Why peace endures: an analysis of post-conflict stabilisation

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Caplan ◽  
Anke Hoeffler

AbstractThis article is concerned with explaining why peace endures in countries that have experienced a civil armed conflict. We use a mixed methods approach by evaluating six case studies (Burundi, East Timor, El Salvador, Liberia, Nepal, Sierra Leone) and survival analysis that allows us to consider 205 peace episodes since 1990. We find that it is difficult to explain why peace endures using statistical analysis but there is some indication that conflict termination is important in post-conflict stabilisation: negotiated settlements are more likely to break down than military victories. We also consider the impact of UN peacekeeping operations on the duration of peace but find little evidence of their contribution. However, in situations where UN peacekeeping operations are deployed in support of negotiated settlements they do seem to contribute to peace stabilisation.

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Levin ◽  
Dan Miodownik

AbstractThere is today a well-established consensus that belligerents must be disarmed in order to reconstruct shattered states and establish a robust and durable peace in the wake of internal armed conflict. Indeed, nearly every UN peacekeeping intervention since the end of the Cold War has included disarmament provisions in its mandate. Disarmament is guided by the arrestingly simple premise that weapons cause conflict and, therefore, must be eradicated for a civil conflict to end. If the means by which combatants fight are eliminated, it is thought, actors will have little choice but to commit to peace. Disarmament is, therefore, considered a necessary condition for establishing the lasting conditions for peace. To date, however, no systematic quantitative analysis has been undertaken of the practice of disarmament and the causal mechanisms remain underspecified. This paper is a preliminary attempt to fill that gap. In it we outline a series of hypotheses with which to run future statistical analyses on the effects of disarmament programs. The success of negotiations and the durability of peace are, perhaps, the single most salient issues concerning those engaged in conflict termination efforts. We therefore focus the bulk of this paper on a review of the supposed effects of disarmament on negotiating outcomes and war recurrence.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard F. Hutabarat

<p align="justify">As peacekeeping has evolved to encompass a broader humanitarian approach, women personels have become increasingly part of the peacekeeping family. The UN has called for more deployment of female peacekeepers to enhance the overall “holistic” approach to current UN peacekeeping operations. There is clearly more work to be done to integrate more female peacekeepers into UN missions. More skilled and trained female peacekeepers can only be an asset to future peacekeeping operations. In October 2000, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. The resolution was hailed as a landmark resolution in that for the first time, the Security Council recognised the contribution women make during and post-conflict. Since the adoption of Resolution 1325, attention to gender perspectives within the international peace agenda has ¬firmly been placed within the broader peace and security framework. This article explains the development of Indonesian female peacekeepers contribution in the period of 2009-20016 and argues why Indonesia needs to support and to consider deploying more female peacekeepers in UN peacekeeping operations.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (7) ◽  
pp. 1595-1600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodora-Ismene Gizelis ◽  
Michelle Benson

The impact of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping on conflict has received a sustained amount of attention in the empirical literature. The advent of new data on UN peacekeeping and new temporal units of analysis have enabled researchers to expand the frontiers of peacekeeping research and undertake a more nuanced examination of peacekeeping effectiveness. In this special section, a series of articles examine how UN peacekeeping affects different types of violence within conflicts and leads to different types of peaceful outcomes. Factors such as the cultural affinity between peacekeepers and local communities, the size of peacekeeping operations and the specific composition of UN forces are shown to be important variables associated with lower levels of casualties and violence and also a higher likelihood of mediation and timely peaceful settlements in civil wars. In the aggregate, these articles suggest that robust peacekeeping is associated with better outcomes in many stages of conflict.


2003 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimmy D. Kandeh

The landslide victory by the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) in the 2002 elections was due not to any ideological or policy differences with opposition parties, but to the perception among a plurality of voters that the party delivered on its promise to end the war and therefore deserved re-election. The elections were in effect a referendum on the incumbent president and his ruling SLPP, with voters overwhelmingly concluding that Ahmad Tejan Kabba, the SLPP leader, was preferable to the legion of certified scoundrels seeking to replace him. Signs of the All Peoples Congress (APC), the party that was in power from 1968–92, making a political comeback galvanised otherwise unenthusiastic voters into supporting Kabba and the SLPP. In contrast to the APC, against whom the rebel war was launched, or the Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP), which initiated and prosecuted the insurgency, or the People's Liberation Party (PLP), whose earlier incarnation prolonged the war by colluding with rebels, Kabba and the SLPP claimed to have ended a war that was caused, launched and sustained by assorted elements of the political opposition. The SLPP, however, can ill-afford to bask in electoral triumph or ignore the festering problems of rampant official corruption and mass poverty that led to armed conflict in the 1990s. Tackling the problem of corruption and mass deprivation may hold the key to democratic consolidation, but it is doubtful whether the SLPP, as presently constituted, is capable of leading the fight against these scourges. The SLPP may be reaching out to become a national party but it still remains an unreconstructed patronage outfit that is unresponsive to popular currents and mass aspirations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Ursula Werther-Pietsch

 The thesis of this article is to unpack potential impact of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations on international law in the field of peacebuilding, and a right to peace in particular. It is argued that the issues of fragility, human security and resilience as stipulated in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 of the Agenda created a valid entry point for steering transition from war to peace in a normative way. In fostering a comprehensive ius post bellum for societal change, this makes crystal-clear that the principle of self-determination functions as a meta-goal of the international order. The 2015 review of UN peacekeeping operations and the UN Security Council’s resolution 2282/2016 regarding sustained peace sharpen this finding in contrast to new geopolitical trends. It can be summarized that peacebuilding and statebuilding strategies are serviced by insights of the new consensus preparing for a rare momentum to move forward a universal right to peace. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (910) ◽  
pp. 273-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Walasek

AbstractThis article draws on my book Bosnia and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage,1 which incorporates ground-breaking fieldwork in Bosnia-Herzegovina and extensive research, and on my subsequent research and fieldwork in the post-conflict country. In the article, I explore the meaning that restoration and reconstruction of cultural heritage intentionally destroyed during conflict can have, particularly to the forcibly displaced. With the protection of cultural heritage increasingly being treated as an important human right and with the impact that forcible displacement during armed conflict has on cultural identity now in the spotlight, the importance of cultural heritage for those ethnically cleansed in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the 1992–95 war (both those who returned and those who did not) has relevance for considerations of contemporary post-conflict populations.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 27-32
Author(s):  
Shree Prasad Devkota

This paper explores the impact of ten years armed conflict on Nepalese People, analyzing how these people are coping the situation in post conflict. Some international practices for conflict victim’s related literature are also presented here. It then considers the forms of reparation and how human rights principles, particularly those regarding the best interests and evolving capacities of the people can help guide program design through TVET program. Ultimately, this analysis shows that people-oriented reparations should be tailored to people’s particular vulnerabilities, needs, and circumstances.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jtd.v1i0.13087 Journal of Training and Development Vol.1 2015: 27-32


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