 It's a very rich and quite a vast array of subjects and themes, but of course all the papers link very nicely to the main topic of our discussion today. So like Laura said, I have two hats on both policy research at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, but also a practitioner having served with the United Nations and also with the Finnish government in quite a number of conflict areas ranging from Cambodia, Palestine, Afghanistan and so forth. So many of the places and situations that you talked about, I can relate also from practice, but let's see, I'll try to go through all the papers and have some specific comments. So I did not prepare a statement like because I think we have been in some of the panels and some of the discussants have sort of prepared statements and I was wondering, you know, they were not talking about the papers at all, so I'd rather want to focus on what you guys said. First of all, Sarah, elections, highly relevant indeed. I worked with the United Nations in Cambodia in the early 90s with the United Nations transitional authority in Cambodia and I can relate very well to what you were talking about, the power play of the elections and the really long and rocky road to peace and of course we have these situations in many, many other instances also. There are sort of four issues that came to my mind. First of all, in these situations, how a post-war polity is constructed and of course the notion of post-war or post-conflict is a bit problematic, particularly in modern times when we have an interplay between sort of no peace, no war and something in between, going back and forth. And then of course touching with the whole question of dealing with the past. And then that links to the point on, you know, how do you obtain an inclusive peace because if you don't have the perpetrators and the sort of warring parties on the same table and coming with a new political dispensation, you will be back to conflict. But it's a really hard and difficult discussion and I think the experience varies also from setting to setting. And then with the elections, the timing, the question of timing, again going back to Cambodia and my own experiences, I really liked when you used this term restrained leviathan because if we look at Cambodia today, it's become an autocratic hegemony or sort of closed democracy in different terms you can use. But this is a good example, the Cambodian experience. The war is over, the violent conflict is over, but yet you have an autocratic leadership in place and this seems to be in many other instances often the situation that unfolds after the electoral process. But yet I would underline from my own experience and understanding is that you really have to have, in order to achieve inclusive peace, you have to have all the protagonists around the table and some very difficult choices and compromises need to be made and then the whole justice debate comes into play and how do you figure that into the equation and of course this demography also comes to play because then with time you have new age cohorts entering the situation and the past becomes more distant but yet it is present in the collective consciousness of the politic. Eila on power sharing, yeah, well interesting stuff also on point on international and the role of international actors. I recall from Nepal which is a good example actually of a situation where Unumik after the Peace Accords of 2006 was really instrumental in being a stabilizing force, it was a political mission rather than a peacekeeping mission but nonetheless and of course we have different situations where either the UN through its political missions or the peacekeepers present or the African Union or OSCE and what have you and then the question remains that to my mind many of the situations are sweet generis their own so the leverage and the incentives and carrots that are available seem I wonder whether they seem to apply only to particular situations where there's more to lose or more to gain from the powers that be from the international community that are involved and whether it would actually apply to situations where the international community does not hold much sway. The question about citizens and how they affect the situation I find it very interesting when you say that the citizens ratify the elite deals that's really fascinating perspective and perspective and I was just wondering I mean what about how do you see the role of civil society at Bokkasi, NGOs, human rights, NGOs and media I mean do they have any role at all in this and then of course you were talking about Colombia I don't have experience on Colombia but isn't that a very sort of relatively homogeneous situation so I mean how would this apply to situations where the ethnic makeup and just the social makeup social fabric is much more complicated but nonetheless yeah I'd be interested to hear about because you did not talk about civil society at all just sort of citizenry at large and how people actually feel about being or not belonging the question of belonging or not belonging to the polity that is being constructed. Mara, wow when do closed camps become prison by another name yes this is a fascinating file I know that our whole file form working with the Finnish government and that's a difficult one because I actually agree 100% 110% with all your conclusions that of course there's a question of uncertain legality the whole international law how does it apply and from terrorism research and talking and working with colleagues in the intelligence community there seems to be a concurrence or sort of a common understanding that these closed camps such as Alhual are actually a radicalization hotbeds and hence at least in Europe most of the intelligence agencies are of the opinion that yes we need to bring the European citizens out from places like Alhual because it's a bad investment in terms of future if they just remain there and of course then this question of human rights comes to this. The whole question of warehousing I mean I served as the deputy rep of Finland in Palestine and Gaza yeah Gaza top but warehousing for whole big population so yeah fascinating stuff I mean I don't know if I really had any questions but I was basically just concurring of your points but good and then Erika wow this is also interesting paper that you presented and actually I make the opportunity that just today me and my colleagues from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs just published a working paper titled understanding non-state armed actors forces for good evil or something in between people who are interested in these confined papers they are on our website and also few papers by the table down there but anyway yeah whether yeah ALP I also served in Afghanistan so I remember ALP Afghan local police tribal mobilization forces in Iraq and then Syrian armed group dynamics I mean today these kinds of actors they have really become standard yet very versatile protagonists in modern asymmetric conflicts that we have been seeing since 9-11 actually well now the situation is we have a new twist with the Ukraine file but that's something different I think one of the issues that sort of sprang to my mind was that many of these I'm non-state actors what is the process how do you see how how they become you know part and parcel of local governance structures because they often become them I mean outsiders create them or help foster them such was as was the case in Afghanistan or Iraq or even Syria but then we we also face this situation where you know it becomes particularly in the Syrian file but also in Afghanistan I saw they become like you know we create this hobesian sort of everybody's war against everybody else kind of situation and how can you know what what you're thinking about and you know the SSR process I mean are they part and parcel of the security sector reform at all and or should they be DDR I mean and I just and now that we are sort of if we are moving with the Ukraine file to a sort of new era of warfare and conflict I mean do you think that on this these kinds of non-state groups are they things of the past or are they here to stay and how you see this file evolving so I think I have actually used my time but they were sort of just thoughts that sprang to my mind when I was listening to your fascinating papers so I'm looking forward for a discussion thanks all panelists presenters including Sarah I'm happy to see that you are still online still very early in the US and and of course thanks to all the also for his for his comments I think they very nicely complimented to compliment your your papers and your arguments now we have about 15 minutes for for questions and discussion so please the floor is finally yours I don't know your name so I'm very sorry I have to sort of unpolitely impolitely point my fingers so gentlemen there in the thank you very much Andrea Ruggieri University of Oxford question for Sarah the first question is about the possible issue of ecological fallacy if you can tell us a bit more whether for instance those that were not victimized but are surrounded by those that were victimized actually are more mobilized to vote for the perpetrators in order to be then eventually defended by the new government and if you can also elaborate by the 2x2 table that was extremely interesting but of course you were running out of time I could understand where the violence was in that table so I could see the balance of power and the pure winners or the mixed winners but now the violence on Ila quickly one provocative thought so in these matters about power sharing and after conflict issues would you say that citizens don't matter because are the leads and the and the affiliation and affinity toward the leads and eventually matter and going less provocative I saw your results I was wondering why there was a heterogeneity between Santos and Oriba if you can tell us whether is a story of incumbent versus opposition a fact or if there is something else thank you very much perhaps we take another tool and then so son has time to do to think of a reaction and also Ila so there is at the back hi really wonderful panel I have a couple questions as well many but I'll just launch a couple and I'll try to be brief so for for Sarah if I understand your logic correctly it's very provocative argument it should only you know they're given the belligerents are given military they're given credit for militarily winning so shouldn't this whole argument only hold in conflicts that end in military victory and not in conflicts that ended negotiated settlement and do you test for that and then also maybe I need to read the book whole book to get the feel but it's felt like you were saying it was a perception not a reality of that the groups have the winning groups have this confidence like I find myself wondering about that I mean to win especially if they're like a rebel group they do build this confidence they often build as something like a state and they get deliver services they gain control they become powerful you know I think of groups like Hezbollah in the Middle East that I mean there's there are reasons it's not just a perception than a heuristic that people then support them and so I don't know but where you fall on that and then for Isla quickly I was wondering a you know you sort of suggest citizens don't matter because they're susceptible to cues I'm not sure that is what the American as political scientists who rely on that those queuing experiments say they in some sense they I think have a defense of rational ignorance among citizens and that how they use these informational shortcuts but are still able to express their so I was wondering on that and then also does it hold among communities that are more on the front lines and I yeah as equally so thanks yeah I'd love to hear on all that thank you very much I I think that we give the the chance to Sarah and and Isla to to react to these questions and then we take you more but I don't want to keep you from from your lunch or the next set of questions please keep them short so Sarah go ahead thank you thank you so much for these really probing and thoughtful questions and for engaging so productively with my my research first I just want to say I completely agree that for peace we need to have all the protagonists at the table and as Isla's fascinating work has shown for peace we also need inclusive elections and so I do want to just say that they're glimmers of hope from from the work and that it's that by including these protagonists you're not necessarily doomed to have only peace and and necessarily trade off everything else because what I find is that former abusers may engage in regressive justice in the short to medium term but as peace consolidates and citizens start to gain breathing room from heightened insecurity there do seem to be possibilities for justice that grow similarly in the governance domain while there do seem to be trade-offs with respect to social welfare the citizenry does seem to gain in the near term in the domain in which the belligerents have a comparative advantage and and competent so in the security domain so there are glimmers of hope from from the book so going to this really great question about ecological fallacy and whether it's just the I do think of citizens emerging from war in the types of categories that you're laying out as direct victims, people who are conflict affected by war but are not its direct victims and then arguably and depending on the nature of the of the the geographic nature of the violence and ethnic nature of the violence you might have what are plausibly non-affected non-victims and in my work I am especially in my survey work I'm able to I was able to interview direct victims conflict affected non-victims and also this category of non-affected non-victims in order to try to address some of these issues that you raise and I certainly think that the the conflict affected non-victims are among are often prevalent and can be the swing voters the undecided voters for whom a lot of these strategies work most effectively and I'm not saying that all the victims will vote for their perpetrators but rather try to understand this especially surprising pattern that any would vote for their perpetrators going to the two by two my my my talk at this hour was definitely too too long for for the time given but I'll just lay out quickly what where the the source of instability comes from and and the security voting does give war winners a sort of upper hand in elections and so these militarily advantaged belligerent parties tend to be not only good at tying their own hands but they can deter their opponents from remilitarizing and so the key point is that if the balance of power after war remains unaltered and thus these election results reflect the power balance then there's little reason for either the war winner or the war loser to reinitiate violence and so then you get peace and but if the balance of power instead inverts meaning that the militarily weaker is now stronger the fact that the population uses the heuristic of war outcomes to guide their vote means that they're now choosing a weaker and now weaker war winner and so the electoral results are misaligned with military power and the newly empowered belligerent should be incentivized to return to war so that's the that's the dynamic there and then in terms of military victory versus negotiated settlement. I'm very sorry Sara but I have to ask you to wind up because Ayla is still you know two people are waiting for for for answers to their questions from Ayla and then I'd like to ask for give a transfer of the people to ask. Okay yes I do like a perception these are such good questions so thank you so much and I look forward to much many many more discussions at this group. Thank you thank you Sara so Ayla go ahead please. Okay now I'm so I'll try to keep these brief thank you so much for the excellent discussion questions and questions from the audience so thinking about this you know I think I intended to be a little provocative because there's been so much focus on citizens in this conference and I think that there are lots of roles that citizens can play of course but this doesn't seem to be one of them to me especially because of the affinity divides that often sort of characterize these post-conflict context right if we think about these citizens as really stabilizing sort of an elite divide and being willing to punish either side if they violate the terms of the peace agreement that's a big ask from like a group of citizens right who have been participating in or at least affected by a civil conflict up until that point and so this is it this is meant to be provocative so I'm glad Andrea responded with a provocative question of his own I'm happy to talk more about that because I really do think that these these are usually divided societies and that's what sort of prevents them from from having you know and if this particular effect and I think this also gets to our discussants question which is like what is the role of civil society NGOs the media we didn't find an effect in the survey of providing additional information or providing information from a non political queue on these sort of people's attitudes right and so those didn't seem to have an effect whether or not they might have a direct fact effect civil society for example might be a balancing factor I think we need to think about what kind of monitoring it's providing and what kind of incentives it can provide to sort of change the incentives for the different combatant parties would certainly be an interesting thing to study why the difference between Santos and or ebay in brief I think there are two answers other than or ebay's charisma I think one is that the camps are very different so the people who are aligned with or ebay on this issue seem much tighter on the right whereas from our survey where people are aligned with Santos seem much broader but they support the peace process right so they may not be getting as much from his queue because they're not as tightly aligned the other aspect is that the or ebay queue may be more surprising because this is essentially a revision to the peace process and so showing that he supports this aspect we oppose is what poses the rest of the peace process maybe especially surprising information so we're guessing it's one of those camps or surprising information as to why the difference there and then the other the other questions in terms of citizens don't matter because they're subtle excuse I don't mean to suggest that citizens don't matter or the preferences don't matter at all but that they don't seem to be serving this or they don't seem to be likely to serve the stabilizing function given that they're sort of splitting into camps on this issue and so they're not going to be very likely to sanction sort of the side that might renege on a peace agreement we do have a paper that's about to come out in JCR with the same co-authors that shows that the elites the politicians parliamentarians don't take a citizen opinion into effect very much on these policy queues so we actually are able to survey the parliamentarians and ask them about their positions and whether they would update them based on information from the Colombian voters and they didn't so that was was very interesting and we don't find strong differences in communities on the front lines as opposed to other places but I'm happy to talk more about that afterwards excellent thank you very much now it's five to one and and so I would take two more questions please be brief then then then then you can also hear the answers thank you so this gentleman here in front I think he was first thank you very much to all the panelists Benjamin Petrini from the International Institute for Strategic Studies I have a question for Erika in one of your implications you said that you're asking how do these mobilization if these mobilizations and co-optation initiatives affect the state building goals and so I want to ask you to the extent that you see a relations and something that echoes what Ollie said the relations between these mobilization and then relations with other functions of governance in in other social services etc and and the second is if these efforts may actually in certain cases reinforce actually fragmentation of security and instead of supporting state building they may actually go the other way thank you and then there was one just behind sorry thanks so much grand Blair from UCLA for Mara I was wondering if you had any observations from looking at the the camps that closed in the data set that you have and whether there were pathways to closure that were kind of relevant for the current set of camps in particular whether any of them face the kind of security threats to recruitment and and mobilization that and then resolve them effectively thank you so I think the first was to Erika and then to tomorrow it's a great question I'll take it from the back so in terms of increasing fragmentation and how that might be in tension with other state building goals this is often front and center for why the states might try to encourage them to be institutionalized so to take non-state actors and attach them either in a parallel force or in some way under the Ministry of Interior some of their state force with the idea that if you're putting them under the state authority you know one you can be seen as positive you're disarming or reintegrating in practice armed groups that are otherwise not corralled under state authority into it and that you're preventing the risk that you're then ceding more competitors to state authority but what tends to happen in practice is that you're you're only doing this because you're already dealing with really weak institutions that aren't able to exert coercive power over these forces so that doesn't really tend to change with the institutionalization so you still get the effects that you may actually still be empowering and mobilizing groups without actually having that sort of taming influence you know you usually get one of two things happening either you know you've got sort of your elite captured corrupt institutions and then it's attached to these community groups and just sort of filters the dysfunction down to them or you get a situation where the militias are then embedded in the state institutions and rather than that being a controlling force they're able to use the legitimacy and the resources of the state to sort of buttress their opinion so it does that's been the most common result I'll just leave it for that given brevity. Thanks so much for the the question Graham and this is a great idea so in this this is a very early stage sort of data collection and I haven't looked in detail into sort of the other other most examples of camps that have been closed but I do know that there were a number of closed camps in Iraq that closed and I think that the main distinction or the reason why it was relatively easier for these rocks these these rocky camps to close is because the entire camp population was an Iraqi nationals and there was relative success there was both sort of a screening process to determine criminal liability in which you know some residents of the camp were then referred for prosecution and the rest were kind of allowed to return to their communities of origin often that needed to be facilitated by various tribal justice mechanisms to overcome certain community resistance and stigmatization and I or in other cases relocated to third communities but I think while whole is particularly challenging is because of the the number of different nationalities represented and so the unwillingness also of their their countries to to repatriate them which in turn then sort of the confinement of third country nationals with the Rockies and Syrians is resulting in you know hundreds of children being born every year now whose nationality are totally uncertain and don't have a clear path so I would just say I mean the one of the mechanisms that's been suggested for as a possible solution to a hole that I find really problematic is is for the court system of the autonomous Syrian autonomous Kurdish administration to claim jurisdiction over prosecutions of you know people from Europe and other countries under you know a legal system that that is quite flawed and doesn't have a sufficient number of lawyers for these cases and and you know I don't I don't see that as particularly viable but I do think that this is one of the most sort of pressing long-term challenges of how to basically yeah how to deal with this population of third country nationals whose countries aren't willing to take them whereas you know there has been some successful reduction in the size of the camp population through return to reintegration of Syrians and Rockies thank you very much I I saw that there was one more question but I think that we we have to we have to leave that this I would like to thank all the panelists and the discussions once again and obviously thank also the audience for for very I'm sure that we would have continued for another half an hour I hope that you are able to continue the discussion in the margins of the conference very rich indeed thank you very much