Moving beyond the policy soundbite: Christine Bell writes that inclusion struggles are about power: who holds it, how it can be redistributed, and who will persuade those in power to share it. But as long as inclusion policies remain ambiguous and without clear commitments to meaningful mechanisms for participation, they will be mantras that can ‘hurt more than help’. Different actors view inclusion differently. Aid actors see it as instrumental to achieving long-term development outcomes. Security actors see it as part of a strategy for countering armed violence. Diplomats and peacebuilders understand it as a requirement for a robust peace process to address root causes of violence. Human rights promoters understand it as a basic right. The tensions between these different ‘inclusion projects’ cannot be eliminated but must be better managed.
There are risks and consequences of ignoring the complex ways in which exclusion and violence affect different identity groups, preventing some from influencing political decision-making, while ensuring others continue to shape it. Approaches that fail to pay attention to these dynamics risk preserving hierarchical, patriarchal and authoritarian decision-making systems with obvious costs for peace, justice and development. Verweijen’s research shows how, in trying to address the inclusion of localised and fragmented armed groups into peace processes, there is a need to comprehensively understand the reasons underlying their divisions. It is important to look beyond simple conflict narratives about the stakeholders, to uncover the multi-faceted conflicts that hide behind them.
Preparing for participation: Political cultures of governance in contexts of protracted conflict tend to rely on top-down decision-making and ambivalent forms of consultation built around weak and often traumatised bureaucracies. So, while they may rhetorically encourage it, governance habits of participation in conflict contexts are poorly developed to deliver.
In those areas where violence has reigned for a long time … you have a fundamental problem of lack of trust in state institutions. Communities on the ground have seen processes like this before and they just don't trust them. If you want to change this, people need to see that their voice not only counts but that they actually are able to shape their own future.
Sergio Jaramillo
Moments of rapid change: Sustained efforts towards greater inclusion shift social norms over time – like those relating to gender inclusion. These processes of ‘normalisation’ will not necessarily show direct signs of steady progress. Research findings indicate that pressure for change accumulates, building on previous efforts and then, during periods of natural or human-made turbulence, a system can change significantly in a short period of time. Preparing for future transitions enables groups to better take advantage of such opportunities to exert long-term influence.
Facing forwards: There tends to be a rush to resolve conflict. But the PA-X Peace Agreements Database has revealed tremendous innovation in ways of leaving a process open to options for dispute resolution and future inclusive change. It is important to understand better how to navigate the fluid ‘unsettlement’ after a peace accord has been reached. References to international legal frameworks in peace accords can provide ‘hooks’ to leverage change if applied in a smart way by local actors when new opportunities arise.
Effective peace processes do not run themselves but require professional management support – including impartial monitoring mechanisms and other necessary infrastructures to conduct the process. These infrastructures are one arena where inclusive practices can be both enabled and embedded.
Sequencing in the initial stages of peacemaking is a key consideration. Some researchers conclude that this means aiming for a limited agenda and participation, where the goal is to ‘stop killing each other and to get the weapons out of the way … and out of politics’. This is then followed by a broader peace process with subsequent negotiations and decision-making processes that address governance, institutions and the social contract, all of which are essential parts of peacebuilding. But we should not undervalue the multiplicity of preparatory efforts taking place in different domains. In all processes, talks on a cessation of violence are preceded by often unofficial initiatives. The case studies in this issue suggest that comprehensive inclusiveness of belligerents in the early stages of a process is difficult to get right but essential to address.
Risks in tackling the challenges of ‘belligerent inclusion’: Poorly managed power-sharing arrangements have incentivised coercion and unleashed violent cycles of competition for power, positions and resources between and within armed factions. Power-sharing arrangements need to pay attention to whether and how they can be implemented in ways that avoid further fragmentation and find tactics for supporting the political transformation of armed groups and their constituencies.
Not all good things go together: Many of the case studies confirm that more directly representative forms of public participation such as national dialogues or referenda do not necessarily translate into influence over the content of an agreement. Also, elections, while an obvious, if limited, form of public participation, challenge the creation of conditions that enable consensus, compromise and reconciliation. This is equally true of referenda. In contemporary electoral democracies, party competition for political power can get in the way of promoting national interests, inter-group accommodation and peace. Politicians can end up trapped in a vicious cycle of intransigence.
Selection procedures and criteria for participation as well as rules for decision-making can either support or limit meaningful inclusion: Structural approaches to inclusion have a fair chance to remain relevant if considered useful by the negotiating parties, for example youth or women’s advisory councils or parallel forms of informal governance such as councils of traditional leaders. Reservation systems in legislation and constitutions during or after peace processes can be effective in ensuring structural change but take time to make their impact felt. Quotas also tend to preferentially benefit elites among the marginalised. Research suggests that more policy attention needs to be paid those ‘left behind’, through access to education, training or social empowerment.
Until we are able to push everyone forward, this system will be able to pull up only a few … If we are in the right direction, a day should come when we should achieve inclusive results without mandatory inclusion.
Minendra Rijal
As peace processes move into the formalisation and then implementation of accords they require even wider participation. It is important to publicise the contents of the peace agreements through public education, translation and dissemination. Yet, the terrain for participation rarely has sufficient preparation. There is also the need for capacity-building because of the entry into formal politics of people with little experience in governance and administration. Post-accord implementation invariably introduces new negotiations, actors and constituencies as those previously excluded during elite negotiations now press for meaningful participation in the new governance arrangements.
There is a direct connection between civil society inclusion and human rights protections which safeguard physical wellbeing. They also secure the enabling environment for peacebuilding work – including through peaceful protest and dissent. Rights and the rule of law provide the backbone to conflict prevention.
