The Security Council?s resolution 1325 addressed the major negative impact that armed conflict has on women and children. This in turn complicates the Council?s work on maintaining international Peace and Security. The resolution therefore highlights women?s rights as participants in peace- and conflict processes.

This essay tries, in different levels, to explain and create a deeper understanding for the phenomena ?private security companies?. By using Mary Kaldors theory about new wars, I will come to the conclusion that the insecurity that these wars create is an important part in understanding the emergence of a security need that these private security companies can provide. Later I investigate and explain howthe neoliberal privatization policy that is spreading through the world today has laid ground for development of the private security industry. When I have answered these questions I analyze how the private security companies can affect the state, war and peace both positively and negatively.

In our world, more than two billion people are living under insecure food conditions and more than eight hundred million people are estimated to be starving. The majority of these people live in developing counties which are poor and often subject of civil war. The past fifty years the main subject of security analysis has been the sovereign and rational state and the threats have been viewed in terms of military and weapons of mass destruction. This has come to change over the last decades and security as a concept has broadened, which better represents the reality of today. Within this broader conceptualization of security the main referent of security is the individual, rather than the state, and threats are not only analyzed from a military point of view, but also seen as threats against human rights and freedoms.

The concept of security is a contested one. The United Nations definition in UNDPs Development report of 1994 is the most authoritive and commonly cited. The civil war in Sudan has led to 2 million deaths and over 5.5 million refugees. In a resolution from 2005, the UN decided that the war in Sudan was a threat to international security and peace. The 10th of January UN decided that a peace commission ought to be send with 10 000 military and civil men including 700 policemen.The main purpose of this thesis is to improve our knowledge of those factors which can cause an increased risk of conflict within a state, and how that can affect the social conditions for individuals.

The United Nations is an important organization when it comes to international Peace and Security. Recent events in international politics, however, have brought about a widespread concern about the abilities of the organization. Powerful states have shosen to act outside of the organization to achieve their goals. They have furthermore a disproportionate influence on the decision-making body, the Security Council.The aim of this essay is to examine wheather UN can function productively as keeper of the international Peace and Security in the political climate of today, and to find out to what extent the powerful states harm the organization. I use a theoretical article, concerning states relations to international organisations, to analyse the acts of powerful states in UN.

AbstractThe thesis investigates how the European Union promotes stability and security in the Mediterranean region. The aim is to analyse the European Union?s security ambitions with Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the Barcelona Process. An analytical framework with five sectors (military, political, economic, environmental and societal), based on the Copenhagen School?s theories about security sectors and securitization, is used for the analysis.

In this essay the morphing of the interstate relations in the post-World War II Western Europe is taken in to consideration in discussing how these relations were stabilized and consolidated through community cooperation to achieve a state of stable peace. It concludes that the early 1900's of Western Europe comes close to being conditioned by Herz's security dilemma and then continues to analyze the development from this state to one of stable peace. In this analysis pivotal features of the ECSC, EEC and the EC are being scrutinized through the use of Boulding's Stable Peace theory and developments of the very same, in separate case studies, in order to account for the Communities? influence on the peace process.In doing this, conclusions are drawn that external pressures can be very effective in creating an incentive to move beyond an initial state of conflicting self-images and that a stabilizing process has got to provide a long term solution in order to sustain a trustful relationship. In order to provide this long term solution the community cooperations suggests that locking in through institutionalization, harmonization, and the creation of a state of irrevocable interdependence are highly effective..

Ukraine shares a long history with Russia. In the early 21th century, Ukrainians wanted a freer Ukraine. Therefore the orange revolution started in 2004 by the Ukrainians and had a positive outcome. The situation later became worse because of the economic crisis in 2008 and a corrupt president. The pro-western politician Petro Poroshenko was elected to become president in 2014.

Participating in peace support operations has been and remains a significant part of the Swedish defense and security politics. Since the end of the Cold War, the Swedish national defence has been more and more dismantled, in favor of international peace support operations which have become an increasingly important task for the Swedish defence. Why then, is Sweden so engaged in conflicts so far from home? Using two classic theories of international politics, realism and liberalism, this study aims to shed light on arguments from the Swedish parliament on why it is important for Sweden to participate in international peace support operations. After analyzing arguments of the Social Democrat Party, the Moderate Party, the Green Party and the Liberal Party concerning three different peace support operations which Sweden has participated in, the result shows that although both realism and liberalism are influencing the parties? argumentation, liberalism is the theory which is used more often.

The purpose of this study was to examine and explain Sweden?s defence and security policy during the twenty-first century. The method that was used in this research was a case study. The material that was used were government documents focusing on this area of policy, and numerous books concerning the theoretical perspectives on international relations and defence security policy. The study is of an explaining art and the analysis explains Sweden?s security and defence policy during the twenty-first century. The analysis explains this by testing it against a liberal and a realist view on international relations. The conclusion of the study is that Sweden?s defence and security policy has been liberal during this time period ? and still is.

Protracted social conflicts, as those in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, are based on deep rooted perceptions of identity and definitions of "the other". According to the theory of discursive conflict transformation, war is primarily a social phenomenon, which is legitimated by a discourse of identity defined in terms of exclusionist boundaries and structural ideas of the social relations in society. In order to develop positive peace, the discourse of violence has to be challenged and the discursive structures that enable war have to transform into a counterdiscourse of inclusion and individuality. For the purpose of making a critical peace analysis, I have, with the assistance of established conflict theories, analysed the basic ideas behind the the Annan Plan and the Belfast Agreement and thus been able to interpret to what extent they may foster positive peace. I argue, that in order to provide basic needs on a group basis, power sharing arrangement, based on ethnicity or religion, exacerbates division rather than ameliorating it.

The world is increasingly coalescing, ecologically, economically and culturally. Many problems can no longer be solved within the own state borders and the limitation of the territorial state is obvious. Jürgen Habermas means that a world domestic politic without a world government is what this progress need. Therefore it is important that national interests become less central and the solidarity between people is given priority in international relations. The focus of this thesis is therefore a critical discourse analysis of the current position of the internationalisation of Swedish security and defence policy.

Art.39 är grindvakten som inleder kapitel VII i FN-stadgan och tröskeln vid vilken säkerhetsrådet går från att vara ett multilateralt organ till ett globalt verkställande organ. Konceptet ?threat to the peace? är det bredaste, otydligaste och viktigaste begreppet i art.39 FN-stadgan. Genom att framställa de centrala förutsättningarna för tillämpningen av art. 40-42, öppnar art.

The world is yet to experience world peace, a peace that is hindered by ongoing conflicts that escalate into wars around the globe. Therefore, peace can only be possible if conflicts are restricted and resolved to prohibit war, creating and maintaining peace. This study will be constructed around this assumption, but will include a moral variable and answer: is there a moral conflict-solving road to peace?The study will be directed around appeasement, economic sanctions and war as conflict resolving agents for peace. I will construct a typology with common features by using empirical material; a topology that will then be analyzed using two opposing ethical theories, consequentialism and common morality.The analysis will be constructed around the above mentioned question.

The aim of this paper is to examine if the two latest Peace Plans in the Palestine-Israeli con-flict observes the sources of the conflict and presents measures in the purpose of solving them. The point of departure is William Azar?s theory of protracted social conflict (PSC). According to Azar, the internal sources of a PSC lies in three clusters of variables: the com-munal content of a society, the deprivation of human needs as an underlying source of PSC, and the role of the state in the deprivation or satisfaction of human needs. The study is de-signed as a multiple-case study where the units of analysis are the Roadmap to Peace and the Geneva Initiative.