Speaker
Description
International organizations play a crucial role in the reintegration of former rebels.
They are often the main guarantors and providers of reincorporation projects and
are pivotal in revealing violence during the post-conflict period. Some studies, however,
associate the presence of international missions with political violence. I argue
that international organizations can increase the probability for members of successor
rebel parties to reconsider the use of political violence by providing condemning
reports that reveal government misconduct. How these messages are currently communicated
does not take into consideration the higher psychological susceptibility,
existential vulnerabilities, and volatile environment surrounding this audience. I
test my arguments in Colombia, where the former rebel group FARC participated
for the first time in elections in 2018. Based on a unique sample of FARC supporters
and an experimental design, I show that members of former rebel groups were
more prone to support the reconsideration of political violence when they were confronted
with UN reports condemning government misconduct against their group. I
also show that the FARC did not share these messages on Twitter, indicating that
the FARC leadership is aware that these reports could have the leverage to influence
a critical threshold for former rebels. These results suggest that UN reports
have the potential to negatively affect volatile post-conflict contexts and reveal the
necessity for reevaluating how the UN communicates at the local level.
