Dealing with the past and transitional justice

Colombia

Forty years of armed conflict have created a horrific legacy of violence and suffering in Colombia. Yet they have also resulted in a wealth of imaginative peace initiatives by people and institutions throughout society and across the political spectrum.

Alternatives to war: Colombia’s peace processes

Feb 2004

Alternatives to war: Colombia’s peace processes (Accord issue 14, 2004) is an introduction to more than three decades of peacemaking efforts. It reveals the extraordinary work of civilians at grassroots, regional and national levels, and documents the main features and outcomes of formal peace processes with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN), smaller guerrilla groups and more recently the paramilitaries.

Powers of persuasion: Incentives, sanctions and conditionality in peacemaking

Feb 2008
Faced with the problem of how to respond to the challenges of intra-state armed conflict, international policymakers often turn to incentives, sanctions and conditionality in the hope that these tools can alter the conflict dynamics and influence the protagonists' behaviour. Drawing on case studies from around the world, Accord issue 19 suggests that while these instruments have in some cases helped tip the balance towards settlement, in many others they been ineffective, incoherent or subsumed into the dynamics of the conflict.

Incentives, sanctions and conditionality

Faced with the problem of how to respond to the challenges of intra-state armed conflict, international policymakers often turn to incentives, sanctions and conditionality in the hope that these tools can alter the conflict dynamics and influence the protagonists' behaviour.

But do such policy instruments underpin or undermine peace processes? How can they constructively influence conflict parties' engagement in peacemaking initiatives?

Inter-community meetings and national reconciliation: Forging a pragmatic peace

Owning the process: Public participation in peacemaking
Dec 2002
In an effort to end persistent violent conflict in northern Mali, in late 1994 local leaders began to organise local inter-community meetings. Kåre Lode describes how through several cumulative phases the meetings contributed to stability and reconciliation.

Public participation

The process for making a transition from war to peace provides an opportunity to agree new political, constitutional and economic arrangements that can deal with the roots of a conflict. However such decisions are often made solely by governments and armed groups’ representatives, who do not always represent the wider public’s interests.

Accord 13 outlines approaches developed by government and civil society that open up the process to more people.

Owning the process: Public participation in peacemaking

Dec 2002

The process for making a transition from war to peace provides an opportunity to agree new political, constitutional and economic arrangements that can deal with the roots of a conflict. However such decisions are often made solely by governments and armed groups’ representatives, who do not always represent the wider public’s interests.

Human rights and justice in Aceh: The long and winding road

Reconfiguring politics: The Indonesia-Aceh peace process
Sep 2008
Faisal Hadi describes the obstacles to redressing wartime human rights violations, including recent backtracking over the Human Rights Court's retrospective jurisdiction to consider cases that occurred during the war.

Managing the resources for peace: Reconstruction and peacebuilding in Aceh

Reconfiguring politics: The Indonesia-Aceh peace process
Sep 2008
Barron explores links between peace, development, reconstruction, and economic rehabilitation in Aceh, noting problems rooted in inequalities between tsunami-affected and conflict-affected areas, uneven opportunities, and a lack of capacity.

Whose peace is it anyway? connecting Somali and international peacemaking

Feb 2010
Accord 21, Whose peace is it anyway? connecting Somali and international peacemaking, seeks to improve understanding and links between Somalis and international policy and practice. Edited by Mark Bradbury and Sally Healy it contains over 30 articles including interviews with Somali elders and senior diplomats, and contributions from Somali and international peacemaking practitioners, academics, involved parties, civil society and women’s organisations.

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