Can positive messaging on social media promote peacebuilding in Myanmar? It is argued that social cognitive communication campaigns reversing negative symbolic interactionism on social networks could be the answer. This paper finds that there has been only one significant campaign, MIDO’s Pan Zagar, to use positive messaging on social media. Whilst the numbers of people that engaged with it suggest that this was popular, there is not enough evidence to determine if this had any behavioural change. However, an opinion survey and interviews show that there is potential to leverage counter narratives towards building peace – especially by harnessing the popularity of the major platform Facebook to both monitor and publish content influencing people towards peaceful behaviour.

Despite efforts to better understand and address the root causes of conflict, violence continues to affect nations and communities around the world, displacing millions and avoiding resolution. Global institutions, developed to promulgate a more cooperative and peaceful world order, have failed to adequately resolve conflicts, with many spanning multiple decades, regionalising, and involving an increasing number of non- state actors. Through historically situating the roots of liberal peacebuilding and analysing recent UN and AU approaches to peace consolidation and conflict resolution, this dissertation seeks to better understand the ways in which these institutions' pasts have influenced their present approaches. By bringing together historicist and sociological approaches to peace research, and following in a constructivist IR tradition, this dissertation traces norm formation at these institutions and contextualises calls for more "locally-led" approaches. I use historical research to situate the roots of UN and AU approaches and conduct thematic analysis to investigate norm shifts related to state sovereignty, protection of civilians, conflict prevention, gender, development, democracy, peacebuilding, and bottom-up approaches to peace. I find that while norms have shifted significantly in both...

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...

For more or less two decades, the application of information and communication technology (ICT) in the realm of peacebuilding has successfully contributed to the transformation of armed conflicts and, thus, made social change and development in conflictive environments possible where traditional mechanisms reached their limits. However, they can also have the opposite effect as they simultaneously bear the potential to undermine participatory processes, re-enforce exclusion, and disempower those affected by conflict.  Hence, using ICT during peace processes both offers opportunities and poses challenges to peacebuilders. Here, traditional peacebuilding mechanisms featuring offline participation in peace processes remain a viable option. In my thesis, I argue that the digitalisation of peacebuilding can only contribute to development if also traditional means are considered to achieve the overarching goal to build peace in the realm of conflict-sensitive communication. Thus, the digital and traditional spheres of peacebuilding have to be both intertwined complementarily - creating a "hybrid" form of peacebuilding.

This study is based on Swedish feminist foreign policy and how ideas about feminist peacebuilding have found their place in international peace and conflict studies. Since World War II, traditional security policy has been dominated by liberal explanatory models and strategies to achieve a more peaceful world order, and the main elements of liberal peace include democracy, international cooperation and free trade. Feminist theory criticizes the liberal view of peace by pointing out the meaning of human security rather than national security. The purpose of the study is to depict the type of peace that the Swedish government has worked for in Colombia and intends to answer the questions, what has the Swedish government's work for peace in Colombia looked like and what type of peace, feminist peace or liberal peace, can the work describe best? By using a qualitative content analysis as a method with an analysis tool that is built based on the theoretical framework, the study aims to more deeply examine the empirical material to depict what the government’s worked looked like during the peace process. The study shows that Sweden has worked for a feminist peace in the negotiations and statements that were directly linked to the peace process, but that the traditional liberal perspective still dominates in certain areas such as trade policy. The study contributes to an increased understanding of the development of Swedish feminist politics.

This thesis explores the role of context-specific peace education initiatives in promoting social cohesion in the Western Cape, South Africa, with an emphasis on drawing lessons from the philosophy of Ubuntu. Against the backdrop of South Africa's colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid historical and social significance, including issues of social cohesion, the study addresses the country's complex socio-political dynamics and ongoing challenges in fostering unity and inclusivity. By applying the Social Capital Theory, which highlights the importance of social networks, trust, reciprocity, shared norms and values, as well as collective action in achieving shared goals and cooperation, this study explores how context-specific peace education initiatives can be customized to local contexts and their potential to promote positive social change. With a focus on the Western Cape province, characterised by high levels of violence and socio-economic disparities, this research delves into peace education initiatives to comprehend their adaptation to local circumstances and their capacity to drive constructive social transformation. The findings underscore the significance of relationships, social networks, and individuals with strong social capital in building positive peace and fostering social cohesion. Creating inclusive spaces for dialogue through storytelling, art, music, and other means emerges as a key finding. These spaces provide opportunities for people to come together, share their experiences, and engage in difficult conversations. The research also emphasizes the role of young people and their active engagement in civic participation as crucial for the success of peace education initiatives. By valuing and incorporating local wisdom, traditions, and practices such as Ubuntu, peace education initiatives can better address the specific needs and challenges of the Western Cape. The study recommends further research on the integration of gender-sensitive and intersectional approaches. Understanding and addressing gender-related factors are essential for promoting inclusivity and equality within peace education programs.

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United Nations (UN) Charter Article 42 authorizes the Security Council to take military action by air, sea or land if non-armed solutions fail to restore international peace and Article 43 states that UN members will keep troops and equipment available for the use of the Security Council. However, Article 43 never went into effect, leaving the UN without an alternative to diplomatic solutions. Canada’s UN representative, Lester Pearson Bowles, proposed instituting peacekeeping missions to address this handicap and Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold established a peacekeeping framework, which included: agreement from the Security Council, agreement by parties involved, readiness of UN members to support mission, and the existence of a peace agreement. However, the UN’s peacekeeping framework is often violated to address complex threats to international peace. This thesis will present an analysis of the UN peacekeeping framework and the UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) and the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA) to establish how the conflict in El Salvador and Guatemala determined ONUSAL’s and MINUGUA’s missions and how these deviate from the UN peacekeeping framework. The purpose of this study is to establish specific modifications that must be made to the classic UN peacekeeping framework based on conflict specifics to prevent UN peacekeeping failures.

Ideas matter. Thus, approaching peacebuilding efforts from an ideational perspective can contribute to a deeper understanding of their meanings and legacies. Traditionally, the liberal peace paradigm has been prevalent in peacebuilding, translating into programs, projects, actions, and agreements that model liberal norms, values, and practices. Among these sets of ideas, it is possible to identify beliefs about New Public Management (NPM), which affect how instruments like peace agreements are designed and codified. However, this relationship has not been thoroughly explored in the peacebuilding and public management literature, although both strive to achieve efficient and effective governance and peace. In response to this gap, this thesis examines, through text analysis, the degree to which the normative and bureaucratic legacies of NPM are present in the design of a comprehensive peace agreement. This required the selection of an empirical case that could deepen the understanding of what kind of public management NPM ideas are embedded and to what extent, hence the selection of the Colombian Peace Agreement, an example of the golden standard in comprehensive arrangements. The study systematically reviewed and codified the text of the agreement –578 provisions or stipulations– based on the presence and specificity of NPM-related doc-trines. The findings show the pervasiveness of bureaucratic legacies associated with strategic planning, performance audit of provisions, decentralisation, and the appointment of managers and high-level bodies to administer the implementation. However, ideas associated with financial control, competition and flexibilization of the public sector, were less relevant. The analysis also identified other ideas, which expand on the civilian input in the main bureaucratic doctrines. Thus, it provides a new insight to understanding peace in bureaucratic terms as the strategic expansion of institutional infrastructure with strong oversight mechanisms within peace agreements. This calls for a more careful review of the bureaucratic legacies and understandings present in peacebuilding efforts and how they could relate to other sets of ideas already reviewed in the literature, which could lead to further research shaping our understanding of peace through time and across contexts.

As developed throughout the dissertation¿s chapters, I combined a number of different and interconnected agendas with the overall goal being to strengthen and revitalize the field of conflict resolution and peacebuilding research in a number of ways. First, I critiqued the past and current peacebuilding literature in order to present its theoretical, methodological and substantive gaps and inadequacies. Second, I argued for a recognition of the interconnectedness of methodology, reflexivity and knowledge/power in general, and more specifically within the peacebuilding literature. Third, my theoretical and methodological framework constituted a distinctive exemplar for conflict resolution and peacebuilding that begins to ground our research questions, methodologies and discourses as situated knowledges within relations of power. Fourth, I argued academic peacebuilding discourses and practices are not neutral but inherently involved in larger social relations. Fifth, I presented the critical narratives from the locality of Indigenous and non-Indigenous grassroots activists in order to shift the spotlight of peacebuilding discourses and practices onto the transformative possibilities of grassroots community-based peace building. I continued with a reformulated theorization of grassroots community peacebuilding as alternative geographies of knowledge, place-based practices and counter-narratives, important in themselves, and as part of a glocality of bottom-up transformative change. Finally, I conclude with a call for a renewing of the field of Conflict resolution and Peacebuilding based on social justice and community-based praxis.