Jul 2020 – Jun 2023
What difference do debates about ethics and philosophy make for on-the-ground peace negotiations?
Discussions about ethics and philosophy can sometimes feel far removed from the concrete needs of diplomats and negotiators in high-pressure mediations. However, policies and mandates – whether they come from the United Nations or individual governments – often lack cohesiveness, and this leads to both ethical and practical problems.
Furthermore, the policies and mandates can work against one another when they are not grounded in a shared understanding of what constitutes fairness, and to whom those policies and mandates are to be considered fair. This can have direct consequences for the success and legitimacy of peace negotiations.
This raises the question: What makes peace negotiations fair?
The FAIR project is the first systematic investigation of ethical problems and solutions in peace negotiations and peace mediation. The project engages with existing debates on norms in peace negotiations and explores relevant philosophical perspectives.
The project will not conclude on the right ways of doing negotiations or mediation but will rather develop a conceptual and philosophical framework for how to think normatively about negotiations or mediation in research, practice and public debate.
The project is divided into four complementary research components:
The project involves partnerships with:
The project also includes an international expert group. In addition to the regular project members, the team includes Lea Matthaei (associate Master student at the MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society) and Tiril Brekke (intern at PRIO).
This new FAIR case brief by Eli Stamnes and Cedric de Coning focuses on the peace negotiations resulting in the Revitalised
Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in
the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS), finalized in September 2018.
This new FAIR case brief by Isabel Bramsen argues that inclusion is in fact a controversial issue with several dilemmas in relation to peace processes.
This new FAIR case brief by Zenonas Tziarras focuses on how the Astana process became central to the peace efforts regarding the Syria conflict after 2017, but it has been heavily influenced by the interests and positions of its three sponsors or guarantor powers: Russia, Turkey, and Iran.
The new case brief by Wenche Iren Hauge examines the Guatemalan peace process from 1990 to
1996 as an early example of the inclusion of civil society in a negotiation process.
The Guatemalan case is an important
illustration of the challenge in having
to prioritize between different norms
in a peace process – and in this
case, ending violence came before
important implications of inclusivity
on other issues on the negotiation
agenda.
This new case brief by Jørgen Jensehaugen examines the dilemma of inclusion/exclusion, which is one of many central problems
in Arab–Israeli peacemaking, by using three instances of international
mediated involvement in the conflict to highlight how mediation gatekeeping has served
to exclude Palestinians, either as a people, as a
political unit, or as a spoiler group.
This FAIR case brief focuses on Malian women's participation in the Algiers negotiations in 2014–2015. It shows how there were stark differences in perceptions of fairness when it came to women's participation among the different actors involved, including relatively strong resistance to women's participation from the international mediation team and the conflict parties in Algiers.
On 9-10 September 2021, around 20 researchers met for a hybrid online-offline workshop to share their research on specific cases of ethical issues in peace negotiations and mediation. The workshop was part of the PRIO project 'On Fair Terms: The Ethics of Peace Negotiations and Mediation' (FAIR) and included both PRIO researchers and researchers from across the world.
What makes peace negotiations fair?
This is the over-arching question asked in the project On Fair Terms: The Ethics of Peace Negotiations and Mediation, which has now received three years of NORGLOBAL funding from the Research Council of Norway.
Congratulations to project leader Henrik Syse, and the other project participants: Kristoffer Lidén (PRIO), Kwesi Aning (KAIPTC), Fitriani (CSIS), Cedric de Coning (NUPI), Eli Stamnes (NUPI), Harry Tzimitras (PRIO Cyprus Centre), Zenonas Tziarras (PRIO Cyprus Centre), Torunn L. Tryggestad (PRIO), Gregory M. Reichberg (PRIO), Nadim Khoury (PRIO), Wenche Hauge (PRIO), Kristian Berg Harpviken (PRIO), Jenny Lorentzen (PRIO), Isabel Bramsen (University of Copenhagen) and Eric Stollenwerk (Freie Universität Berlin).
FAIR Case Brief
PRIO Policy Brief
FAIR Case Brief
FAIR Case Brief
FAIR Case Brief
FAIR Case Brief
FAIR Case Brief
Conference Paper