Peace talks are the cornerstone of addressing many of the world’s most intractable conflicts. But they are complicated, and their resulting agreements don’t always last. What is needed is a deeper understanding of what makes them work or fail. That will enable us to craft more effective diplomatic approaches, which can help reshape the incentives for parties involved to move beyond war and toward reconciliation.
Scholars have devoted significant effort to identifying and analyzing the intellectual parameters of peacemaking, but we still have much to learn about how best to support these efforts in practice. Some of the challenges include how to address the trade-offs that negotiators are called upon to make, such as whether to focus on security reform or amnesty and disarmament, and when to prioritize one or the other. Other challenges are how to best sequence the negotiating process and what capacities and areas of expertise—e.g., law, security and governance—are critical for success.
As we grapple with these challenges, it is important to remember that history creates moments of opportunity for peaceful resolutions. If we are able to take advantage of this moment, the forces that depend on conflict will be vastly weakened and the world will move toward progress instead of conflict. But we must do so quickly, as those opportunities don’t always last long. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.
About the Author
