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The post Peace and Conflict Resolution in Rural Areas appeared first on Völkerrechtsblog.

The post Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict appeared first on Völkerrechtsblog.

More than thirty years after the proclaimed "end of history" and the third wave of demo­cratization, the world is once again marked by increased diversity in political regimes. The (re-)emergence of powerful autho­ritarian states like China and Russia and the trend of back­sliding in seemingly consolidated demo­cracies have created a more pluralistic and multipolar world, in which states with different political regime types increasingly view each other as competitors, seeking to prove the superiority of their own political and economic systems and to win the alle­giance of third countries.
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Pascal Abb



Dr. Pascal Abb ist Koordinator der Forschungsgruppe "Regimewettbewerb" und wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der HSFK mit Schwerpunkt China. Er betreibt aktuell ein Forschungsprojekt zu den Auswirkungen der Belt-and-Road-Initiative auf Konfliktstaaten. // Dr Pascal Abb is Coordinator of the Research Group "Regime Competition" and Senior Researcher at PRIF with a focus on China. He is currently conducting a research project on the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on conflict states.

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Der Beitrag Regime Competition in a Fragmented World: Consequences for Peace and Conflict erschien zuerst auf PRIF BLOG.

Promotionsstipendien in Programmbereich "Internationale Organisationen und Völkerrecht" zu vergeben An der Hessischen Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung
(HSFK) in Frankfurt sind im Programmbereich "Internationale Organisationen und Völkerrecht" (Leitung Professor Dr. Christopher Daase)

2 Promotionsstipendien

für die Dauer von zunächst 2 Jahren zu besetzen. Eine Verlängerung ist möglich. Die Promotionsvorhaben sollten sich an der Thematik des Programmbereichs orientieren und können sich mit Gerechtigkeitskonflikten in internationalen Organisationen oder mit Fragen von Recht und Gerechtigkeit internationaler Konfliktregelung befassen. Voraussetzung für eine Bewerbung ist ein zur Promotion berechtigender Hochschulabschluss mit der Mindestnote "gut". Eine gute Beherrschung des Englischen in Wort und Schrift ist unabdingbar.

Die Höhe des Stipendiums beträgt Euro 1.300 monatlich. Kinderzulagen werden gemäß den Richtlinien der VolkswagenStiftung (analog DFG) gezahlt. Für Aufwendungen im Zusammenhang mit dem Arbeitsvorhaben stehen Sachmittel im Rahmen der Projektbewilligung zur Verfügung. Das Stipendium verpflichtet zur Teilnahme am Promovierendenkolloquium der HSFK.
Als Trägerin des Total E-Quality Prädikats fordert die HSFK qualifizierte Frauen verstärkt auf, sich zu bewerben. Bewerbungen aus dem Ausland sind erwünscht. Schwerbehinderte werden bei gleicher Eignung bevorzugt. Die Bewerbungsfrist endet am 01.04.2012.

Die Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung ist eine Stiftung öffentlichen Rechts und Mitglied der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft. Mit über 60 Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeitern ist die HSFK das größte deutsche Friedensforschungsinstitut.

Ihre schriftliche Bewerbung richten Sie mit den üblichen Unterlagen und einem max. 10-seitigen Exposé Ihres Dissertationsvorhabens bitte an

Bianca Christoffer
Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung Baseler Straße 27-31 60329 Frankfurt/Main oder elektronisch an christoffer@hsfk.de

Conflicts over climate and energy policy, security and geopolitical dimensions of global decarbonisation, or human and environmental rights violations in global value chains: The current socio-ecological transformation is causing new and exacerbating existing socio-political conflicts that will characterise the 21st century. The new working group on socio-ecological transformation conflicts, which introduces some of its fields of research in this blog series, brings together existing expertise on these conflicts at PRIF.
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Hendrik Simon



Hendrik Simon ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am PRIF im Programmbereich "Transnationale Politik". Er forscht zu Normen in der internationalen Politik und der Rolle des Völkerrechts. // Hendrik Simon is a Researcher at PRIF's research department "Transnational Politics". He researches norms in international politics and the role of international law.

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Der Beitrag Socio-ecological Transformation Conflicts: A Central Field of Conflict and Research in the 21st Century erschien zuerst auf PRIF BLOG.

The post Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (3-4)(2024) appeared first on Völkerrechtsblog.

The post Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (1-2)(2024) appeared first on Völkerrechtsblog.

The post Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (3-4) 2023 appeared first on Völkerrechtsblog.

Sectarian violence in the border town of Parachinar in Pakistan has been a long term problem. Instability in Afghanistan and a lethargic response in Islamabad have exacerbated it.

It's easy to forget now, but the shocking and horrific violence that set off the current hostilities in the Middle East, where Hamas militants slaughtered and kidnapped innocent Israeli civilians, was predicted. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump warned in October 2020 that terrorist violence was set to be imminently inflamed.
Trump's DHS didn't claim it was because, in President Joe Biden words, of "sheer evil" from those who exist only "to kill Jews." Rather, it pointed to the Abraham Accords: the U.S.-led effort to normalize relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which Trump claimed would shift the course of Middle Eastern history from "decades of division and conflict" and which the Biden administration claimed would make the region "safer and more prosperous."
So how did we end up with the exact opposite?
For decades, the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, meaning the provision of an independent state for the Palestinian people and the end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, was central to the task of engineering peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This was a problem, since between successive Israeli governments steadily chipping away at the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict and dwindling U.S. interest in pressuring the Israeli state to follow through on the commitment, that resolution started to look increasingly impossible.
But over time, the priorities of the Arab states shifted away from the Palestinians, too. Their largely authoritarian leadership became more preoccupied with matters like maintaining political control in the wake of the Arab Spring protests — for which support from an advanced military power like Israel might prove useful — and an increasingly assertive Iran, which then-newly appointed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman called a "much more urgent and more important" issue.
This shift dovetailed with the Trump administration's ultra-Israel-friendly stance and its own goal of further isolating Iran in the region. The resulting Abraham Accords were, at least in the neoconservative world, considered a stroke of "genius." Rather than finding a solution to the seemingly intractable question of Palestinian statehood, it simply sidelined it.
The signers dropped this long-standing precondition as they re-established diplomatic relations and deepened security and economic cooperation with Israel, while Trump lavished them with rewards, like an arms deal for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and U.S. recognition of the annexation of West Sahara for Morocco. It effectively supplanted the Saudi government's Arab Peace Initiative, which since its 2002 introduction had been the foundation of the Arab world's program for resolving the conflict, placing the Palestinians front and center.
The new normalization agreements' foundational and cynical assumption was that the plight of the Palestinians could and would be safely ignored and forgotten about by both the region's governments and the broader international community. Both the Trump administration and, reportedly, bin Salman, pressured Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to assent, while the states that signed continued paying lip service to the Palestinian cause, claiming this normalization push would halt Israel's annexation plans for its illegal West Bank settlements.
In reality, the text of the agreements barely mentioned Palestinians, outside of a few vague assurances to keep working toward a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that Morocco maintained a "coherent, constant and unchanged position" on the matter. This was, to put it mildly, far short of what both Palestinians and their supporters in the U.S. Congress demanded.
As Arab states began gradually deepening ties with Israel, they increasingly backed away from their historic positions. Bin Salman declared (and subsequently walked back) that Israelis "have the right to have their own land," effectively sanctioning the loss of what the Muslim world viewed as Palestinians' historic land. When violence broke out in April 2021 at the Al-Aqsa mosque, with Israeli forces raiding one of Islam's holiest sites, the UAE response was notably muted. That the normalization process continued despite what would earlier have been viewed as an unacceptable provocation against both Palestinians and Islam itself was celebrated by the accords' supporters, as proof that ongoing repression of Palestinians could indeed be safely ignored.
But the Palestinian issue could not simply be wished away, and the signing of the pacts created a set of contradictions that fueled the tensions that erupted October 7. The vast majority of the populations of Israel's Arab neighbors opposed the accords, as did some leaders, like Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who charged that the signers had "lost their moral compass," and Jordan's King Abdullah, who declared that "no architecture for regional security and development can stand over the burning ashes of this conflict."
So did Palestinians themselves, across opinion surveys, with both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas calling it a "betrayal," a "treacherous stab," and "grave harm." Hamas also called for "an integrated plan to bring down normalization." Protests against the accords erupted in Morocco, one of the signers.
The signing of the Accords was particularly fraught in Saudi Arabia. The country's powerful clerics continued to oppose Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. But beyond that, the Saudi leadership's internal legitimacy and its standing as the region's leader of the Islamic continued to rest in part on its commitment to the Palestinians. Regional rival Iran quickly stepped in to fill this vacuum left by Saudi support for the deals, sharply criticizing the normalization effort as a "betrayal of Palestinian aspirations for freedom."
Meanwhile, Israeli policy didn't change as promised, and in fact, only hardened. Since 2020, when the accords were signed, illegal settlements have expanded and even ramped up alongside settler violence. The Netanyahu government has now advanced a record number of settler housing units, and transferred administration of the occupied territories from military to civilian hands, widely interpreted as signaling plans for annexation, even as figures like former Abbas adviser Ghaith al-Omari claimed the accords had "already delivered to the Palestinians" by stopping this policy. This past September, the UAE's ambassador to the United States admitted annexation hadn't actually stopped.
The Biden administration could have reversed Trump's efforts, and placed pressure on Israel to halt these plans, as well as end its settlement expansion while making good on its promises and obligations under the peace process. Instead, the president continued Trump's normalization efforts while breaking from presidential precedent and not even attempting to advance the peace process, all while issuing little to no criticism of the Israeli government's violations. He has in fact escalated the issue, pushing for an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement, with the only concession to Palestinians the mere preservation of the possibility of Israeli-Palestinian peace — an agreement that would also entail further nuclear proliferation in the region and giving Saudi Arabia security assurances. Even so, Biden's secretary of state continues to claim that this could "be used to advance" such a peace.
So while Hamas had reportedly planned this operation for two years, and claimed it was motivated by years of violence at Al-Aqsa, its attack also can't be understood without the bipartisan push for Israeli-Arab normalization at the Palestinians' expense, and the outrage, anger, and despair it has inspired.What is clear — from Hamas's extraordinary violence, the wider regional war it threatens to spark, as well as the major pro-Palestinian protests across Arab countries in response to Israel's bombing campaign — is that almost every assumption that undergirded the Abraham Accords was disastrously wrong, not least the idea that dismissing the Palestinians would make for a more peaceful Middle East.

Oriana Mastro (Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies) & David A. Siegel (Florida State University) have posted Talking to the Enemy: Explaining the Emergence of Peace Talks in Interstate War (Journal of Theoretical Politics 35, no. 3 (2023):...

Call for Panels for a Conference in Marburg on November 9–11, 2024. Deadline: May 1, 2024

In July 2023, amid the sectarian violence that ravaged India's Manipur state, a harrowing video emerged of two women being paraded naked and sexually assaulted in Manipur's Kangpokpi district. Despite a registered police complaint, no ...

Foreign aid to Somaliland has fostered authoritarian rule and contributed towards conflict in the eastern city of Las Anod. In recent months, the apparent miracle of democracy has fractured as conflict has led to hundreds of deaths, and hundreds of thousands displaced. Jethro Norman writes there is a clear international dimension to the crisis. Those in Washington, London and Brussels are oblivious to the problem right under their nose: the consequences of their own aid and investment strategies.
The post Foreign aid and conflict in Somaliland first appeared on ROAPE.
The post Foreign aid and conflict in Somaliland appeared first on ROAPE.

The advantage historians have over journalists is that the passage of time offers them a perspective not available to those with immediate deadlines. But the year is about to end, which constitutes a firm deadline ...