Tag: Peace Processes

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Local Peace Processes and the Protection of Civilians

Image courtesy of UNAMID/Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

This article was originally published by the IPI Global Ovservatory on 27 September 2019.

Resolving local conflicts between non-state armed groups, or between communities, is key to reducing violence against civilians. The United Nations is often involved in supporting local peace processes and seems to enhance the prospects for local conflict resolution. One major obstacle to a successful local peace process, however, is that local conflicts are often integrated into higher-level, national or transnational conflicts. A holistic approach to peacemaking is therefore necessary, which could allow peace to trickle down from the transnational or national level to the local, ultimately reducing violence against civilians.

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Afghan Peace Talks Are Damaged, But Not Yet Broken

Image courtesy of DVIDS/John Conroy

This article was originally published by the United States institute of Peace (USIP) on 10 September 2019.

USIP’s Andrew Wilder sees an urgent need to get the peace effort back on track.

President Trump’s weekend announcement of a halt to U.S. peace talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban—including a previously unannounced U.S. plan for a Camp David meeting to conclude that process—leaves the future of the Afghanistan peace process unclear. USIP’s Andrew Wilder, a longtime Afghanistan analyst, argues that, rather than declaring an end to the peace process, U.S. negotiators could use the setback as a moment to clarify the strategy, and then urgently get the peace process back on track before too much momentum is lost.

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The Conflict in and around Ukraine

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This week’s featured graphic concerns the conflict in and around Ukraine, highlighting the territory and border checkpoints not under the control of the Ukrainian government. For an insight into the complexity Ukraine peace process, read Anna Hess Sargsyan’s recent contribution to the CSS Analyses in Security Policy series here.

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Countries that Experienced Armed Conflict with Religious Dimensions in 2016

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This graphic maps out the various countries that experienced armed conflicts with religious dimensions in 2016. To find out more about the interlinkages of religion and conflict and how conflict resolution approaches should respond, see Jonas Baumann, Daniel Finnbogason, and Isak Svensson’s CSS Policy Perspective here. For more graphics on conflict resolution, see the CSS’ collection of graphs and charts on the subject here.

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Mediation Perspectives: The Political-Technical Interaction in Ceasefires

Christmas Truce 1914. Image courtesy of Wikipedia/A.C.Michael/Illustrated London News

Mediation Perspectives is a periodic blog entry that’s provided by the CSS’ Mediation Support Team and occasional guest authors. Each entry is designed to highlight the utility of mediation approaches in dealing with violent political conflicts. To keep up to date with the Mediation Support Team, you can sign up to their newsletter here.

If something is purely political, it becomes fuzzy as there is no clear, objective “right or wrong”. If something is purely technical, with many objective “rights and wrongs”, it becomes boring as there is nothing to debate or shape. Things become fascinating when the political and technical interact. Ceasefires that aim to stop violence are important because they can save human life, but they are also intellectually intriguing because of the way political and technical dimensions must interact if they are to be effective.

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