Andrew Edward Tchie

Andrew E Tchie is a Conflict and Policy Advisor for Syria Relief, where he focuses on research and advocating for policies aimed at delivering SDG 3 and 16 to support women, children and children with disabilities in Syria. His Ph.D. thesis, which was submitted in January 2018, seeks to understand the trends and the use of indiscriminate violence in conflicts. He explores the different strategic positions, which actor(s) adopted during the decade-long Nepalese conflict (1996-2006) and Second South Sudanese conflict (1983-2005). He demonstrates in his thesis, who the actors of the conflict are, and establish why it is important to rethink the way actor(s) in a conflict are categorised. He presents a theoretical framework, entitled the Concept of Embeddedness, which addresses the conditions in which civilians experience indiscriminate violence during conflicts. In the thesis, he demonstrates how the strategic movement and positioning of actors within conflict zones renders civilians wedged between embedded actors who control a zone and actors who are sent on temporary deployment to the zone. Through a mixed method approach, he reveals how the position of embeddedness triggers other actors to use indiscriminate violence against civilians in different zones. He writes about UN peacekeeping, the protection of civilians in UN peacekeeping missions, violence against civilians and civil war dynamics. His previous conflict advisory and field research postings include working in conflicted and fragile states with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, UNDP in Nepal and the Commonwealth Secretariat in Botswana, Mauritius and Uganda. He accepted a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Conflict and Health at King College London, where he examines the impact of conflict on health system and deliver. He is a visiting researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), a research of the research school on peace and conflict, a PhD fellow at the Michael Nicolson centre for conflict and cooperation and fellow of The Higher Education Academy (HEA).