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This chapter examines the complex interplay between international judicial processes and peace. Johansen engages the debate on international judicial activism, evaluating specific cases, especially the International Criminal Court’s indictment of leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Judicial proceedings have complex consequences for a wide range of conflict issues, including negotiating ceasefires, deterring future crimes, and prospects for post-conflict reconciliation. The author proposes guidelines for employing judicial processes to promote an end to conflict, based on a utilitarian ethic that gives priority to saving as many lives as possible. The guidelines consider how to advance peace and justice not only through judicial proceedings, but also when judicial proceedings are suspended.

Compares Northern Ireland's peace process with the transition to democracy in South Africa. The chapter details the ways in which Northern Ireland's political elites learnt from South Africa's negotiations, and argues that they have more to learn. It squarely rejects the claim of Irish republican militants that their position is analogous to that of South Africa's African National Congress.

Marc Lynch examines the Jordanian disengagement from the West Bank in 1988 as a case of state downsizing. The author focuses on international factors and elite politics on both sides of the Jordan River, drawing conclusions on the influences of state downsizing on the changing character of the Jordanian political regime under King Hussein and his son, Abdullah. The author examines the role of public sphere changes and the political identity, the entrepreneurs played in the process, and he outlines the reflexive institutional relationship of the disengagement on state institutions, political parties, the press, and professional organizations. Finally, he examines the role of the Arab–Israeli peace process for the formula of separation between Jordan and Palestine.

Wallensteen argues that further defining and specifying key concepts in peacebuilding will result in increased consistency and contribute to the development of policy-relevant strategies for peace. He suggests that any analysis of peacebuilding efforts should employ a typology of conflicts that distinguishes between interstate war, internal conflict, and new state formation. It should also consider that the state is central to many wars, so it is essential to distinguish among the specific aims or ambitions of post-conflict peacebuilding: limited forms of state-building, democracy-building, security-building, nation-building, and market-building. A review of current research on sustainable peace processes highlights the importance of four factors: how the previous war ended; whether the causes of the war have been addressed; the impact of international actors on local state-building, including the timing of democratization; and the extent to which the regional context is conducive to peacebuilding.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, two peace processes that were deemed promising came to a halt. In Cyprus, the Annan Plan was rejected by the majority of Greek-Cypriots and in Israel/Palestine, the Oslo Peace Process collapsed in the second intifada. This chapter provides a comparative exploration of the roles the refugees played as individuals and as groups in the eventual failure of various peace processes as well as the political issues that have contributed to such failure. It focuses on the Greek-Cypriot refugees and the Palestinian refugees as the treatment of the rights of these groups of refugees were deemed the most controversial issue in the peace processes. In this chapter, the historical conditions, legal statuses, access to political representations and the geopolitical factors that have influenced the manner with which the conflict and refugees are dealt with are explored and examined. The various sections of the chapter are devoted to the rationale behind the failure of the Annan Plan and the Oslo Peace Process and the role of the refugees in this failure. The chapter concludes with some suggestions about the implications of refugee issues in order to settle long-term conflict.

The proliferation of civil wars since the end of the Cold War and the rise of peace settlements as a way of ending them has given rise to a new phenomenon in nascent post-war states, namely pervasive low-level violence perpetrated by non-state actors that does not threaten the existence of the state, but undermines its consolidation.This chapter explores the use and purpose of non-state violence in post-civil war contexts, with a particular focus on Liberia, South Sudan and Cambodia. It makes an original, critical assessment of the instrumental nature of this non-state violence in contesting the basic structures and authority of the state.It examines the role that elites, including those embedded in new state structures, play in mobilising such violence, and the ends to which they do so. Finally, it considers mechanisms to address violence, and the extent to which they reflect elite interests. It suggests that the extension of a particular type of state-model to new post-conflict states creates a set of incentives for violence that does not contest the basic existence of the state, but rather its interaction with other forms of political power and authority.

This chapter explores a general problem of definitions and what is meant by ethnic conflict, peace processes, peace agreements, and human rights. It also lays out the rationale for the chosen comparisons, and puts the four case studies in a broader comparative context of other peace processes and peace agreements.

This chapter examines the Oslo peace process as the first attempt to introduce the liberal peace framework in the Middle East, and the later, more limited engagement with the construction of a viable peace between the Israeli state and the Palestinians. It argues that the ‘thin’ liberal peace model employed in the Middle East peace process is problematic due to its exclusive nature. It builds states for liberals, and thus excludes and indeed, often simply ignores non-liberal others. Indeed, it may also be the case that some of the obstacles to a viable framework for peace stem, not just from local political and cultural dynamics, but also from the liberal peace paradigm's engagement with the region itself.

This chapter draws together the picture of the relationship between peace agreements, human rights, and international law. It suggests that peace agreements are best understood as a form of transitional constitution, and that the human rights provisions must be understood as an integral part of that constitution and as having particular transitional functions. The chapter also demonstrates that just as international law shapes the peace agreement, so the devices found in peace agreements also impact on international law.

Just as George H.W. Bush’s and George W. Bush’s worldviews impacted their decisions regarding war, these worldviews impacted their approach toward the Middle East peace process. It begins by illustrating how George H.W. Bush was initially reluctant to pursue peace in the Middle East, but later translated victory in the Persian Gulf War into a diplomatic process promoting Middle East peace. The chapter then turns to George W. Bush’s unwillingness to directly engage in the peace process. The chapter returns to the George H.W. Bush administration, discussing George H.W. Bush’s negotiations to ensure a peace conference between Israelis and Palestinians at Madrid, Spain. It concludes by examining the impact of George W. Bush’s neglect of the peace process. Throughout, the chapter focuses on the importance of personal relations. George H.W. Bush’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir proved to jump-start the peace process, since George H.W. Bush’s dislike of Shamir translated into his willingness to deal with the Israelis more sternly than his predecessors had. Likewise, George W. Bush’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led him to support the Israeli policy, often unquestionably.

This chapter discusses the conflicts and peace processes in Israel/Palestine and Bosnia Herzegovina. These conflicts had much clearer international dimensions than those in South Africa and Northern Ireland. Both contained the potential for regional and, ultimately, global instability; and both had created a refugee problem for other countries. The international dimension of both conflicts gave the international community a clearer reason for being involved, both legally and in terms of self-interest.

This chapter discusses the ‘Era of Troubles’ of Ireland from 1968 to 2005. The first section of this chapter examines politics after the Stormont regime from 1972 to 1974. The second section explores Harold Wilson and British withdrawal. The third section examines the hunger strikes and the stabilisation of policy. The fourth section looks into the Anglo–Irish Agreement of November 1985 and the Hillsborough Accord. The fifth section discusses the ongoing peace process. The sixth and seventh sections deal with the creation and the breaking of the Good Friday Agreement. The discussion notes that brutality of the IRA campaign bred another brutality by intensifying a loyalist predilection for violence already visible in 1966. The broad outline history of violent death in the Troubles has not been disputed. Yet all this horror was underpinned by the safety-net provided for by the British state.

In a context of continuing nationalist conflict in a post-Good Friday Agreement (GFA) era, a challenge for Ulster evangelicals is how can they live up to their calling to be ‘Bible people’ and ‘Gospel people’. This will entail achieving a healthy balance of ‘distance’ and ‘belonging’ at three levels—political, theological, and relational. At each level, a stark dichotomy is evident between ‘closed’ and ‘open’ evangelicalism. The main reason for this is that closed evangelicalism has substituted nationalism as its core belief system and used religion to reinforce and justify nationalist objectives. However, while traditional ‘closed’ evangelical ideology historically has been the glue holding unionism together, the emerging presence from ‘within the camp’ of open evangelicalism may be the source of one of its most profound critiques.

This chapter explores the role of diaspora communities in the politics of interethnic bargaining processes in identity conflicts. It explores both the positive and negative impacts such communities can have when a negotiation process is set in motion, not just on the parties to the conflict but also on intermediaries who are engaged in trying to secure a peace agreement. Commitment problems are commonly identified as one of the main obstacles to negotiation in interethnic disputes. Disaporas can exacerbate this problem through their engagement via remittances, arms transfers, political mobilization, and other kinds of support to warring parties. However, diasporas can also provide much needed support to a peace process when the members of a community are convinced that politics must replace armed struggle. Such turnabout or waning effects are are an important but understudied dimension of diaspora politics in identity-based conflicts.

This chapter discusses the role of the United States government in encouraging the peace process in Northern Ireland. The evolution of the United States from passive observer of political violence in Northern Ireland to active participant in the efforts to end it was critical to the peace process. The United States provided the dynamic for change that altered the internal balance of power and the context within which the conflict took place. While Clinton built on the work of others, he was committed to the efforts to secure an IRA ceasefire—and beyond that to the formal negotiations themselves from 1996 to 1998. The internationalization of the conflict altered the context and internal power structures in a way that facilitated political change. The Clinton administration also encouraged the unionist and loyalist community to engage with it, and slowly won respect within that constituency for its efforts to make a positive contribution to peace.

This book examines the extent to which the peace process in Northern Ireland developed as a result of the repudiation or maintenance of previously held views by those who had ‘fought the war’ and spent time in prison as a consequence of their actions. Most contemporary accounts of the peace and political processes were concentrated at elite level, examining the ability of political representatives to construct and maintain an inclusive set of compromises. The book argues that none of these compromises were sustainable without backing from ‘combatants’ in the conflict. As such, any account of the peace process which failed to take account of why so many former prisoners supported the 1998 Good Friday Agreement was incomplete. It also explores why conflict ended amid ideological continuity not change, with emphasis on loyalism and republicanism. Moreover, the book highlights the importance of prisoner releases in peace processes beyond Northern Ireland, and how the literature on demilitarisation, demobilisation, and reintegration has tended to overlook the centrality of prisoner releases to a successful peace process.

This chapter discusses the conflicts and peace processes in South Africa and Northern Ireland. The process in South Africa lasted several years and followed a ‘step-break-gesture-step’ pattern. Concessions were made by both sides in stages, punctuated by high levels of violence and instability that, at times, brought public negotiations to a standstill, although behind-the-scenes negotiations often continued until a new set of compromises was reached. In Northern Ireland, a similarly long, drawn-out, and halting process was concluded with a contrasting intense period of negotiations under pressure of a deadline imposed by US Senator George Mitchell, who had been brought to chair the talks. In both South Africa and Northern Ireland, the agreement reached produced a constitutional document that claimed to provide the way forward, but which required to be implemented through legislation and ongoing negotiations.

This chapter highlights the importance of prisoner releases in peace processes beyond Northern Ireland. Where the terms of such releases are ambiguous, or freedom is used overtly as a bargaining chip, the beneficial effects are often only brief. The chapter offers a set of ‘ideal-type’ conditions for prisoner releases, to maximise the chances of such measures making a positive contribution to sustainable peace. It also highlights how the literature on demilitarisation, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) has tended to overlook the centrality of prisoner releases to a successful peace process. Moreover, the focus has often been upon the mechanics of demobilisation of ‘armies’ at the expense of a serious consideration of whether those former combatants have adapted their political views. Disarmament as part of the overall DDR process represents a dilemma for governments. Former prisoners and other combatants often form part of the newly reconstituted armed forces, as has happened in Namibia, Tajikistan and Cambodia, among other countries.