One of the standard responses to eco-crisis and environmental security narratives is that the environment can be a source of cooperation as much as of conflict, of amity, not just of enmity. This chapter interrogates this liberal rejoinder to Malthusian and eco-pessimist reasoning. The chapter critiques functionalist and related accounts of peacemaking via water cooperation and argues that water is neither innately cooperation-inducing nor particularly important within peacemaking today. It shows, moreover, that because peace processes are themselves often deeply problematic – in extreme, reproducing or radicalising pre-peacemaking divisions and attendant patterns of conflict, appropriation and inequality – so the same applies to peacebuilding and cooperation relating specifically to water. These arguments are developed through analysis of the Israeli–Palestinian Oslo peace process, the Annan process on Cyprus and Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Water scarcities, the chapter shows, have not historically been a significant force for peace; by extension, it is argued in conclusion, climate change–induced scarcities are unlikely to have such effects either.

Politics are back in force and impacting people lives like never before. This is the time of the reawakening of the Palestinian national movement and the making of the mini-empire of Israel. The whole Palestine is now under Israel’s control. A false peace process will begin would lead to nowhere, and the Israeli military establishment and political leadership destroyed the PLO presence in Lebanon, and the resistance moved into the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This chapter examines the relation between language and conflict resolution, by focusing on the beginning of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process in 1993 as it was represented by the New York Times. It analyzes the front-page articles dedicated to this dialogue and discusses the results in the context of the diplomatic negotiations and the political and social discourses of peace available at the time. The chapter also shows how the diplomatic discourse concealed opposite views of the peace process, and it maps the transfer of dominant discourses of peace from the political and social levels to the media and diplomatic ones. Finally, it discusses the implications of such dynamics for peace achievement.

This chapter introduces the question of why capitalist development in Colombia has resulted in contradictory outcomes, including endemic political violence and labor repression that exist alongside regular elections, stable economic growth, and deeply entrenched political conservativism across large segments of the country’s working class. To understand these contradictions, it reconceptualizes them as labor regime dynamics that vary significantly across three global commodity-producing regions (coffee, bananas, coca) and across developmental periods of time (pre-developmentalist, developmentalist, neoliberal). It then lays out the conceptual framework and methodological approach of the book, which draws from and extends insights from labor regimes, global commodity chains, world hegemonies, and comparative and world historical sociology. Finally, it provides an overview of the structure of the book and its main findings.

This chapter begins by analyzing how the adoption of neoliberal agrarian policies in the 1990s intensified land struggles in the region by generating new waves of displaced migrants who became incorporated into the coca economy of the FARC while also transforming the cattle industry from a domestic meat and hide supplier into an exporter of dairy products for the world market.It shows how FARC control of the region remained strong until the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the region became a geographic focal point of the state’s new neoliberal development strategies. I then demonstrate how and why previous efforts to dislodge the guerrilla threat through US-backed Cold War containment strategies failed, but that the balance of power shifted to the Colombian military in the late 1990s and early 2000s, following a massive influx of US military aid that was appropriated under the aegis of the US War on Drugs and War on Terror.I conclude this chapter with a discussion of the future economic prospects of the region’s cocalero farmers and workers in the absence of FARC protection or a developmental alternative to capitalist accumulation through dispossession.

This chapter evaluates the UN’s engagement in Guatemalan negotiations from 1989-1996. It asks how the Government of Guatemala (the GoG) and the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG), the coalition of rebel groups fighting and negotiating with the GoG, assessed the UN’s performance as the guarantor of agreements elsewhere, especially the concurrent peacekeeping success in neighboring El Salvador and the simultaneous failure in the Balkans, and how these assessments influenced the course of negotiations and the final agreement that emerged from their peace process. Drawing on archival material and oral histories, I find that participants looked nearly exclusively at El Salvador to assess the contours and possibilities of UN intervention—but they perceived the Salvadoran example as a negative one: both sides believed their Salvadoran counterparts had given too much away during their negotiations, and advocated for a smaller UN mission.This is surprising—influential credible commitment theories of peacekeeping predict that the UN’s success in El Salvador would enhance the Guatemalan parties’ confidence in the UN as guarantor. Instead, the UN’s banner success in El Salvador first prolonged the war in Guatemala and then produced a weaker agreement and a degraded capacity to enforce the peace.

Chapter 4 examines the conflict resolution processes surrounding the 1990-1994 civil war in Rwanda; what effect the UN’s past performance had on the Rwandan peace process; how peacekeeping failures in Somalia and Burundi may have shaped the conflict in the crucial months between the Arusha Accords and the genocide; and what led the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to invite a second UN peace operation into Rwanda following the first mission’s cataclysmic failure. Drawing on archival material and interviews, I argue the negotiating table at Arusha was populated by desperate negotiators who had to settle because they could no longer fight; by hardliners who used the negotiation process to pursue tactical, distributional, and symbolic goals other than peace; and by spoilers who ultimately strove to break the peace. In this context, the international community’s unique abilities to assist in demobilization and refugee resettlement, and their ability to confer legitimacy upon political groups, were important dimensions of negotiations. In the turbulent aftermath of genocide, amidst massive population transfers and the RPF’s consolidation of power, the RPF’s desire to be viewed as legitimately pursuing post-conflict peace, rather than exacting retribution on political opponents, was a key reason to seek out UN assistance.

Brexit imposed a new binary on Northern Ireland politics which has interacted with the national question in complex ways. This interaction is the focus of this chapter. It begins by reviewing the position of the five main Northern Ireland parties on Europe prior to 2016. It explains the parties’ stances during the Brexit referendum campaign and examines how the parties responded to the referendum result. The chapter argues that Brexit produced constitutional restlessness in Northern Ireland because the vote lacked legitimacy according to the standards of consent contained in the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement. The chapter then traces how the new constitutional debate became established, highlighting how, although the debate was initiated by Brexit, it was intensified by subsequent developments in British and Irish politics. The chapter also explores key dilemmas that the debate posed for the political parties. The conclusion suggests that constitutional deliberations look set to continue but possibly at a lower intensity. Their direction will be shaped by developments in 2019-20 including the Boris Johnson Brexit agreement, the new Irish government, the restoration of devolution in Northern Ireland, and the coronavirus crisis.

This chapter examines the case of Timor-Leste, the first peace settlement negotiated after the United Nations launched its anti-amnesty policy. As a UN-led process, initial acceptance of the anti-amnesty position was guaranteed: none of the resolutions that provided for the settlement of East Timor’s independence struggle included amnesties, and soon after independence a hybrid tribunal was established to prosecute perpetrators of human rights violations. However, this anti-impunity/pro-accountability stance quickly eroded in the post-conflict period with persistent calls for amnesties being translated into practical impunity measures. As this chapter demonstrates, both Indonesian and East Timorese leaders have emphasised the importance of state security, stability, and survival in justifying the use of impunity measures. For Indonesian, in particular, acceptance of impunity for human rights violations came in the context of the threat to state disintegration posed by separatist claims in other parts of the country. For both, resistance to the anti-amnesty norm was the result of a norm hierarchy that prioritises the survival of the state over individual human rights claims.

This concluding chapter revisits some of the key issue areas in peace settlements, which have been covered in the International Law and Peace Settlements volume, to demonstrate how past settlement practice has added to the repertoire of legal tools that can be deployed in conflict settlement, and to highlight the contours of the relationship between this settlement practice and international law. By reflecting on the ‘patterns’ of approaches and provisions that have emerged in settlement practice in addressing these key issues, the chapter lays some empirical foundations to interrogate the normative character of these emerging ‘patterns’ of legal tools in peace-making. The normativity to legal tools for peace-making is considered in the context of the diversity in settlement actors and in the legal character of settlements, with a view to identifying how settlement practice has affected international law, and whether it is possible, helpful or necessary to proclaim the existence of a lex pacificatoria.

National dialogues hold significant promise for conflict resolution because they enable diverse interests to engage in an inclusive negotiation process. However, peacemakers and conflict parties need to have realistic expectations. This chapter makes two arguments regarding the effectiveness of national dialogues. The first is that national dialogues are well-placed to strengthen and legitimise elite agreements that have already been struck, but not well-placed to develop elite-level commitment to dialogue when none has previously been built. The second argument is that, in order to make a positive contribution, national dialogues need to be able to adjust flexibly to changing political realities and to avoid rigid rules and structures. National dialogues which are able to adapt their negotiation formats are more likely to make reach decisions which are implemented by the parties.

This introductory chapter identifies the key questions and themes for the International Law and Peace Settlements volume, and provides a framework and conceptual map for analysing the relationship between international law and peace settlement practice. In particular, it examines the concepts of peace and war, and their relation to law, before developing a working lexicon for peace agreements and settlements. The chapter then critically examines the legal character of peace agreements and settlement commitments as ‘legal tools’ for peace-making. This analysis provides essential foundations to map out the ways in which peace settlements and international law can interact. Those forms of interaction become key focal points for the various contributions in the remainder of the volume. The thematic rationale and structure of the volume is explained to orientate the reader in light of its key themes and questions.

On October 2 of 2016, Colombian voters rejected a peace agreement between the government and the FARC, a Marxist guerrilla, to put an end to the oldest armed conflict in the western hemisphere. Ex-combatants who fully confessed to their crimes, asked for forgiveness and repaired the victims would have been granted more lenient sentences. Those who criticized the agreement vehemently opposed this kind of justice, claiming that it was an antidemocratic expression of impunity and that it violated international human rights standards. Through the study of the Colombian case, this chapter explains how the conceptions of justice, impunity, and punishment, are a construct that relies on ‘international standards’ – on human rights, criminal justice, the rule of law, and democracy. Such standards have been devised in global north countries and do not necessarily respond to the realities and necessities of global south societies, but, nevertheless, have become predominant and almost uncontested. The chapter also aims to show the ways in which the relationship between political and economic regimes, on the one hand, and the scope and forms that punishment takes, on the other, are constructed and legitimize particular forms of government, both at the national and international levels.