Transitional Justice and Ex-Combatant Reintegration in Post-Civil War States
Open Access
- Author:
- Westlake, Ryan
- Area of Honors:
- International Politics
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Cyanne Loyle, Thesis Supervisor
Gretchen G Casper, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Transitional Justice
Disarmament Demobilization Reintegration
Civil War
Colombia - Abstract:
- Why do some post-civil war states establish a durable peace while others remain stuck in a cycle of violence? Post-civil war states have many obstacles to overcome even after an agreement for peace is reached. Ex-combatants often threaten the legitimacy of the post-conflict government, therefore threatening the overall stability in the state. A solution to this threat becoming popular for use in post-civil war states is implementing disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs. DDR programs function to first reduce the physical threat of ex-combatants and then streamline their transition back into society. There are many other mechanisms available for post-conflict governments to implement in order to pursue justice and establish peace, often referred to as transitional justice mechanisms. These mechanisms include amnesty (impunity), exiles (forced or voluntary retreat of individuals from a certain side of the conflict from the country), prosecutions (judicial accountability measures), purges (removing individuals from a certain side of the conflict from public office positions), reparations (providing resources or support for victims of the conflict), and truth commissions (an extrajudicial process that aims to get the full story of the conflict). I am interested in the potential for DDR programs and transitional justice mechanisms to interact in ways that reduce the likelihood of conflict recurrence in post-civil war states. Since it has been found that focusing on reconciliation in the context of transitional justice yields the best results, I conduct a Cox Proportional Hazards model, complimented by a case study on the conflict in Colombia, to see if this logic holds true with DDR programs. I find that post-civil war states which implement both a DDR program and at least one grievance-motivated transitional justice mechanism have a lower likelihood of returning to conflict than those that do not.