CIAO DATE: 05/02

The Challenges of Strategic Coordination: Containing Opposition and Sustaining Implementation of Peace Agreements in Civil Wars

As a sub-field of conflict resolution, peace implementation has been more practiced than studied. Unlike either conflict mediation or long-term peacebuilding, very little analytical reflection has been devoted to the immediate challenges of implementing peace agreements once they are concluded. Too often, those responsible for translating these accords into meaningful action have had to proceed quickly, without either an accurate map of the hazards of the war-torn terrain in which they find themselves or a reliable plan for managing challenges when they do arise. At the most elementary level, what has been missing is clear knowledge of those factors that make the difference between successful peace implementation and failure, between the assurance of peace and the resumption of war.

That such analysis is needed, and needed urgently, becomes clear in surveying the experience of the 1990s. In Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Somalia, and twice in Angola, the failure to get warring parties to live up to their peace agreements not only restarted armed conflict, it also escalated the violence. The breakdown of the 1994 Arusha Accords in Rwanda led to a genocide of some 800,000 people: approximately fifty times more deaths than had occurred in the 1990-1993 civil war. As all of these tragedies suggest, the period immediately after the signing of a peace agreement is arguably the time of greatest uncertainty and danger. It is also the time when most peace agreements fail. Improving our knowledge of the specific challenges of peace implementation might help to improve the odds of success.

Full text (pdf)