Thesis advisor: Philip G. Altbach / "Education and conflict" has emerged as a new field of study during the last two decades. However, higher education is still relatively absent from this debate as most of the research has focused on primary and non-formal education. This dissertation is an exploratory qualitative study on the potential role of higher education in peacebuilding processes. The conceptual framework for the study is a taxonomy of the functions of higher education designed by the author. The questions guiding the dissertation are: 1) What can we learn about the role of higher education in conflict and postconflict from the experience of countries that have suffered internal conflicts in the last century? 2) How are universities in Colombia affected by the ongoing armed conflict in the country? 3) How can Colombian higher education contribute to build sustainable peace in the country? First, based on secondary sources, the dissertation explores seven armed conflicts that took place during the twentieth century. Then, the focus turns to the Colombian case. The research incorporates the analysis of 23 semi-structured interviews, published and unpublished documents, institutional websites, and government statistics, among others. In most of the conflicts included in the international overview, higher education institutions (HEIs) played instrumental roles during the conflict and the postconflict. Yet, those roles were not always conducive for peacebuilding. Universities, professors and students have been affected by the conflict, have participated in it, and sometimes, have been used by the combating parties for logistical purposes or to promote an ideology. In contrast, delegating a peacebuilding role to higher education is a relatively new phenomenon. Armed conflict in Colombia tends to affect public HEIs more than private ones. Public and private HEIs in Colombia have participated in peacebuilding activities. Sometimes they collaborated with government agencies and NGOs; other times, they worked independently. The contribution of higher education to peacebuilding goes beyond its traditional teaching function and includes many other functions that are hardly mentioned in peacebuilding literature. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This dissertation explores Liberian market women's food distribution activities and specifically focuses on their organizations and practices in postconflict times. During the last few years, Liberian market women have received considerable national and international attention. They have been hailed as heroines because of the significance they played in supplying food to Liberians during the civil war. However, little is known of their micro-world. This paradox constitutes the starting point of my dissertation, which explored market women's micro-level understandings and practices as related to peacebuilding. I used African feminist ethnography as a theoretical and methodological lens to investigate market women's organizations and practices surrounding food distribution in the capital city of Monrovia. African feminist ethnography incorporates insights from African feminist theory and feminist ethnography. It gives attention to issues of importance in West Africa like food and violent conflict. It also rejects the framing of African women as victims of war and recognizes their full agency. I conducted 40 in-depth semi-structured interviews with market women as well as observations in Fiamah, a daily food market located in central Monrovia. I examined market women's grassroots organizations called susu groups. Susu groups are informal credit unions that provide money to market women, necessary to purchase food items and maintain the market business. Findings illuminated the significance of wartime memories on postconflict susu group organizing practices. In this sense, memories of disruption and distrust engendered susu groups that were different from their prewar counterparts. Results also pointed at the invisible nature of susu groups, which had to balance their tendency towards secrecy with the pressure to become visible in a postconflict context where questions of organizational transparency dominated. I also investigated how market women made sense of their food distribution position in the peacebuilding era. Findings revealed that the women framed their role as one of community keeping. They emphasized the physical nature of food distribution which also necessitated maneuvering. Ultimately, food distribution gave them a sense of empowerment in postconflict times. These understandings reified class distinctions between market women and Liberian elites.

Background: There are about 23.7 million internally displaced persons worldwide today, still living in the low-income countries. Ethiopia has for the past four decades been ravaged by war and famine. A lengthy civil war resulted in Eritrea, formerly a part of Ethiopia, becoming an independent state in 1991. This war led to displacement of one million people, and currently there are about 55000 internally displaced Ethiopians in Addis Ababa, most of them living in temporary shelters. A minority resettled in a small town Debre Zeit south east of Addis Ababa, dispersed in the community. Objectives: To study the consequences of trauma and extreme stress among these displaced persons. Methods: A random sample of 1200 displaced persons was selected from the Kaliti and Kore shelters of Addis Ababa, aged between 18 and 60 years. They were interviewed by internationally validated instruments which were translated into the Ethiopian official language Amharic. Information thus obtained covered sociodemographics, childhood trauma, traumatic life events, and mental distress as assessed by the SCL-90-R, the four domains of quality of life assessed by WHOQOL-BREF, coping strategies, perceived social support, and basic living conditions. A sample of 120 subjects from the displaced persons living in Debre Zeit was similarly evaluated. A study comparing prevalence rates and risk factors for PTSD in four postconflict, low-income countries (Algeria, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Gaza) was also undertaken. Results: Men, compared to women, reported significantly higher experience of trauma, higher perceived social support, and higher task-oriented coping. Women reported higher emotion-oriented coping. In both genders, emotion-oriented coping was correlated with higher trauma events, and task-oriented coping was correlated with higher perceived social support. Mental distress increased and quality of life decreased with age. Mental distress mediated the effects of most trauma in reducing quality of life, and some trauma reduced quality of life directly. Living conditions were also significantly related to quality of life. Coping strategies and perceived social support influenced mental distress and quality of life directly as well as indirectly by moderation, in part gender specific. Placement in the community setting of Debre Zeit gave a better quality of life compared to placement in the shelters of Addis Ababa. This difference was accounted for by the difference in living conditions, particularly protection from animals (rodents) and insects (mosquitoes), for three domains of quality of life. For domain 3 (social relationships), however, several further factors accounted for the difference, like marital status, ethnic belonging and coping strategy. The comparative study of 4 postconflict countries contributes to the theory that trauma may be the direct cause of the onset of PTSD but that a multiplicity of other adverse events determine the development of this disorder. Conclusions: Using the same assessment methods, a wide range of rates of symptoms of PTSD were found among 4 low-income populations who have experienced war, conflict, or mass violence. In the Ethiopian context we also found gender differences in the trauma background, coping strategies and perceived social support. Mental distress mediated much of the effects of trauma on quality of life. Coping strategies and perceived social support were significant moderators in this process.

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Postconflict governments and counterparts have collaborated to provide skills training to communities as a critical postconflict development strategy. In these undertakings, the role of community members remains largely undefined. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive case study was to understand the perceptions held by rural community members regarding the role they played in influencing government's policy priority for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) as a local human development strategy in postconflict Liberia. The conceptual framework was based on human capital theory and concepts of motivation and achievement. Fourteen participants were purposefully selected for the study. Data were collected from interviews, focus group discussion, and documents and analyzed using constant comparison. Results indicated that increasing human capital, restoring self-esteem, encouraging civic participation, and building peace were among the community members' motivations for establishing a skills training institution. Leadership, advocacy, and ownership were major roles community stakeholders played in establishing their local skill training institution; voluntarism and collaboration were found to be strategies for support to the local TVET initiatives. Findings have positive social change implications for facilitating community-initiated TVET programs for youth employment as well as informing TVET policies in countries transitioning from conflict to development.

This diploma thesis deals with the postconflict reconstruction in Afghanistan from the american invasion in 2001 with the special focus on institutional reforms which were implemented there and whether these reforms caught on and function properly. Firstly, I deal with the conclusions which the theoretics of institutional economics came to regarding the role of institutions in economic development, how economic and political institutions come to existence and develop and if it is possible to change country's instituional environment. The institutions which lead to economic growth are above all equality before law, equality of opportunities, rule of law and free bussiness and trade. However, not all countries developed this optimal instituional framework because of different economic and political history. These countries then suffer from poverty and instability and in many of these cases the international community intervene to change this unfavourable situation. However, as many these unsuccessful interventions show, to change the country's institutional environment is not easy. Spontaneously or from below developed institutions are deeply rooted in society and if they are not in accordance with new institutional reforms, they will probably not function properly or will even lead to opposite results. In the case of Afghanistan, many years of civil war resulted in creation of war economy and total fall of state institutions while this power vacuum wal filled by rise of local warlords who, with the help of armed militias, seized control over number of regions and made a living by illegal trade. The reform process started after the successful military invasion in 2001 and after the fall of Taliban regime with the goal to establish liberal democracy of western type in Afghanistan was not successful. Most of the country is again under the control of Taliban, economy consists mostly of opium growing and illegal trade and the country is still extremely poor and instable and in spite of the change of formal rules actually nothing has changed- Afghanistan is still war economy and fallen state.

Power-sharing has become a frequent approach to conflict resolution and postconflict reconstruction in deeply divided multi-ethnic states. Although most of the power-sharing arrangements failed within the first years after their establishment, a few contemporary cases are associated with successful power-sharing, namely with the consociational model. This work aims to determine the impact of the power-sharing arrangement on conflict dynamics and vice versa, thus the development of the model in the long term. Designs, aims and theoretical predictions of two power-sharing models, specifically consociational and centripetal models, are elaborated and subsequently compared with the after-civil war development in Lebanon and Burundi from 2005 to 2019. The periods are divided into time units bounded by amendments of the power-sharing arrangements and peace agreements. That enables to observe the development of both conflict dynamics and models. Political and civil society developments, conflicts registered in the UCDP database and political crisis are considered and put into the context of power-sharing arrangements. Based on the results, I claim that conflict dynamics from the last civil war are maintained on elites' level in the long term, while the gap between elites and masses has widened. Also, the...

Grâce au Good Friday Agreement (GFA) signé en 1998, l’Irlande du Nord connait une période de pacification sans précédent depuis les Troubles (1969-1998). Dans cette situation de post conflit, la violence liée aux affrontements entre groupes paramilitaires et forces de sécurité britannique a très largement diminué. Cependant, de petits groupes paramilitaires républicains s’opposent toujours au traité de paix. Cette thèse a pour objectif comprendre pourquoi les paramilitaires républicains anti-GFA continuent d’utiliser la violence alors qu’ils reconnaissent que, dans le contexte actuel, la lutte armée a peu de chance de conduire à la réunification de l’Irlande. A Belfast, l’analyse spatiale des violences intracommunautaires (perpétuées dans le cadre d’un système de justice alternatif) et des attaques contre les forces de police montre que la stratégie des organisations paramilitaires anti-GFA repose sur la création d’un cycle d’agitation. Il s’agit d’une stratégie de développement locale qui vise à maintenir des territoires d’exception. Ce terme désigne ici des territoires où la normalisation voulue par le processus de paix est limitée par les actions des républicains anti-GFA et où le monopole de la violence légitime est disputé. Cependant, cette stratégie de contrôle du territoire communautaire se heurte à toute une série de problèmes. En effet, les organisations paramilitaires anti-GFA sont de petits groupes fragmentés qui tendent à se diviser dans le temps. Enfin, l’influence des paramilitaires anti-GFA est limitée par un contexte social extrêmement défavorable à la lutte armée, par les actions des forces de sécurité, et par la présence et la stratégie du Sinn Féin. / Thanks to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) signed in 1998, Northern Ireland knows a period of pacification unknown since the Troubles (1969-1998). In this post-conflict situation, violence in the form of confrontation between paramilitary groups and British security forces has greatly decreased. Nevertheless, small republican paramilitary groups are still opposing the peace treaty. The goal of this dissertation is to understand why republican paramilitaries opposed to the GFA continue to rely on violence while recognizing that, in the current context, armed struggle has little chances of leading to the reunification of Ireland. In Belfast, spatial analysis of intracommunal violence (carried out within an alternative justice system) and attacks against the police indicate that the strategy of the paramilitary organizations opposed to the GFA relies on creating a cycle of unrest. This is a strategy of local development aiming at maintaining territories of exception. This concept here means territories where the normalization sought by the peace process is limited by anti-GFA republicans’ actions and where the monopole of legitimate violence is disputed. This strategy of communal territory control is however facing a series of problems. Anti-GFA paramilitary organisations are indeed small fragmented groups which often splinter overtime. Finally, anti-GFA paramilitary organizations’ influence is limited by a social context extremely unfavourable to armed struggle, by security forces, and by the presence and strategy of the Sinn Féin.

The civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which took place between 1992 and 1995, is perceived as the most tragic conflict in Europe since the Second World War. The process of postconflict reconstruction has been running there for 17 years and there have been numerous actors involved. But still, the process has not been finished. The diploma thesis deals with the question of the role played by particular involved actors in the process of postconflict reconstruction. In the first part of the thesis the theoretical framework of postconflict reconstruction is presented. In the second part the contemporary situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Dayton Peace Agreement are outlined. The third part fully focuses on the analysis of particular groups of actors. Three groups of actors are analysed: the international community, the local ruling elite and the international and local nongovernmental organisations. The aim of this work is to identify the objects of those actors in the process of postconflict reconstruction and consequently to evaluate their opportunities to achieve those goals. The SWOT analysis is applied to analyze the role of the actors.

Les guerres sont d’importants facteurs de recompositions territoriales. Les territoires des « Pays du Niari », région créée par le politique, ont une place particulière dans l’histoire des conflits au Congo et celle-ci conditionne leur reconstruction. Après 10 ans de guerres, la région a du mal à se remettre, et se trouve au cœur d’enjeux socio-économiques, politiques et identitaires à différentes échelles.Cette thèse étudie d’une part les conflits, procédant à une géohistoire méthodique d’une région et de populations occultés par les acteurs nationaux et internationaux. Elle étudie d’autre part la façon dont les différents acteurs s’approprient la notion de post-conflit et les répercussions territoriales des actions entreprises. Cela amène enfin à faire état du hiatus entre actions de reconstructions et besoins des populations et des territoires, visibles à travers des territoires et des temporalités fragmentés. / Wars are major factors in territorial reorganisation. The territories of the “Pays du Niari”, region created by politicians, have a particular/specific place in the history of conflicts in Congo and the former influences their reconstruction. After 10 years of war, the region finds it difficult to recover, and finds itself in the middle of socio-economic, political and identity issues at different levels.This thesis studies, on the one hand, the conflicts leading to a methodical history-geography change of a region and populations put aside by national and international decision makers. It studies, on the other hand, how the different actors make theirs the notion of the post conflict and the territorial repercussions of the actions undertaken. This finally leads us to put forward the hiatus between reconstruction actions and the needs of the populations and the territories, clearly visible through the fragmented territories and timeframes.