As violence conflicts escalate and fragility increases across the globe, conflict prevention, peace-making and peacebuilding efforts aimed at sustainable peace and development become ever more significant. Focusing on the role of international law and actors, our research in this area spans a broad range of inter-connected topics, including peace agreements, peace negotiations, transitional justice, post-conflict constitution-making, and the humanitarian-development-peace nexus.

Highlights from our work in this area:

Modern Peace and Ceasefire Agreements: An Annotated Collection (Forthcoming)

Co-edited by Professor Robin Geiß and Dr Asli Olcay, this book provides a concise picture of the contemporary peace-making practice through a compilation of the major components of selected peace and ceasefire agreements. The number of negotiated settlements to armed conflicts has dramatically risen following the end of World War II, particularly in the post-Cold War era, with the conclusion of around 900 peace agreements during the past seventy years. Despite the high number of peace agreements signed, the contemporary practice of negotiated peace-making has not been one of plain sailing. It has been perplexingly marred by weak agreements, non-implementation and post-agreement violence with more than 50 percent of peace agreements failing within five years. Against this backdrop, the book aims to facilitate the negotiation and drafting of peace agreements, the assessment of the effectiveness of different mechanisms in bringing about durable peace, and the study of common practices by scholars. Accompanied by annotations, the compiled practice will be of guidance to researchers, policy-makers and diplomatic actors involved in peace processes around the world.

 

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Expected Publication Date: 2020