The main purpose of this thesis is to provide an understanding of the EU’s approach to peacebuilding in its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions and operations. The thesis explores why EU missions carry out mainly post-conflict peacebuilding tasks and whether the shift towards peacebuilding is about a substantial change of EU norms. The research analyses how peacebuilding in CSDP actions is framed, designed and operationalised through the complex decision- and policy-making processes within the CSDP. In particular, the thesis assesses how the EU’s approach to peacebuilding in the CSDP was influenced by the UN’s conceptualisation of peacebuilding and how the EU has developed its own distinctive approach to peacebuilding. While looking at the examples of civilian missions and military operations in Mali and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the thesis provides insights into the operational dynamics of peacebuilding under the CSDP. The thesis argues that CSDP missions and operations reflect a normative and practical commitment of the EU to international peacebuilding. CSDP actions deployed in post-conflict scenarios follow the logic of liberal peacebuilding strategies while aiming at the stabilisation, reconstruction and building of the institutions of a functioning state, in particular the military, police and justice sectors. The EU pursues its peacebuilding activities under the CSDP in a comprehensive, case-specific and geopolitically strategic way as demonstrated by case studies of Mali and Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the same time, the research reveals that, although the shift towards peacebuilding in CSDP actions has been underpinned by a change of normative approaches, driven by the reform process of the UN peacekeeping, it also reflects the EU’s preferences, pragmatic limits and capability-expectation gaps in crisis management.

In recent times traditional justice processes have become increasingly adapted to serve as transitional justice tools in post-conflict societies. The healing potential of traditional justice is becoming more recognized, nevertheless there is still little known about its impact on collective trauma and especially about the causal mechanisms behind it. To contribute to this research field, this study is guided by the following research question: Why do some traditional justice processes generate the healing of collective trauma after conflict more than others?The developed theoretical framework argues that bottom-up, locally-led traditional justice processes foster voluntary community engagement which enhances collective trauma healing. Top-down, institutionalized processes, on the other hand, are theorized to produce involuntary contact which leads to lower levels of collective healing. It is thus hypothesized that locally-led traditional justice processes are more likely to generate healing of collective trauma than institutionalized traditional justice processes. An in-depth comparative case study which uses Structured Focused Comparison, analyzes the Rwandan Gacaca trials and the traditional justice processes in Acholiland. The empirical findings lend support to the hypothesis and provide modest support to the proposed causal mechanism.

With the implementation of UNSC Resolution 1325 the role women play for peace and security was affirmed. Since the implementation of the resolution, almost two decades ago, more than 400 peace agreements has been signed. Since then one can assume much has happened regarding women and their role in the peace process. It can thus be valuable to explore if the implementation of the resolution has created a larger acknowledgement of women in the peace agreements and to see if women are limited to and by the roles they are assigned to in the peace agreements in their peace work. The focus of this study is a comparative case study that examines five cases where women’s role in peacebuilding were mentioned more extensively. This will be done in two sections. First, the roles women are assigned in peace agreements and second, what the women actually work with. This will create a basis for the thesis to investigate the presumed supposition that women are victims of conflict rather than agents of change and also look into if women are engaged in work that follow societal roles or if they act outside of these gender norms. The findings of the study showed that women engage in all types of peacebuilding work and even though women suffer and are victims of war they are also agents of change and when they are limited by the gender roles that exist, they use what agency they have within the frame of their roles as women to implement change.

Academic research on peacebuilding, without the keywords ‘local’ or ‘ownership’, has become almost unthinkable nowadays. This thesis aims to contribute to current debates by offering insight into discursive and practical meanings of local elites’ strategies to actively seek and utilize diaspora’s capacity to help their own position in the peacebuilding ownership configuration. It focuses on examination of the local ‘elite self-empowerment’ through power-sharing arrangements with diaspora that can further offer a deeper understanding of how local ownership of peacebuilding is articulated and operationalized in a post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina.This is a case-oriented comparative study, which combines comparative methods and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) tools. Ideal-type and fsQCA are used for creating empirical typologies, as well as a systematic analysis of selected conditions across investigated mono- and multiethnic sets of cases. Comparative methods are used for their further juxtaposition and finding similarities between individual cases belonging to the same group, and identifying overall differences between groups. The thesis demonstrates that overwhelming success of the Bosnian diaspora in the economic sphere can be an excellent indicator of their overall capacity to contribute to other areas of post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding. Elite-driven inclusion of conflict-generated diaspora, as an agent of peacebuilding, contributes to more successful dynamics and management of the process, which as a result can advance local elites’ share in ‘owning’ the process. There are several types of diaspora incorporation strategies in local peacebuilding frameworks, which are shaped and embedded in the local contexts; variations amongst them depend on factors that are not ethnically-based but rather rationalist in their conception; incorporation of diaspora is perceived as a viable alternative to externally-led peacebuilding and has the potential of overcoming the post-conflict democratic transformation fatigue that currently exists in the country.Even though a core building-block of any study of diaspora is the diasporic community itself, this study is not focused on examining their actions or patterns of behavior. This thesis is about exploring and testing alliance-building strategies of local elites towards diaspora communities, a craft that has yet to be mastered. Currently, diasporas are considered as ‘resources’ or ‘tools’ for their countries of origin, not as genuine partners. This work shows that homeland local governments, need to avoid making assumptions of an inherent diasporic ‘obligation to help’, especially in post-conflict reconstruction, and must work instead on developing local strategies of diaspora incorporation in order to profit from their involvement and enhance their local peacebuilding capacities.There exists a growing interest in inspecting the roles of diaspora groups in the countries and regions of their origins, yet scholarly work on Bosnian diaspora’s political involvement in BiH is extremely limited. This study focuses on elites’ perceptions of diaspora’s role as an agent; it examines types of specific positioning locals have towards their potential engagement, and how it all impacts dynamics of the entire peacebuilding process. Exploring different venues for co-option of Bosnian diaspora on a local level opens up and attracts new theoretical meanings to local ownership in peacebuilding processes. Research findings indicate that developing transnational management policies to attract diaspora’s engagement, through sharing decision-making powers on a local level, can contribute to compensating for shortcomings that locals have been unable to overcome in the past to advance their ownership position in the peacebuilding process. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Pour rendre compte des dynamiques sociales et politiques à l’œuvre au sortir d’un conflit, cette thèse prend pour objet les mémoires de la guerre de 1992-1995 en Bosnie-Herzégovine. Inspirée par la sociologie de la mémoire de Maurice Halbwachs, par la sociologie des mobilisations et par celle des relations internationales, elle se penche sur les conditions sociales de l’expression des souvenirs de la détention en camps. A partir d’entretiens et d’observations ethnographiques et grâce au dépouillement d’un large corpus d’archives écrites, cette thèse prend à bras le corps l’hypothèse selon laquelle les mémoires de la guerre seraient clivées selon des lignes ethnonationales. Elle met au jour, dès les années de guerre, un processus de politisation nationaliste des récits publics de la détention. La judiciarisation internationale de la guerre favorise paradoxalement la construction par des acteurs politiques et militants bosniens d’une figure du détenu de camp comme témoin par excellence de la nature de la guerre. Or en déplaçant le regard vers l’échelle locale, on constate les limites de la politisation des récits de la détention. En effet, le devoir de témoignage assigné aux individus y rentre en concurrence avec des normes de civilité retravaillées au quotidien. Loin de l’image d’une « guerre des mémoires » ethnonationale, cette thèse donne à voir, dans les interactions locales, l’évitement du politique et la discrétion des « témoins ». Elle invite ainsi à prendre en compte les régulations sociales locales dans une sortie de conflit que l’étude des entreprises nationalistes et des interventions internationales de construction de la paix ne suffit pas à élucider. / In order to grasp the social and political dynamics at play in the aftermath of a conflict, this research investigates the memories of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Drawing on Halbwach’s sociology of memory, social movement theory and the sociology of international relations, it scrutinizes the social conditions for the communication of memories of war camp detention. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and on a large corpus of press archives, judicial testimonies and memoirs, this work questions the widespread view of Bosnian war memories as being divided along ethnonational lines. It first delineates a process of nationalist politicization of public narratives of detention in the 1990s. The international judiciarization of the conflict paradoxically contributed to Bosnian politicians’ and activists’ construction of camp detainees as the epitome of the war witness. However, by moving the focus of analysis to the local level, this research signals the limits of the nationalist politicization of war memories. Former camp detainees do not monolithically reproduce antagonistic interpretations of the war as a genocide or a civil war. Moreover, even though they are imposed a national “duty to testify”, individuals also negotiate with local norms of civility in their face-to-face interactions. Far from waging an ethnonational “memory war”, former camp detainees resort to everyday practices of discretion and avoidance of politicized matters. This research therefore pleads for an understanding of post-war societies that does not only focus on nationalist politics and international peacebuilding interventions, but also on war-affected local practices of civility.

The potential for art in peacebuilding has shown success but not complete acceptance in the peacebuilding field. Participatory photography’s method of photovoice has shown effective as a unique participatory action research tool able to allow users to communicate deeply on sensitive subjects with potential to influence larger social change. Participatory photography programs involving intergroup conflict or tensions presents an important relational component for practitioners and stakeholders to respond to, however the factors which lead to successful collaborative action, an ambitious outcome is not yet known. This thesis examines why some participatory photography programs involving intergroup conflict or tensions can reach collaborative social action more easily than others.  A structured focused comparison tests a theorized positive relationship between program duration and achievement of collaborative social action. The findings give moderate support to the hypothesis, as a low program duration shows a challenge to reach collaborative social action and a mid-range program duration proves able to achieve a high level of collaborative social action. On the other hand, an extreme high program duration can reach social action but it is not collaborative. Analysis considers some other factors affecting collaborative social action such as context and program design factors, which suggests the need for further testing to inform better practical designs of future participatory photography programs.

The thesis focuses on the post-conflict reconstruction of a small Balkan state, Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the emphasis on a wide-range mandate assigned by the Dayton Peace Accords to the regional security organization OSCE. The second part of the thesis takes a closer look at the main causes of the current political, economic and social crisis hindering the development of the country. Although Bosnia is a unitary country, it is strongly decentralized in most of its public life as well as political and social sectors, including the political parties, media or education system.

This paper presents the complexity of peacebuilding by looking at different types of peacebuilding models. To understand the peacebuilding models, this paper reviews different scholarly pieces of literature on the topic of peacebuilding. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the case of Somalia to determine the suitable peacebuilding model for Somalia. Somalia has faced one of the longest civil wars in Africa after the collapse of the government. To propose suitable peacebuilding for Somalia, the paper reviews different types of peacebuilding attempts that were conducted in Somalia by both international organizations and local peacemakers. These processes include an UN-led top-down approach and a bottom-up approach initiated by elders and local respected individuals. From reviewing different types of peacebuilding literature, the finding reveals conflict resolution specifically Ramsbotham et al (2011) as the best suitable peacebuilding model for Somalia.

Dissertation Title: Transforming Violent Masculinities: Nigeria's Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Programme in the Niger Delta Abstract Gender mainstream in security studies has been erroneously equated with the introduction of women in security practices. Hence, gender analysis of Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programmes have largely underestimated the importance of also considering men's gender identity. Breaking this pattern, this dissertation examines the ability of the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration approach adopted in the Niger Delta to change or consolidate violent masculinities among ex-combatants. The selected case study is of special relevance to the topic at hand since the conflict in the Niger Delta has been partly attributed to the constructions of masculinity that prevail in this Nigerian region. Following previous research in the field of critical masculinities and feminist peacebuilding, the paper reveals that the transformative potential of the Presidential Amnesty Programme is extremely limited, exclusively offering a way of expressing positive masculinities as part of the economy. This is the result of the Nigerian government's decision to adopt a minimalist approach to DDR that pays full attention to ex-combatants as individuals rather...

Contemporary peace operations are deployed to increasingly complex, high-risk environments where localised armed groups, often those that can influence the trajectory of the conflict are not at the table, at the same time militaries are mandated to facilitate social, economic and political transformative processes in recovered areas. By the opening of the twenty-first century, the distinction between peacebuilding and military interventions converged both in policy and practice and increasing pressure are placed on the troop-contributing countries to adapt to the dynamics of ‘multidimensional peace operations. Drawing upon the intersection between the academic bodies of peacekeeping and counter-insurgency, this research argues that there is a growing amount of empirically grounded literature that seeks to critically assess missions’ peacebuilding capability, and more specifically its impact on local settings. Yet, most studies tend to be framed in relation to conflict abatement along reductionist approaches to development rather than analysing how and in what ways such missions aid in providing a stable polity, thus suggesting a need of further investigation about the phenomena. In contribution to the community of practice(s), this research draws upon the latest theoretical trend of peacebuilding, abiding to a system perspective of the 5 Capabilities Framework (5Cs). This, in order to attain an increased understanding of military actors’ involvement and ability to undertake early peacebuilding tasks, by studying the case of the Kenyan Defence Force (KDF) under the auspices of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in the Jubbaland region. Moreover, the research was operationalised through an on-ground collection of data in Kenya and Somalia, using unstructured and semi-structured interviews and draws upon a purposive sampling method to gather perspectives from a variety of actors involved in peace operation affairs. The study finds that the AMISOM KDF has played a key role in shaping the organisation’s peacebuilding policy, with a diverse portfolio engagement of both top-down and bottom-up character. Working predominantly through informal structures, much of their engagement is not aligned with the AMISOM civilian headquarters, in response to an environment with many challenges, resulting in a patchwork of practices with sectoral difference. Analytically, the 5Cs framework posit that an organisation must strike a balance between all capabilities in order to produce social value, something that the Kenyan contingents have struggled to achieve. While this unpacks a view of moderate, to low capacity for peacebuilding, it also generates an overall critique to the framework as it promotes a scenario which seems impossible to realise. Despite its ‘system-wide’ contribution, questions remain regarding the value of the framework in analysing local peacebuilding engagement in peace operations.