The United Nations' Convention on the rights of the child presents a legislative framework that nations worldwide through their ratification have promised to aim for. Going from theory to practice this field study intends to investigate how the work to implement the children’s rights is carried out in reality by social institutions in Somoto Nicaragua. This essay specifically looks at how a children’s rights approach is performed in the work with working children and will therefore focus on two rights that protrude as relevant to the target group; the right to education and the right to be protected from hazardous work and economic exploitation. Furthermore, this paper considers existent criticism towards the human rights conventions for being Eurocentric in its visions and not always applicable to local conditions. Therefore the perception of working children locally in Nicaragua is examined to see how well this is in accordance with the legislation on children’s rights or if the social institutions have met difficulties in the implementation. Fundamental in the work carried out by the social institutions has been to raise awareness in the society on the children’s rights. The conclusion is that attitudes to working children have gone through a change since the introduction of a children’s rights approach in Somoto, but what remains the major obstacle to implementation is the restricted access to economic resources.

This paper aims to answer the question Why do some ceasefires de-escalate conflict better than others? By applying a theory-driven empirical comparative approach, a theoretical argument focused on compliance provisions is presented. The argument holds that more comprehensive compliance provisions in ceasefire agreements are more likely to de-escalate conflict than limited ones. The causal mechanism argues that more comprehensive compliance provisions will increase transparency and raise costs for non-compliance. This will result in an increase of trust between conflict parties, leading to greater de-escalation. The thesis studies two ceasefires, one in Colombia from 2017, and one in Nicaragua from 1990. Through a structured focused comparison, the study finds that the Nicaraguan ceasefire, which has more comprehensive compliance provisions, de-escalated violence more compared to the Colombian case, which has limited compliance provisions. Therefore, the study finds support for the hypothesis with the caveat that compliance provisions do not appear to influence agreement resilience for long-term goals in the agreements.

Measures of human development, no matter their specific methodology, have always placed Costa Rica substantially higher than its neighbor, Nicaragua, but no apparent governmental, resource, or historical discrepancy can account for this gap. This thesis uses two case studies to examine this phenomenon from three different theoretical perspectives, and conclude which has the greatest explanatory power to account for the disparity between these two particular governments. Political scientists have noted that parliamentary systems lend themselves to better governance when compared with their presidential countersystems. Shugart and Carey (1992) cite peculiarities within some presidential models which may account for lower rates of human development. Another approach, offered by Tsebelis (2002) produces a more generalized explanation of this phenomenon, while Lawrence Harrison (1985) offers an entirely different, culture-based explanation. This thesis seeks to examine the validity of these claims, using Costa Rica and Nicaragua as case studies. Limiting the thesis to these two presidential governments will highlight the variation that exists within the presidential model, and possibly shed light on the most significant variables.

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The 1980’s were troublesome years for the Nicaraguan Sandinist government and its citizens. After accomplishing the task of overthrowing the 43 years of Somoza rule in Nicaragua, a new challenge was waiting in the shape of the American war against communism. The former Somoza National Guard transformed into the notorious contras, also known as the CIA- and American government-backed freedom fighters who worked hard to recoup the nation and halter the socialist movement in the Central Americas. Today in 2007 the world knows what kind of interventions the Sandinist rule stood victims of; air-raids, sabotage, embargos and mining of the Nicaraguan harbour. Eventually the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the United States should immediately cease and refrain from any action restricting access to or from Nicaraguan ports, and, in particular, the laying of mines. But what did the American public know about its country’s silent war against Nicaragua? This is the core question of this paper. How did the media, and more specifically, how did one of the largest American newspapers the New York Times present the events in Nicaragua to its readers? This essay examines New York Times-headlines and articles covering the years between 1979-1990 in the Nicaraguan history, by means of using the agenda-setting theory, developed by Maxwell McCombs in cooperation with his colleagues Don Shaw and David Weaver. The results of this study will show confirmation of how the New York Times framed the nation of Nicaragua into a communist framework, describing the country as a authentic threat against the American society and its values. The information provided by the New York Times during this era played without doubt a key role in the construction of the American public’s visions of the Nicaraguan reality. By using attributes when mentioning Nicaragua such as “Cuba”, “the threat of nuclear war”, “Soviet” and “communism”, the American public opinion most certainly came to reflect and support the media agenda. To paraphrase McCombs, ‘The media set the agenda when they are successful in riveting attention on a problem. They build the public agenda when they supply the context that determines how people think about the issue and evaluates its merits.’

This paper examines activists in the United States that supported the socialist Nicaraguan government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and opposed efforts by the Reagan Administration to militarily undermine Nicaragua’s new government during the 1980s. Such scholarship examines the rise of a leftist political coalition organized around supporting Nicaragua’s government and this solidarity movement’s eventual demise after the Sandinistas lost their country’s 1990 Presidential election. The work ultimately asks how did U.S. leftists and progressives of the late 1970s and 1980s perceive Nicaragua’s new government and how did these perceptions affect the ways in which these activists rallied to support the Sandinistas in the face of the Contra War? In answering this question, this paper consults a variety of primary sources including articles from socialist newspapers, the meeting minutes and notes of solidarity organizations, and oral histories with former activists. “I Have My Mind!” also consults cultural sources such as the protest and art benefit flyers and the lyrics to punk rock songs of the period to make its claims. This Masters Thesis argues that U.S. Americans’ solidarity with the Sandinistas relied upon a romanticization of Nicaraguan revolutionary reforms representative of movement participants’ own political aspirations. / History

This paper attempts to explore issues related to right to information (RTI) and RTI laws, in the context of local governance. The paper focuses on four case studies¿namely, India, Indonesia, Uganda, and Nicaragua¿to highlight some of the complexities in campaigning for RTI laws and in implementing them. Based on these, a framework is developed as a tool to map alternative approaches to making local governance more effective and accountable. At present, there are two schools of thought: one focusing on supply-led or state-led mechanisms such as public expenditure tracking surveys, and the other focusing on a human rights-based approach with RTI law at its centre. The framework developed here suggests that these alternative approaches need not be considered mutually exclusive approaches but can be seen in terms of Dreze and Sen¿s argument of democratic institutions and democratic practice. Thus, activists can choose approaches that best suit a context at a given point in time as intermediate steps in the journey towards developing just and inclusive institutions.