The Right to Peace in International Law: Theoretical Foundations and Application to Conflict-Affected Communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt

This dissertation develops a theoretically rigorous framework for the right to peace under international law and applies it to conflict-affected communities in Nigeria's Middle Belt region, where persistent farmer-herder violence and intercommunal conflict have generated massive civilian suffering in Benue, Plateau, and Nasarawa States. The right to peace, articulated in the UN Declaration on the Right to Peace (2016) and given normative content through the work of the UN Advisory Committee, remains contested as a substantive right in international law, with debates about its legal status, content, and subjects. Drawing on human rights theory, peace studies, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, this research develops an original right to peace framework that specifies the right's tripartite content encompassing freedom from organised violence, access to peace processes, and entitlement to post-conflict reconstruction, and establishes its legal foundation in existing international human rights instruments. It fills a critical gap in the right to peace literature by providing the first legally rigorous application of the right to a sub-national conflict context in Africa, generating both theoretical and empirical contributions. The dissertation empirically assesses the right to peace situation of Middle Belt communities against the proposed framework, drawing on conflict documentation, access to justice data, and reconstruction programme assessments. Original contributions include the tripartite right to peace framework, a right to peace assessment methodology for sub-national conflicts, and a normative proposal for the right's justiciability in African human rights law. Keywords: right to peace, Middle Belt Nigeria, human rights, conflict, African Charter.