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"This volume explores how we theorize, politicise, and practice peace and conflict discourses in the social sciences. As concepts, peace and conflict are intricately interwoven into a web of complementary discourses where states and other actors are able to negotiate, deliberate, and arbitrate their differences short of the overt and covert use of physical violence. The essays in this volume reflect this eclecticism: they reflect on concerns of contemporary conflicts in world politics; the dissection of the ideas of peace and power; the way peace studies join with global agencies; peace and conflict in connection to geopolitics and identity; the domestic basis of conflict in India and the South Asian theatre including class, social cleavages and gender. Further they also process elements like globalization, media, communication and films that help us engage with the popular tropes and discursive construction of the reality that play critical roles in how peace and violence are articulated and acted upon by the elites and the masses in societies. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political science, international relations theory, peace and conflict studies, public policy, area studies. It will also be a key resource for bureaucrats, policy makers, think tanks and practitioners working in the field of international relations"--

This thought-provoking book explores the emerging construction of a customary law of peace in Latin America and the developing jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It traces the evolution of peace as both an end and a means: from a negative form, i.e. the absence of violence, to a positive form that encompasses equality, non-discrimination and social justice, including gendered perspectives on peace.

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is one of Africa's most notorious armed rebel groups, having operated across Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When they entered the Juba Peace Talks with the Ugandan Government in 2006, the peace deal seemed like a gift to fighters who had for years barely been surviving in Central Africa's jungles. Yet the talks failed. Why? Based on exclusive interviews with LRA fighters and their notorious leader Joseph Kony, Mareike Schomerus provides insights into how the LRA experienced the Juba Talks, revealing developing dynamics and deep distrust within a conflict system and how these became entrenched through the peace negotiations. In so doing, Schomerus offers an explanation as to why current approaches to ending armed violence not only fail but how they actively contribute to their own failure, and calls for a new approach to contemporary peacemaking.

There are legal limits on the circumstances under which states may use military force to address a perceived or actual threat. The concepts of necessity and proportionality are central to these limitations imposed by the law. Necessity and Proportionality in International Peace and Security Law explores the many ways in which necessity and proportionality arise in the law on the modern battlefield, which is rapidly changing, complex, and ambiguous.

Preface / Tom Woodhouse -- Introduction / Jordi Calvo Rufanges -- Trends in global military expenditure : drivers of increases and causes of concerns / Aude E. Fleurant and Yannick Quéau -- Military expenditure, arms transfer and armed conflicts / Chloé Meulewaeter -- Military spending, foreign military operations and counter-terrorism / Alejandro Pozo Marín -- Empire, US military spending and campaigning for a moral budget / Joseph Gerson -- Militarisation of the European Union : fresh money for the military industry / Laëtitia Sédou, Mark Akkerman and Bram Vranken -- Cost of nuclear weapons / Tarja Cronberg and Dave Webb -- Military spending and climate change / Pere Brunet and Chloe Meulewaeter -- Peace movement work on military spending / Colin Archer -- Conclusion / Jordi Calvo Rufanges.

"Scholars and practitioners of international relations have increasingly pointed out significant links between armed conflicts and different types of criminal and terrorist activities in many regions of the world, including the Caucasus, South-West Asia, the Middle East, Western Africa, the Balkans, Central America, and the Andean region in South America (see Andreas, 2011a; and Shelley, 2018)"--

The Fetish of Peace: The Myth of Transformational Peace is a critical theoretical exploration of the ways in which the concept of peace is utilized and managed by the international arena and statist systems, distinctive in that the concept of peace is consistently employed in various performances by the state, and international systems, to address serious issues/problems in the international community. Despite all the rhetoric of peace and actions taken in the name of peace, we find ourselves within the same cycle of violence.

Peacebuilding in Africa: The Post-Conflict State and Its Multidimensional Crises argues that building enduring peace in post-conflict states in Africa requires comprehensive, state-specific approaches that address the multidimensional crises that generated civil conflict and instabilities in these countries. Contributors examine states such as Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Sudan to demonstrate that peacebuilding projects in each of these states must address the cultural, economic, political, and social root causes of their respective underlying civil conflicts. In addition, contributors prove that peacebuilding projects must be shaped by the centrality of human security: the respect for ethno-cultural diversity, the advancement of human material well-being, the protection of political rights and civil liberties, and the redesigning of the military and security architecture to ensure the safety of all citizens from both internal and external threats.

"This book examines the history of political continuity and conflict in East Timor between 1974 and 2006, and the origins of an unexpected crisis in 2006 which caused an international military intervention and several more years of UN missions. Providing a fresh and empirical political history to explain the crisis, the book offers new dimensions to the understanding of East Timor, its independence struggles, political transition and politics after independence in 2002. The author revisits historical materials and brings to light new resources, making extensive use of the 2005 Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation and contemporary diplomatic, UN and news media reports, to provide a precise context and chronology for the events in 2006. The book provides an analysis within which factors such as ethnic and inter-communal violence, security sector weaknesses and conflict between the army and police, the constitution and legal system, state-building and peace-building can be located in the larger context of the 2006 crisis. Demonstrating how and why, in the space of four weeks in April and May 2006, the newly independent country of Timor-Leste plunged from 'UN success story' into catastrophe, this book will be of interest to academics working on Southeast Asian Politics, Southeast Asian history, Development Studies and Nation-, State- and Peace-Building and International Relations"--