Publications

In Turner, C. & Waehlisch, M. (eds) Rethinking Peace Mediation: Challenges of Contemporary Peacemaking Practice (Bristol University Press 2021)

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.

While third states and international organisations often co-sign peace agreements in the capacity of witnesses or guarantors, little is understood of the legal consequences flowing from these roles. The chapter aims to fill this gap. First, it highlights that the mere designation of witness or guarantor leads to few consequences. Second, it analyses how specific third-party rights and obligations are established and conceptualised under VCLT rules, extended by analogy to intra-state peace agreements. Third, it provides a brief illustration of common third-party rights and obligations in peace agreements. Finally, it examines whether the involvement of third parties can internationalise an intra-state peace agreement, i.e. render it to be governed by international law. Bringing together views from the literature, jurisprudence and the preceding analysis on the structure of third-party rights and obligations, the chapter concludes that such rights and obligations can be internationalised, in a manner that can only extend to the agreement as a whole when inseparable from the rest of the agreement.

Some 650 peace agreements have been concluded between governments and armed opposition groups since 1990. These agreements often do not fulfil the criteria of sources in domestic or international law: they are negotiated outside the established lawmaking channels of domestic law and are signed by armed opposition groups, which are traditionally not accorded treaty-making capacity in international law. Yet many scholars contend that the international legal status of peace agreements should be recognised either as international(ised) or hybrid agreements. In some peace processes, negotiating parties also intend to attach international legal status to their agreement. Consequently, a rich repertoire has emerged on the question of the international legal status of peace agreements across the practice of peacemaking, United Nations Security Council (‘UNSC’) practice, domestic and international judicial and arbitral decisions, and scholarship. Providing a comprehensive examination of this repertoire, this article demonstrates that peace agreements are not yet attributed legal status in international law. However, it is also explained that the lack of international legal status of peace agreements does not yield their conclusion and implementation as precarious, as is often feared. Attaching international legal status to peace agreements would neither shield them from all domestic and international judicial challenges nor necessarily function as an incentive to conclude and comply with a peace agreement. The article concludes on the note that the lack of international legal status does not relegate peace agreements to ‘scraps of paper’, as the implementation of peace agreements can be enhanced by incorporation into domestic law and through international oversight mechanisms, including the tools at the disposal of the UNSC.

In this chapter, however, I consider what happens next. In other words, I will discuss the law of state succession. The chapter will proceed as follows. First, I provide a brief overview of the development and central tenets of the law of succession. Just like the creation of states, the law of state succession is a fundamental, foundational part of international law. When instances of state succession occur, in whatever form, the entire panoply of international legal rights and obligations applicable to the successor state (as well as any continuing state) potentially are affected”