Democracy and Governance in Afghanistan

Lack of security, slow progress in the disarmament of militias, and a weakly developed legal and institutional framework for democratic politics are endangering the success of Afghanistan’s presidential and parliamentary elections due to be held in September.

How beautiful is small?

CEFRAD, The Centre for Rights & Development, discusses the problems with human rights in the Seychelles.

El derecho a la democracia

El derecho a la democracia Author: Oscar Álvarez Araya Originally Published at Peace and Conflict Monitor on: 08/29/2008 Category: Comment Los pueblos de América tienen derecho a la democracia que debe ser la única forma legítima de gobierno en nuestro continente. El proceso de Cumbres de las Américas se ha convertido en un mecanismo de […]

Peace in Kenya Campaign

Peace in Kenya Campaign Author: Peter Ongera Originally Published at Peace and Conflict Monitor on: 04/02/2008 Category: Conciliation Kenya’s post-election violence has been, to say the least, an unanticipated tragedy with far-reaching implications. Even as the country’s calm returns, albeit slowly, underlying tension is evident. With over 1,000 lives lost and over 250,000 people displaced […]

The Consequences of Failure

Kenya’s choices are simple: life or death, penury or prosperity, a cohesive, well governed nation that counts its diversity as strength or a suspicious, hateful one governed by the cynical and awash in the blood of its young. The leaders too must now decide whether they will be remembered as the men who destroyed a nation or those who rescued it and set it on a glorious path that will be remembered for generations.

Fixing Obama’s Crooked Cabinet

Fixing Obama’s Crooked Cabinet Author: Pandora Hopkins Originally Published at Peace and Conflict Monitor on: 08/15/2009 Category: Opinion I am a true-blue American citizen, I am a passionate believer in the two-party system, I am a proud Democrat, a member of the reach-across-the-aisle party that is showing the world how the two-party system can naturally […]

It stops with me

It stops with me Author: Sandra Macharia Originally Published at Peace and Conflict Monitor on: 02/06/2008 Category: Comment Since the disputed election in Kenya on 27 December 2007, more than one thousand of my fellow Kenyans have met a violent death and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. Life as we have known it has […]

Democracy and peace: an over-emphasized relationship

This essay revisits the classical argument of democratic-peace in reference to more recent political events, including the US and UK led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and concludes that democracy in and of itself is an insufficient indicator of a given state’s likelihood of engaging in war. The message of this argument takes on an extra dimension of meaning in light of the recent conflict in Georgia.

El Salvador’s Democracy

In the early 1990s, peace negotiations in El Salvador’s civil war were made possible by a military stalemate. Now, a decade later, a political stalemate might make real negotiations possible yet again. A look at El Salvador’s past, with a view to its future.