Week: Mediation Perspectives

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.

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CSS Blog Regional Stability

Mediation Perspectives: Ending Dialogue to End the Israel-Palestine Conflict?

John Kerry and Benjamin Netanyahu. Image: US State Department/Wikimedia

After more than two decades of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that have failed to bring peace, few words are as reviled among Palestinians as “normalization.” “Anti-normalization”is a widespread response: many Palestinians refuse to cooperate with Israelis, arguing that joint activities have merely given cover to Israel’s ongoing military occupation of their land and society for decades. Peace and reconciliation activities, they feel, create a false image of equality that does not reflect reality and contributes to their ongoing oppression.

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CSS Blog Terrorism

Mediation Perspectives: Innovative Approaches in the Colombian Peace Process

Photo: flickr/Lucho Molina

The Colombian peace process has advanced steadily without major interruption since it was formally launched in Norway and peace talks between the Colombian government and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) began in Cuba in late 2012. As with most peace processes, the Colombian process has evolved over time and in stages, with adjustments to the methodologies, focus, and engagement of the stakeholders. A number of these modifications are breaking new ground, particularly with regard to the roles of civil society and the design of strategies for dealing with the past.

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Mediation Perspectives: The Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims in Dialogue With the World

Image: Los Alamos National Laboratory/Wikimedia

“We must not kill to resolve our differences, whatever they may be. They must be resolved, as I have said, within the ethic of our faith through dialogue, through compassion, through tolerance, through generosity and forgiveness. These are the pillars on which to build a strong society in modern times – not through weapons.”

His Highness the Aga Khan, 49th Hereditary Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, Tajikistan 1995

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Mediation Perspectives: Security Arrangements Key to Justice

Photo:Flickr/Stein Ove Korneliussen

Peace processes – and the mediators that shepherd them – increasingly address the legacy of large-scale human rights violations.  They can provide a crucial ‘moment’ for addressing the causes and consequences of an earlier conflict. To this end, peace agreements often include justice provisions: attempts to begin to deal with the past through a range of judicial and non-judicial measures such as amnesties, prosecutions, truth-seeking and reparations. While ‘justice provisions’ such as these are important, the argument here is that security arrangements in peace agreements are as important, if not more so, for accountability. Mediators’ influence on the content of a peace agreement may be limited, but there are still ways in which they can contribute to more effective security arrangements.

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CSS Blog

Mediation Perspectives: Fighting ‘Feminist Fatigue’

Photo: Nancy Pelosi/flickr

Despite decades of advocacy, why are women still so poorly represented at the peace table? In 2012, UN Women reported that women accounted for just four per cent of participants in 31 major peace processes between 1992 and 2011. Why is this number so low despite international mechanisms like United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women?

A partial answer to this question may be found in the shortcomings of certain approaches to promoting women’s rights.  In particular, the effectiveness of some strands of academic and policy literature on women, peace and security (WPS), and related advocacy campaigns that push for greater representation and participation of women at the peace table, can be questioned.

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