Introduction: What Peace?What Process?

Abstract

Just as the past two decades has seen a significant number of civil wars, it has also seen a significant number of peace processes, peace agreements, post-war reconstruction programmes, and efforts to reach intergroup reconciliation. Many international organizations, governments, militant groups, NGOs, and communities have gained vast experience of making, keeping, and building peace. Much of this experience has come the hard way: through trial and error, fire brigade-style emergency reactions, or because – forced into a corner – they had little choice but to strive for accommodation with an opponent. But some of this experience has been able to build on lessons learned from other peace processes. Political parties, government officials, and United Nations personnel in Nepal, for example, were keen students of the ways in which peace agreements were reached and implemented in other locations. Peacemaking processes cannot be lifted wholesale like templates and applied to other locations; the variations in civil war contexts are too great. Quite simply, some peacemaking environments are more benign than others. But the very fact that peacemaking efforts are underway in one location may encourage peacemaking in another. Techniques used in one location may be investigated and adapted for use in another location.