Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich invite paper submissions for a three-day workshop in Oslo 18-20 September focused on the causes, consequences, and dynamics of civil war ceasefires and security arrangements. This meeting will bring together researchers, practitioners and policy- and decisionmakers to explore how we can better understand and design ceasefires.

Despite the important role that ceasefires often play in civil war peace processes, it is not always clear which factors lead to the adoption of different forms of security arrangement, how they influence broader dynamics in a civil conflict, or how ceasefires shape ongoing political negotiations. More and better information on the role played by ceasefires is therefore needed.

PRIO and CSS at ETH Zürich are currently leading a research project attempting to answer these important questions. As part of this project, we are organizing this three-day workshop. The workshop will be both academic and policy oriented.

The two first days of the conference will be primarily academic in nature, and include a series of presentations based on the latest research in this area. This will include the presentation of the new ETH-PRIO Civil War Ceasefires dataset, a newly compiled dataset that captures all ceasefires in civil war between 1989-2018. We welcome submissions for paper presentations to be included on this day. We invite both quantitative and qualitative papers which address knowledge gaps related to the causes, consequences and effect of ceasefires.

We will put together a special issue consisting of selected papers presented at the conference. Our first choice for a journal for the special issue is the Journal of Peace Research. Final decision on whether to publish such an issue will be taken by the JPR board. As usual, each submitted article will have to go through individual review according to the standard JPR process and criteria for accept.

Day three will focus more on the practice and policy community, and discuss key practical lessons that can be drawn from recent research, as well as highlighting areas in which understanding remains deficient.

If you are interested in joining this event, please submit a short proposal of no more than one-page to sirir@prio.org by April 12.