EE on Peace and Conflict Studies

[doesntmatterwhy]

Hey,

This subject is not offered in my school. However, my adviser teaches International Relations in my school and has done and EE on this subject with a student from his previous school.

I'm currently hesitating whether this topic is Peace and Conflict, so need your opinion..help. ESPECIALLY people who are actually taking the course.

Aim: To what extent can corruption explain the lack of enforcement in policies and laws regarding the manufacturing, trading and distribution of illicit small arms in South East Asia?

Purpose of the Essay: Illicit use of small arms in SEA allows crime to occur. Although UN resolutions have proposed various procedures to take steps in solving the issue of manufacturing, trading and distributing of small arms, the issue still prevails as much as before because of the government’s lack of responsibility in enforcing them. In reality, the government itself may have officials that may be benefiting from this illegal business. The essay will explain how corruption plays a role in the usage of illicit small arms and will propose solutions to combating corruption in small steps.

[Vvi]

I think your question sounds very Peace and Conflict related. It might be slightly narrower if you focused on just one country, such as China or Thailand, because analysing separate policies in several SE Asian countries and evaluating their combined effectiveness will be hard, as well as analysing corruption and its effects in each country. Proposing the same solutions in each country may not be effective, due to regional variations in the degrees of corruption and national policies. A big country like India should be large enough for an entire EE to be written on. You can always make comparisons with other countries even if you do write an EE on just one country.

Hopefully there are peace and conflict theories on how to solve corruption. Lack of relevant theories is one reason for weak P&C EE's.

"One of the weakest elements of extended essays in this subject is the failure of many students to show that they have any knowledge and understanding of theories about the causes of peace and conflict, which should underpin any study of the subject. At least one of the books that deal with these theories ought to appear in the bibliography and students should show their awareness of such theories at appropriate points in their essays (criterion D)."- From the EE guide.

So as long as you handle that, you should be fine.

Edited May 13, 2009 by Vvi