My first experience with violent conflict started when I first heard of a rebel attack in the neighbouring country of Liberia, 1989, where a group of armed men began an assault on the regime of the former dictator, Samuel K. Doe. To quote Reinhold Niebuhr: ‘All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions’, in other words, what started in Liberia as an isolated incident ...

This thesis addresses the dynamics of high-risk unauthorised migration. First, it explores how new routes develop in relation to policies that seek to curtail unauthorised migration. Second, it analyses how aspiring migrants justify taking certain risks to migrate by negotiating risk information in relation to their life circumstances and considering the symbolic value of specific forms of migration. ...

This study concerns the Swedish peace education project “The Dream of the Good” (DODG) and explores it’s potential to educate for peace at an individual level. DODG is a holistic, transformative and networking peace project. It aims to inspire for and facilitate education for individual peace in schools at different levels through practical methods based on two key principles: 1) awareness of ...

This paper looks into the reasons for the Nepali Maoists’ decision to join the peace process. Nepal, a country of 27 million inhabitants and squeezed in between India and China, was engulfed in a civil war between 1996 and 2006, that cost the lives of over 13000 people. In 2005 King Gyanendra assumed full power in a coup, and vowed to restore peace. The response was an alliance between the Maoists ...

Being the largest guerrilla group in Colombia and entitled the richest guerrilla group of the world, the FARC-EP constitutes the most important non-state conflict actor of the Colombian internal conflict. In recent years it has been recognised in conflict research that non-state actors must be taken seriously if we want to understand today’s internal conflicts. This is the starting point for my ...

This theoretical investigation presents Peace Education as a group of deliberate human activities that consist on teaching and learning about and for positive peace. It addresses conceptual issues concerning the structures and dynamisms of this field of human activity. Although this effort assumes a humble attitude toward the conceptual controversies it presents, it highlights that effective practice ...

The present thesis looks at the relationship between cultures, mass media representations, war, and peace. The main research question is how self, other, and conflict are presented in artefacts of contemporary US popular culture - war and action movies in particular - and what impact such representations have on the attitudes, conceptualisations, and, ultimately, the behaviour of individuals and ...

Since its first application in Central America in the 1980s, the practice of nonviolent international accompaniment of civil society members threatened with political violence has undergone substantial growth. This thesis provides an understanding of protective international accompaniment as a communicative phenomenon. It shows the intricate dynamics of international accompaniment and its impact on ...

Dette arbeidet handler om skolemobbing i en lokal kontekst. De egentlige drivkreftene til mobbing er vanskelig å avdekke i sin helhet, men her kan det fastslås at mobbing er handlinger som må karakteriseres under begrepet vold. Vold er det motsatte av fred. Vold i sin meste ekstreme form er krig. Fredsbegrepet har historisk blitt relatert til krigshandlinger mellom nasjoner. I min søken etter ...

Is there one root, and one infrastructure under the hatred of Israel, since the late 19th century, called antisemitism? Can we dare and raise such a question with regard to a phenomenon so prolonged in time and so diversified in its appearances and explanations – a human phenomenon which started as early as the charge of deicide, and which is present during a couple of thousands of years, as steady ...