No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The issue of child soldiering continues to be a significant part of armed conflicts. The research on children in conflict has not fully been able to understand how children not only experience but also actively participate in war. This thesis is premised in the pre-condition of low civilian support which in varying rates of child soldiering are expected to explain different outcomes in rebel violence against civilians. The examination is done through the lens of socialization theory. During the 1990’s the rates of child soldiering were extreme, causing rise to groups such as the RUF, AIS and brought attention to the KNU. These three cases are compared using Mill’s method of difference and structured focused comparison. The thesis finds that low civilian support is instrumental but ultimately inefficient to explain the variation in outcomes and proposes to look further into the influence of natural resource dependency and political ideologies.

The aim of this thesis is to observe and analyze the effects of religious dimensions in armed conflict on violence against civilians. Focusing on rebel groups in intra-state conflicts, quantitative statistical analysis in form of Ordinary Least Squares multivariate regression, is utilized to examine data onreligious wars, one-sided violence, and conflict-related sexual violence. Two hypotheses are formulatedand tested; that (1) higher significance of religion in armed conflict leads to higher levels of one-sidedviolence, as well as that (2) higher significance of religion leads to higher levels of conflict-related sexual violence. The results, relying on four different datasets and 1107 observations, empirically support both hypotheses. The conclusion of this thesis suggests that civilians are found to be particularly vulnerable in religious armed conflict, pointing to the importance and urgency of further and closer examination of civilian victimization in these types of wars.

Rebel governance and rebel violence against civilians are two closely related fields within peace and conflict research that have gained increased interest amongst scholars during recent years. Still, there is a gap within current research that concerns how variation in one field may influence variation in the other. This paper aims to fill this gap by applying a theory on rebel violence in the context of rebel governance to hypothesize that a high level of rebel governance will decrease the intensity of rebel violence against civilians. The hypothesis is tested through linear regression, using data from the UCDP One-Sided Violence dataset, Rebel Governance Dataset and a replication dataset by Huang and Sullivan (2021). The findings from the regression analysis suggest a negative relationship between a high level of rebel governance and decreased intensity of rebel violence against civilians which supports the hypothesis. However, these results are not statistically significant and therefore only provides indications of a relationship. Yet, this thesis contributes by interlinking two fields that are highly relevant in modern civil wars and thereby provides a small but important building block for future research.

While peacekeeping operations have been researched for decades, due to a lack of data there are still many aspects of peacekeeping that remain unexplored. However, with the introduction of the Peacemakers at Risk dataset a wide array of dynamics and relationships can now be researched. This thesis uses this dataset and others in order to study the risk of violence towards peacekeepers and its effects on the peacekeepers’ ability to protect civilians. My main claim is that due to a shift in priorities, peacekeepers that are exposed to risks of violence have a decreased capacity to protect civilians which leads to increased civilian casualties. The study utilizes a time-series cross-sectional quantitative approach in order to study this relationship. After the introduction of control variables, drawn from the literature, to the multivariate regression, the study finds that there is no statistical significance to the relationship supported in the existing data. However, the study can ultimately not draw a generalizable conclusion due to a lack of observations.

<p>Rebel attacks on civilians constitute one of the gravest threats to human security in contemporary armed conflicts. But why do rebel groups kill civilians? The dissertation approaches this question from a strategic perspective, trying to understand when and why rebel groups are likely to target civilians as a conflict strategy. It combines quantitative studies using global data on rebel group violence with a case study of the civil war in Mozambique. The overall argument is that rebel groups target civilians as a way of improving their bargaining position in the war relative to the government. The dissertation consists of an introduction, which situates the study in a wider context, and four papers that all deal with different aspects of the overall research question. Paper I introduces new data on one-sided violence against civilians, presenting trends over time and comparing types of actors and conflicts. Paper II argues that democratic governments are particularly vulnerable to rebel attacks on civilians, since they are dependent on the population. Corroborating this claim, statistical evidence shows that rebels indeed kill more civilians when fighting a democratic government. Paper III argues that rebels target civilians more when losing on the battlefield, as a method of raising the costs for the government to continue fighting. A statistical analysis employing monthly data on battle outcomes and rebel violence, supports this argument. Paper IV takes a closer look at the case of Mozambique, arguing that the rebel group Renamo used large-scale violence in areas dominated by government constituents as a means for hurting the government. Taken together, these findings suggest that violence against civilians should be understood as a strategy, rather than a consequence, of war.</p>

Gender equality is an emerging field in conflict studies, but so far research has mainly focused on the onset of conflict. However, strong correlations between low levels of gender equality and the risk for conflict has been found, which gives encouragement for further research. Other fields have explored the field of gender equality more extensively, and has for example found relationships between attitudes towards gender equality and the prevalence of violence in personal relationships. Building on those findings, this thesis attempts to advance the field of gender equality in conflict studies by examining how attitudes towards gender equality affects the dynamics of violence during conflicts, with the hypothesised relationship that more positive attitudes towards gender equality results in lower levels of violence. This is done through a statistical study of 172 selected cases from different regions and with different ideologies. The suggested mechanism for this relationship is that of traditional gender norms, and in particular traditional ideals of masculinity which are closely associated with violence. While not lending strong support for the all the hypothesised relationship, the results gives some reason for optimism for future research.

The 1990’s did not only see the end of the Cold War, it experienced several man-made humanitarian crises, an emerging debate on the responsibility to protect, and an increased number of sanctions. All at the same time. How does these relate to each other? International economic sanctions can be seen as having the purposes of both punishing and making others comply with certain norms (Galtung, 1967:379). I believe that both of these purposes are visible when imposing sanctions as reactions to violations of international humanitarian law. Because of this, I argue that violations of IHL are likely to be met with sanctions. In this thesis, I study whether or not this hypothesis holds true. Specifically, I test the probability of receiving sanctions after the following IHL rules have been violated: the prohibition of child soldiers, torture, use of terror, one-sided violence and sexual violence. Most research on economic sanctions focuses either on their effect on armed conflict, or exclusively on one international institution. This thesis contributes to the research field by presenting a quantitative study on the effect violations of international humanitarian law can have on the imposition of economic sanctions, and whether there is a difference in how different violations are being reacted to.