No / Demilitarization of conflict and society is crucial to building sustainable peace in countries emerging from the scourge of civil war. As longstanding conflicts come to an end, processes which facilitate the potentially volatile transition from formal peace to social peace are critically important. At the heart of the exercise is the necessity of transforming the culture and the instruments of war - demilitarization - including disarming, demobilizing and reintegrating (DDR) former combatants into society. This volume represents the first in-depth and comprehensive discussion of reintegration of former combatants in war to peace transitions. In addition to a systematic reflection and review of existing literature on DDR, the authors devised and applied a field research methodology to studying the reintegration of former combatants in Angola with potentially significant implications on the design and implementation of DDR programmes. The volume is written for academics, students and practitioners focusing on war to peace transitions and post-conflict issues.

Countries emerging out of armed conflicts face immense challenges in their efforts to build electoral democracies. Contrary to our intuition that elections can transform violent competition to peaceful political contests, past research suggests that holding post-conflict elections only increases the chance of renewed violence. Why are elections unable to build sustainable democracies as expected? In this dissertation, I examine the question by focusing on two levels of analysis. First, I study the effects of violence on political behavior of mass publics at the individual level using the World Values survey Dataset. I argue that citizens are more inclined to support undemocratic leaders, when they are faced with threats from armed violence. Empirically, I find that presence of pre-election violence in post-conflict elections leads voters to prefer parties that are stronger in terms of their violence-wielding capacities over more moderate and peaceful parties. Second, I investigate how such an outcome might influence the risk of renewed conflicts in a country emerging out of armed conflict. The hypothesized mechanism can only be described as tragic. At individual level, fearful voters support violent parties mainly to maintain the status quo, fearing that parties with a violent reputation are likely to renew conflict if they lose the election. Tragically, however, placing undemocratic and violent parties in power only increases the likelihood of renewed conflicts. I test this expectation using an event history model to analyze all post-conflict countries from 1950 to 2010 and find that the presence of pre-election violence in a country increases its risk of renewed armed conflicts. The study has important implication for policymakers and election monitoring bodies. Rather than the current practice of observing only a single event Election Day, this study emphasizes the importance of creating a secure environment during the pre-election phase, about six months prior to the first election, in order to achieve a sustainable peace in post-conflict countries.

The history of mankind has been plagued by an almost continuous chain of various armed conflicts - local, regional, national and global - that have caused horrendous damage to the social and physical fabric of cities. The tragedy of millions deprived by war still continues. This study sets out to understand the nature of reconstruction after war in the light of recent armed conflicts. It attempts to catalogue and discuss the tasks involved in the process of reconstruction planning by establishing a conceptual framework of the main issues in the reconstruction process. The case of Bosnia and Herzegovina is examined in detail and on the whole acts as the leit-motif of the whole dissertation and positions reconstruction in the broader context of sustainable development. The study is organized into two parts that constitute the doctoral aggregate dissertation – a combining of papers with an introductory monograph. In this case the introductory monograph is an extended one and there are six papers that follow. Both sections can be read on their own merits but also constitute one entity. The rebuilding of war-devastated countries and communities can be seen as a series of nonintegrated activities carried out (and often imposed) by international agencies and governments, serving political and other agendas. The result is that calamities of war are often accompanied by the calamities of reconstruction without any regard to sustainable development. The body of knowledge related to post-conflict reconstruction lacks a strong and cohesive theory. In order to better understand the process of reconstruction we present a qualitative inquiry based on the Grounded Theory Method developed originally by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967). This approach utilizes a complex conceptualization with empirical evidence to produce theoretical structure. The results of process have evolved into the development of a conceptual model, called SCOPE (Sustainable Communities in Post-conflict Environments). This study proposes both a structure within which to examine post-conflict reconstruction and provides an implementation method. We propose to use the SCOPE model as a set of strategy, policy and program recommendations to assist the international community and all relevant decision-makers to ensure that the destruction and carnage of war does not have to be followed by a disaster of post-conflict reconstruction. We also offer to provide a new foundation and paradigm on post-conflict reconstruction, which incorporates and integrates a number of approaches into a multidisciplinary and systems thinking manner in order to better understand the complexity and dependencies of issues at hand. We believe that such a systems approach could better be able to incorporate the complexities involved and would offer much better results than the approaches currently in use. The final section of this study returns to the fact that although it is probably impossible to produce universal answers, we desperately need to find commonalities amongst different postconflict reconstruction settings in order to better deal with the reconstruction planning in a more dynamic, proactive, and sustainable manner. / <p>QC 20111014</p>

This thesis is an ethnographic study of rights restitution as an arrangement that establishes boundaries, and how those boundaries are translated, challenged, and exceeded. Following the guidelines of International Humanitarian Law and its version contained in the Law of Victims and Land Restitution (1448/2011), the Colombian government established a wide network of professionals in charge of registration and reparation for claimants registered as victims of the armed conflict (7,999,963 people in April 2016). In these procedures of recognition and reparation, technologies like forms and protocols become crucial for the mediation of rights restitution. As a starting point, I trace the trajectories of technologies of recognition and reparation across assistance centres, governmental offices and sessions of psychosocial assistance. I am interested in functionaries and applicants’ experiences of forms and protocols, the procedures of recognition and reparation, and the circulation of official numbers as narratives of rights restitution. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, a central concern of this thesis is to ask what technologies of recognition and reparation assemble. I interrogate the translation of experiences of pain and mobility into numbers and the circulation of those numbers by state representatives. I also explore some of the material forms of organisation developed by registered and unregistered interlocutors, as arrangements beyond the boundaries of state interventions. I describe how some of those alternative orders translate state interventions and enact spaces of material justice. Instead of reproducing the notion of reparation as a cornerstone of rights restitution in transitional justice societies, I suggest that a different sort of Reparation might occur beyond the boundaries of post-conflict statehood and within its intersections with alternative arrangements.

Les questions de genre dans le développement pour l’avancement des droits des femmes et de leur statut ont connu un intérêt croissant au niveau universel, notamment depuis les années 1990 et la Conférence mondiale sur les femmes du Beijing de 1995.L’enthousiasme suscité autour de ces questions est ainsi illustré par les moyens mis en œuvre au Timor par la communauté internationale dans ce domaine en parallèle du processus d’établissement de l’Etat de droit et de construction de ce nouvel Etat dans le contexte post-conflit dans lequel celui-ci se trouve, l’assimilant parfois à un « laboratoire » des Nations Unies pour la mise en œuvre des principes internationaux relatifs à l’établissement de l’Etat de droit et à l’approche de genre dans la reconstruction et la gestion d’un Etat ainsi que des mécanismes de contrôle des droits de l’homme au bénéfice de la femme. Se basant sur une recherche empirique, la présente étude tente ainsi d’analyser de quelle manière le droit international influence non seulement les droits des femmes au Timor d’un point de vue formel, mais aussi et surtout leur statut au sein de la société timoraise. / Gender issues in development for the advancement of women's rights and their status have gained increasing attention at the universal level, particularly since the 1990s and the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women. The enthusiasm for these issues can be illustrated by the means implemented in Timor by the international community in this field in parallel with the process of establishing the rule of law and the construction of this new State in a post-conflict context, making equating it as a United Nations "laboratory" for the implementation of international principles related to the establishment of the rule of law and the gender approach in the reconstruction and management of a State as well as the evaluation mechanisms of human rights to the benefit of women. Based on an empirical research, the present study attempts to analyze how international law not only affects formal women's rights in Timor but also, and especially, the status of women within Timorese society.

While the role of youth in post-conflict settings has increasingly gained policy attention, systematic academic studies on this topic remain scarce. This research adds to existing literature by the youth bulge theory of conflict onset to a post-conflict setting. It hypothesizes that large youth bulges at the time conflict episodes end increase the feasibility for rebel groups to relaunch their insurgence and are therefore associated with a higher risk of conflict recurrence. A global quantitative analysis revealed a statistically significant positive correlation between youth bulges and conflict recurrence. Three conditional hypotheses which focus on elements of economic, political and social exclusion that are argued to interact with youth bulges to influence the risk of conflict recurrence found no empirical support. However, the combination of findings for Hypothesis 1 and non-findings for Hypotheses 2 may indicate that the underlying cause for the relationship between youth bulges and conflict recurrence may not be based on young people’s individual grievances and motives to join a rebel group. Instead, other factors may be at play which could not be tested within the scope of this study. Despite its shortcomings, this study therefore confirms the necessity of continuing to investigate the relationship between the age distribution of a population and the risk of conflict recurrence.

O trabalho apresenta o problema da dificuldade do acesso à justiça no contexto de reconstrução institucional pós-conflito. A preocupação inicial está voltada para a análise das práticas internacionais de reconstrução de sistemas de justiça, tradicionalmente habituadas à prática de exportação de modelos, o que na maioria das vezes contribui para o fracasso de iniciativa da comunidade internacional, principalmente da ONU. Procura-se, por meio de estudo interdisciplinar, abordar a teoria do acesso à justiça e identificar os traços essenciais da formação dos novos sistemas de justiça. Em seguida, pretende-se desenvolver uma reflexão crítica sobre as falhas dos modelos de justiça. Partindo do enunciado de algumas hipóteses de caráter axiológico-normativo relativas à organização dos sistemas de justiça, procura-se avaliar a robustez de tais premissas, inclusive pela análise do contexto pós-conflito de dois países, Timor Leste e Afeganistão, com matrizes jurídicas distintas, mas que fazem bastante uso do sistema tradicional de resolução de conflito. Nesse contexto, avalia-se fragilidade de trabalhar-se exclusivamente com os modelos estatais de justiça quando formas alternativas de solução de conflito podem melhor representar os interesses e valores. A última parte do trabalho, de caráter integrativo, pretende fazer a união de perspectivas modernas sobre o acesso à justiça, tratados no capítulo 1º, nos contextos estudados no capítulo 2º, tendo, por isso, três orientações principais: enfocar o tema dos direitos humanos e dos direitos fundamentais no contexto pós-conflito, abordar as contribuições havidas com os mecanismos de justiça de transição, refletir sobre a ortodoxia da prática para um estado de direito com base na perspectiva do empoderamento jurídico. Pretende-se, por fim, sugerir a adoção de mecanismos alternativos de resolução de conflitos no escopo da redefinição dos sistemas jurídicos pós-conflito como elemento de garantia de eficácia do acesso à justiça / Le travail expose le problème de la difficulté de laccès à la justice dans le contexte de la reconstruction institutionnelle post-conflit. Lorientation initiale est lanalyse des pratiques internationales de reconstruction des systèmes de justice qui repose traditionnellement sur la pratique dexportation de modèles laquelle contribue la plupart du temps à léchec des initiatives de la communauté internationale, principalement de lONU. Par le biais dune étude interdisciplinaire, nous cherchons à aborder la théorie daccès à la justice et à identifier les traits essentiels de la formation de nouveaux systèmes de justice. Ensuite, nous développons une réflexion critique sur les failles des modèles de justice. A partir de lénoncé de certaines hypothèses à caractère axiologico-normatif concernant lorganisation des systèmes de justice, nous cherchons à valider la robustesse de telles hypothèses y compris par lanalyse du contexte post-conflit de deux pays, le Timor Oriental et lAfghanistan, aux systèmes juridiques différents, mais qui utilisent intensément le système traditionnel de résolution de conflit. Dans ce contexte, nous évaluons la fragilité de travailler exclusivement sur des modèles étatiques de justice quand des formes alternatives de solution de conflit peuvent représenter plus efficacement les intérêts et les valeurs. La dernière partie du travail, à caractère intégratif, prétend allier les perspectives modernes daccès de la justice, traitées au premier chapitre, au contexte étudié au chapitre 2, avec de ce fait trois orientations principales: se concentrer sur le thème des droits humains et des droits fondamentaux du contexte post-conflit, aborder les contributions existantes aux mécanismes de justice de transition, réfléchir sur lorthodoxie de cette pratique pour un état de droit ayant pour base la perspective dautonomisation juridique. Enfin, nous suggérons ladoption des mécanismes alternatifs pour la résolution de conflit afin de redéfinir les systèmes juridiques post-conflit comme un élément de garantie de lefficacité à laccès de la justice.

Em dezembro de 2012, após treze anos, três mandatos de operações de paz e dois mandatos de missões políticas, a ONU se retirava do território do Timor-Leste de maneira bastante discreta. Fechava-se, naquele momento, um ciclo de participação da Organização na vida política e econômica daquele país, que se iniciara com os episódios de violência de 1999, quando milicianos pró-indonésia tentaram impedir o processo político de autodeterminação do povo timorense. Herdando um país com suas infraestruturas destruídas e mais de um quarto de sua população refugiada ou deslocada internamente, a ONU não apenas pacificou o território como também empreendeu ali um processo de Post-conflict Peacebuilding (PCPB), onde sua participação variou entre o exercício pleno de todos os poderes soberanos atinentes às funções de governo de qualquer Estado ao apoio de assessores altamente especializados em prol do governo independente do Timor-Leste. O balanço final dessa participação é positivo na medida que revela um país com estruturas governamentais consolidadas, formalmente democrático e com boas taxas de crescimento econômico. Por outro lado, o combate à pobreza, a consolidação da pacificação social, a necessidade de maior participação popular na política e a redução da dependência de sua economia em relação ao petróleo seguem sendo desafios não resolvidos e, em grande medida, externalidades provocadas pela própria ONU. / In December 2012, after thirteen years, three mandates of peace operations and two mandates of political missions, the UN withdrew from the territory of Timor-Leste in a rather discreet manner. At that moment, a cycle of the Organization's participation in the political and economic life of that country, which began with the 1999 episodes of violence, occurred when pro-Indonesian militiamen tried to impede the political process of self-determination of the Timorese people. Inheriting a country with its destroyed infrastructure and more than a quarter of its population refugee or internally displaced, the UN not only pacified the territory but also undertook a Post-conflict Peacebuilding (PCPB) process, where its participation ranged from full exercise of all sovereign powers pertaining to the government functions of any State to the support of highly specialized advisers for the independent government of Timor-Leste. The final balance of this participation is positive insofar as it reveals a country with consolidated government structures, formally democratic and good rates of economic growth. On the other hand, the fight against poverty, the consolidation of social pacification, the need for greater popular participation in politics and the reduction of dependence of its economy on oil remain unresolved challenges and, to a large extent, externalities caused by the UN itself.

Security sector reform has in the recent past been a critical component of peace agreements in countries emerging from armed conflicts or political crisis. In Kenya, the Commission of Inquiry into the 2007/08 Post-Election Violence (CIPEV) established that Kenya’s security sector, particularly the police, bore the greatest responsibility for the violence. Subsequently, the police emerged as one of the major institutions for reforms. ‘How have security sector reforms, particularly police reforms, in Kenya developed since 2007 and how, and to what extent, have they been shaped by Kenya’s wider political transitions and SSR process during this period?’ The research aimed at investigating how the police reform process in Kenya has developed since 2007, and how the process has been shaped by Kenya’s wider political transitions and security sector reform processes in general. Using mixed methods research, we found that despite some progress, there is wider public perception that the reforms are yet to address reform priorities at the national level and still fall short of expectations of ordinary Kenyans. We argue that political power-sharing after the 2007 post-election violence facilitated police reform, while at the same time frustrated its implementation especially in instances where reform seemed to dis-empower political elites.

This diploma thesis deals with the post-conflict development in Rwanda and its main aim is to evaluate the tools adopted after the genocide in 1994 for the purpose of preventing recurrence of any similar conflict in the future. The thesis mostly concentrates on the process of justice (on the international, national and local level) and on the process of reconciliation of the polarized society in Rwanda as two key components of the post-conflict reconstruction. On the basis of the results derived from the detailed analysis of the tools from security, social, economic and political area, the thesis answers the asked question if the future conflict in Rwanda is nowadays hardly probable (thanks to effective and successful activity of the adopted measures) or if there is, on the contrary, some ethnic tension in Rwanda which could become the reason for repeating of any wave of violence in short- or medium-term.