Suchergebnisse

Truth telling has come to play a pivotal role in postconflict reconciliation processes around the world. A common claim is that truth telling is healing and will lead to reconciliation. The present study applies recent psychological research to this issue by examining whether witnessing in the gacaca, the Rwandan village tribunals for truth and reconciliation after the 1994 genocide, was beneficial for psychological health. The results from the multistage, stratified cluster random survey of 1,200 Rwandans demonstrate that gacaca witnesses suffer from higher levels of depression and PTSD than do nonwitnesses, also when controlling for important predictors of psychological ill health. Furthermore, longer exposure to truth telling has not lowered the levels of psychological ill health, nor has the prevalence of depression and PTSD decreased over time. This study strongly challenges the claim that truth telling is healing and presents a novel understanding of the complexity of truth-telling processes in postconflict peace building.

Emerging from corruption and conflict -- Negotiation and development assistance in postconflict settings -- El Salvador -- Guatemala -- Sierra Leone -- Burundi -- Papua New Guinea -- Liberia -- Impact of integrity provisions -- Lessons for analysts -- Lessons for practitioners -- Achieving peace with integrity -- Annex 1: additional case study sources -- Annex 2: peace provisions related to anti-corruption and good governanace issues -- Annex 3: experiences of development assistance projects that support anticorruption provisions

Truth telling has come to play a pivotal role in postconflict reconciliation processes around the world. A common claim is that truth telling is healing and will lead to reconciliation. The present study applies recent psychological research to this issue by examining whether witnessing in the gacaca, the Rwandan village tribunals for truth and reconciliation after the 1994 genocide, was beneficial for psychological health. The results from the multistage, stratified cluster random survey of 1,200 Rwandans demonstrate that gacaca witnesses suffer from higher levels of depression and PTSD than do nonwitnesses, also when controlling for important predictors of psychological ill health. Furthermore, longer exposure to truth telling has not lowered the levels of psychological ill health, nor has the prevalence of depression and PTSD decreased over time. This study strongly challenges the claim that truth telling is healing and presents a novel understanding of the complexity of truth-telling processes in postconflict peace building. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

AbstractQuotas to promote women's representation in the world's legislatures have spread to more than one hundred countries. The diffusion of gender quotas poses a puzzle since they have often been adopted in countries where women have low status. International influence and inducements best explain quota adoption in developing countries. Promoting gender equality, including through gender quotas, has become a key part of international democracy promotion. The international legitimacy of gender quotas leads them to be adopted through two causal pathways: directly, through postconflict peace operations, and indirectly, by encouraging countries, especially those that depend on foreign aid, to signal their commitment to democracy by adopting quotas. An event history analysis, which controls for other relevant factors, shows that the hypothesized relationships exist. Further support comes from a process-tracing analysis of Afghanistan's 2004 quota.

This article challenges claims to neutrality and impartiality of aid interventions in Afghanistan, arguing that the war on terror intrudes on postconflict peace building and reconstruction interventions in Afghanistan, specifically in the southern and eastern parts of the country where a virulent insurgency has reemerged. In these regions, aid interventions are deeply entangled in active insurgent and counterinsurgent politics as aid settings are often used to wage ideological, cultural, and political campaigns over Afghans in order to demonstrate victory. This article argues that Afghan women are caught on the frontlines of this "aid battlefield," both as "nation builders" celebrated by the U.S. administration as examples of liberal-imperial victory and as "nation betrayers" of their culture and traditions for their participation in internationally facilitated programs. I suggest that feminists need to be aware and wary of the ways that aid projects are co-opted by foreign and local militarized masculinities that collectively perpetuate insecurity and violence against Afghan women.

In the development of this work it can be affirmed that the most effective means to massively implement culture of peace in regions of the province where traditional media of the national and regional order do not have a presence is community radio, due to its proximity and its effects (Rodrigo, 2001), which allows the participation of the audience and the construction of a peace language (Peresson, Mariño and Cendales, 1983).In this sense, the radial parliament, well constructed within the socio-political and cultural logic, is an adequate instrument for the dialogical relationship and peaceful coexistence in populations where violence has prevailed between irregular armed groups of the right and left and the Colombian army, mainly in the Colombian Caribbean region, where it has lashed the most and where the post-conflict processes motivated by the same national government begin to be implemented.The word, as a symbolic entity of peace, conducive to it, used strategically in a frank and conciliatory, assertive manner (Pottier, 1992), reinforces the bonds of understanding and conciliation, constructing with it semiotic nuclear significations and related ideas (Charaudeau, 2003; van Dijk, 1990, and Apel, 1987) that mean, for example, identity, understanding, tolerance, inclusion, respect, participation, in short, affection in situations of dialogue to promote a culture of peace (Barreto, Broja and Serrano, 2009, and Centeno, 2008). ; En el desarrollo de este trabajo se puede afirmar que el medio más eficaz para implementar masivamente cultura de paz en regiones de provincia donde no tienen presencia los medios tradicionales del orden nacional y regional es la radio comunitaria, por su proximidad y sus efectos (Rodrigo, 2001), lo que permite con mucha facilidad participación de la audiencia y la construcción de un lenguaje de paz (Peresson, Mariño y Cendales,1983).En este sentido, el parlamento radial, bien construido dentro de la lógica sociopolítica y cultural, es un instrumento adecuado para la relación ...

Global governance and postconflict peacebuilding -- Postconflict peacebuilding -- Crisis of institutionalism -- Crises of state and institutional memory -- Crises of legitimacy and dispossession -- From third to fourth generation peacebuilding -- Fourth generation peacebuilding -- Legitimacy, popular peace, and global governance.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14678802.2012.703535 ; International peace-building interventions in post-conflict countries are intended to transform the socio-political context that led to violence and thereby build a stable and lasting peace. Yet the UN's transitional governance approach to peace-building is ill-suited to the challenge of dealing with the predatory political economy of insecurity that often emerges in post- conflict societies. Evidence from peace-building attempts in Cambodia, East Timor and Afghanistan illustrates that the political economy incentives facing domestic elites in an environment of low credibility and weak institutionalization lead to a cycle of patronage generation and distribution that undermine legitimate and effective governance. As a result, postconflict countries are left vulnerable to renewed conflict and persistent insecurity. International interventions can only craft lasting peace by understanding the political economy of conflict persistence and the potential policy levers for altering, rather than perpetuating, those dynamics.

This paper develops two claims that follow from two general conclusions from recent re-search on peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction. The first is that international peacebuilders are fairly good at ending violence and at producing stability, but are less talented at creating liberal states. In order to understand why, Section I develops the concept of the "peacebuilders' contract", which is intended to map the kinds of strategic interactions that are likely to unfold between peacebuilders and local élites and capture why these interactions are likely to favour the status quo preferred by local forces. Following on the general recognition that international peacebuilders are limited in what they can produce, the second conclusion concerns the need for peacebuilders to be more strategic in their thinking and to be satisfied with producing small victories that can sup-port the emergence of decent governments which provide the foundations for future movements towards a positive peace. These observations and their implications are applicable not only to post-war interventions, but also to the broader international agenda of fixing states.