Civilian Dimensions of Peace and Conflict - CIVICON (PRIO Strategic Initiative) PI (with Scott Gates)

We are seeking to develop a long-term research agenda on the role of civilians and civil society actors in conflict and post-conflict contexts through strategic partnerships with researchers in various fields and from various research communities. One central concern is the lack of focus on civilians in systematic studies of conflict processes and peacebuilding - despite the critical role that civilian populstions play and the frequent emphasis on this in policy circles.

- Under what conditions and how do civilians and civil society affect conflict dynamics and contribute to peace building?

- How can civil society based peacebuilding be strengthened? What works?

Researchers at PRIO involved in the initiation of this project are: Ragnhild Nordås, Scott Gates, Gudrun Østby, Torunn Tryggestad, and Helga Malmin Binningsbø.

Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (SVAC)

The SVAC research project responds to the gravity of the problem of sexual violence and the critical need for more systematic information by creating a comprehensive Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (SVAC) dataset covering the twenty-year period 1989–2009. We will use this data to analyze patterns of sexual violence in and across conflicts and conflict actors, including in the immediate aftermath of war. By disseminating our data and findings, we seek to advance the research on conflict processes, raise awareness of the problem of sexual violence in armed conflicts, and facilitate evidence-based preventive strategies.

The research team includes Inger Skjelsbæk (PRIO), Dara Kay Cohen (University of Minnesota), Scott Gates (CSCW/PRIO), and Håvard Strand (CSCW/PRIO), in addition to an advisory group consisting of Elisabeth Wood (Yale), Mia Bloom (Penn State), Christopher Butler (University of New Mexico), Helga Hernes (PRIO) and Amelia Hoover Green (Yale).

Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers (SEAP)

Project leader

Why does SEA occur in connection to international peacekeeping missions; how prevalent is it; and what accounts for variations in and between different peacekeeping operations? These are questions that this project will address and which have not been addressed on a systematic and statistical level of this magnitude in any studies to date.

This project focuses on garnering more systematic knowledge about SEA in peacekeeping.  This has potentially wide-ranging security implications for current and future peace operations. The research questions guiding the project is: when, how and why is sexual violence and abuse used within and across peacekeeping operations? Answering this question is useful for improving policies of prevention. To answer this research question this project will establish a large-N dataset on SEA in and between the 35 international peacekeeping operations active since 1999. Specifically, we will provide a systematic account of the reported and punished SEA over time and between peace operations, to allow for comparison of cases of known high prevalence of SEA as well as cases of no reports. We will also collect data on particular mission-specific factors, troop-sending country factors, local condition factors or context specific aspects of particular interactions or combinations of these factors that may explain why reported SEA varies between different peacekeeping contexts and actors. 

Beliefs & Bloodshed: Understanding Religion and Intrastate Conflict

Dissertation Advisers: Ola Listhaug (NTNU/CSCW) and Scott Gates (PRIO)

This dissertation improves our understanding of the origins and dynamics of intrastate conflict by exploring the role (if any) played by religion. Specifically, under what circumstances and exactly how does religion matter for intrastate conflict? Despite the popular assumption that religion is critical for understanding contemporary conflicts, but research on the religion-conflict nexus is theoretically and empirically underdeveloped, and the empirical findings inconsistent. To bridge this divide, this dissertation develops an improved conceptualization and theoretical framework for understanding how, when, and why religion matters for conflict. The dissertation presents new data on religious dimensions of conflict and religious repression, and studies the religion–conflict nexus through different methodological lenses, integrating lessons from carefully selected cases into rigorous tests. The main findings to be drawn are that (1) religious diversity does not in itself translate into intrastate conflict, but repressive contexts can make religion an organizing principle and motive for rebellion which can escalate to civil war, and (2) religious conflicts or conflicts involving Islam are not more violent than other conflicts in terms of battle deaths. However, intrastate conflicts involving a religious dimension, and involving Muslim conflict parties in particular, seem to constitute a growing share of contemporary conflicts. The research conducted in this dissertation is therefore important for generating policies to deal with this challenge.

Submitted 31 October 2009. Defended 19 March 2010

Climate Change and Conflict: Some Plausible Scenarios
WG3 CSCW Environmental Factors in Civil War Human-induced climate change is one of the most drastic neo-Malthusian scenarios. The suggested causal chains presented in the literature from climate change to social consequences like conflict is long and fraught with uncertainties. Therefore they are hard to evaluate. One of the more widely-described scenarios is from global warming to sea-level rise to extensive migration to conflict, but even for this scenario every link is contested. Climate change has so many potential consequences for the physical environment that we could expect a large number of potential paths to conflict. This paper summarizes some of the points found in reviewing the literature on environmental security and conflict, and presents some scenarios in which climate change can have an effect on violent conflict. In addition, some paths to improved and increased knowledge on this topic are suggested.