Progressing Towards
Settlement Progress Report - July 2000
Origins
The 'Progressing
Towards Settlement' project started in January 1999, with funding support from
the Central Community Relations Unit, the United Nations University and British
Academy. Its aim is to draw on recent experience to identify and explore the
essential components of peace processes. The outcome will be a substantial edited
book dealing with general and specific aspects of recent peace processes.
Progress
The project
continues to progress very well. At the time of the last progress report, in
February 2000, the two main researchers were concentrating on the most recent
literature and on clarifying objectives and procedures. We had identified the
five main themes and approached the authors, and met with them at the Kroc Institute,
University of Notre Dame in December 1999.
Following
that meeting, we have been working on the other chapters, determining the best
approaches and themes and identifying the contributors who could write with
greatest authority on each theme. This has involved working closely with the
five main contributors: John Paul Lederach, Eastern Mennonite University; Adrian
Guelke, Queen's University Belfast; Stephen Stedman, Stanford University, California;
Timothy Sisk, Denver University, Colorado; and Cynthia Arnson, Woodrow Wilson
Center, Washington DC. During this period we also researched the individual
research briefings and approaches for the other twenty-one contributions. The
draft outline has gone through six drafts.
A substantial
part of the project concentrates on post-settlement problems and will have direct
relevance on the issues being addressed in Northern Ireland in the post-April
1998 period.
Present position
The final
publication will contain a total of twenty-six contributors, and twenty-four
have accepted our invitation. We are still awaiting agreement from two contributors.
Each contributor has agreed to write about a particular element within peace
processes, and to draw on at least two particular cases to illustrate their
points. As will be evident for the list of contributors appended (and is even
more striking from the examples upon which they will draw) a wide variety of
peace processes will be reflected in the book. The twenty-one authors of the
secondary chapters have been asked to deliver their chapters by the end of September.
These will feed into the chapters by the five main contributors. We hope to
have received all copy by late 2000, and to send the edited book to the publishers
by Spring 2001.
We have had
fruitful discussions with United Nations University Press, which will publish
the completed book with the Brookings Institution Press. It should be remembered
that the Progressing towards Settlement emerged from an earlier project on peace
processes, 'Coming out of Violence'. We are pleased to announce the publication
of the first of six books based on the project, 'The Management of Peace Processes,
edited by John Darby and Roger MacGinty (London, Macmillan, 2000). The second
book in the series, on the South African peace process, by Pierre duToit, is
with the publishers.
All
the contributors to the book will be invited to a conference after the project
has been completed, in early 2001.
John Darby
and Roger MacGinty
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