with electoral manipulation tools. Hence, I hypothesize the arrest of former wartime leaders likely to be during the election period (the pre-election period, election day, and immediate post-election period). All else equal, the statistical test does not support the hypothesis while the complementary evidence from post-conflict Nepal and Sri Lanka suggest that presence (or absence) of justice in post-conflict countries is largely shaped by domestic politics. Similarly, few arrests in Sri Lanka and Nepal offer mild support to the theoretical expectations while few other arrests in Sri Lanka suggest that some arrests during the hypothesized election period are coincidental. This further questions the explanatory power of the suggested theory and findings.