3 - Art or Science? Narrative Struggles over the Meaning of UN Mediation

Summary

Chapter 3 explores narrative struggles over defining UN mediation. It examines the discursive production of UN mediation as an institution, from its beginning as a series of ad hoc diplomatic engagements, to its institutionalisation in the 2000s. The chapter shows how we can observe over time the increasingly dominant construction of conflict as a technical rather than political challenge. The chapter traces these struggles by contrasting two key documents on the UN’s role in peace and security that appeared in 1992: UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali’s 'Agenda for Peace' and the UN Office of Legal Affairs' 'Handbook on the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes between States'. The differences between these documents illustrate the development of competing logics of UN mediation: that of mediation as an art, and that which sees it as a science. The chapter compares and contrasts the narrative features of these institutional logics, and discusses how they rely upon gendered-colonial assumptions about the nature of politics, violence, and agency that shape the incorporation of the WPS Agenda.