Negotiated civil war terminations differ from their interstate war counterparts in that one side must disarm and cease to exist as a fighting entity. While termination through military victory provides a relatively more enduring peace, many civil wars end with peace agreements signed after negotiations. However, research has shown that the implementation of civil war peace agreements is difficult and prone to collapse. Often these failures are followed by recurrence of the conflict. In some cases, the agreements break down before key provisions are implemented. This article adds to this topic by focusing on the role of state capacity in peace agreement success. We argue that peace agreements and state capacity are necessary but not sufficient conditions for sustainable peace. The article employs a case study approach to explore the importance of state capacity in implementing civil war peace agreements. The role of third-party interventions is also considered. The cases (United Kingdom-Northern Ireland, Indonesia-Aceh, Burundi, Mali, and Somalia) include 14 peace agreements that vary by war type (secessionist or control over government), type of agreement (comprehensive or partial), levels of state capacity (high or low), and peace success (success, partial or failure), and each experienced third-party involvement in the peace process.
W e are currently witnessing the fourth industrial revolution 1 . Technological innovations have altered the way in which economies operate and how people interact with built, social and natural environments. One area of transformation is the emergence of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS), defined as technologies that can sense, analyse, interact with and manipulate their physical environment 2 . RAS include unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), self-driving cars, robots able to repair infrastructure, and wireless sensor networks used for monitoring. RAS therefore have a large range of potential applications, such as autonomous transport, waste collection, infrastructure maintenance and repair, policing 2,3 and precision agriculture 4 (Fig. 1). RAS have already revolutionized how environmental data are collected 5 and how species populations are monitored for conservation 6 and/or control 7 . Globally, the RAS market is projected to grow from $6.2 billion in 2018 to $17.7 billion in 2026 8 .Concurrent with this technological revolution, urbanization continues at an unprecedented rate. By 2030, an additional 1.2 million km 2 of the planet's surface will be covered by towns and cities, with ~90% of this development happening in Africa and
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