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AbstractFor societies transitioning from conflict to peace, the phenomenon of child soldiers poses significant challenges. These include quandaries associated with assisting in the reintegration of serving child soldiers, determining how to prevent future recruitment of child soldiers, and pursuing accountability of those who utilize child soldiers. In addition, questions are also raised as to whether and how child soldiers responsible for crimes committed during conflict are to be held to account. While no one mechanism or response can adequately and sufficiently address the multifaceted issues that arise, peace agreements, as foundational documents that serve as the blueprint for peacebuilding and the post-conflict State, can make a useful contribution to some or all of them. Drawing on all references to child soldiers in 77 peace agreements signed between 1990 and 2022, this article examines the ways in which peace agreements address the issue of child soldiers.

Abstract
The cessation of violent conflict offers crucial opportunities to increase the likelihood that children's rights are respected, protected and realized in the post-conflict state. Peace processes—which include peace negotiations, peace agreement(s) and the implementation of peace agreement provisions—can be central to the realization of this objective. This article examines the concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child through the lens of process-based performance. The objective is to demonstrate contributions that the Committee can make to advancing children's rights at different stages of a peace process, often in combination with other actors and mechanisms seeking to do the same. After identifying some of the challenges associated with translating this potential into practice, suggestions are made to help bridge the chasm between potential and practice.

In response to the covid-19 pandemic, leaders across the globe scrambled to adopt emergency legislation. Amongst other things, these measures gave significant powers to governments in order to curb the spreading of a virus, which has shown itself to be both indiscriminate and deadly. Nevertheless, exceptional measures, however necessary in the short term, can have adverse consequences both on the enjoyment of human rights specifically and democracy more generally. Not only are liberties severely restricted and normal processes of democratic deliberation and accountability constrained, but the duration of exceptional powers is often unclear. One potentially ameliorating measure is the use of sunset clauses: dispositions that determine the expiry of a law or regulation within a predetermined period unless a review determines that there are reasons for extension. The paper argues that without effective review processes, far from safeguarding rights and limiting state power, sunset clauses can be utilized to facilitate the transferring of emergency powers while failing to guarantee the very problems of normalized emergency they are included to prevent. Thus, sunset clauses and the review processes that attach to them should be approached with caution.

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic on 11 March 2020. This global health crisis demanded a quick, decisive and efficient response by governments to protect lives, curb the spread of the virus and prevent public health systems from being overwhelmed. This report explores the way governments undergoing transitions to peace and democracy have triggered emergency legal frameworks to disable some ordinary (democratic) procedures and set aside standard political and legal accountability mechanisms as part of their Covid-19 response. It also provides information about where elections have been postponed or cancelled, and central governments have assumed enhanced responsibilities, which have often included powers otherwise designated to local or regional governments. While the impacts of both the pandemic and the responses to the contagion have been felt globally, they often have quite different consequences in countries attempting peace and democratic transition processes.

AbstractThis article reads Carr through the lens of Spinoza's ethics, and Spinoza through the prism of Carr's IR Theory. The argument of the piece is that there are significant parallels in the ethical projects of both writers, which upon further examination reveal important aspects of global political life and the nature and limits of ethics in International Relations. The close, critical examination of Spinoza ad Carr undertaken in this article also sheds light on the most controversial aspect of Carr's career, his advocacy of appeasement in Nazi Germany.