Food security and conflict are fundamentally linked. Peace and conflict literature recognises food security as a known contributing factor to conflict, while conflict is also established to have significant and long-lasting impacts on access to food. Both of these phenomena are affected by the provision of international aid, which in the agriculture sector, broadly aims to improve food security. While it is generally supported that agricultural aid has a positive effect on growth, conditional effects are minimally understood, particularly when it comes to socioeconomic outcomes. This thesis explores the effect of international agricultural aid on food security and how this relationship is moderated by conflict and post-conflict contexts. Using a panel dataset comprising countries that received agricultural aid in any year within the timeframe of 2002-2016, I find that the overall relationship between agricultural aid and food security yields mixed and inconclusive results. However, results suggest a conditional effect whereby increases in agricultural aid during conflict phases has a positive impact on food security, while increases during other phases has a negative impact on food security. Aid during post-conflict phases specifically appears to negatively affect food security, contrary to previous research. The analysis suggests more research is necessary on sector-specific, conditional aid effectiveness in relation to food security and conflict.

The aim of this thesis is to observe how media and activism can be a part of the post-conflict peace building in Bosnia as well as to highlight the work and importance of NGOs in the country. This thesis will focus on how these NGOs work with media and activism in order to contribute to the post-conflict peace building. Further, it will analyze elements of civic activism as well as grassroots activism to see how the organizations implement these in their work. Eight interviews have been conducted with two participants from four NGOs in the country. The result shows that whilst ethnic divisions still largely characterize the contemporary Bosnian society, there are instances where ethnic differences have been disregarded. Further, the result shows that the everyday work of these organizations showcase a great example of how ethnic divisions can be combated and how social change can be achieved.

Security Sector Reform (SSR) is considered a significant feature in post-conflict peacebuilding efforts typically employed by states and international partners. Recently, the concept of SSR has played a significant role in the statebuilding process in Afghanistan after the Taliban regime; however, a disorganised and unplanned withdrawal poses severe threats to the security sector. This thesis explores the SSR efforts made by the western states after the end of the Taliban regime. The holistic approaches present in policy and strategy documents are quite challenging when it comes to SSR implementation in a post-conflict country ruled by an insurgent group for years. This thesis illustrates two competing approaches that show how SSR played a role in the post-conflict peacebuilding within Afghanistan and how peace spoilers and US/NATO withdrawal will impact the gains of twenty years in SSR. In order to better analyse the SSR process, a case study of the Afghan National Police is used. Moreover, this thesis offers some practical policy recommendations that can be useful for the concept of SSR in Afghanistan. This thesis does not offer a solution to the challenges of SSR in post-conflict countries like Afghanistan. Yet, it suggests that an uncoordinated withdrawal of external powers can negatively...

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International non-governmental organisations (INGOs) play an important role in tackling gender based violence in many countries. Hundreds of reports have been written and thousands of recommendations made. Yet, rates of gender based violence are known to increase during conflict and post-conflict. Needing a vast multitude of needs addressed in attempt for INGOs to support survivors of gender based violence. This study sets out to understand the ways that INGOs support, empower and advocate for women concerning gender based violence in post-conflict countries such as Colombia. It further analysed how INGOs implemented preventions and interventions of gender based violence. Specifically, exploring aspects such as, empowerment, gender roles and overall service provision. The research takes an intersectional feminist perspective to consider what gender based violence interventions have been used by these INGOs and see how aligned these interventions are with intersectional feminist theory. Further, the research focuses on the involvement of INGOs in gender based violence and their view of women as displayed in that involvement. The study adopts a desk-based research design to explore the involvement of INGOs looking at gender based violence in Colombia. The material was analysed in relation to gender, intersectionality and feminist theory, specifically referencing back to values embedded in inclusivity and gender equality. A number of aggravating factors are identified that seem to critically evaluate the involvement of INGOs in regards gender based violence. Despite their best efforts to provide an inclusive approach, the study indicates that some INGOs perpetrate unequal power dynamics, depict survivors of gender based violence as victims and do not address other intersectional issues such as lack of inclusivity. Overall, the thesis is critical as to why gender based violence seems to be a lower priority for INGOs and local actors and recommends that more intersectional feminist values should be included within projects and programs.

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Since the classical work of Samuel Huntington tilted the Third Wave of Democratisation, the question of how a country becomes a democracy and why others do not have been of interest to social scientists, notably political scientists. With more than three decades since the publication of this seminal work, empirical research has focused on several regions in the world and have provided various explanation for why some countries transition to democracy and why other fail. Along these lines, this thesis attempt to study the future of democracy by focusing on an intriguing case (e.g., Iraq), a country known to have a diverse ethnic and sectarian composition, conflict-ridden but also vital to the global war against terrorism. Thus, the thesis is guided by the question, "How have foreign state actors and domestic factors affected the democratic process in Iraq, 2014-2023?" The thesis uses qualitative research methods such as process tracing and semi-structured interviews to answer this question.

This dissertation addresses gendered vulnerabilities after the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda. It consists of three essays, each focusing on the experience of women in a particular aspect of post-conflict development. The first essay analyzes trends in poverty and inequality in Rwanda from 2000 to 2005. The chapter identifies four important correlates of consumption income: gender, human capital, assets, and geography, and examines their salience in determining the poverty of a household and its position in the income distribution. The second essay is an econometric examination of an important health insurance scheme initiated in post-conflict Rwanda. Employing logistic regression techniques, I find systematically lower membership among female-headed households in the community-based health insurance scheme in Rwanda. This finding contravenes other empirical studies on community-based health insurance in Africa that found higher uptake by female-headed households. Female-headed households are just as likely to access health care, implying greater out-of-pocket expenditures on health. They report worse health status compared to their male counterparts. The third essay examines the prevalence and correlates of intimate partner violence, based on household-level data from the Demographic and Health Survey conducted in Rwanda in 2005. Three results stand out. First, there are significant differences in the prevalence of three different types of gendered violence: physical, emotional and sexual violence. Second, women who are employed but whose husbands are not experience more sexual violence, not less, as would be expected in conventional household bargaining models. This can be interpreted as reflecting `male backlash' as gender norms are destabilized. Finally, there is a strong inter-district correlation between the post-conflict prevalence of sexual violence and the intensity of political violence during the genocide. The findings of the dissertation support its underlying premise: that looking at economic processes through a gendered lens, and recognizing that women face social, historical and institutional constraints that are ignored in much standard economic theorizing, affords important insights into social processes and development outcomes.

The United Nations has a long history of peacekeeping missions. These have evolved over time but since the end of the Cold War there has been rapid growth in those missions where the remit placed on the peacekeepers, both military and civilian, is more complex and demanding. In trying to define these missions and their mandates a wide range of terminology has been developed in an effort to describe the exact nature of the mission. Since many of these deployments take place into theatres where there is no peace to keep, or where a fragile peace reverts to a conflict situation such tight definitions often lead to the troops involved no longer having an appropriate mandate. More recently some of these larger missions constitute in fact interventions to impose peace. Attempts to find a `peace¿ classification for such deployments often confuse the issue rather than bring clarity. In reality these missions are not peacekeeping at all. The almost forgotten doctrine, principles and practices of Counterinsurgency provide a better framework for defining these missions, the respective roles of the key players and the factors necessary to bring success.