Where will the conference be held?

The conference will take place in Kampala, UGA.

What is the primary focus of this conference?

The conference focuses on conflict resolution in societies transitioning from authoritarian rule, with discussions on peacebuilding, reconciliation, and institutional reform.

What is the format of the conference?

The event is described as an international conference, suggesting a format that includes presentations, discussions, and networking among participants.

International Conference on Conflict Resolution in Post-Authoritarian Societies

Name: International Conference on Conflict Resolution in Post-Authoritarian Societies
Start: 2026-08-22T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-08-22T00:00:00Z
Location: Kampala

Aug 22, 2026Kampala, UgandaIn-person

Starts in 14 daysRegistration open

The International Conference on Conflict Resolution in Post-Authoritarian Societies, held in Kampala, UGA, focuses on the complex challenges and opportunities inherent in transitioning from authoritarian rule to more democratic and stable governance. This event brings together academics, practitioners, and policymakers to discuss the multifaceted aspects of conflict resolution within these delicate societal transformations. Participants will explore strategies for peacebuilding, reconciliation, and institutional reform in contexts emerging from periods of autocratic control.

Committees & topics

Topics
Post-Authoritarian Transitions and Conflict Resolution · The Role of Civil Society in Democratization · Challenges of Reconciliation in Post-Authoritarian States · Case Studies of Successful Democratic Transitions · The Impact of Authoritarianism on Social Cohesion · International Support for Democratic Movements · Human Rights Violations under Authoritarian Regimes · Political Dialogue in Post-Authoritarian Contexts

Why it matters

The transition from authoritarianism to a more open society is rarely linear or peaceful. Many societies grapple with legacies of violence, human rights abuses, and deep-seated divisions that can easily reignite conflict. Understanding how to effectively resolve these conflicts is crucial for establishing lasting peace and fostering sustainable development.

This conference is particularly relevant as it convenes in Kampala, UGA, a region with its own complex history of political transitions and conflicts. The discussions will draw on global experiences while also grounding them in the realities faced by countries in Africa and beyond. By sharing research and practical insights, the conference aims to contribute to a more robust understanding of the mechanisms that can prevent relapse into conflict and support the consolidation of democratic gains.

The insights generated from this gathering are vital for international organizations, national governments, and civil society groups working in post-authoritarian contexts. Effective conflict resolution in these settings can determine the long-term stability and prosperity of nations, impacting millions of lives and shaping regional security dynamics.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for this conference should consider the nuanced dynamics of power shifts and the role of various actors in post-authoritarian transitions. A thorough understanding of how different stakeholders, including former regime elements, opposition groups, and civil society, interact is essential. This can be informed by exploring concepts such as "hidden stakeholders" and applying frameworks from "stakeholder workshop" and "what is stakeholder mapping" to analyze specific case studies.

Further preparation should involve examining the diverse approaches to justice and reconciliation in societies emerging from authoritarian rule. This includes considering both formal legal processes and informal community-based initiatives. Understanding the challenges of institutional reform, security sector transformation, and economic reconstruction in these environments will also be beneficial. Delegates are encouraged to review "dynamic analysis" to better understand the evolving nature of post-authoritarian conflicts and the need for adaptive strategies.

Given the location in Kampala, UGA, participants might also benefit from researching the historical and contemporary political landscape of the region, paying attention to local conflict resolution mechanisms and peacebuilding efforts. Considering the "gender dynamics across cultures" in peace processes is also critical, as women often play unique and vital roles in reconciliation and community rebuilding.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Uganda

Host nation with significant experience in post-conflict recovery and regional peace initiatives.

Role in topic

As the host country, UGA provides a relevant backdrop for discussions on conflict resolution in post-authoritarian societies, having navigated its own complex political history and engaged in regional peace efforts.

Germany

Significant donor and advocate for democratic transitions and reconciliation processes.

Role in topic

DEU has historically supported democratic transitions and reconciliation processes globally, offering expertise and financial aid to countries emerging from authoritarian rule.

United States

Global actor in promoting democracy and supporting post-conflict stabilization efforts.

Role in topic

The USA plays a substantial role in international efforts to promote democracy and stabilize post-conflict regions, often through diplomatic engagement, aid, and security assistance.

Sweden

Strong proponent of peacebuilding, human rights, and gender-inclusive approaches in transitions.

Role in topic

SWE is known for its commitment to peacebuilding, human rights, and advocating for gender-inclusive approaches in conflict resolution and post-authoritarian transitions.

Switzerland

Neutral facilitator in peace processes and host to numerous international organizations.

Role in topic

CHE often acts as a neutral facilitator in peace negotiations and hosts many international organizations focused on conflict resolution and humanitarian aid, contributing to global expertise in these areas.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Post-Authoritarian Transitions and Conflict Resolution

The collapse of authoritarian regimes — from Franco's Spain in 1975, through the post-1989 transitions in Central and Eastern Europe, to the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 — has repeatedly demonstrated that the removal of a dictator is only the opening phase of a much longer political project. Transitions typically unfold across overlapping tracks: constitutional redesign, security sector reform, transitional justice, and the integration of former regime actors into a pluralist order. Where these tracks are sequenced poorly, as in Iraq after 2003 or Libya after 2011, the resulting institutional vacuum has fueled civil war and renewed authoritarianism. Contemporary scholarship, including work commissioned by the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and the International IDEA Global State of Democracy reports, emphasizes that durable transitions tend to combine elite pacts with broad-based participation. Yet a global wave of democratic backsliding since the mid-2010s — documented by V-Dem and Freedom House — has shown that even consolidated transitions, such as Hungary's and Turkey's, can reverse. The core dispute today is whether the international community should prioritize stability and negotiated pacts with incumbent elites, or insist on accountability and rapid democratization at the risk of renewed conflict.

Key players

The Role of Civil Society in Democratization

Civil society — independent trade unions, religious associations, professional bodies, NGOs, and informal civic networks — has been central to nearly every successful democratic transition of the past half-century. Poland's Solidarity movement, the Catholic Church in the Philippines' 1986 People Power Revolution, the Coordinadora Democrática in Chile's 1988 plebiscite, and Tunisia's Nobel Prize-winning National Dialogue Quartet in 2013 all illustrate how organized civic actors can both pressure incumbents and provide the trust networks needed to negotiate a transition. In the post-transition phase, civil society typically shifts roles: from opposition to watchdog, service provider, and convener of political dialogue. However, since roughly 2012 the global operating environment for civil society has narrowed sharply. CIVICUS Monitor data show that the majority of the world's population lives in countries where civic space is rated 'repressed' or 'closed.' Foreign-agent laws — pioneered in Russia in 2012 and replicated from Nicaragua to Georgia — have constrained external funding. The central debate is how international actors can sustain independent civic actors without exposing them to accusations of foreign interference that authoritarian and hybrid regimes weaponize against them.

Key players

Challenges of Reconciliation in Post-Authoritarian States

Reconciliation after authoritarian rule confronts a recurring dilemma: how to acknowledge mass abuses without re-igniting the cleavages that produced them. Since Argentina's CONADEP in 1983 and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995, more than 50 truth commissions have been established worldwide. They have been complemented by criminal accountability mechanisms — from Argentina's Trial of the Juntas to Chile's prosecution of Pinochet-era officers and the hybrid tribunals in Cambodia and Sierra Leone — and by reparations programs, lustration laws, and memorialization policies. The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, established in 2011, frames these as four interlocking pillars. In practice, reconciliation is contested at every step. Amnesties may secure elite cooperation but entrench impunity, as Spain's 1977 Pacto del Olvido is now widely criticized for doing. Lustration risks producing new injustices and can be manipulated for partisan ends, as debates in post-communist Europe illustrate. Where transitions are partial or reversed — Cambodia, Rwanda, post-2013 Egypt — official reconciliation narratives can become tools of the successor regime rather than mechanisms of repair. The unresolved question is whether reconciliation requires justice or merely the cessation of conflict, and who has standing to decide.

Key players

Case Studies of Successful Democratic Transitions

A handful of transitions are routinely cited in the comparative literature as 'successful,' though the criteria — durability, quality of democracy, and reduction of political violence — remain debated. Spain's post-Franco transition (1975–1982), anchored by the 1977 Moncloa Pacts and a negotiated constitution, is frequently held up as a template of elite consensus. Portugal after the 1974 Carnation Revolution and Greece after the 1974 fall of the Colonels round out the southern European 'third wave' identified by Samuel Huntington. The post-1989 transitions of Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states benefited from the powerful anchor of EU and NATO accession conditionality. Outside Europe, Chile's 1988–1990 transition via plebiscite, South Africa's 1994 negotiated settlement, South Korea and Taiwan's gradual liberalization in the late 1980s, and Indonesia's post-1998 Reformasi are commonly studied. Common features include credible internal elite bargains, external incentives or anchors, the early establishment of independent electoral management, and a security sector willing to accept civilian oversight. Yet recent regressions — including democratic erosion in Hungary and Poland — caution against treating consolidation as permanent. The debate is whether these cases offer transferable lessons or are bound to specific historical conditions.

Key players

International Support for Democratic Movements

Since the end of the Cold War, an architecture of international democracy support has emerged, encompassing the UN Democracy Fund (UNDEF, established 2005), the EU's European Endowment for Democracy, the US National Endowment for Democracy, Germany's Stiftungen, the Community of Democracies, and electoral observation missions by the OSCE/ODIHR, the OAS, the AU, and the EU. Multilateral bodies have also articulated normative frameworks: the AU's 2007 Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance and the OAS's 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter both contain provisions for collective responses to unconstitutional changes of government. The field is now under sustained pressure. Authoritarian and hybrid regimes have advanced an 'authoritarian counter-norm' through bodies like the SCO, restricted election observation, and exported surveillance technology. Western democracy assistance has been criticized as inconsistent, geopolitically selective, and at times counterproductive — as debates over Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan illustrate. Today's central dispute is how to support democratic movements credibly: through quiet, locally led assistance and accession conditionality, or through more assertive sanctions and political backing that risk being framed as interference.

Key players

Human Rights Violations under Authoritarian Regimes

Authoritarian governance is associated with a consistent pattern of violations of civil and political rights protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ICCPR: arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial killing, suppression of expression and assembly, and persecution of minorities. Twentieth-century cases — from the Soviet Gulag and Mao's Cultural Revolution to Latin America's Operation Condor and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge — established the empirical baseline. Contemporary OHCHR, Human Rights Council Commissions of Inquiry, and treaty body reporting document ongoing large-scale violations in North Korea (per the 2014 COI), Xinjiang, Syria, Myanmar, Iran, Eritrea, and elsewhere. Accountability mechanisms have expanded — including the ICC, universal jurisdiction prosecutions in European courts (notably the Koblenz trial on Syrian state torture), targeted Magnitsky-style sanctions, and the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria — but coverage is uneven and frequently blocked by Security Council vetoes. The core debate is how to document violations in real time, protect victims and witnesses, and convert documentation into accountability when the political conditions for prosecution may only emerge years after a transition.

Key players

Political Dialogue in Post-Authoritarian Contexts

Structured political dialogue is widely regarded as indispensable to managing the contested period after authoritarian rule. Models range from Spain's Moncloa Pacts (1977) and Poland's Round Table Talks (1989) to South Africa's CODESA process (1991–1993), Tunisia's National Dialogue (2013), and Sudan's ill-fated Constitutional Declaration (2019). The UN's Guidance on National Dialogues, developed by the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, identifies common design choices: inclusivity of participants, clarity of mandate, credible convening, and linkage to formal decision-making bodies. Dialogues fail more often than they succeed. Yemen's 2013–2014 National Dialogue Conference produced a substantive outcome document but collapsed into civil war; Libya's successive UN-facilitated dialogues have struggled to bridge militia-backed factions; Venezuela's intermittent negotiations have repeatedly stalled. Recurrent obstacles include spoilers excluded from talks, asymmetries between organized former-regime actors and fragmented opposition, lack of guarantees, and waning international attention. The unresolved question is how to design dialogues that are inclusive enough to be legitimate yet focused enough to deliver decisions, and how external actors should support without dominating.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on Conflict Resolution in Post-Authoritarian Societies.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis 2026

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis

Delimitation Based on 2011 Census

Supreme Court Upholds Election Commission Dis

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Conflict Resolution

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Uganda August 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

International Conference on Conflict Resolution in Post-Authoritarian Societies

Aug 22, 2026Kampala, UgandaIn-person

Starts in 14 daysRegistration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Post-Authoritarian Transitions and Conflict Resolution · The Role of Civil Society in Democratization · Challenges of Reconciliation in Post-Authoritarian States · Case Studies of Successful Democratic Transitions · The Impact of Authoritarianism on Social Cohesion · International Support for Democratic Movements · Human Rights Violations under Authoritarian Regimes · Political Dialogue in Post-Authoritarian Contexts

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Uganda

Host nation with significant experience in post-conflict recovery and regional peace initiatives.

Role in topic

Germany

Significant donor and advocate for democratic transitions and reconciliation processes.

Role in topic

DEU has historically supported democratic transitions and reconciliation processes globally, offering expertise and financial aid to countries emerging from authoritarian rule.

United States

Global actor in promoting democracy and supporting post-conflict stabilization efforts.

Role in topic

The USA plays a substantial role in international efforts to promote democracy and stabilize post-conflict regions, often through diplomatic engagement, aid, and security assistance.

Sweden

Strong proponent of peacebuilding, human rights, and gender-inclusive approaches in transitions.

Role in topic

SWE is known for its commitment to peacebuilding, human rights, and advocating for gender-inclusive approaches in conflict resolution and post-authoritarian transitions.

Switzerland

Neutral facilitator in peace processes and host to numerous international organizations.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Post-Authoritarian Transitions and Conflict Resolution

Key players

The Role of Civil Society in Democratization

Key players

Challenges of Reconciliation in Post-Authoritarian States

Key players

Case Studies of Successful Democratic Transitions

Key players

International Support for Democratic Movements

Key players

Human Rights Violations under Authoritarian Regimes

Key players

Political Dialogue in Post-Authoritarian Contexts

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on Conflict Resolution in Post-Authoritarian Societies.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis 2026

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis

Delimitation Based on 2011 Census

Supreme Court Upholds Election Commission Dis

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Conflict Resolution

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Uganda August 2026

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

International Conference on Leadership, Human Rights, and International Security

International Conference on Migration, Diaspora and Transnationalism

10th International Public Procurement Conference (IPPC10)

International Conference on Organized Crime, Terrorism, and Law Enforcement Strategies (ICOCTLES)

International Conference on Human Rights, Genocide, and Mass Violence (ICHRGMV - 26)

International Conference on African Diaspora and Transatlantic Studies (ICADTS-2026)

Frequently asked questions