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This dissertation contributes to the growing literature on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). More specifically, the four essays it contains advance our understanding of CRSV by shedding light on the intersection between international involvement and CRSV perpetrated by states and rebel groups engaged in civil war. Despite the increased attention to CRSV among international policy-makers, this intersection has been examined only sparsely within the scholarship on CRSV. Essays I, II, and III address the overarching question of how different types of international involvement influence the level of CRSV. Essay I offers a global study of the effect of third-party military involvement on levels of CRSV. It argues that shifts in the balance of power following external involvement tend to aggravate the situation with regard to CRSV, and it finds indicative support for this. Essay II examines the capacity of peacekeeping missions to mitigate CRSV. It finds that the effectiveness of peacekeeping hinges on the degree of internal control exercised by states and rebel groups. Essay III looks beyond military involvement and focuses on the political power of condemnation. Using newly collected data on condemnations of sexual violence issued by the United Nations (UN) human-rights body between 1987 and 2014, the study tests the extent to which governments that perpetrate CRSV can be influenced by international condemnation. In parallel, the study examines the power of domestic outrage expressed through protests. The findings have important policy implications: Domestic protests are associated with an escalation of CRSV by states. International condemnation correlates with declines in CRSV in recent years (2008–2014), but not historically. International involvement – whether multilateral or unilateral – only materialises if fellow states so decide. Essay IV thus focuses on the willingness of states to take action against CRSV perpetrated by other states. By examining bilateral condemnations of sexual violence issued within the UN Universal Periodic Review, this essay sheds light on the diplomatic relationships and political interests that shape the (un)willingness of individual states to condemn CRSV. In sum, this dissertation makes both theoretical and empirical contributions to the research on CRSV, as well as to the scholarship on international involvement in civil wars more broadly.

In the last decade advances in statistics, computing power, and data collection has led to an increased interest in forecasting within the field of peace and conflict research and to the adoption of a wide range of methodological approaches for making such forecasts. By making use of these more powerful forecasting methods researchers have been able to produce accurate predictions, as well as better inferences, of many different types of contentious politics events and to create operational early warning systems for such events. Adapting these forecasting methods to the social world in which politics and political behavior operate, however, is not without its challenges. This dissertation explores a number of methodological issues and advances in peace and conflict research, both inferential and forecasting oriented, through a series of four papers. In the first paper, I explore trends in democratization and autocratization using dynamic simulation. In Paper II, my co-author and I take aim at the difficulty of modeling and making forecasts with data which contains both excess zeroes and extreme-values. We propose an extreme-value and zero-inflated regression model which we use to replicate a study on the effects of UN peacekeepers on violence against civilians. Paper III explores latent variable modeling by using Markov models to make forecasts for escalation and de-escalation of armed conflicts. In the last paper, I investigate the effects of missing data and imputation techniques on the predictive performance of models. The four papers of the dissertation make several contributions to the growing literature of forecasting within peace and conflict research. First, the dissertation contributes to the methodological aspects of conflict forecasting by developing new statistical tools, Paper II, and adapting tools from other fields to different processes of armed conflict and contentious politics, Papers I & III, as well as by evaluating the practical effects of common choices in data pre-processing on the performance of forecasts in Paper IV. Second, the dissertation contributes to new ways of drawing inferences about conflict processes by anchoring the inferences in the latent state of the conflict processes in Papers II & III, and through the comparison of aggregated simulations to the historical record in Paper I. Lastly, the dissertation makes a substantive contribution to the broader field of peace and conflict research in Papers I & II by contributing to the debate on the waves of democratization and autocratization, and by nuancing the impact of UN Peacekeepers on violence against civilians.

This cutting-edge book illuminates the key characteristics of inclusivity in mediation during armed conflicts and post-conflict peacebuilding. Daisaku Higashi illustrates the importance of mediators taking flexible approaches to inclusivity in arbitration during armed conflicts, highlighting the crucial balance between the need to select conflicting parties to make an agreement feasible and the need to include a multiplicity of parties to make the peace sustainable. Higashi also emphasizes the importance of inclusive processes in the phase of post-conflict peacebuilding. Higashi draws on first-hand experience as a team leader for reconciliation and reintegration in UNAMA, as well as interviews with leaders in conflicting states and UN missions, and recommends various roles for the UN, neighboring states and global powers in mediation during and after armed conflicts. Utilizing extensive field research and analysis, the book focuses on conflict regions in Afghanistan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and East Timor to demonstrate the significance of addressing inclusivity in mediation and peacebuilding with different approaches. Engaging with a range of empirical sources to make key policy recommendations, this book is crucial reading for practitioners working in mediation and peacebuilding, particularly UN officials, think-tank experts, government officials and NGOs. It will also benefit scholars and students of political science and international relations in need of unique, real-world accounts of global mediation, peacebuilding and conflict management.

"Le présent ouvrage est une réflection sur plusieurs problèmes brûlants du Mali. Il se présente comme un débat vivant bâti sur des récits vifs et réels, des discours poignants tenus par des témoins d'événements insolites. Ce livre privilégie une recherche qualitative qui a consisté à récueillir auprès des résidents des régions de Ménaka et de Gao des discours, des anecdotes. À travers des entretiens individuels et des focus groupes, nous avons tenté d'explorer plusieurs thématiques afférentes à l'histoire de Ménake relatée par ses propres résidents, aux rivalités politiques et sociales, au conflit intercommunautaire entre Peulh et Daoussak, à la régionalisation, et aux représentations des résidents de la région de Ménaka sur la coexistence des forces internationales, c'est-à-dire la force Barkhane et la MINUSMA, d'une part avec les groupes armés, des FAMAS d'autre part, de la population civil assez mitigée sur leur action. Le livre s'achève par les récits émouvants de rescapés de la migration en Algérie et en Libye."--Page 4 of cover