Bosnia 20 Years On

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The Dayton agreement ended the war. But with children from different ethnic groups unable to attend school together in many places, its intentions concerning reconciliation have unfortunately not been realized.

Martyrs’ memorial cemetery Kovači in Sarajevo. Photo: Michael Büker

“Of course I don’t need good grades in Bosnian when I’ve got good grades in English,” says a 13-year-old to his father in Sarajevo. The boy, who usually does well at school and has consistently good grades, has this year done slightly worse than usual in Bosnian, which is his mother tongue. His father is concerned. “But, why don’t you need good grades in Bosnian?” asks the father, with some astonishment. His son is quick to provide an explanation: “I won’t live here when I’m grown up. I’ll have to go somewhere else to find a job. For that it’s more important to know English than Bosnian.”

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Myanmar: What now for Women and Minorities?

Posted by & filed under Gender, Regions and Powers

Will Aung San Suu Kyi dare to engage in a direct confrontation with religious nationalism and insist that the new parliament reconsider Myanmar’s laws on
 race and religion? Doing so could cost her dearly.

Sexual violence

Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) has been in a continuous state of civil war since its foundation as a state in 1948. Different ethnic minorities have opposed the central government, because they view the state as illegitimate. The resulting wars have led to enormous suffering for women, men and children. War affects women and men differently, however. A particularly serious consequence has been the army’s use of sexualized violence against ethnic minority women. Violence against women is a widespread problem, but Burma offers little legal protection to victims either of domestic violence or of various forms of sexualized violence. In addition, women have been omitted systematically from peace negotiations between rebel groups and the state. Consequently, 52% of the country’s population is not included in the process of building political foundations for future peace.Read More

An Academic New Year’s Resolution for Colombia: Understanding Continued Gendered Violence as a Threat to Positive Peace

Posted by & filed under Gender, Humanitarianism, Peacebuilding

Over the last decade, Colombia has been host to the world’s largest population of internally displaced people (IDP). In 2016, it is expected that the Colombian government and FARC will reach a peace agreement, marking the formal end of more than 50 years of civil war. It is widely recognized that this peace agreement will not resolve the immediate causes of displacement, but rather generate one kind of settlement in a context of longstanding and complex uses of violence.

At present, contradictory tendencies seem to be at play: While periods of 2015 have seen the lowest levels of violence recorded on a national level since 1975, threats against civil society actors are increasing at an alarming rate.

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Is it Strange that Dictators Hold Elections?

Posted by & filed under Governance

Why do dictators hold elections that merely play to the gallery?

On 11 October, Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected as president of Belarus with an impressive 84 per cent share of the vote. The election was anything but free and fair. According to the OSCE, Belarusian law makes it impossible for the will of the people to be realized and, as if that were not enough, the election itself was characterized by fraud. Lukashenko’s regime had invested significant resources in preventing the election from being meaningful. So what was the point of holding it? Why do dictators hold elections that merely play to the gallery?

Alexander Lukashenko during this year’s 7th BRICS summit in UFA. PHOTO: CC BY 4.0

The fact that regimes like Lukashenko’s hold elections is even more surprising when one takes into account the fact that doing so is often extremely hazardous for a regime. Recent research conducted by myself, in collaboration with Carl Henrik Knutsen and Tore Wig of the University of Oslo, showed that around three times as many regimes fall in the year after an election as in the year before.

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This Week in South Sudan – Week 50

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Monday 7 December Vice President James Wani Igga met with a representative from the SPLM-Former Detainees and the SPLM (IO) to confidentially discuss the return of opposition members to Juba. South Sudan’s government demanded the SPLM (IO) to drastically reduce the number of members on their advance team scheduled to return to Juba. Tuesday 8… Read more »

A Peace Prize Against Terror

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European news headlines in 2015 have been all about the refugee crisis and religion-based terrorism. Is there still room for discussing “peace”? Should we not concentrate on bombing ISIS and protect national security?

Yesterday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet. This quartet consists of four organizations – with distinct differences – that have contributed to brokering a foundation for a democratic, rights-based society in the former French protectorate in Northern Africa. The situation in Tunisia is tense. Internal rifts, impulses from other countries that have more or less broken apart after the “Arab Spring”, along with recent acts of terror, may lead to failure for the Quartet’s endeavors. The Peace Prize is a small push in the right direction for Tunisia. If the fragile democracy crumbles and religious extremists try to establish an order of their own, will the Nobel Committee’s choice of 2015 laureate be shown to be wrong?Read More

Dialogue is Not Enough

Posted by & filed under Peacebuilding, Regions and Powers

National Dialogue Quartet

Why did Tunisia succeed in reaching a compromise that led to democratic development, while other countries in the region have failed?

The answer does not lie in the large numbers of activists and demonstrators. There were also massive crowds protesting against the regimes in countries such as Egypt and Yemen. Nor is the answer an absence of Islamists. Islamist parties dominated in all the Arab countries.

Following the award of the Peace Prize, politicians and commentators have emphasized that the award shows the importance of “dialogue” and “compromise” in the building of strong democracies. But dialogue alone is insufficient. In Tunisia’s neighbour Egypt there were several attempts at national dialogue. The parties engaged in discussions, but never reached agreement.

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National Dialogues as Self-Mediation Mechanisms

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Tunisian National Dialogue in October 2012. Photo: Magharebia

In the last century, peace was far more likely the product of victory on the battlefield than a negotiated settlement. From 1940 until 2002, the world witnessed more than 370 state-based conflicts. At any point in time over the last decade, the world hosted nearly 30 armed conflicts simultaneously — many of them “check book wars,” with external powers funding and supplying arms to different internal factions in order to enhance their access to the beleaguered state’s resources.

In this “post-post-colonial” era we are witnessing the post-colonial government incarnations of the colonial “strong man” being replaced by new democratic forces. These new movements are re-defining democracy; they are innovating new forms of representative government; and many are re-considering the nation-state concept. As each of these countries attempts to cut the umbilical cords from their former colonial powers, we see a reduction in external foreign mediation and an increase in mass people’s movements and national dialogues as tools of political transformation. With these significant phenomena, local and national peacemakers and concerned parties work together to resolve their conflict through the creation of joint “self-mediation” instruments, different types of national dialogues and various forms of supporting peace infrastructures that emerge out of these local contexts.

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This Week in South Sudan – Week 49

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Tuesday 1 December The government of South Sudan accuses the SPLA (IO) of killing four government soldiers in an attack on government positions in the town of Bazia in Western Bahr el Ghazal state. The SPLA (IO) later denied the accusations. Nigeria’s government promised to assist South Sudan with setting up a Debt Management Office…. Read more »