The Management of Peace
Processes - Executive Summary
Project coordinators: John Darby, University of Ulster and Roger
Mac Ginty, University of York
The
process of making peace has been transformed during the 1990s. Between
1988 and 1998 at least thirty-eight formal peace accords were signed.
The United Nations, a major actor in peace negotiations during the
1980s, was directly involved in sixteen of them. Of the fifteen agreements
reached since the start of 1996, all but two were agreed without UN
assistance. The others were primarily negotiated by the parties engaged
in the conflict itself, sometimes with external mediation.
The
term 'peace process' has increasingly been used to describe this new
phenomenon. Many of these attempts to reach accommodation were structured
and sustained. In the true sense of the word, they were 'processes'.
Most of them extended beyond strictly political and security matters
to encompass issues of social and cultural inclusion and economic
regeneration. They adopted new approaches and new procedures, often
borrowing from contemporary or recent cases.
This
phenomenon was the subject of the 'Coming Out of Violence' research
project, started in 1996 by INCORE (the Initiative on Conflict Resolution
and Ethnicity) at the University of Ulster. Based on interviews with
senior politicians and policy-makers involved in all five peace processes,
the project set out to identify those factors that facilitate or block
political movement in five recent peace processes, those in Israel/Palestine,
South Africa, Basque Country, Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland.
Each
process was monitored by research partners working in the five countries.
The processes were charted along six tracks: political and constitutional
changes; violence and security; external influences; economic factors;
popular responses and on-the-ground activity, and symbolism.
The publication of The Management of Peace Processes emerged from
this project. It focuses on the dynamics of negotiations and charts
them through the process of getting into talks, during the negotiations
themselves and into post-settlement peace building. It challenges
a number of commonly accepted notions associated with peace processes
such as the existence of peace dividends and the impact of violence
on negotiations. The Management of Peace Processes, edited by John
Darby and Roger MacGinty (London, Macmillan: 2000) forms part of a
series of six publications on the research findings from the project.
It concentrated on the comparative lessons from the five cases examined
in the project. Each of the other five books has been informed by
the comparative framework which was the hallmark of 'Coming out of
Violence'. They are also detailed enough to capture the peculiarities
and nuances of individual cases.
The
project describes and analyses the complexities of modern peacemaking.
It also illustrates the positive lessons to be learned from the comparative
study of the peace processes.
Read a review of the Management of Peace Processes here
Coming
out of Violence
