The State is not the point! Reorienting International Relations Around Human Security
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
This article contends that state centrism, as both a theoretical framework and a policy orientation, systematically produces outcomes that contradict the foundational commitments of international law, and that reorienting foreign policy around human security rather than state security yields fundamentally different, and more defensible, conclusions. Examining the ongoing conflict in Iran as a primary case study, the article develops three interlocking arguments: that military escalation weakens the civil society movements best positioned to produce durable political change; that media framing and the historical dehumanization of Muslim populations construct the moral conditions under which civilian harm becomes politically tolerable; and that the nuclear justification for the conflict is self defeating. These dynamics are situated within the broader structural crisis produced by great power competition, where the selective enforcement of international law has accelerated arms dynamics in the Indo Pacific and eroded global institutional trust. The article concludes that people centered alternatives, such as deliberative governance and track two diplomacy, are necessary and evidenced, and that the precondition for a more stable international order is a framework that treats human security as the measure of policy success.
KEYWORDS
Human security, state centrism, media framing, nuclear proliferation, security dilemma, great power politics, people centered governance, civil society, Iran conflict, international law
INTRODUCTION
When considering the state of the world and the actions available to us in addressing its most urgent challenges, we must first ask: what kind of world do we want to create through the choices we make now? The answer to that question depends entirely on who we believe international relations is for, states, or the people who live inside them.
This article argues for a fundamental reorientation: away from a state centered view of international relations and toward a people centered one. While international law has long operated through the framework of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, its deepest commitments, to self determination, human rights, and the prohibition of aggressive force, are grounded in the dignity and security of people, not governments. The question of what a state is for has never quite been settled. Still, U.S. founding father Thomas Paine offered one of its most enduring answers: governments derive their legitimacy from the people they govern, exist solely to protect natural rights, and forfeit their claim to authority the moment they cease to do so (Common Sense, 1776). A state without a population is a contradiction in terms, and a state that turns against its population has undermined the only basis on which its existence can be justified. When governments invoke their own “right to exist” to justify the destruction of other peoples, that claim to legitimacy has already collapsed.
To illustrate this argument, I focus primarily on the ongoing U.S. and Israeli war against Iran. The war’s vague justification, preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, contains a fundamental paradox: military aggression against a state is precisely what incentivizes that state to pursue nuclear deterrence as its only reliable protection (ICAN). If the metric of concern were genuinely the security of people rather than the security of states, this paradox would be disqualifying. War often entrenches the threat it claims to eliminate.
This article also examines the role of media in constructing the narratives that make such wars possible, the dehumanization of populations and the conflation of a people with their government. Finally, it argues that great power politics represents the single greatest structural threat to global security and human rights, and that shifting our frame from states to people is the precondition for a more just, multilateral, and stable international community.
MAIN CONTENT
I. The Framing Problem: States vs. People
Realism, Liberalism and Constructivism differ substantially in how they understand international actors, interests, and change. Yet each has, in different ways, retained the state as a central unit of analysis, subordinating civilian wellbeing to the strategic calculations of governments (Tauseef, 2024). Hegemony theory holds that a dominant power stabilizes the international system, yet in practice, that stability serves the hegemon’s interests first (Norrlof, 2019). Through a state centric lens, when the balance of power shifts, the security dilemma and the logic of the Thucydides Trap push even stabilizing powers toward destabilization. Constructivism offers a partial corrective: Alexander Wendt’s foundational argument that “anarchy is what states make of it” challenged the realist claim that competition between states is structurally inevitable, demonstrating instead that state identities and interests are socially constructed through interaction rather than fixed by the system (Wendt, 1992). Yet even constructivism, in centering the state as the primary actor whose identity is being constructed, stops short of the reorientation this article argues is necessary. The UDHR and constitutional frameworks worldwide were built against this logic, embedding protections for dissent, reform, and accountability because those involved understood that governments must remain answerable to those they govern (Bhardwaj, 2024). When a state pursues strategic interests at the direct expense of civilian welfare, it has violated that foundational purpose.
The Iran conflict illustrates this inversion. A March Ipsos survey found 58% of Americans disapprove of military strikes against Iran, 61% consider the conflict a mistake, and only 7% would support large scale troop deployment, levels of opposition that took years longer to materialize during Iraq and Vietnam (Blake, 2025). When asked about the financial burden on ordinary Americans, President Trump dismissed the concern entirely, instead reiterating concerns over Iran’s procurement of nuclear weapons. His latest 34% approval rating from the Pew Research Center captures the result: an administration prosecuting a war its own population has rejected.
When strikes hit the Minab School in February, 175 people were killed (Human Rights Watch, 2026). Bombs do not distinguish between a government and its people; they silence reformers alongside loyalists, creating martyrs where movements once existed. As military and economic pressure deepens, the Iranian government justifies domestic crackdowns as responses to foreign interference, systematically weakening the protest movements best positioned to demand accountability from within (Robert Lansing Institute, Amnesty International 2026). Those most capable of fostering change face added challenges as their dissent is recast, in the current climate, as alignment with the country bombing their neighbors. Civilian deaths strengthen the hardliners it was designed to weaken (Kahalzadeh, 2025). Any viable path forward requires incentivizing responsible governance through the approaching transition, not foreclosing it through militarism (CFR, 2026).
This is the structural contradiction of state centric international relations. The UNDP’s 1994 Human Development Report introduced human security as a framework precisely because state security and people’s security are not the same thing. The International Rescue Committee reports thousands dead and millions displaced, with ripple effects already spreading to conflict zones elsewhere. The breadth and speed of public opposition to this conflict reflect what dominant frameworks have long struggled to account for: the persistent insistence of people, across borders, to be centered in policy decisions.
II. Media and Dehumanization
Media shapes not only how conflict is covered but the perceptions that make conflict possible, constructing, long before the first strike, the moral environment that justifies one government’s killing of another people. Paliomi (2025) defines this as media framing, “the act of selecting and organizing information to make sense of events, deciding what to highlight or omit.” What makes this consequential in the context of war is dehumanization. Governments do not send people to war against other human beings, they send them against threats, regimes, and axes of evil.
Dehumanization works by placing the ‘other’ outside moral consideration. As Fischer (2023) documents, stripping victims of moral worthiness reduces the empathic and self condemning responses that normally constrain violence, enabling aggressors to act without moral self sanction. The effect extends beyond perpetrators: research on the Syrian civil war found that third party observers who dehumanized one side showed measurably higher support for retributive war crimes against that group (Landry, 2024). The imagery precedes the violence, conditioning populations to experience retributive killing as necessary.
Iranian society, one of the world’s oldest civilizations, young, urbanized, and in profound tension with its own government, is routinely reduced in western media to threatening stereotypes. The dehumanization of Muslim populations has a longer history than this conflict; Edward Said’s foundational analysis of Orientalism documented how western media has long constructed the Muslim world as threatening, irrational, and in need of civilizational correction (Said, 1978). That framing persists. “Regime,” “rogue state,” “axis of evil” does not describe a political situation neutrally, and it conditions audiences to receive Iranian casualties with less moral weight than casualties framed differently. Deffenbaugh (2024) of the ICRC observed that dehumanization raises the risk of conflict, increases the likelihood of abuses within it, and hardens the populations whose cooperation peace ultimately requires.
Press suppression has deepened the distortion. The Committee to Protect Journalists found Israel responsible for two thirds of all press killings in both 2024 and 2025; the UN Human Rights Commission has documented the Iranian government’s imprisonment and killing of journalists. Without independent reporting and demand for transparency, narratives default to official sources, the same sources that declared strikes had achieved “the total obliteration of Iran’s ability to create a nuclear weapon” (Donald Trump, June 2025). Anti American grievances, meanwhile, require little fabrication: the weaponization of sanctions, a documented history of intervention, and a political system perceived as serving concentrated wealth are not Iranian inventions (Chatham House, 2025).
Yet the decentralization of media has created genuine counter pressure. Pattanshetty’s research captures what drives this shift: Generation Z embodies a “glocal” identity, locally rooted yet globally connected, making them pivotal actors in shaping political accountability across borders. When Gen Z entered the U.S. midterm arena in 2018, youth voter turnout doubled relative to the previous thirty year average, with as much as 70% voting Democratic, a trend sustained across every cycle since (Harvard Gazette, 2023). A generation facing rising costs of living, environmental consequences of militarism, and the human toll of wars fought in their name is producing a politics that state centric frameworks cannot address. The question for peacemakers is how to cultivate what that generation has already demonstrated it can do: humanize the people on the other side of a conflict.
III. The Nuclear Paradox
The nuclear justification for the conflict contains a contradiction so fundamental it undermines the entire strategic rationale. Military aggression does not deter nuclear proliferation, it incentivizes it. The geopolitical lesson of the past three decades appears: states possessing nuclear weapons tend to have their sovereignty respected, while those without them are invaded, sanctioned into collapse, or bombed without congressional authorization or UN approval. Iran’s leadership is observing the same historical pattern and drawing what, from a realist perspective, is an entirely rational conclusion.
As Kelly Grieco from the Stimson Center notes, airpower can destroy hardened facilities and kill commanders, what it cannot do is reorder domestic politics. History repeatedly confirms this: governments fighting for survival rarely capitulate under external coercion. A study of thirty asymmetric interstate conflicts involving the United States between 1918 and 2003 found that coercive strategies most often failed when American demands threatened a weaker state’s survival, provoking resistance rather than surrender (Haun, 2015). Regime change represents the ultimate existential threat, one that Iranian leaders have every reason to perceive as credible. Under such conditions, Tehran has little incentive to exercise restraint and every incentive to pursue deterrence by any means available.
Before the strikes, there was scant evidence Iran was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, it had complied with NPT inspections and IAEA verification. The unraveling began with the withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, after which Iran steadily expanded its uranium enrichment program (Arms Control Association, 2024). Iranian escalation thus appears to have followed American withdrawal, not the other way around. The war itself is unlikely to prevent a nuclear Iran, it arrived after policy had already dismantled the diplomatic architecture keeping one from emerging. Waltz’s structural realism and the security dilemma framework both predict exactly what is now unfolding: states that feel existentially threatened pursue the most credible deterrent available regardless of regional consequences. Notably, Waltz himself argued in his piece “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb: Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability,” that a nuclear armed Iran might paradoxically stabilize the Middle East through mutual deterrence, a position that underscores how poorly the military logic holds even within realist theory (Waltz, 2012).
If the genuine goal is a stable, non nuclear Iran that respects the rights of its people, the path runs through diplomacy and the support of civil society, not through strikes that hand the government a rally around the flag moment, accelerate the security dilemma, and suppress the internal reform movements that represent the most credible long term threat to its hold on power.
IV. The Legitimacy Crisis: Great Power Politics and International Law
State centrism glorifies a particular feature of the international system: the concentration of power in the hands of a few states whose interests are then naturalized as the interests of the world. Graham Allison identified sixteen cases in which a rising power threatened to displace a ruling one; twelve ended in war (Allison, 2017). This hegemonic dynamic, built on the accumulation and defense of power, has weak internal mechanisms for managing its own transitions peacefully.
Realist theory makes this flaw explicit. Kenneth Waltz argued that the anarchic structure of the international system compels governments to prioritize self help and relative power above all else, not because states are inherently aggressive, but because the system leaves them no other rational choice (Waltz, 1979). What follows is the security dilemma: when one state builds capacity to protect itself, neighboring states perceive a threat and respond in kind, generating cycles of militarization that no individual actor intended, and no individual actor can stop (Jervis, 1978). Mearsheimer’s offensive realism extends this further, arguing that great powers are structurally driven to maximize relative power whenever the opportunity arises, regardless of the human consequences (Mearsheimer, 2001). The logic is internally consistent, and that is precisely the problem. A framework that treats the accumulation of state power as both the means and the end of international relations has no entry point for human cost. Civilian casualties, displaced populations, and suppressed reform movements do not register as strategic failures within state centrism, they register as collateral, acceptable so long as relative power is maintained. The Iran conflict follows this realist logic.
Rather than adapting to a growing multipolar world, American foreign policy has doubled down on unilateralism as a strategy to maintain hegemony, which the Center for American Progress identifies as undermining its legitimacy on the global stage. The Iran war was initiated without congressional authorization, without UN approval, and without consultation with NATO partners bearing downstream economic consequences they had no voice in accepting. G. John Ikenberry has argued that the durability of American global leadership depended precisely on its willingness to operate within the rules based order it constructed, once that willingness is abandoned, the order loses its anchor (Ikenberry, 2011). What realism cannot account for is that legitimacy, once lost, does not respond to military pressure.
A 2023 Pew Research Center survey across twenty four countries found a median of 74% of people believe elected officials do not care what people like them think. The Democracy Perception Index, reported by Reuters in 2026, found global perception of the United States had fallen from plus 22% to minus 16% in just two years, placing it behind both Russia and China in global public opinion. These ratings are evidence that foreign policy organized around state power systematically disillusions the people it claims to represent. As Raquel Jesse (2026) argues in her People Centered Policymaking Handbook, “policymaking is failing to keep pace with complex realities or deliver outcomes aligned with public needs.” When multilateral institutions are undermined precisely when they are most needed, the populations caught between competing state interests have progressively less recourse to the protections international law was designed to provide. Realism predicts this outcome and offers no remedy for it, because within its own logic, there is none.
V. State Centrism Beyond the United States and Israel
State centrism creates incentives and conceptual structures that can subordinate people to state interests regardless of which government is acting. A people centered framework is therefore neither pro Western nor pro Eastern; it is opposed to the subordination of human security to state security wherever that subordination occurs. The argument is not that state power becomes problematic only when exercised by Western governments or their allies. The same analytical standard must be applied to all governments whose policies are otherwise outside the primary focus of this article.
Due to its strategic position and expertise in semiconductor technology, Taiwan is commonly interpreted through the strategic interests of Beijing, Washington, and Taipei. The Pentagon’s 2025 report to Congress documented a substantial increase in Chinese military activity around Taiwan, reflecting the intensification of a strategic contest involving Beijing, Washington, and Taipei (U.S. Department of Defense, 2025). Beijing’s insistence on sovereignty and reunification, Washington’s concern with credibility and regional balance, and Taipei’s calculations concerning deterrence and survival are all intelligible within a state security framework. Yet a state centered analysis can leave the people living within that strategic contest a merely derivative concern. It asks how military buildups affect the balance of power, but not with equal urgency how those buildups affect civilian populations, what mechanisms exist to prevent escalation, or how the political preferences and security of those most directly affected can be protected independently of the strategic calculations of competing states.
The Iranian government provides a parallel example. Under conditions of external threat, the preservation of national sovereignty and regime security can be conflated with the security of the Iranian people, allowing political dissent to be reframed as a threat to national survival. The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition organization, argues “without the oxygen of war, an external enemy, and a permanent state of emergency, the regime’s domestic control disintegrates. Peace would allow deep seated, explosive social demands and grievances to rise to the surface” (2026). Whether or not one accepts the NCRI’s characterization of the regime’s motivations in full, the argument illustrates the conflation of regime security with human security at the heart of state centrism: when the survival of the state or governing regime is treated as synonymous with the security of its population, measures taken to preserve state security can simultaneously suppress the political agency and human security of those the state claims to protect.
SUMMARY
This article argues that the central weakness of state centric international relations is not simply that states sometimes make harmful decisions, but that the framework itself makes state security the primary measure through which international problems are understood. The Iran conflict demonstrates the consequences of this prioritization. Military escalation threatens the civil society movements most capable of producing domestic political change, while external pressure can strengthen the government’s ability to characterize dissent as foreign interference. Media framing and historical patterns of dehumanization further reduce the perceived human cost of civilian harm. Finally the nuclear rationale for military action produces a strategic paradox: external threats can increase rather than reduce the incentive to pursue nuclear deterrence.
The same mechanism extends beyond the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran. Increased Chinese pressure on Taiwan demonstrates how competing claims of sovereignty, deterrence, and national interest render the security of affected populations secondary to state calculations, while the Iranian government’s conflation of regime security with national security demonstrates the problem from within the state itself. Together, these cases support the article’s central contention that human security must become an independent measure of international policy rather than a consequence assumed to follow from state security.
The alternatives examined in this article, civil society participation, deliberative governance, track two diplomacy, and international norm development, suggest that political stability is more durable when the people affected by conflict possess meaningful agency in determining its resolution. A people centered framework therefore does not eliminate states from international relations; it repositions them as instruments to foster human security rather than being the point.
CONCLUSION
The Iran crisis remains politically blocked, not because alternatives are unavailable but because civil society dialogue and multilateral mediation have been sidelined in favor of military escalation. Jesse (2026) asks whether we might understand the public domain not as a fixed entity but as a collective activity, created and sustained in pursuit of shared values. Applied internationally, the question becomes whether foreign policy should be judged by state power or by whether it improves human security and freedom. By that measure, the conflict has failed comprehensively: civilians killed, reform movements weakened, nuclear proliferation incentivized, international law undermined.
From a mediation perspective, the objective is therefore not to resolve Iran’s political conflict by imposing an outcome, but to foster the conditions under which Iranian actors can negotiate their own political future. Mediation becomes not simply a mechanism for settling disputes between existing power holders, but a means of protecting the political agency necessary for sustainable peacebuilding. A world organized around the security of states will continue sacrificing people to preserve power. A world organized around the security of people makes that sacrifice far harder to justify.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION: WHAT A PEOPLE CENTERED WORLD CAN LOOK LIKE
If state centrism produces these outcomes, a people centered framework must change not only what international actors protect, but how they understand political change. Constructivism offers a way to understand how such systems change: Finnemore and Sikkink’s norm cascade theory holds that international norms shift when civil society organizations, advocacy networks, and reform movements establish new standards of behavior that become embedded in institutional practice (Finnemore and Sikkink, 1998). The abolition of slavery and the codification of human rights law each followed this pattern, driven not by states but by the people states had failed. Human security requires not merely protecting people from harm but preserving their capacity to act politically.
Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement with FARC incorporated civil society and women’s organizations into negotiations after public pressure demanded broader representation, ultimately creating the first Gender Subcommission in a peace process. Research by Joshi (2025) found that implementing these gender provisions correlated directly with the agreement’s durability, demonstrating the value of including those most affected by conflict. Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly similarly produced constitutional change on issues that elite driven systems had struggled to resolve, succeeding precisely because deliberative democratic models are less constrained by entrenched political interests (Courant, 2021). Track two diplomacy follows the same logic: Paffenholz (2014) found that civil society actors strengthen negotiations precisely because they remain accountable to communities rather than states. In Iran, any lasting resolution will require the participation of women’s rights activists, labor organizers, and student movements, the same groups whose capacity to organize has been weakened by the conflict.
Decapitation, the military strategy utilized by the U.S. and Israel, is unlikely to produce durable political change because it treats leadership removal as a substitute for political transformation and fails to preserve the agency of the people who must ultimately determine Iran’s future. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies observes, the “great man” theory of history overlooks the systems and patronage networks through which leaders exercise power. Removing individuals without addressing those underlying structures risks destabilization rather than meaningful political change.
This is particularly consequential in Iran, where substantial opposition to the Islamic Republic exists alongside a fragmented opposition movement. A 2024 survey by the Netherlands based institute, Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GMAAN), found that 71% of Iranians oppose continuation of the Islamic Republic, while 89% support democracy. Yet, the Madrid based think tank Elcano argues that despite the Iranian people having challenged the regime myriad times, protests lack a “unified ideological frame, leadership structure or clear objectives,” producing political stasis rather than rupture. The challenge, then, is not simply generating opposition to the existing regime, but creating the conditions in which that opposition can develop into a shared political vision.
Such an approach should operate through multilateral rather than unilateral institutions. The United Nations and other international actors can provide diplomatic platforms for Iranian civil society representatives, support track two dialogue, and establish mechanisms through which competing political and social groups can participate in discussions about Iran’s political future without requiring immediate agreement on its final form. The objective would not be to manufacture a unified opposition from outside, but to create the conditions under which a unified political platform can emerge organically from within Iranian society. Deliberative mechanisms modeled on Citizens Assemblies could provide one possible institutional framework for this process, encouraging diverse constituencies to articulate shared priorities rather than having political structures imposed upon them.
The greatest obstacle to this approach is the instability that makes it necessary. Corruption, repression, internet shutdowns, economic insecurity, and the government’s hostility toward transparency restrict the ability of civil society to organize. External military pressure compounds each of these problems by forcing both citizens and governments into survival oriented mindsets, giving the state further justification for suppressing dissent as foreign interference. The result is a self reinforcing cycle: external threats strengthen regime security, strengthened regime security constrains civil society, and weakened civil society makes political transition more difficult.
Breaking that cycle requires time and mediation rather than escalation. A people centered strategy would therefore measure success not by whether an external power has removed a particular leader, but by whether citizens possess greater capacity to participate in determining their own political future. Relevant indicators include expanded civic space, the ability of independent organizations to communicate and organize, the inclusion of women and other historically marginalized groups in political deliberation, and the emergence of a political framework capable of translating disparate grievances into shared democratic objectives. These outcomes cannot be imposed through airpower; they must be fostered through participation.
This is the fundamental distinction between regime change and political change. The former treats the state as the object to be managed; the latter treats people as the political agents capable of determining what comes next. If the central problem is that state security has been prioritized over human security, the solution cannot simply be a different state exercising power. It must be a political process in which the security, agency, and preferences of the people themselves become the priority.
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The Irony of the Security Council
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT *
This short article examines the contradiction at the centre of the United Nations Security Council. Beginning from the Charter’s stated purpose of saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war, the author sets out the powers conferred on the Council under Chapter VII, including the determination of threats to the peace, the mediation of disputes and the authorisation of force. Against this the author places the conduct of three of the five permanent members: the pressure exerted by China on Taiwan, the invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003, and the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in 2022. The failure of the Council to adopt a resolution on Ukraine in February 2022, defeated by the veto of the state whose conduct was at issue, is presented as the clearest expression of the problem: the body charged with preventing aggression is constituted so that its most powerful members cannot be held to account by it.
Editorial note: the assessment of the states discussed reflects the author’s own perspective. This journal’s editorial position is neutral. *
KEYWORDS *
United Nations, Security Council, veto, permanent members, Chapter VII, aggression, Ukraine, Iraq, Taiwan, accountability, institutional reform, international order
INTRODUCTION
The establishment of the United Nations by the United States, Europe, and other allies after the Second World War was intended to enhance international diplomacy (Simonoff 2012). The preamble of the UN Charter indicates the intention of the organization to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The First and the Second World Wars were captured therein as having “twice in our lifetime brought untold sorrow to mankind”.
Chapter III, Article 7 of the Charter establishes the principal organs of the UN as the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice, and the Secretariat.
MAIN CORPUS
The Security Council is the most powerful organ of the UN. Its powers and functions span the whole Charter. Chapter VII, Article 39 gives the Security Council the power to determine the existence of a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression. Article 40 allows the Council to call upon parties to comply with provisional measures, and Article 42 gives the Council the power to authorise the use of force to maintain international peace and security when necessary.
However, the UN Charter encourages all its member states to settle their disputes peacefully and to refrain from the use of force. Its members must also respect the sovereignty of all member states. Simonoff, a legal adviser to the US mission to the United Nations, speaking at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, praised the work done by the UN since its inception. He highlighted the following:
The maintaining of international peace through the averting of war.
The development of friendly relations among nations.
The achievement of international cooperation.
The decisions of the Security Council are legally binding on member states. The Security Council has the power to impose sanctions on states. Sanctions have been imposed on countries like North Korea and Iran. Some of these are examples of the exercise of the powers of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, whose main task is to keep world peace.
The Security Council consists of 15 members who have one vote each. Among the 15 states are the five permanent members: China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America. The permanent members were the major allies and victors of the Second World War. These members are supposed to be the peacekeeping champions of the world. They are the international peacekeeping giants.
However, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton, 19th century). The giants are at it.
China has consistently pressured Taiwan, declaring the government and its elections illegitimate, and has not ruled out the use of non-peaceful means.
The United States invaded Iraq on 19 March 2003, alleging that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, an allegation later shown to be unfounded.
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded the sovereign state of Ukraine.
These three world powers, the United States, Russia, and China, are all permanent members of the UN Security Council. They are the giants of the international community. The Security Council must reach agreement in order to adopt a resolution. On 25 February 2022, the Security Council could not adopt a resolution on the Ukraine crisis, as the Russian Federation exercised a veto. Kyiv’s Permanent Representative told the Council that its words had less value than a hole in a New York pretzel. The draft submitted by Albania and the United States gained the support of 11 members but was vetoed by the Russian Federation, with China, India, and the United Arab Emirates abstaining.
The giants are indeed taking their turns in bullying the peasants. Nobody is about to stop this Russian giant; it is its turn to spit its fire.
SUMMARY *
The article states a structural point in compressed form. The Council was designed on the assumption that the great powers would police the peace, which requires that they not be the ones breaking it. Where a permanent member is itself the party whose conduct is in question, the veto converts the Council from a mechanism of accountability into a guarantee of impunity, and the vote of 25 February 2022 illustrated this without ambiguity: eleven members in favour, one negative vote, and no resolution. The author’s further point is that this is not confined to one state, since each of three permanent members has acted in ways the Charter prohibits, and the arrangement protects all of them equally.
CONCLUSION
The body charged with maintaining international peace and security cannot act against those of its own members most capable of disturbing it. That is the irony the Charter has carried since 1945, and the events of 2022 displayed it more plainly than at any time since the Cold War.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The contradiction the article names is real and it was deliberate, which is the first thing worth establishing. The great powers made their participation conditional on the veto at San Francisco, and the smaller states accepted it because a United Nations containing the great powers and unable to restrain them was judged preferable to a League of Nations that they had left. That bargain is the reason the organisation has survived eighty years while its predecessor lasted twenty, and it is also the reason it cannot do what the author asks of it. Whether the trade was worth making is a genuine question; what is not in doubt is that it was made knowingly.
The reform debate is correspondingly older than most readers assume, and it has produced proposals that are worth naming because they represent what is actually achievable. The initiative on restraint in cases of mass atrocity, supported by well over a hundred states, asks permanent members to undertake voluntarily not to veto where genocide, crimes against humanity or large scale war crimes are at issue. The code of conduct promoted by the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency group runs along similar lines. Neither binds anyone, and both create a cost: a permanent member that vetoes in such a case now does so against a publicly stated standard it has been asked to accept. Formal amendment is a different matter, since Article 108 requires the concurrence of all five permanent members, which means the veto cannot be removed except by those who hold it.
What has developed instead is a set of routes around the Council, and these are the more instructive part of the answer. The General Assembly’s Uniting for Peace procedure, devised in 1950 for exactly this situation, allows the Assembly to meet in emergency session and make recommendations where the Council is deadlocked, and it was used within days in 2022 to adopt a resolution on Ukraine by 141 votes to 5. Its resolutions are not binding, and their value lies elsewhere: they establish where the membership stands, they deny the vetoing state the claim that its conduct is merely contested, and they provide the basis on which other bodies act. The Assembly has since required that any veto be followed automatically by a debate in which the vetoing state explains itself, which is a modest measure and one of the few adopted in decades.
Two further observations belong here. Accountability has migrated toward the courts, which do not depend on the Council: the International Court of Justice has heard proceedings arising from the invasion, the International Criminal Court has issued warrants, and a mechanism has been established to register damage. None of this stops a war, and all of it constrains the range of settlements that will later be available. And the article’s own framing suggests where the leverage sits. If the permanent members cannot be restrained by the Council, the constituency for reform is the rest of the membership, and the pressure available to it is legitimacy: a Council whose composition reflects 1945 and whose decisions are seen as protecting its own members forfeits the authority on which its resolutions depend. That is a slow instrument and it is the one the smaller states actually hold.
Finally, a word about the article’s closing image. It is vivid and it concedes more than the author perhaps intends, since a world in which giants take turns and nobody stops them is one in which the smaller states have no recourse at all. The record does not support quite that much pessimism: the Council has authorised action in a great many cases where no permanent member’s interest was at stake, its sanctions and peacekeeping mandates operate continuously, and the routes described above exist because the deadlock has been worked around before. The honest conclusion is narrower and more useful than despair. The Council cannot restrain its own permanent members, it was never designed to, and everything else it does remains available. Knowing which category a given crisis falls into is what allows the effort to be directed where it can produce something.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Simonoff, Mark. Diplomacy at the United Nations. 3 December 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXKjJL-Asu8. Accessed 15 September 2024.
United Nations. Charter of the United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter. Accessed 25 October 2024.
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
Charter of the United Nations, 1945, Articles 2(4), 24, 25, 27, 39 to 42, and 108.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 377 A (V), Uniting for Peace, 1950.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES 11/1 (2022) on the aggression against Ukraine, and Resolution 76/262 (2022) establishing the standing mandate for a debate following the use of the veto.
Security Council draft resolution S/2022/155 of 25 February 2022 and the record of the meeting, S/PV.8979.
Accountability, Coherence and Transparency Group, Code of Conduct regarding Security Council action against genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes, 2015.
France and Mexico, Political Declaration on Suspension of Veto Powers in Cases of Mass Atrocity, 2015.
Report of the High level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2004). A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, United Nations, New York, chapter on Security Council reform.
Bosco, D. L. (2009). Five to Rule Them All: The UN Security Council and the Making of the Modern World. Oxford University Press, New York.
The Role of Mediation in Post-Conflict Transitional Justice in Achieving Truth, Accountability, and Reparations
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
EDITORIAL NOTE *
The manuscript reproduced its discussion of the Colombian process twice in consecutive passages; the duplication has been removed. Two references in the bibliography do not correspond to the propositions for which they are cited in the text, and readers are advised to check them at source.
ABSTRACT
Post-conflict societies face the profound challenge of reconstructing political order while addressing legacies of mass violence, systematic human rights violations, and social fracture. This article examines the role of mediation within transitional justice frameworks, arguing that mediation is not merely a procedural mechanism but a transformative political and social process that can, when properly designed and supported, reconcile the tension between peace and accountability. Drawing on scholarly literature and case studies from Rwanda, Colombia, Sierra Leone, and South Africa, the article analyses how mediation contributes to truth-seeking, reparations design, institutional reform, and the prosecution of perpetrators. It further interrogates the normative dilemmas that mediation poses, particularly the trade-offs between amnesty and accountability.
KEYWORDS
Transitional justice, mediation, political order, accountability, reconciliation
INTRODUCTION
The literature on transitional justice has grown substantially since the 1990s, driven by the proliferation of transitional processes across Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia (Kritz 1995; Huntington 1991). Yet the specific role of mediation within these frameworks remains undertheorised. Legal scholarship has tended to focus on the architecture of international criminal law, while peace studies has centred on the dynamics of ceasefires and power-sharing arrangements. This article seeks to contribute to an emerging interdisciplinary conversation that situates mediation at the intersection of law, politics, and social repair.
This article proceeds as follows. Section two provides a conceptual framework situating mediation within transitional justice theory. Section three examines mediation’s contribution to the principal pillars of transitional justice: accountability, truth, reparations, and institutional reform. Section four analyses the normative dilemmas that arise from mediating between peace and justice imperatives. Section five draws on comparative case studies to identify patterns of success and failure. Section six concludes with design principles for effective mediation in transitional contexts.
MAIN CORPUS
Post-conflict transitional justice
The cessation of armed hostilities does not, by itself, generate justice. In the aftermath of mass atrocities, civil war, or authoritarian repression, societies are confronted with a dual imperative: they must construct conditions for sustainable peace while simultaneously reckoning with the past. Transitional justice refers to the set of judicial and non-judicial processes and mechanisms through which societies respond to a legacy of large-scale past abuses (International Center for Transitional Justice 2009). Mediation intersects with each of these mechanisms, functioning as both a procedural enabler and a normative framework for managing competing claims over memory, responsibility, and redress.
Conceptual framework: understanding mediation and transitional justice
Mediation in international conflict resolution is typically understood as facilitated negotiation, a process in which a third party assists disputants to reach a mutually acceptable agreement without imposing a binding decision (Bercovitch and Jackson 2001). In post-conflict transitional contexts, however, mediation takes on additional dimensions. It is not only a conflict management tool but also a mechanism for reconstructing social norms, distributing symbolic and material redress, and producing authoritative accounts of the past.
Transitional justice, meanwhile, has evolved from a narrow preoccupation with criminal prosecution toward a more holistic conception encompassing restorative, reparative, and institutional dimensions (Roht-Arriaza and Mariezcurrena 2006). The four pillars identified in the report of the Secretary-General of 2004, namely prosecution, truth, reparations, and guarantees of non-recurrence, provide a useful taxonomy for assessing mediation’s contributions (United Nations 2004). Each pillar involves negotiation: over the scope of amnesty, the mandate of truth commissions, the form and quantum of reparations, and the pace and content of institutional reforms. Mediation provides structured process for these negotiations.
What is conspicuously absent from this otherwise rich body of work is sustained attention to mediation as a distinct object of analysis. The word mediation appears frequently in the transitional justice literature, but typically as shorthand for the broader category of third-party facilitation, without serious engagement with the theoretical frameworks, professional norms, or practical techniques that the mediation field has developed. Conversely, the mediation literature, with notable exceptions such as Bercovitch and Jackson (2001), Wallensteen (2015), and Cobb (2013), has engaged only sporadically with the distinctive features of post-conflict contexts: the legal obligations that constrain party autonomy, the asymmetric relationships between mediators and parties, the inclusion imperatives imposed by international norms, and the systemic challenge posed by the simultaneous pursuit of peace and accountability.
Pillars of transitional justice
Criminal accountability. One of the most contested areas in which mediation intersects with transitional justice concerns criminal accountability for atrocity crimes. The Rome Statute of 1998 obliges signatory states to prosecute or extradite those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, a framework that significantly constrains the room for mediators to offer blanket amnesties. Yet the practical dynamics of peace negotiations often create pressure to provide immunity incentives to powerful armed actors.
The Colombian peace process between 2012 and 2016, between the government and the FARC-EP guerrilla organisation, offers a paradigmatic illustration of how mediation can navigate this tension. Under the mediation of Cuba and Norway, the parties negotiated the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a sui generis accountability mechanism that conditions reduced sentences on truth-telling and reparations (Uprimny 2017). It represents a mediated compromise that attempts to satisfy both the demands of international criminal law and the pragmatic imperatives of securing FARC participation in a settlement. Whether it succeeds in producing meaningful accountability remains contested, but it demonstrates the creative potential of mediation to generate innovative institutional forms.
Truth and memory. Truth commissions are perhaps the clearest institutional expression of mediation’s role in transitional justice. They function as structured spaces for the negotiated production of authoritative historical accounts, balancing individual testimony against institutional narrative, and personal suffering against collective memory. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 1995 under the chairmanship of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is widely regarded as the paradigmatic case. By offering amnesty conditional on full disclosure of politically motivated crimes, it mediated between the African National Congress’s preference for truth over trials and the apartheid security establishment’s demand for legal protection (Tutu 1999).
Hayner (2011) documents more than forty truth commissions established since 1974, finding that their effectiveness is significantly shaped by the degree of political independence they enjoy, the breadth of their investigative mandates, and their access to state archives. Mediation contributes to all three dimensions: in the design phase, mediators negotiate commission mandates with parties; during operation, commissioners themselves mediate between survivors, perpetrators, and the state; and in the follow-up phase, mediators may assist governments in implementing commission recommendations.
Reparations. Reparations, encompassing restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition, require extensive negotiation over eligibility, form, quantum, and administration. Mediation facilitates these negotiations by creating structured dialogue between victim groups, who may have competing claims, perpetrator states or armed groups, who may deny liability, and international donors, whose financial contributions may be conditional on specific arrangements. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has developed extensive jurisprudence on reparations that serves as a normative framework for such negotiations, though mediators must often translate these legal standards into politically viable compromises.
Sierra Leone’s experience with the Special Court and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission illustrates the challenges of mediating reparations in resource-poor contexts. Despite the court’s significant prosecutorial achievements, reparations for survivors remained woefully underfunded, partly because the parallel operation of two accountability mechanisms created confusion over institutional responsibilities and partly because the mediation of donor contributions did not adequately prioritise reparative dimensions (Schabas 2004). This case underscores the importance of integrated mediation that addresses accountability and reparations simultaneously rather than sequentially.
Institutional reform. Guarantees of non-recurrence, the fourth pillar of transitional justice, require the reform of institutions that enabled or perpetrated past abuses, including the military, police, judiciary, and civil service. Security sector reform and the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of combatants are the most politically sensitive aspects of post-conflict institutional reform, and mediation plays a central role in facilitating them. Parties to a conflict have powerful incentives to resist institutional reform that diminishes their control over coercive resources, and international mediators must deploy a combination of incentives, guarantees, and procedural safeguards to overcome this resistance.
Rwanda’s post-genocide experience offers an instructive, if cautionary, case. The Gacaca community courts, a mediated hybrid of customary law and formal justice, processed more than 1.9 million cases between 2002 and 2012, providing both accountability and truth at a scale that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda could not achieve (Rettig 2008). However, critics argue that the courts, operating under a dominant government, provided insufficient protection for the rights of accused persons and were used instrumentally to consolidate political power rather than to produce genuine reconciliation. The lesson is that mediated institutional reforms must be insulated from political capture if they are to generate legitimate and durable outcomes.
Normative dilemmas: the peace and justice dilemma
The core normative tension in post-conflict transitional justice is the so-called peace and justice dilemma. This refers to the perceived incompatibility between the demands of peace negotiations, which may require offering amnesty or impunity to powerful actors in order to secure their participation in a settlement, and the demands of international criminal law, which obliges states to prosecute those responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes (Snyder and Vinjamuri 2003).
Scholars remain deeply divided on this question. Some argue that accountability is constitutive of peace, because impunity perpetuates cycles of violence (Sikkink 2011). Others maintain that premature prosecutions may destabilise fragile transitions by threatening actors whose cooperation is necessary for security sector reform and democratic consolidation (Huntington 1991). Mediation operates precisely at this fault line. A skilled mediator must manage the expectations of victims who demand justice, perpetrators who seek immunity, international actors who impose legal obligations, and domestic political elites who may prioritise stability over accountability. The quality of mediation in transitional settings is therefore measured not only by whether it produces a peace agreement but by whether that agreement adequately incorporates justice mechanisms that can survive the post-agreement period.
The result is a disciplinary gap that is not merely academic in its consequences: mediators operating in post-conflict settings routinely face dilemmas for which neither the transitional justice literature nor the mediation literature provides adequate guidance.
Amnesty and the limits of compromise
The granting of amnesty is the most divisive normative question in transitional justice mediation. International humanitarian law and customary international law impose obligations to prosecute the most serious international crimes, but peace negotiations frequently produce amnesty arrangements that shield perpetrators from accountability. The Lomé Peace Agreement of 1999, which mediated an end to Sierra Leone’s civil war, included a blanket amnesty for rebel forces including those responsible for systematic amputations, sexual violence, and the recruitment of child soldiers. The Special Representative of the United Nations signed the agreement but appended a reservation stating that the amnesty would not apply to crimes under international humanitarian law, a reservation that proved practically ineffective but normatively significant.
Inclusion and representation
Transitions negotiated exclusively between armed elites tend to produce settlements that reflect elite interests rather than the needs of affected populations, particularly women, minorities, and economically marginalised groups. The gendered dimensions of transitional justice and mediation have received growing scholarly attention. Women experience conflict in differentiated ways, including exposure to sexual violence and reproductive coercion, yet remain systematically underrepresented in formal peace negotiations. This exclusion shapes the design of post-conflict justice frameworks, often resulting in mechanisms that inadequately address gender-based harms and fail to incorporate gender-sensitive reparative approaches (O’Rourke 2013).
Design principles for effective mediation in transitional justice
Drawing on the foregoing analysis, several design principles emerge for mediators operating in post-conflict transitional contexts.
First, mediators could pursue integrated rather than sequential approaches to the pillars of transitional justice, ensuring that accountability, truth, reparations, and institutional reform are addressed in a coordinated and mutually reinforcing manner. Piecemeal approaches that deal with one pillar at a time risk producing agreements that optimise for one dimension at the expense of others.
Second, mediators could build inclusive processes from the outset, not as an afterthought. Women, youth, civil society organisations, and marginalised communities should be structurally incorporated into negotiating processes rather than consulted in parallel tracks that have limited influence over outcomes. This requires mediators to actively challenge the tendency of powerful parties to restrict participation to those with military capacity.
Third, mediators could engage proactively with international legal frameworks rather than treating them as external constraints. The obligations of international criminal law and international humanitarian law define the normative space within which mediation operates and provide important leverage over parties who might otherwise demand sweeping impunity. Mediators who understand this framework can use it creatively to design accountability mechanisms, such as the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace, that satisfy both legal obligations and political imperatives.
Fourth, mediators could invest in capacity-building for post-agreement implementation. Many transitional justice processes fail not at the negotiation stage but at the implementation stage, when political will erodes, resources prove insufficient, or institutional capacity is inadequate. Mediators can contribute to implementation resilience by building monitoring mechanisms, securing multi-year international funding commitments, and establishing clear performance benchmarks against which progress can be assessed.
SUMMARY *
The article’s contribution is to identify a gap between two literatures and to show that the gap has practical consequences. Transitional justice scholarship treats mediation as an unexamined precondition of the mechanisms it studies; mediation scholarship treats the legal obligations that constrain transitional settlements as background. The practitioner who must design a truth commission mandate, negotiate the scope of an amnesty, or sequence security sector reform against prosecutions therefore works without guidance from either. The four cases assembled here identify the variable that distinguishes the more from the less successful, and it is not the ambition of the design but its insulation: the mechanism that survives is the one whose independence from the parties who created it was secured in the agreement rather than assumed afterwards.
CONCLUSION
Mediation in post-conflict transitional justice is an indispensable but deeply contested practice. It operates at the intersection of competing moral imperatives, peace and accountability, stability and justice, elite negotiation and popular participation, and must navigate these tensions without clear templates or guaranteed outcomes. The cases examined in this article demonstrate that mediation can generate innovative institutional forms capable of bridging these imperatives, as in the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace or the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but also that poor design, elite capture, or inadequate international support can produce processes that reproduce impunity under the guise of transitional justice.
The design principles set out above offer a partial but grounded answer to the question of what conditions make mediation effective: integration across the four pillars of transitional justice, inclusive process design that reaches beyond armed elites, proactive engagement with international legal frameworks, and sustained investment in post-agreement implementation. These principles do not resolve every normative dilemma that mediators face, nor do they substitute for the political will that remains the precondition of any durable settlement. What they provide is a more precise specification of the variables, such as third-party conduct, process architecture, and institutional design.
In the many active and nascent transitional processes unfolding across the world today, in Myanmar, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Ukraine, mediation choices will shape whether millions of survivors receive acknowledgement, redress, and the assurance that the past will not be repeated. The stakes of getting those choices right are too high to leave the question unanswered.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s framing of the peace and justice dilemma is the point at which the field has moved furthest since the debate it describes, and reporting that movement strengthens the argument.
The empirical question has largely been settled against the position that prosecutions destabilise transitions. The comparative work, notably Sikkink’s and the large-N studies that followed, finds that states which pursued accountability did not experience worse subsequent outcomes and in several respects experienced better ones, with lower recurrence of repression and stronger rule of law. That does not dispose of the dilemma, because the difficulty is not whether prosecutions are compatible with peace in general but whether a particular armed actor will sign an agreement that exposes him personally to trial. The reframing that has proved useful in practice is therefore about sequencing rather than about choosing: nothing in the obligation to prosecute specifies when, and a settlement that defers prosecutions while preserving them, through suspended proceedings, extended limitation periods, or the conditionality the Colombian mechanism employs, satisfies the legal requirement without demanding the concession at the moment it cannot be given.
The article’s treatment of amnesty can be sharpened by the distinction that now governs. Blanket amnesty for international crimes is incompatible with the obligations the author cites and has been so held by regional courts, the Sierra Leonean Special Court among them. Conditional amnesty, granted individually on proof of full disclosure and subject to revocation, is a different instrument, and it is what the South African commission operated and what the Colombian jurisdiction elaborated. Whether the second satisfies the obligation to prosecute is genuinely contested; that it is not the same thing as the first is not.
Two additions on the practical proposals. The integration principle is right and the harder question is which pillar leads, since the sequence has consequences: reparations delivered early build the constituency that later sustains the other mechanisms, while prosecutions pursued first frequently exhaust the political capital available for anything else. And on inclusion, the evidence has become specific enough to be actionable: agreements with women’s substantive participation are significantly more likely to be implemented and to endure, and the mechanism identified is not representation as such but the broader range of issues that reach the table when the participants are not exclusively those who carried weapons.
Finally, one observation about the case the article treats as cautionary. The difficulty with the Gacaca courts was not that they were a hybrid, nor that they were community-based, but that they were established and supervised by one party to the conflict, and no procedural safeguard survives that. The transferable principle is the one the article states and could state more forcefully: what determines whether a transitional mechanism produces justice or its appearance is not its design but who controls it, and that question is settled in the agreement or it is not settled at all.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Ball, N. (2001). Transforming Security Sectors: The IMF and World Bank Approaches. Conflict, Security and Development, 1(1), 45 to 66.
Bercovitch, J., and R. Jackson (2001). Negotiation or Mediation? An Exploration of Factors Affecting the Choice of Conflict Management in International Conflict. Negotiation Journal, 17(1), 59 to 77.
Cobb, S. B. (2013). Speaking of Violence: The Politics and Poetics of Narrative in Conflict Resolution. Oxford University Press, New York.
Duthie, R. (2009). Building Trust and Capacity: Civil Society and Transitional Justice from a Development Perspective. International Center for Transitional Justice.
Hayner, P. B. (2011). Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions (2nd edition). Routledge, New York.
Huntington, S. P. (1991). The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
International Center for Transitional Justice (2009). What Is Transitional Justice?
Kritz, N. J. (Ed.) (1995). Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes. United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington D.C.
O’Rourke, C. (2013). Gender Politics in Transitional Justice. Routledge, London.
Rettig, M. (2008). Gacaca: Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in Postconflict Rwanda? African Studies Review, 51(3), 25 to 50.
Roht-Arriaza, N., and J. Mariezcurrena (Eds.) (2006). Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Schabas, W. A. (2004). A Synergistic Relationship: The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Criminal Law Forum, 15, 3 to 54.
Sikkink, K. (2011). The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics. W. W. Norton, New York.
Snyder, J., and L. Vinjamuri (2003). Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice. International Security, 28(3), 5 to 44.
Tutu, D. (1999). No Future without Forgiveness. Doubleday, New York.
United Nations, Secretary-General (2004). The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, S/2004/616.
Uprimny, R. (2017). Transitional Justice and Peace Processes in Colombia. In Beyond the Binary: Securing Peace and Promoting Justice after Conflict. Dejusticia, Bogotá.
Wallensteen, P. (2015). Understanding Conflict Resolution (4th edition). Sage, London.
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, Preamble and Articles 17 and 53.
Final Agreement for Ending the Conflict and Building a Stable and Lasting Peace, Colombia, 24 November 2016, in particular the Comprehensive System for Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition.
Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No. 34 of 1995, South Africa.
Peace Agreement between the Government of Sierra Leone and the Revolutionary United Front, Lomé, 7 July 1999, and the Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, 2002, Article 10.
Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Barrios Altos v. Peru, 2001, and Gelman v. Uruguay, 2011, on the incompatibility of blanket amnesties with the American Convention.
United Nations Commission on Human Rights (2005). Updated Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity, E/CN.4/2005/102/Add.1.
Olsen, T. D., Payne, L. A., & Reiter, A. G. (2010). Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy. United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington D.C.
Krause, J., Krause, W., & Bränfors, P. (2018). Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations and the Durability of Peace. International Interactions, 44(6), 985 to 1016.
Building a Transborder Social Identity within BRICS+ and a Fragmented Multilateral World
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ongoing difficulties and future challenges that BRICS nations face on their way to a meaningful political impact and supplementary relevance on a global level. More often than not, stakeholders and decision-makers ignore crucial and fundamental necessities that societies request in order to enable and initiate a sustainable and lasting process of growth. Potentially, politicians in charge may be aware of the importance of such anthropological puzzle pieces and, accordingly, should put them on their agenda. Reality seems to prove that the general focus is widely placed on targeting and canvassing short-term financial turnovers and outcomes related to the balancing or unbalancing process of global impact only. Forecasting the failure of such progress, this chapter offers a more convenient strategy to find one’s position within the global community based on mutual respect, shared responsibility, and a holistic approach to peacebuilding.
KEYWORDS
Social identity, global alliance, political divergence, multilateral fragmentation, global stability, sustainable world order, holistic peacebuilding
INTRODUCTION
Starting off our journey through this chapter, I would like to create a common ground of understanding by having a brief look at the status quo of the BRICS community in the year 2026. Being initially a group of interest, Goldman Sachs researcher Jim O’Neill discussed the geopolitical relevance of Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2001 (O’Neill 2001) and thereby potentially introduced the proper term and existence of BRIC (Mostafa 2013). It only makes sense to mention that South Africa was accepted as the first additional or joining member in 2010 (Harrison 2018). Based on this action, South Africa formed the fifth member of the alliance, made the name change to the common term of BRICS, and complemented the group in a meaningful geopolitical way (Erdmann 2024b).
By reviewing the economic history of the group’s members, we can see that all such states underwent crucial economic changes and faced challenging financial situations in the late 20th century (EFSAS 2023). The awareness of the members’ natural resources, the increasing level of global consumption, the improvement of price strategies, and the expanding worldwide interlinked trade established later overall economic stability within the above-listed states (EFSAS 2023). Nowadays, this group finds itself in an economically comfortable situation (Erdmann 2024a), controlling a meaningful quantity of worldwide natural resources and obtaining a key role in global trade (Iqbal 2021).
Being still a purely economic-oriented alliance, the group could not be more diverse in a multitude of aspects. Potentially, this and the complexity of the alliance per se are one reason why it took the group 25 years to grow from the initial four states to a more significant number of members (Glogowski 2024). Even though the number of states being interested in partnering with BRICS extends this number by far, we may still find a lack of a focused and determined agenda explaining what BRICS actually stands for.
The currently available communiqués look like lists of interests stated by the broad quantity of members and partners, while every country intends to get the individual points on. Especially the vague formulation of an agenda bears many uncertain aspects that can turn out to become an uncomfortable setting for countries that find themselves in this specific economic alliance. While being part of BRICS, many of these members strengthen their independence and stability by trading with potential opponents of the group (Erdmann 2024b). This inconformity and contradiction gives birth to an inner instability that prevents BRICS from building the solid and impactful global force that it might look for, namely to become an entity that strongly leads or manages the worldwide economy and politics at the same time, based on its all-embracing network and level of fundamental natural resources.
MAIN CORPUS
A hyper-diverse global alliance called BRICS
The subject of our analysis often presents itself as a fast-growing economic unity that stands up in order to challenge the potentially existing Western financial trade order and to reorganize such towards a much-needed balance or towards leading it into the opposite extreme. Even though such a balancing and unbalancing process, depending on one’s perspective, takes place continuously, we are now having a look at the uniqueness of the M.U.M. Model (Erdmann 2024b). This model relates to global politics and describes the ongoing shift between multipolarism and unipolarism and vice versa, as it presents itself specifically at the beginning of this millennium.
The nature of this phenomenon is based on the struggle between the often labelled and perceived Western and Eastern alliances, targeting economic dominance and impact on a global level. This process entails dynamics that describe a constant movement from multipolarism towards a potentially brief phase of balance, and a further development to the status of unipolarism, before setting the frame for a new epoch of multipolarism. This concept outlines the notion that terms and concepts repeat themselves over and over again. The process of improving repetition can be visualized by imagining a spiral staircase, showing that one constantly arrives at the same spot, but on a new level of escalation (Erdmann 2024b).
Putting this into practice and being aware of the scheduled picture of global dominance, we also want to paint a picture based on our own research and on our own understanding of this situation, being highly interlinked with the world community and with what is potentially needed by mankind and less by a few stakeholders. When we talk about BRICS, we exchange on a global alliance that stretches over four continents, currently counts nine full member countries, and recently accepted thirteen partner countries (Norton 2024). In order to identify even more complexity, we need to say that its members are spread over four continents, while some of them economically partner with and on all five continents. We also see that a common understanding of what BRICS stands for and what it targets is lacking in the portfolio of the alliance. As such a common ground is missing, it turns out to be highly difficult to create or even imagine a strategy that supports the achievement of such a goal, and a path that maintains such a status once it was achieved. Furthermore, it remains entirely unclear how full members derive greater benefits from their membership status compared to countries that are recognized solely as partners.
The fact that BRICS finds itself being completely decentralized turns out to be often communicated as an impactful selling point, while it could also materialize as being the weakest point in the portfolio. Sharing the mutual interest of common economic growth, the alliance includes a broad quantity of languages, cultures, political systems, diverse trade partners, and foremost a wide frame of economic competencies and capabilities of its members (Solomon 2022), while the last point may not match with all partners, as many of them suffer tremendously from their economic instability. This level of diversity turns this alliance into a highly heterogeneous group (BpB 2023) and maybe into the most diverse group that ever existed in modern history on a global scale. The ongoing strategic expansion of BRICS forms part of the alliance’s goal to raise its economic power and natural resources based on global relevance (Tseen Fu 2024). A closer and critical view may disclose that the potential goal of the alliance is simply to create a trade network of natural resource owners, producers and consumers, excluding what may be labelled as Western countries. A far too long potential exclusion from the so-called Western world order makes members of the alliance wish to strike back by continuously admitting new members, propagating inclusiveness (Tseen Fu 2024), and increasing the level of country-based diversity to a more extensive and questionable level. Obviously, the claimed inclusiveness turns out to be highly selective.
Based on such a diverse range of starting points, interests, and capabilities, setting up such an alliance turns out to be an extraordinary challenge, while the transcontinental and inter-political character of its members specifically reinforces the complexity of making such a construct grow in a sound and sustainable way (Erdmann 2024a), especially when potential authoritarian regimes and opposing economic relations are compressed into one group. Nonetheless, besides already being extraordinarily diverse, BRICS continues to extend the quantity of its members and partners and thereby raises the level of inner complexity. A brief look at some fundamental core members of BRICS, namely China and India, shows how two almost historic rivals find themselves put into one alliance, still being and remaining highly competitive opponents on a multitude of levels. Interestingly enough, Russia takes over the role of a mediator in order to bring such members closer together (Baunov 2024). Four of the recently admitted members are likewise involved in complex disputes. Saudi Arabia and Iran are trapped in a long-term dispute on regional predominance and political integrity (Desta 2011), while Egypt and Ethiopia find themselves involved in an ongoing contradiction on natural resources, namely the Nile’s water dispute (BpB 2023).
A baseless iceberg?
Considering the ambitious growth and overall potential target of BRICS, namely to be the rebalancing tool in world economics, we may wonder where this vision and motivation actually comes from. The worldwide economic playground offers a multitude of alliances for countries to join, to actively participate in, and to create overall lasting benefits. Forming part of or being a member of the G20 and BRICS at the same time is such an ambivalent example that it raises many questions. All founding members of BRICS, including South Africa, are members of the G20, while they identified the need not only to join a more likely Western-run alliance, but also to be part of an opposing alliance that challenges the economic stability of several member states from the previously mentioned compound. Such a contradiction does not support one’s credibility in having one clear vision but more likely creates uncertainty on a global scale, actually a feature that mankind currently does not need at all, and potentially turns out to be a very poor political strategy that supports fragmentation instead of unification.
When features like mutual exchange, respect, and understanding support socio-economic peace and balance, what does fragmentation and exclusion mean to global society? It can be stated that the process of fragmentation turns out to be an impactful strategic tool, especially when a group achieves and thereby defines a certain level of self-confidence and power within the global scale. Sufficient resources show that fragmenting groups strategically exclude broad parts of a community in order to destabilize it, and to create a specific image of an enemy (Erdmann 2024c). Hereby, the recently created splinter groups are subject to the aggressor in number and power. Such dynamics can also be found during prosecution and ethnic cleansing (Zartman 2010).
The more we challenge the peak of the iceberg, namely the image of BRICS that is communicated to the broad public, the more complex and confusing the setting of this potential alliance becomes. Step by step, we may discover that it looks like a bottomless construct that is lost in its own complexity. You may see that one can even challenge the term alliance, as such traditionally identifies a group of countries or parties that share one common goal or interest (Cambridge 2025). The previously mentioned communiqués and the global economic interlinkages of the group’s members show more likely interests in all possible political directions, while some look for economic growth, others target financial stability, still others try to enrich their global network, and finally some aim to look as challenging as possible towards potential Western opponents and to impress such in a meaningful way (Baunov 2024). This seems to be the new identity of BRICS in the present era, namely to focus on the number of members and potentially less on the realistic, productive impact new partners may provide. Hereby, it seems to be worth noting that potential natural resources that a partner or member may provide, in combination with an unstable political system, do not turn out automatically to be a supportive feature to such an alliance. Furthermore, members need to observe the overall political behaviour of member and partner countries. Forming part of a group also means that other stakeholders’ actions look to be supported or at least tolerated. Accordingly, admitting new members to BRICS while continuously battling Ukraine may also serve as a wider legitimation for the Russian leadership to proceed in this political direction.
Nobody can deny that joining BRICS as a member or partner in these times serves as a clear political message towards the global community. Such countries should be well aware of the meaning of this symbolic act, namely that they support what BRICS members commonly stand up for or what they tolerate. Here, a potential anti-Western perspective may serve as a common point of interest (Baunov 2024), while most members remain involved in trading with a multitude of such Western countries. Generally, we can observe that joining a group incorporates and requests two fundamental points, namely that each member supports the overall group target and supports what, more precisely, individual peer members stand up for. This simple fact perfectly underlines the level of contradiction that BRICS finds itself in, especially referring to handling dual memberships in pro and contra Western alliances. Whether it may be the potentially anti-Western course, the unclear overall target of BRICS, or the Russian dominance in constantly inviting new members (Baunov 2024), this uncertainty does not attract everyone. It is worth noting that Argentina and Kazakhstan resigned from joining, while the role of Saudi Arabia actually remains unclear as no official confirmation of a joining act can be identified (Baunov 2024). The fact that Russia, based on its activism, put itself apparently into the position of a presidency of BRICS made the group’s character change from an initially cooperative alliance that targets mutual development into some sort of a plaything of unpredictable anti-Western propaganda, losing itself in the baseless complexity of a self-focused worldview and biased global interests.
Even though such a global partnership has the potential to float solidly like an iceberg, its intransparency beneath the surface extends to such a crucial level that its baselessness starts creating a downforce instead of supporting the complete superstructure. The fundamental question may be what measures need to be taken to turn the currently existing construct into a globally responsible, well-respected alliance that supports peace, mutual respect, and socio-economic growth, if this is the goal at all.
An unfortunate coincidence?
The topic of the organization’s credibility is far more complex than only the issue of socio-economic transparency. Currently, there does not exist one single updated document that displays, in a transparent way, all members of this construct. Even though potential members are listed on websites, on platforms, and in media channels, the specific level of membership is not clear. Hereby, the public cannot easily identify which country is a full member, which one is a partner country, which one maintains friendly relations, which country is an applicant for membership, and which country delayed or cancelled the joining process and for what reason (Council on Foreign Relations 2025). Furthermore, no officially signed joining memoranda are accessible to the public. Such are circumstances that truly challenge a belief in an upright ambition to increase one’s membership numbers and global impact in a sound way. Far more confusing remains the fact that it is constantly highlighted how many countries participate in the annual summits, while it remains unclear which role they play in such events. The question is, what kind of countries are attracted by such a foggy environment?
Unfortunately, there is another critical topic that needs to be discussed, especially when talking about transparency and international standards. This context overshadows the current setting of the alliance but is seldom addressed. The reason therefore may be the unpopularity of the topic per se, but it absolutely needs to be brought to the table, especially by representing the perspectives and the interests of being heard by potential victims. Third party reports communicate that several member countries of this alliance show human rights violations within their territories (U.S. Department of State 2025).
In order to use an additional source and to be able to analyze, from another angle, how deep-rooted and complex the issue presents itself in the current era, the reports of Amnesty International may offer additional insights (Amnesty International 2026), in order to better comprehend the information shared by other reporting bodies. Based on these burdening reports, it may not be sufficient to proclaim a condemnation of war, as commonly done during annual summits, especially when the addressed conflicts solely take place between labelled Western countries and potential BRICS members (Lima 2025), while issues that take place within the members’ own territories are not addressed and are silenced. Here, a superficial polishing of the topic may not be sufficient. It is definitely needed to address the topic in a seriously critical way and to create a path of getting back on track, following what was agreed on in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948), a document that was signed by a significant number of BRICS related countries.
Addressing this critical topic and initiating credible requested action, in order to counter the current circumstances, may generate a higher level of global acceptance of member countries or of the alliance at all, while the question remains why not all member countries signed this document and what this specifically means to the other associated countries that automatically stand in for or back up the other joining members’ political setting by attending one common alliance.
Ordo ab chao
Considering BRICS is currently more likely a rag rug of nations longing for sustainable economic growth and wealth management, we may commonly agree that there is no access to wealth without prior management. Such management needs to initiate a process that all members, partners, and joining applicants evaluate as useful and that all of them are willing to follow up on. This common understanding can be a cornerstone of an overall identity that supports a much needed ordo ab chao, order out of chaos. Obviously, such a process of change takes time and definitely starts by every one of such partners before possibly spreading from partner to partner or generating an overall code of conduct, or better said, a common identity that supports the respectful and peaceful growth of the global community. And of course, such an achievement may only be possible by leaving behind the constant labelling and setting up of Western and Eastern opposing countries, in order to finally understand all of us being global citizens.
Here, we need to face one specific reality, namely that the level of diversity that BRICS covers surpasses existing regional and continental alliances and unions by far. In this way, BRICS may not be compared to any other existing union, such as the European Union, the African Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or the Union of South American Nations. Its complexity of cultures, languages, religions, and economic necessities makes this construct face very unique challenges. Currently, we do not see indications that support the understanding that BRICS will grow from within in order to become sound (Erdmann 2024a), grow in a sustainable way, and build a lasting global value for mankind, as previously requested. This status might continue, while the focus remains on growing, promising new members credibility and legitimacy (Adams 2023).
Having such widespread diversity as a foundation, we may understand that what is needed looks like a common creed or a transborder identity that reconciles differences and harmonizes diversity in an all-embracing way. So, the term identity offers us a very complex nature and a rich scale of interpretations. As soon as the consciousness is sharpened and a human individual realizes their proper existence, the quest for an identity is born. Identity per se is a multilayered word that is of importance on an individual level, a group level, a regional level, a national level, a continental level, and may reach its climax on a global level, including ethnicities, languages, creeds, and cultures. Even though we may identify a multitude of different sorts of identities, they all seem to have one common denominator, namely the quest for a harmonic and organized aspect.
Accordingly, we may imagine that it is basically a very tricky and challenging project to create or build a truly transborder identity, while what is needed is something that people can believe in, that connects them, and that motivates them to start talking about themselves as a sound community. What we are looking for is the still missing central puzzle piece that completes the artwork and that gives a higher meaning to angles, visions, and perspectives. This puzzle piece could turn chaos into order and provide BRICS with the opportunity to stop being a potentially unpredictable underdog who challenges an existing global construct. BRICS could leave this image behind and start growing solidly within itself and within the global community in order to become a cornerstone for global balance, peace, and harmony. This missing link, or still transborder identity, can only be identified and developed by the community of BRICS itself (Yzerbyt 1997), and starts with the discernment that only merged puzzle pieces complete the picture, or that all countries are needed to build a lasting global community. The form, structure, and character of a puzzle piece is crucial when we identify its place within the overall artwork, while the piece itself merges perfectly with the bigger picture by not focusing on its proper borders any longer. Thus, the ultimate goal, on a global level, should be to leave proper personal interests behind, and to merge into a community of conscious and truly interdependent partners.
SUMMARY
The revision sharpens the argument at the point where it is most easily dismissed as abstract, by asking what can actually be established about the association. The finding is that no authoritative document sets out who belongs to it and in what capacity, that no accession instruments are published, and that the annual summits report attendance without specifying the standing of those attending. From this the author draws a conclusion that does not depend on any political position: an association whose membership cannot be ascertained cannot be held to anything, because there is no record of who undertook what. The second addition applies the same test to conduct rather than to form, observing that declarations condemning wars between others sit alongside silence about conditions within the members’ own territories, and that a group whose members are documented as violating undertakings they have signed acquires a collective problem of credibility whether or not it acknowledges one.
CONCLUSION
In order to be able to build a transborder identity that truly combines a high level of diverse members of a group, we need to understand the uniqueness of this common goal, and the specific challenges of the setting in question. Traditionally, a group identifies itself as such based on a common language, dialect, culture, history, or tradition (Akuche 2016). Obviously, not all members of the wider BRICS circle are completely different, but they are potentially diverse. Some of them share languages, but not dialects; others share religions, but not their traditions within them. Here, we can clearly see that diversity is unequal to fragmentation, which more likely is the counterpart of unity. This gives us a very crucial hint, namely that diversity can still be or become the starting point that has its peak in some level of unity. Having stated in the beginning that the high level of nations’ diversity may be the weak spot of BRICS, we find ourselves at the point of turning a fragile ornament into the truss of a superstructure. This means that if it turns out to be possible to build an identity of BRICS members, it should also be realistic to build an even stronger identity, namely the identity of a global community, incorporating all puzzle pieces, as previously mentioned and requested.
We may have learned so far that building a transborder identity is more likely an extensive task, especially as setting the foundation of a common understanding begins with each participant and targets the overall conformity of the sum of such diverse individuals, longing to label themselves members of a homogeneous group. Here, we may challenge the traditional concepts of strategic economic growth and the methods that accordingly are based on building inclusive and exclusive alliances, such as the G20, the G7, BRICS, and NATO, more often than not benefitting from this process of economic and political fragmentation. The question that we need to analyze for ourselves is whether such an exclusive mindset still meets today’s necessities, in a global and multilateral world, and if we can justify such a path in a dialogue with upcoming generations.
Reflections may unveil that exclusive behaviour often turns out to be a strong hint towards an advanced level of fear of loss, of disadvantage, and of being left behind in general. Based on the general global connectivity, referring to individuals, companies, organizations, and countries, one may strongly doubt that building economic borders supports global growth. Accordingly, and as previously stated, putting a name on everything and everyone supports exclusiveness, which per se is often a door opener for fragmentation and extremism (Erdmann 2024c). What mankind potentially needs in a time of economic and social insecurity is a common creed that binds all humans together at the bottom of their hearts. Namely a creed that is so fundamental that it touches and supports basic human necessities, namely stability, peace, and harmony. If we do not build harmony at the grassroots level of the individual and their family, we have no space to further develop a sound identity that surpasses borders and that embraces the wealth of mankind.
It may already be sensed where this will possibly take the global community. BRICS, but more likely mankind per se, needs to create a real consciousness of a global community and, more specifically, the awareness that today’s exclusiveness and fragmentation do not support real stability and global growth in the long term but always support that only very selective groups that initiate such processes benefit from those dynamics. In order to initiate such a change, we need politicians who act like responsible adults and who understand that owning the biggest piece of the cake does not automatically grant satisfaction, not in the long run, and potentially less to all of us. Based on what has been written so far, we all may imagine a world without the previously mentioned trade associations and unions. Mankind may envision that a common level of true responsibility towards the planet Earth and mankind is much needed, far beyond self-centred and ignorant behaviour that is based on and that supports chaotic circumstances in the human mindset and on the surface that we walk on.
Therefore, BRICS, and again mankind in general, needs an agenda that clearly communicates, in a reasonable and realistic way, shared values that offer tranquillity on a global level and enable mankind to develop a common identity, not as individuals but as a global community. Such a common identity could also be the true recognition of the Declaration of Human Rights, that would enable all countries to meet upon one level, to exchange and to treat each other based on righteousness. Hereby, it is crucial to discharge the importance of a labelling name and not to put an excluding acronym in the front row, such as BRICS, the G20 or the G7. Now, it is humankind that counts first, it is humankind that needs to turn into a global community of mutual respect and responsibility, it is humankind that needs to connect and grow from within, and it is humankind that does not need a name to differ, because it already got a name that binds all of them together, citizens of the world.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The transparency argument is the strongest thing in this revision and it is worth separating from the political assessment that surrounds it, because it stands on its own and is harder to answer.
An association that publishes no accession instruments, maintains no authoritative list of members and their status, and reports attendance at summits without specifying capacity, has no ascertainable membership. The consequence is not merely presentational. Commitments made in a communiqué bind whoever agreed to them, and where it cannot be established who agreed, nothing binds anyone. The comparison the author sets aside is instructive here rather than inapt: the European Union publishes its treaties, the African Union its Constitutive Act, and both maintain registers of ratification precisely because an institution that cannot demonstrate who is a member cannot enforce anything against anyone. This is an institutional design question rather than a political one, and it admits of a straightforward remedy that costs nothing and that no member could reasonably oppose.
Two observations on the human rights passage. The most difficult version of the argument is not that member states have poor records, which is true of members of every large grouping including those the author contrasts them with, but the one the text arrives at in its final paragraph: that association implies a degree of endorsement, and that a body which condemns conduct by non-members while remaining silent about equivalent conduct among its own acquires a selectivity problem that undermines the standing from which it speaks. That argument applies with equal force to every grouping, which is what makes it a general proposition about multilateral bodies rather than a criticism of one, and stating it that way makes it considerably harder to dismiss. Relatedly, the sourcing would be strengthened by drawing on bodies whose reports cannot be characterised as partisan by the states concerned: the treaty bodies of the United Nations, the special procedures of the Human Rights Council, and the universal periodic review examine every member state on the same criteria, including those whose governments commissioned the reports the author cites.
Two further points bear on the constructive proposal. A minimal standard of association is achievable in a way that a shared identity is not, and it is what comparable groupings have adopted: published criteria for admission, an accessible register, a code of conduct, and a procedure for suspension. None of these requires anyone to agree about values, and each would answer the specific defect the author identifies. And the concluding proposal that the Universal Declaration serve as the common ground is well chosen for a reason worth stating: it was adopted without a dissenting vote, its substance has been incorporated into instruments ratified by every state in the grouping, and it is therefore the one text on the table that no member can characterise as an external imposition. Where a shared identity must be built and cannot be invented, an existing common undertaking is the only available foundation.
Finally, the metaphor of the puzzle piece that ceases to attend to its own borders states, in the author’s own terms, the finding this journal has reached repeatedly from other directions. Identities are not dissolved by the discovery of a larger one; they are held within it, and the arrangements that work are those in which belonging to the whole does not require anyone to stop being what they were. That is the dual identity finding, and it is the mechanism by which the aspiration in the closing paragraph could become something other than an aspiration.
*Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Adams, Mubarak (2023) BRICS and the New World Order: Implications for the Existing World Order.
Akuche, Andre Ben Moses (2016) Nation Building and the Impediments of Building the Nigerian Nation.
Amnesty International (2026) Country Reports. https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/
Baunov, Alexander (2024) New Identity of BRICS. Carnegie Endowment.
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (2023) Erweiterung der BRICS Gruppe.
Cambridge Dictionary (2025) Alliance.
Council on Foreign Relations (2025) What Is the BRICS Group and Why Is It Expanding?
Desta, Teddy (2011) The Iran and Saudi Arabia Power Struggle.
EFSAS (2023) The BRICS: Origins, Evolution and 2023 Expansion.
Erdmann, Daniel (2024a) BRICS: Minus × Minus = Plus? About the Art and Challenges of Growing from Within. In: Kiyala, J. C. K., Tshikovhi, N., Ngwenya, D. M., and F. Netswera (eds) Expanded BRICS Nations. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.
Erdmann, Daniel (2024b) The Dynamics of Polarised Pluralism: On the Benefits, Challenges, and Threats of a Constantly Changing Fragmented World Order. In: Kiyala, J. C. K., Tshikovhi, N., Ngwenya, D. M., and F. Netswera (eds) Expanded BRICS Nations. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.
Erdmann, Daniel (2024c) Personal Identity and Peacebuilding: A Critical Reflection. In: Kiyala, J. C. K., and N. Chivasa (eds) Climate Change and Socio-political Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Anthropocene. Springer, Cham.
Glogowski, Aleksander (2024) India, Pakistan and BRICS after the 2024 Kazan Summit.
Harrison, Philip (2018) South Africa in the BRICS.
Iqbal, Badar Alam (2021) BRICS as a Driver of Global Economic Growth and Development.
Lima, Julia (2025) BRICS Leaders’ Declaration Condemns Wars and Calls for Reform of Global Governance.
Mostafa, Mahmood (2013) The Rise of the BRICS and Their Challenge to the G7.
Norton, Ben (2024) BRICS Keeps Growing in a Multipolar World.
O’Neill, Jim (2001) Building Better Global Economic BRICs. Goldman Sachs.
Solomon, Mussie (2022) BRICS Plus and Its Major Impacts on Poor Members.
Tseen Fu, Brice Lee (2024) Legitimacy through Diversity: China’s Leadership in the BRICS Plus Expansion for Global Balance.
United Nations (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (2025) 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
Yzerbyt, Vincent (1997) Building a European Identity.
Zartman, I. William (2010) Identity Conflicts. International Peace Institute.
Further reading added by the WMO Editorial Team
Agreement on the New Development Bank, Fortaleza, 15 July 2014, and the Treaty for the Establishment of a BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, 2014.
Kazan Declaration of the XVI BRICS Summit, 23 October 2024, and subsequent summit declarations.
Constitutive Act of the African Union, 2000, and the Treaty on European Union, consolidated version, on the publication of accession instruments and criteria for membership.
Universal Periodic Review, Human Rights Council, and the reports of the United Nations human rights treaty bodies.
Acharya, A. (2018). Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Stuenkel, O. (2020). The BRICS and the Future of Global Order (2nd edition). Lexington Books, Lanham.
Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2000). Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model. Psychology Press, Philadelphia.
Risse, T. (2010). A Community of Europeans? Transnational Identities and Public Spheres. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Ukraine and the Limits of Mediation
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
EDITORIAL NOTE *
This article assesses an ongoing war and the conduct of the states and leaders involved, and its closing section sketches the terms of a possible settlement. Those assessments and proposals reflect the author’s own perspective; this journal’s editorial position is neutral as between the parties. The article was written in 2025 and should be read with that date in mind.
ABSTRACT
This article examines the limited effectiveness of mediation in high-intensity interstate conflicts, using the war in Ukraine as a case study. While mediation has proved useful in intrastate and post-conflict settings, it faces distinct structural, strategic, and normative challenges in other contexts. The paper explores why third-party efforts have failed to de-escalate the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and considers whether a rethinking of mediation frameworks is needed for better results in future interstate conflicts.
KEYWORDS
Ukraine, Russia, mediation, conflict resolution, diplomacy, peace process, success, failure
INTRODUCTION
Mediation has long stood as one of the most important instruments in the diplomatic repertoire for managing and resolving armed conflict. From the Camp David Accords to the Dayton Agreement, its record suggests that even protracted disputes can, under the right conditions, be brought to the negotiating table. Yet not all wars are equally receptive to mediation. High-intensity conflicts, especially those involving major power rivalry, existential stakes, and geopolitical entanglement, pose challenges that often render traditional mediation ineffective. The war in Ukraine is a striking example.
Since the full-scale invasion of February 2022, the international community has launched a series of mediation efforts, both formal and informal. From the Minsk and Istanbul talks to more recent meetings in Saudi Arabia, and initiatives by the United Nations, Turkey, China, and the African Union, none has produced a sustainable outcome. Peace remains distant, while the military, political, and symbolic stakes continue to rise. Mediation, despite its normative appeal, has been displaced by a combination of irreconcilable war objectives, entrenched distrust, the perceived bias of potential mediators, and the absence of a mutually hurting stalemate.
The return of Donald Trump to the American presidency adds a revealing dimension to the broader difficulty. Promising a swift end to the war and invoking his personal rapport with Vladimir Putin, he has presented himself as a dealmaker uniquely capable of brokering peace. His administration has so far produced sharp deadlines, threats of expanded sanctions, and public disagreement with President Zelensky. His approach, personalistic, coercive, and transactional, serves less as a decisive change than as a mirror reflecting the deeper structural difficulties of international peacemaking today.
This article argues that the failure of mediation in Ukraine is not simply the result of diplomatic missteps or errors of timing, but a symptom of systemic constraints that afflict high-intensity interstate conflicts. These constraints include power asymmetry between the parties, imperfect information, incompatible war aims, the framing of the conflict as existential, the collapse of credible neutrality among mediators, and the geopolitical instrumentalisation of peace efforts themselves. By situating Ukraine within a broader theoretical and comparative context, the paper offers a critical assessment of whether current mediation frameworks are fit for purpose in the contemporary security environment.
MAIN CORPUS
Identifying success and failure
Mediation is broadly defined as a form of third-party intervention aimed at facilitating negotiation between two or more parties in conflict. Unlike arbitration or adjudication, mediation is non-binding, voluntary, and heavily dependent on the perceived legitimacy and strategic utility of the mediator. Its flexibility makes it attractive in both intrastate and interstate disputes, but this same characteristic reveals its limitations, particularly when applied to wars between sovereign states with high stakes, high casualties, and deeply entrenched geopolitical dynamics.
When is mediation successful? Research, particularly the work of Bercovitch and Jackson (2009), has identified four primary variables that shape the success or failure of international mediation: the identity and characteristics of the conflict parties; the nature of the dispute itself; the identity and credibility of the mediator; and the broader political and international context. All these elements are crucial, determining the nature, quality, and effectiveness of the mediation and indicating why some efforts succeed while others fail (Bercovitch and Jackson 2009: 34). Where any of these is unfavourable, the prospects for successful mediation diminish considerably.
The parties in conflict
Bercovitch and Jackson emphasise that effective mediation is highly contingent on the legitimacy and internal cohesion of the conflicting parties. Mediation requires that each party be represented by actors with clear authority, unified political backing, and international recognition. Mediation has a better chance of success where the adversaries are recognised as the legitimate spokesmen for their parties. This insight helps to explain why mediation has historically struggled in settings such as Lebanon, Sudan, or Cyprus, where internal disunity or competing claims to authority undermined the credibility of negotiation.
While Ukraine and Russia both possess clearly defined state leadership, the question of legitimacy nonetheless re-emerges here through Russia’s repeated denial of Ukrainian sovereignty, its support for separatist proxies, and its characterisation of the Ukrainian government as illegitimate (BBC News 2023; Treisman 2022; EUvsDisinfo 2025). Earlier this year, the American presidency also used the language of dictatorship in reference to the Ukrainian government (Howard 2025; Sauer and Harding 2025). Such narratives, coming not only from one of the belligerents but also from one of the principal potential mediators, obscure the basic premise of mediation, namely that two recognised sovereign parties negotiate as equals, guided by an impartial third party.
The dispute
While the structure and identity of the actors involved are critical, a second and perhaps more decisive factor is the nature of the dispute itself. Where a conflict centres on issues perceived as existential, such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, or regime survival, mediation efforts are significantly less likely to succeed. These are what Zartman (2008) refers to as intractable issues and what others, including Ott (1972) and Randle (1973), have framed as non-negotiable interests. The war in Ukraine presents precisely the kind of high-stakes, zero-sum conflict that renders traditional mediation structurally ineffective. For Ukraine the war is not merely a geopolitical dispute but an existential struggle for national survival, political independence, and democratic self-determination. For Russia it is framed as a civilisational confrontation with the West and a strategic campaign to reassert dominance within a perceived sphere of influence.
Kleiboer (1996), in her work on understanding success and failure in international mediation, sets out the main elements of a dispute that determine outcomes. First, she identifies the problem of ripeness, the idea that conflicts pass through a life cycle and that mediation is more or less likely to be effective at particular phases. Some scholars suggest that mediation is more effective in later stages, when the costs of war have escalated, battlefield optimism has faded, and the parties reassess their goals. In Ukraine this threshold has arguably not been reached. Russia continues to perceive strategic value in prolonging the conflict, believing that Western unity may fray, that fatigue may increase, and that further territorial gains remain possible. Ukraine has benefited considerably from Western support and maintains hopes of reversing Russian advances.
Others argue that mediation is best pursued in the early stages, before violence escalates and positions harden. But this window never truly existed. The war of 2022 began with a full-scale invasion predicated on regime change, under the assumption of a rapid fall of Kyiv. Early maximalist objectives foreclosed early diplomatic options. Still others suggest that ripeness is not a matter of time but of key events, such as a mutually hurting stalemate or a radical shift in the balance of power that forces a strategic rethink. Neither has yet occurred. While Ukraine has mounted successful counteroffensives and even operated on Russian territory, and Russia has endured significant attrition and sanctions, neither side perceives itself as losing outright.
Second, Kleiboer draws attention to conflict intensity and its divergent logics. Contrary to simple assumptions, intensity can push parties towards or away from negotiation depending on their position. For Russia, as the stronger party, high intensity may reinforce optimism and a form of victory thinking, particularly where losing may mean not only the loss of the conflict but a threat to the leadership itself. For Ukraine the same intensity might encourage negotiation, especially as civilian costs and social exhaustion mount. But this assumes that negotiation offers a meaningful path forward. For Ukraine the prospect of territorial concession, neutrality, and the legitimation of annexation is not only politically unacceptable but strategically hazardous. Both logics therefore work against mediation.
Third, the intensity of violence cannot be separated from the substance of the dispute. The war concerns issues that are deeply divisive and difficult to settle: sovereignty, with incompatible territorial aims; ideological questions about the nature of political systems and core values; security questions concerning borders and territory; and questions of self-determination and nationhood. All of these make the war a paradigmatic case of a structurally resistant conflict, in which mediation is not merely difficult but may be fundamentally misaligned with the logic of the conflict itself.
The mediator
A third determinant is the identity and attributes of the mediator. While it is tempting to assume that any well-intentioned third party can play a constructive role, the literature shows that effective mediation depends on the interplay of three core factors: impartiality, leverage, and status (Kleiboer 1996).
Conventional wisdom holds that a mediator’s success depends on perceived impartiality, following a logic in which impartiality breeds confidence, confidence fosters acceptability, and acceptability increases the likelihood of success. Impartiality is less a matter of objective neutrality than of perception: the parties must believe that the mediator has no hidden agenda and is equally invested in a fair resolution. In Ukraine, very few mediators have met this threshold. The United States and the European Union are widely seen from the Russian side as partisan players rather than neutral brokers. Ukraine is equally suspicious of actors perceived as close to its adversary, such as China, which has maintained careful rhetorical neutrality while deepening economic ties with Moscow.
On the other hand, a degree of bias can be useful. A mediator with strong ties to one party, particularly the more powerful one, may be better able to persuade that actor to make concessions. This suggests that while the most consequential mediators, the United States and the European Union, have the capacity to influence Ukraine, they lack access to or trust with Moscow, rendering any influence over Russia practically non-existent.
A further key factor is leverage, understood as the mediator’s ability to shape the parties’ behaviour through incentive or pressure. Without leverage, even the most neutral mediator is little more than a facilitator; with it, a mediator can shift calculations and create meaningful costs and benefits attached to a settlement. The conflict in Ukraine reveals a dual paradox. The United States and the European Union possess considerable leverage, particularly over Ukraine, given that they provide the bulk of its military and economic support, but this leverage has proved politically fraught: any signal that the West is pressing Ukraine towards negotiation can be interpreted as abandonment, may embolden Russia, and may fracture Western unity.
On the Russian side, those same actors have very little leverage, since sanctions, isolation, and warrants issued by the International Criminal Court have closed off diplomatic channels and hardened resistance. Middle powers such as Brazil, India, Turkey, and South Africa have attempted to fill the gap, seeing it as an opportunity to increase their standing in a changing world order (Friedrich 2025). But their lack of military, economic, or institutional weight has made their proposals appear more symbolic than strategic.
Lastly, a mediator’s status shapes the ability to convene talks and to drive outcomes. High-status mediators have struggled with credibility, while low-status actors have struggled with access. The United Nations has repeatedly called for peace, but its credibility has been undermined by internal division and by paralysis in the Security Council. Religious and humanitarian actors such as the Holy See or the International Committee of the Red Cross enjoy moral authority but have not been entrusted with a political mandate. Middle powers such as Saudi Arabia or Turkey have hosted talks, but their standing is too ambiguous to convert diplomacy into firm commitments.
International context
Mediation efforts do not unfold in a vacuum; they are embedded in a broader international context. This includes the involvement of third parties and the effect of other global conflicts. As to the former, the war in Ukraine has been internationalised to a very high degree, with each involved actor pursuing its own interests and strategic calculations; these actors do not simply support or oppose mediation but often seek to steer its outcomes. The United States and the European Union have rhetorically endorsed peace while simultaneously intensifying military aid and deepening sanctions. Moscow, for its part, has used mediation initiatives from states of the Global South to advance a narrative of Western hypocrisy and to legitimise its own account of the conflict.
As to the latter, the war in Gaza that began in 2023 has affected mediation elsewhere by diverting international attention, political capital, and diplomatic capacity (Fischer 2023). It has hardened divisions between Western and non-Western states, exposed the selective application of international norms, and weakened the moral authority of the same actors who are prominent in Ukraine.
Prospects for constructive mediation
The failure of mediation in Ukraine does not imply that peace efforts should be abandoned, but rather that they must be rethought. Any future initiative must reckon with the structural constraints of the conflict. There is no quick remedy, but some strategic adjustments may improve the prospects for meaningful mediation.
Mediation cannot be forced where no basic readiness exists. At present neither party appears to regard the situation as unsustainable enough to warrant real concession. Ukraine, sustained by external support and by resistance morale, continues to prioritise territorial integrity; Russia, although facing attrition, shows no sign of internal collapse or strategic retreat. Yet this state of affairs will not persist indefinitely. Mediating actors must prepare now for a future moment of ripeness, through discreet channels of communication, unofficial diplomacy, and the careful cultivation of relationships with intermediaries who are perceived as neither partisan nor lacking in weight.
No single state or institution holds both the legitimacy and the leverage required to mediate this war effectively. One possible response is a multilateral mediation group, a consortium including regional powers from both camps, such as Turkey, India, Brazil, and China, paired with neutral international organisations such as the OSCE or an envoy appointed by the United Nations. This hybrid format would help to offset perceived bias while allowing each actor to bring a different form of influence, whether diplomatic, symbolic, or economic. While past attempts at such inclusive formats have faltered, a renewed attempt could succeed if accompanied by real confidence-building measures. The goal cannot be a comprehensive settlement overnight, but rather incremental progress, such as humanitarian agreements, local ceasefires, or mechanisms for the exchange of prisoners of war.
Rather than aiming immediately at a comprehensive peace agreement, mediation should for the present pursue limited but strategic goals that are easier to achieve and politically less costly for the parties. These might include demilitarised humanitarian corridors, nuclear safety arrangements, grain export frameworks, and monitoring mechanisms for violations of the law of armed conflict. Such issue-based mediation offers two advantages. First, it creates channels for communication and cooperation even amid continuing violence. Second, it can build the trust and the institutional scaffolding needed for more substantive negotiation. Small steps, if consistently successful, can shift the logic of the conflict away from zero-sum calculation.
SUMMARY *
The article’s analytical achievement is to show that the failure here is overdetermined rather than accidental. Applying an established framework, it finds that every one of the four conditions for successful mediation is absent at once: one party disputes the other’s standing to negotiate at all, the issues are of the kind that parties do not divide, no actor combines access to both sides with the capacity to impose a cost, and the wider system in which any process would sit is itself divided. The consequence the author draws is not despair but a reallocation of effort. If the conditions for a settlement cannot presently be produced, the useful work is to build the channels and relationships that a later moment will require, and meanwhile to pursue the humanitarian and technical arrangements that do not depend on those conditions.
CONCLUSION
The war in Ukraine has exposed the limits of international mediation in the face of entrenched geopolitical interests, high-stakes territorial disputes, and a global order marked by fragmentation and normative inconsistency. This article has sought, through theoretical insight, to clarify why mediation has struggled to gain traction. Ukraine is not merely a war between two states but one deeply embedded in the ideological and strategic rift between the West and a bloc of non-Western actors; mediation in such a context is not only about stopping bullets or drawing borders but about fundamental questions of global power, legitimacy, and security.
This should not lead to fatalism. The war should serve rather as a stress test for the theory and practice of mediation. It calls for more flexible, plural, and long-term approaches that recognise the complexity of modern conflicts. Ripeness cannot be imposed, but it can be anticipated and prepared for. Mediators may not be impartial, but they can still be effective if they bring influence, coordination, and creativity. The challenge is not to revive old models but to rethink diplomacy itself, so that it is more adaptive, more plural, and better equipped to navigate the fractured realities of contemporary war.
While a comprehensive and just peace may remain a distant prospect, serious diplomatic thinking must begin to consider what a minimally viable settlement could look like, one that does not reward aggression but recognises the strategic realities on the ground and the need to prevent prolonged devastation. Given the effective occupation of parts of eastern Ukraine, one scenario that has been discussed is a negotiated arrangement addressing the status of the occupied territories. This would require significant concessions from Ukraine, which, to be politically and strategically acceptable, would demand powerful counterbalancing guarantees from the international community.
For Kyiv, any territorial compromise, however limited, would be viable only if paired with long-term security and integration guarantees. Chief among these would be membership of the European Union, providing institutional, financial, and political anchoring for Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy. Membership of the Atlantic alliance, while more contentious, might be considered as a long-term objective, or at least a structured bilateral security guarantee negotiated with allies. Such arrangements would signal resolve, provide tangible deterrence against future incursion, and avoid the risk of a mere pause in hostilities of the kind that followed 2014.
The role of the international community is therefore not to impose a blueprint but to cultivate the political conditions under which compromise becomes possible. That entails a shift from reactive, fragmented diplomacy to sustained multilateral engagement that includes emerging actors who may lack leverage but offer legitimacy. Since mediators have found it difficult to reach ideal solutions, it is necessary to begin building a security architecture that can contain conflict, institutionalise restraint, and allow diplomacy to take root.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The analytical framework is applied carefully and its most important implication deserves to be separated from the article’s closing proposals, because the two rest on different footings.
The framework establishes that the conditions for a negotiated settlement are absent. The proposals for issue-based mediation follow from this directly and are supported by what has actually worked: the grain initiative moved cargo out of Ukrainian ports for a year, prisoner exchanges have continued throughout, the agency responsible for nuclear safety has maintained a presence at Zaporizhzhia, and children have been returned through the mediation of a small number of states. None of these required either party to accept anything about the other’s claims, and each was negotiated by intermediaries whose usefulness lay precisely in having no position on the war. That is the model the author’s analysis supports, and it is being executed now.
The territorial proposals in the closing section stand differently, and one distinction would strengthen them considerably. There is a difference between recognising a territorial change in law and accepting it in fact while withholding recognition, and the second has a long history. The Baltic states were occupied for fifty years without Western recognition of the annexation, and the non-recognition preserved a claim that was eventually realised. Applied here, an arrangement that fixes a line of control without conceding sovereignty offers Ukraine something a recognised cession does not, namely the preservation of the claim, and offers Russia the practical control it holds, while requiring neither to say what its own politics forbid. The constitutional position reinforces this: the Ukrainian constitution reserves any alteration of territory to a national referendum, which means a cession is not within the gift of any negotiator, and a formula that avoids the question is not merely diplomatic tact but a legal necessity.
The security guarantee question is the harder one and the article is right to make everything turn on it. Ukraine has been given guarantees before, in the Budapest Memorandum, and the experience is precisely why assurances are now insufficient. The distinction that matters is between a guarantee that requires a decision at the moment of crisis and one that is automatic, and only the second deters, which is why membership of the alliance and the presence of forces on the ground are the forms that have been pressed for. Any arrangement that leaves the guarantor a choice will be read by both parties as leaving the guarantor a choice.
Two additions on the mediation analysis itself. The article treats leverage over Russia as absent, and the more precise statement is that it is held by parties who have not chosen to exercise it: the states purchasing Russian energy and supplying the components that sustain the war have influence that the sanctioning states do not, which is the strongest argument for the plural format the author proposes and also the reason it has not yet materialised. And the Istanbul discussions of spring 2022 deserve more weight than the article gives them, since they came closer to terms than anything since and are the clearest available evidence about what each side would accept when it believed it had to; whatever one concludes about why they ended, they establish that the positions are not fixed by nature.
Finally, one observation from this field. The article’s proposal that mediators prepare for a ripeness that has not yet arrived is the most practical thing in it and the hardest to fund, because it produces nothing visible. Channels are maintained by people who meet for years without result, and the value of that work becomes apparent only at the moment when someone needs to make a call and finds that a line exists. Every settlement examined in this journal has depended on such channels having been kept open by someone during the period when keeping them open looked pointless.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
BBC News (2023) Ukraine War: President Putin Speech Fact-Checked. 21 February 2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/64718139
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Friedrich, J. (2025) Outcome Neutral? The Limits of Third-Party Mediation in Ending the War Against Ukraine. Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin.
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Kleiboer, M. (1996) Understanding Success and Failure of International Mediation. Journal of Conflict Resolution 40(2), 360 to 389.
Ott, M. (1972) Mediation as a Method of Conflict Resolution: Two Cases. International Organization 26(4), 595 to 618.
Randle, R. (1973) The Origins of Peace: A Study of Peacemaking and the Structure of Peace Settlements. Free Press, New York.
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Treisman, R. (2022) Putin’s Claim of Fighting against Ukraine Neo-Nazis Distorts History, Scholars Say. NPR, 1 March 2022.
Zartman, I. W. (2008) Negotiation and Conflict Management: Essays on Theory and Practice. Routledge, Abingdon.
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
Initiative on the Safe Transportation of Grain and Foodstuffs from Ukrainian Ports, Istanbul, 22 July 2022.
Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, 5 December 1994.
Constitution of Ukraine, 1996, Article 73 on the alteration of territory.
Minsk Protocol, 5 September 2014, and the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, 12 February 2015.
International Atomic Energy Agency, reports on nuclear safety and security in Ukraine, Vienna.
Fearon, J. D. (1995). Rationalist Explanations for War. International Organization, 49(3), 379 to 414.
Zartman, I. W. (2001). The Timing of Peace Initiatives: Hurting Stalemates and Ripe Moments. Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 1(1), 8 to 18.
Centre of Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation, professional standards and field manuals, Geneva.
From Kill Switch to Peace Switch: Rethinking AI Governance in African Military Law
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
EDITORIAL NOTE *
This article names particular states in connection with surveillance practices and assesses the conduct of their governments. Those assessments reflect the author’s own perspective and rest on the sources cited; this journal’s editorial position is neutral. The article was written in 2024 and should be read with that date in mind.
ABSTRACT
The escalating integration of artificial intelligence into warfare has ignited a fierce global debate, often narrowly confined to the perils of killer robots, or lethal autonomous weapons systems, and to calls for outright bans. This framing, while highlighting critical ethical concerns regarding accountability and human control over decisions of life and death, risks obscuring the broader transformative potential of the technology and the need for more holistic governance. Humans remain superior to such systems in judgement and knowledge under significant uncertainty. This paper argues that focusing merely on a kill switch, meaning the prohibition or stringent control of autonomous weapons, is an insufficient and reactive approach to governance. It advocates instead a peace switch paradigm, urging a proactive re-evaluation of the diverse applications of this technology in order to foster international security and stability. Beyond autonomous targeting, it enhances intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, logistics, and decision support. Drawing on global efforts to regulate military applications, particularly the human-centred approaches developed in Europe, this paper argues that the dual-use nature of the technology, in which commercial advance significantly outpaces military development, requires integrated and forward-looking legal frameworks. While the sources consulted do not specifically address African military law, the principles explored here offer a foundation for any region seeking to move beyond a purely prohibitive stance. Such an approach would embed human-centred ethical guidance within comprehensive legal and policy frameworks, ensuring that the evolution of this technology serves not only to avert catastrophic conflict but actively builds pathways to lasting peace and security.
KEYWORDS
Artificial intelligence, humanitarian, drones, peace, law, military
INTRODUCTION
The Harmattan, a relentless wind whipping sand across the vast plains of the Sahel, carries with it a new kind of chill. It is the chill of uncertainty, a fear that whispers at the edges of the sandstorm, the fear of machines making decisions of life and death on the battlefield. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, artificial intelligence and machine learning systems could have profound implications for the role of humans in armed conflict, particularly with regard to the increasing autonomy of weapon systems and other unmanned systems, new forms of cyber and information warfare, and, more broadly, the nature of decision-making. Artificial intelligence is no longer science fiction; it is a presence in the war-torn landscapes of Africa.
Several African countries, including Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Angola, and Mozambique, have invoked national security to justify the deployment of surveillance technologies. The difficulty with mass surveillance is that it creates a climate of fear in which citizens are presumed guilty until proven innocent, and it alters the balance of power between a state and its citizens. In Nigeria, 2.2 billion naira was allocated in the budget of 2018 for a social media monitoring capability, alongside instructions to the military to watch for anti-government content online. In Libya, autonomous lethal weapons systems have reportedly been used in fighting. In Zimbabwe, a military-driven national facial recognition scheme has raised concerns over the technology’s alleged use as a surveillance tool. The draft continental policy of the African Union does not explicitly address the use of such technology by African governments for national security purposes, although it acknowledges that hazardous risks may arise.
MAIN CORPUS
Potential benefits in African militaries
In the field of peace and security, these technologies can enable more effective conflict analysis and early warning. They can support peacemaking and mediation by addressing information asymmetry. They can also enable state institutions to enhance their capacity for enforcing law and order and for countering criminality, thereby contributing to the security of citizens. Surveillance and policing platforms are deployed for tracking organised criminal networks and for responding to or preventing the activities of terrorist or insurgent groups.
The Nigerian Navy is adopting such technologies, which are increasingly used in ship construction and maintenance, as maritime operations become more complex. The Chief of the Naval Staff set this out during the presentation of a paper by naval participants at the National Defence College, on artificial intelligence and ship maintenance as a strategic option for the Nigerian Navy by 2035, stating that the service must continue to adopt and integrate these technologies in order to maintain a competitive edge during operations.
In light of the need for guidelines and legal frameworks that promote transparency, accountability, and compliance with human rights in the adoption and use of such technologies, at least seven African countries, namely Benin, Egypt, Ghana, Mauritius, Rwanda, Senegal, and Tunisia, have developed national programmes. While the adoption of such regimes at national level is important, the governance and regulatory challenges posed by these technologies exceed the capacity of individual states. One area where they are already in use, and will undoubtedly spread with unpredictable benefits and possibly much harm, is in the many wars and conflicts across the continent.
Risks and ethical concerns
These technologies also carry negative aspects, some of them of particular concern for Africa. As a general-purpose technology, artificial intelligence is susceptible to being used for harmful ends. There are increasing concerns associated with generative systems in relation to disinformation, cybersecurity threats, hate speech targeting women and minorities, and the incitement of violence in times of crisis and conflict. Synthetic voice and image material has been used to impersonate political figures and to propagate false information during elections in Nigeria and during the civil war in Sudan.
As Nate Allen of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies observes, artificial intelligence is already built into the technology used for surveillance platforms and satellite image analysis, and one application is the identification of movement such as tyre tracks. He notes that an autonomous fighter aircraft is not what is required, but rather an autonomous drone that can distinguish a tank from a car, and that what will work best in Africa is whatever is low cost and relatively easy to use. Drones have already been widely used in conflicts across the continent.
Unprecedented capabilities
Such systems, drawing on probabilistic reasoning and advanced algorithms, can compress the observe, orient, decide and act cycle to near-instantaneous speeds, creating scenarios in which machine-led interactions far outpace human cognition. This translates into greater battlefield awareness through the fusion of multi-source sensor data, enabling target identification and planning at scales beyond human capacity. It also facilitates a shift towards mass over quality, allowing the deployment of expendable autonomous systems, from drones to lethal autonomous weapons, that operate in hazardous environments with endurance and speed beyond human limits, reducing risk to personnel and capital investment.
Furthermore, these technologies strengthen both offensive and defensive capabilities in cyber operations, providing tools for more potent attacks and for continuously evolving countermeasures, and thereby becoming a strategic advantage that fuels a global arms race and alters power equations. This technological development promises a future in which wars are fought with enhanced speed, scale, and autonomy, demanding a fundamental reassessment of deterrence and of military strength.
International humanitarian law
International humanitarian law is at risk of being outpaced by the advance of these technologies. Who is accountable for the actions of an autonomous weapon system? How can respect for proportionality and distinction, principles enshrined in that body of law, be ensured when the decision belongs to an algorithm? The legal frameworks governing warfare have not caught up with this reality, leaving a dangerous vacuum.
There is some jurisprudence on the question, although it is scarce. In August 2020 the case of R (Bridges) v Chief Constable of South Wales Police was the first challenge in the United Kingdom to the use of such technology invoking human rights law. South Wales Police was trialling live automated facial recognition, comparing images of people attending public events with images held on a database. The Court of Appeal found that there was no proper basis in law for its use, and that the deployment did not satisfy the requirements of data protection legislation and of the public sector equality duty. The case halted the force’s use of the technology while leaving open the possibility of its reintroduction on a proper legal footing.
Some have raised the prospect of swarms of armed autonomous drones that are intended to distinguish combatants from civilians but that in practice may fail to do so. Others have suggested that these technologies could be used to anticipate conflict and civil unrest, allowing early intervention that preserves peace or mitigates violence. The Economic Community of West African States is understood to be working towards incorporating such methods into predictive models using information gathered from its members.
The advent of artificial intelligence, while reshaping the mechanics of warfare, also holds a nascent power to reduce war’s inherent uncertainty. Its capacity for rapid sensor fusion and probabilistic reasoning promises to reduce the fog of war, providing decision makers with greater situational awareness and potentially leading to more informed choices. This enhanced informational landscape could mitigate uncertainty about intentions and outcomes, a fundamental driver of conflict, and could prompt a convergence in expectations among international actors. Its potential to strengthen cyber defences could tip the long-term balance towards resilience and protection, eroding the structural advantages of attackers and possibly deterring aggression. The ongoing global discourse on meaningful human control over autonomous weapon systems, and the emphasis on ethical guidance, reflect a collective effort to ensure that human judgement, empathy, and moral consideration remain paramount, in the aspiration that the power of the technology may help to constrain the violence it could otherwise amplify.
SUMMARY *
The article’s proposal is to move the question from prohibition to design. On the author’s account, the debate over autonomous weapons has absorbed the available attention while the technologies that will actually shape African security, cheap drones, satellite analysis, facial recognition and social media monitoring, arrive without any comparable scrutiny, and several are already in use against populations rather than in armed conflict. The peace switch the author proposes is the claim that the same capabilities that permit targeting also permit early warning, analysis and mediation support, and that a governance framework built only to prohibit will regulate neither. The continental dimension gives this its force: the author observes that regulation exceeds the capacity of individual states, that the African Union lacks the instruments to legislate, and that responsibility will therefore fall back on national frameworks that mostly do not yet exist.
CONCLUSION
South Africa now stands as a continental pioneer, having inaugurated a defence-focused artificial intelligence hub within the Military Academy as one of the latest arms of the AI Institute of South Africa. This development is not an isolated step; it marks a shift in how African states are beginning to combine questions of war, peace, and machine logic. By contrast, the African Union remains structurally constrained in its ability to harmonise policy, to legislate enforceable standards, or to govern the military applications of emerging technologies, and its ambitions in this field remain aspirational. Even if the draft continental strategy secures parliamentary endorsement, it will still fall to sovereign states to give effect to the vision through national frameworks.
The crossroads is technological, philosophical, moral, and historical. Will Africa become a canvas for experimental militarised intelligence, haunted by the ghosts in the machine, or will it reimagine itself as a global leader in forging responsible, peace-centred governance of these technologies? These questions are not rhetorical flourishes. They are blueprints awaiting architects.
We may not yet possess definitive answers, but raising such questions is a beginning. It is an invitation to policymakers, to scholars, to African technologists and jurists, to create together the principles, processes, and pathways to peace that we do not yet have. In interrogating the uncertain, we prepare. The future of war and peace in Africa may well be written in algorithms, but the moral code must be authored by human hands. Africa’s technological awakening must not only be intelligent; it must be wise.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s central move, from prohibition to governance, is the right one, and the reason it is right can be stated more sharply than the article states it. The negotiations at Geneva on lethal autonomous weapons have run for more than a decade under a convention that operates by consensus, which means that any single state can prevent an outcome, and several with the relevant capabilities have done so. A prohibition that will not be agreed is not a policy. Meanwhile the systems that are actually deployed are not the ones under negotiation, and the article’s own examples establish this: facial recognition, social media monitoring, satellite analysis and low-cost armed drones are in use now, are procured commercially, and fall outside every instrument being debated.
That points to what a governance framework would have to cover, and it is broader than the weapons question. Export and procurement controls determine what enters a country and on what conditions. Data protection law determines what may be collected about whom. Judicial authorisation determines whether a surveillance capability may be turned on a population. Procurement transparency determines whether a system’s error rates are known before it is bought. None of these is a matter of arms control, and each is within the competence of a national legislature. The article’s observation that responsibility will fall to states is therefore not a counsel of despair but a description of where the work lies.
Two clarifications strengthen the legal analysis. First, the existing framework is not as empty as the metaphor of a vacuum suggests. The obligation under Additional Protocol I to review new weapons and means of warfare for compliance already applies to autonomous systems, and it is binding on states parties whether or not any new instrument is concluded; the difficulty is that very few states conduct such reviews rigorously and fewer publish them. Establishing a review capacity is achievable, is cheap relative to procurement, and would do more in the near term than the outcome of any negotiation. Second, the case cited from the United Kingdom is a stronger authority than the article suggests, because the ground on which it succeeded is transferable: the deployment failed not because the technology was inaccurate but because the discretion as to who went on the database and where the system was used was left to individual officers without a legal framework governing it. That is a rule of law argument, and it is available in any jurisdiction with a constitutional right to privacy, which most African constitutions contain.
Two further observations for this journal’s readers. The article’s claim that these technologies can support mediation and early warning is the least developed part of it and the most relevant to this field, and the record supports a modest version: automated monitoring of hate speech, satellite detection of displacement and crop failure, and the analysis of communications for signals of mobilisation have all contributed to warning systems, and each shares the weakness identified in every review of prevention, namely that the failures have concerned political will rather than information. A better detector attached to the same decision-making produces earlier reports of atrocities that are not prevented. And the dual-use point cuts both ways: the same platform that maps population movement for humanitarian planning maps it for targeting, which means the governance question is not what a system can do but who controls it and under what authorisation.
Finally, the article’s framing of Africa’s position deserves to be taken as more than rhetoric. The continent is currently a market rather than a producer, which means that the terms on which these systems arrive are set elsewhere, and that the accountability for their failures is correspondingly difficult to locate. The most consequential thing the states concerned could do is not to draft a declaration but to establish jointly the technical capacity to evaluate what they are being sold, because a purchaser who can assess a system is a purchaser who can impose conditions on it. That is a modest institutional proposal, and it is the one on which everything else in this article depends.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
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Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 1977, Articles 35, 36, 48, 51 and 57.
Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons, 1980, and the reports of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, Geneva.
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Boulanin, V., & Verbruggen, M. (2017). Mapping the Development of Autonomy in Weapon Systems. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Stockholm.
Allen, N. (2024). Advancing Artificial Intelligence Governance in Africa. Africa Center for Strategic Studies, Washington D.C.
Buolamwini, J., & Gebru, T. (2018). Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 81, 1 to 15.
Building a Transborder Social Identity within BRICS+ and a Fragmented Multilateral World
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT
This editorial discusses the ongoing difficulties and future challenges that BRICS nations face on their way to a meaningful political impact and supplementary relevance on a global level. More often than not, stakeholders and decision-makers ignore crucial and fundamental necessities that societies require in order to enable and initiate a sustainable and lasting process of growth. Potentially, politicians in charge may be aware of the importance of such anthropological pieces of the puzzle and should accordingly put them on their agenda. Reality seems to prove that the general focus is widely placed on targeting and canvassing short-term financial turnovers and outcomes related to the balancing or unbalancing of global impact only. Forecasting the failure of such progress, this text offers a more convenient strategy for finding one’s position within the global community, based on mutual respect, shared responsibility, and a holistic approach to peacebuilding.
KEYWORDS
Social identity, global alliance, political divergence, multilateral fragmentation, global stability, sustainable world order, holistic peacebuilding
INTRODUCTION
Starting off our journey, I would like to create a common ground of understanding by having a brief look at the status quo of the BRICS community in the year 2025. Being initially a group of interest, the geopolitical relevance of Brazil, Russia, India, and China was discussed by the Goldman Sachs researcher Jim O’Neill in 2001 (O’Neill 2001), thereby introducing the term and the notion of the BRIC states (Mostafa 2013). It makes sense to mention that South Africa was accepted as the first additional member in 2010 (Harrison 2018). South Africa thereby formed the fifth member of the alliance, occasioned the name change to the common term BRICS, and complemented the group in a meaningful geopolitical way (Erdmann 2024b).
By reviewing the economic history of the group’s members, we can see that all these states underwent crucial economic changes and faced challenging financial situations in the late twentieth century (EFSAS 2023). Awareness of the members’ natural resources, the increasing level of global consumption, the improvement of pricing strategies, and the expanding interlinkage of world trade later established overall economic stability (EFSAS 2023) within these states. Nowadays this group finds itself in an economically comfortable situation (Erdmann 2024a), controlling a meaningful quantity of the world’s natural resources and holding a key role in global trade (Iqbal 2021).
Being still a purely economically oriented alliance, the group could not be more diverse in a multitude of aspects. Potentially this, and the complexity of the alliance in itself, is one reason why it took the group 24 years to grow from the initial four states to a more significant number of members (Glogowski 2024). Even though the number of states interested in partnering with BRICS extends this number by far, we may still find a lack of a focused and determined agenda explaining what BRICS actually stands for. The currently available communiqués look like lists of interests stated by the broad quantity of members and partners, while every country intends to get its individual points onto the paper. In particular, the vague formulation of an agenda bears many uncertain aspects that can turn out to be uncomfortable for countries finding themselves in this specific economic alliance. While being part of BRICS, many of these members strengthen their independence and stability by trading with potential opponents of the group (Erdmann 2024b). This inconsistency and contradiction give birth to an inner instability that prevents BRICS from building the solid and impactful global force that it might be looking for, namely an entity that strongly leads or manages the world economy and world politics at the same time, based on its all-embracing network and its holdings of fundamental natural resources.
MAIN CORPUS
A hyper-diverse global alliance called BRICS
The subject of our analysis often presents itself as a fast-growing economic unity that stands up in order to challenge the potentially existing Western financial and trade order, and to reorganise it towards a much-needed balance, or towards leading it into the opposite extreme. Even though such a balancing and unbalancing process, depending on one’s perspective, takes place continuously, we are now having a look at the uniqueness of the M.U.M. model (Erdmann 2024b). This model describes the ongoing shift between multipolarism and unipolarism and back again, as it presents itself at the beginning of this millennium. In my previous article on the dynamics of polarized pluralism, I already explained and outlined the nature of this phenomenon, while the present text extends the previous dynamics in global reach and impact.
Being aware of the picture that potentially underlies a specific strategic plan, and that is therefore projected towards the public, we also want to paint a picture based on our own research and our own understanding of this situation, which is highly interlinked with the world community. Basically, we are talking about a global alliance that stretches over four continents, currently counts nine full member countries, and has recently accepted thirteen partner countries (Norton 2024). In order to identify even more complexity, we need to say that its members are spread over four continents, while economic partnership with selected members of BRICS spans all five.
The fact that BRICS finds itself completely decentralised often turns out to be an impactful selling point, while it could also materialise as the weakest point in the portfolio. Sharing a mutual interest in common economic growth, the alliance includes a broad quantity of languages, cultures, political systems, and diverse trade partners, and above all a wide range of economic competencies and capabilities (Solomon 2022) among its members, although this last point may not apply to all partners, as many of them suffer considerable economic instability. This level of diversity turns the alliance into a highly heterogeneous group (BpB 2023), and perhaps into the most diverse group that has ever existed in modern history on a global scale. The ongoing strategic expansion of BRICS forms part of the alliance’s goal of raising its economic power and its global relevance based on natural resources (Tseen Fu 2024). A closer but unreflected view may suggest that the goal of the alliance is simply to create a trade network of producers and consumers excluding what may be labelled as Western countries. A protracted exclusion from the so-called Western world order makes members of the alliance strike back by continuously admitting new members, propagating inclusiveness (Tseen Fu 2024), and increasing the level of country-based diversity to a more extensive and questionable degree.
My article on BRICS and the art of growing from within already discussed the extraordinary challenge for a transcontinental and inter-political alliance to grow in a sound and sustainable way (Erdmann 2024a), especially when potentially authoritarian regimes and opposing economic relations are compressed into one group. Nonetheless, besides already being extraordinarily diverse, BRICS continues to extend the number of its members and partners and thereby raises the level of internal complexity. A brief look at some of the core members of BRICS, namely China and India, shows how two almost historic rivals find themselves placed in one alliance while remaining highly competitive opponents on a multitude of levels. Interestingly enough, Russia takes over the role of a mediator in order to bring such members closer together (Baunov 2024). Four of the recently admitted members are likewise involved in complex disputes. Saudi Arabia and Iran are engaged in a long-term dispute over regional predominance and political integrity (Desta 2011), while Egypt and Ethiopia find themselves in an ongoing contention over natural resources, namely the dispute over the waters of the Nile (BpB 2023).
A baseless iceberg?
Considering the ambitious growth and the overall target of BRICS, namely to be the rebalancing tool in world economics, we may wonder where this vision and motivation actually come from. The worldwide economic playing field offers a multitude of alliances for countries to join, to participate in actively, and through which to create lasting benefits. Forming part of the G20 and BRICS at the same time is such an ambivalent example that it raises many questions. All founding members of BRICS, including South Africa, are members of the G20, while they identified the need not only to join a more Western-run alliance but also to be part of an opposing one that challenges the economic stability of several member states of the former. Such a contradiction does not support one’s credibility in having a clear vision, but more likely creates uncertainty on a global scale, a feature that mankind currently does not need at all, and potentially turns out to be a very poor political strategy that supports fragmentation instead of unification.
The more we examine the peak of the iceberg, namely the image of BRICS that is communicated to the broad public, the more complex and confusing the setting of this potential alliance becomes. Step by step, we may discover what looks like a bottomless construct that is lost in its own complexity. You may see that I even challenge the term alliance as such, which traditionally identifies a group of countries or parties that share one common goal or interest (Cambridge 2025). The previously mentioned communiqués and the global economic interlinkages of the group’s members suggest interests pointing in all possible political directions, while some look for economic growth, others target financial stability, still others try to enrich their global network, and finally some aim to appear as challenging as possible towards potential Western opponents (Baunov 2024). This seems to be the new identity of a Russian-led BRICS, namely a focus on the number of members and potentially less on the realistic, productive impact that new partners may provide. Adding new members to BRICS while continuing to fight in Ukraine may also serve as a wider legitimation for the Russian leadership to proceed in this political direction.
Nobody can deny that joining BRICS as a member or partner in these times serves as a political message towards the global community. Such countries should be well aware of the meaning of this symbolic act, namely that they support what BRICS members commonly stand for. Here, a potentially anti-Western perspective (Baunov 2024) may serve as a common point of interest, while most members remain involved in trading with a multitude of Western countries. Generally, we can observe that joining a group incorporates or requires two fundamental points, namely that each member supports the overall group target and supports what individual peer members stand for. This simple fact perfectly underlines the level of contradiction in which BRICS finds itself, especially with reference to dual memberships in alliances that are for and against the Western order. Whether it be the potentially anti-Western course, the unclear overall target of BRICS, or the Russian prominence in constantly inviting new members (Baunov 2024), this uncertainty does not attract everyone. It is worth noting that Argentina declined to join and that the position of Saudi Arabia remains unclear, as no official confirmation of accession can be identified (Baunov 2024). The fact that Russia, on the basis of its activism, placed itself in a leading position within BRICS made the character of the group change from an initially cooperative alliance targeting mutual development into something closer to an instrument of unpredictable anti-Western messaging, losing itself in the baseless complexity of a self-focused worldview and partial global interests.
Even though such a global partnership has the potential to float solidly like an iceberg, its opacity beneath the surface extends to such a degree that its baselessness starts creating downforce instead of supporting the whole superstructure. The fundamental question may be what measures need to be taken to turn the currently existing construct into a globally responsible, well-respected alliance that supports peace, mutual respect, and socio-economic growth, if this is the goal at all.
Ordo ab chao
Considering that BRICS is currently more a rag rug of nations longing for sustainable economic growth and wealth management, we may commonly agree that there is no access to wealth without prior management. Such management needs to initiate or create the path towards wealth that may be taken by all members, partners, and applicants in the same way. In order to begin building such a path, we need to understand how to build a supportive order that enables the individual, whether a single person or a nation, to understand how it defines itself and where this conceptual structure comes from.
Here we need to face one specific reality, namely that the level of diversity that BRICS covers surpasses that of existing regional or continental alliances and unions by far. In this way BRICS may not be compared, on the basis of its complexity of cultures, languages, religions, and economic necessities, to any other existing union, such as the European Union, the African Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or the Union of South American Nations. Currently we do not see indications supporting the understanding that BRICS needs to grow from within (Erdmann 2024a) in order to become sound, to grow in a sustainable way, and to build a lasting global value for mankind. In the meantime, the focus may be placed on growing by number, on the basis that more and more members and partners are accepted, promising them credibility and legitimacy (Adams 2023).
Having such widespread diversity as a foundation, we may understand that what is needed is a common creed or a transborder identity that reconciles differences and harmonises diversity in an all-embracing way. The term identity offers us a very complex nature and a rich scale of interpretations. As soon as consciousness is sharpened and the individual realises their own existence, the quest for an identity is born. Identity is a multilayered word that is of importance on an individual level, a group level, a regional level, a national level, a continental level, and that may reach its climax on a global level, including ethnicities, languages, creeds, and cultures. Even though we may identify a multitude of different sorts of identity, they all seem to have one common denominator, namely the quest for a harmonic and organised aspect.
Accordingly, we may imagine that it is a very tricky project to create or build a truly transborder identity, since what is needed is something that people can believe in, that connects them, and that motivates them to start speaking of themselves as a sound community. What we are looking for is the still missing central piece of the puzzle that completes the artwork and that gives a higher meaning to angles, visions, and perspectives. This piece could turn chaos into order and provide BRICS with the opportunity to stop being a potentially unpredictable challenger to the existing global construct. BRICS could leave this image behind and start growing solidly within itself and within the global community, in order to become a cornerstone for global balance, peace, and harmony. This missing link, or transborder identity, can only be identified and developed by the community of BRICS itself (Yzerbyt 1997), and starts with the discernment that only merged pieces complete the picture, or that all countries are needed to build a lasting global community.
SUMMARY
The argument advanced here moves from a diagnosis to a proposal that is deliberately larger than its subject. The diagnosis is that BRICS has grown by addition rather than from within, that its members hold interests which point in incompatible directions, and that an association defined chiefly by what it is not cannot supply the coherence that its stated ambitions require. The proposal is that what such a grouping lacks is not a better communiqué but a shared identity, and that identity cannot be manufactured from above because it forms among people rather than between governments. The final turn is the one that distinguishes this text from a policy assessment: if the difficulty is that alliances define themselves by exclusion, then the remedy cannot be a better alliance, and the author accordingly declines to offer BRICS a strategy and offers instead the observation that the only membership large enough to solve the problem is one that no one has to be admitted to.
CONCLUSION
In order to be able to build a transborder identity that truly combines a highly diverse membership, we need to understand the uniqueness of the common goal and the specific challenges of the setting in question. Traditionally a group identifies itself as such on the basis of a common language, dialect, culture, history, or tradition (Akuche 2016). Obviously, not all members of the wider BRICS circle are different, but they are potentially diverse. Some of them share languages but not dialects; others share religions but not their traditions within them. Here we can clearly see that diversity is not the same as fragmentation, which is more likely the counterpart of unity. Having stated at the beginning that the high level of diversity among the nations involved may be the weak spot of BRICS, we find ourselves at the point of turning a fragile ornament into the truss of a superstructure. This means that if it proves possible to build an identity among BRICS members, it should also be realistic to build an even stronger one, namely the identity of a global community, incorporating those previously mentioned.
We may have learned so far that building a transborder identity is an extensive task, especially as setting a foundation of common understanding begins with each person and targets the overall conformity of the sum of diverse individuals wishing to label themselves as members of the group. Here we may challenge the traditional concepts of strategic economic growth, and the methods accordingly based on building inclusive and exclusive alliances such as the G20, the G7, BRICS, and NATO. The question that we need to analyse for ourselves is whether such an exclusive mindset still meets the necessities of today’s global and multilateral world.
My reflection and analysis reveal to me that exclusive behaviour often turns out to be a strong indication of an advanced level of fear of loss or disadvantage. On the basis of our general global connectivity, referring to individuals, companies, organisations, and countries, I strongly doubt that building, separating, and fragmenting economic borders supports global growth. Accordingly, such labelling supports exclusiveness, which in itself is often a door opener for fragmentation and extremism (Erdmann 2024c). What mankind potentially needs in a time of economic and social insecurity is a common creed that binds all humans together at the bottom of their hearts, a creed that is so fundamental that it touches and supports basic human necessities, namely stability, peace, and harmony. If we do not build harmony at the grassroots level of the individual and their family, we have no space in which to develop a sound identity that surpasses borders and embraces the wealth of mankind.
You may already sense where this will possibly take us. BRICS, but more likely mankind itself, needs to create the consciousness of a global community, and more specifically the awareness that exclusiveness and fragmentation do not support real stability and global growth in the long term. In order to initiate such a process we need politicians who act like responsible adults and who understand that owning the biggest piece of the cake does not automatically grant satisfaction. On the basis of what has been written so far, we may all imagine a world without the trade associations and unions mentioned above, and we may envision that what we more likely need is a common level of true responsibility towards the planet Earth and towards mankind, far beyond self-centred and ignorant behaviour that rests on and reproduces chaotic circumstances in the human mindset and on the surface that we walk on.
Therefore BRICS, and again mankind in general, needs an agenda that clearly communicates, in a reasonable and realistic way, shared values that offer tranquillity on a global level and enable mankind to develop a common identity, not as individuals but as a global community. It is crucial here to emphasise the importance of a name, and not to place an excluding name in the front row, such as BRICS, the G20, or the G7. Now it is humankind that counts first, it is humankind that needs to turn into a global community of mutual respect and responsibility, it is humankind that needs to connect and grow from within, and it is humankind that does not need a name in order to differ, because it already has a name that binds all of us together, namely citizens of the world.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The central claim here, that an association without a shared identity cannot become more than the sum of its transactions, is well made and can be tested against what the group has actually built, which strengthens the argument in one direction and qualifies it in another.
The qualification first. Some of what BRICS has produced does not depend on shared identity at all. The New Development Bank lends, the contingent reserve arrangement exists, and the arrangements for settlement in national currencies have expanded, in each case because the members had a convergent interest in reducing dependence on a single financial system rather than because they agreed about anything else. This is the pattern the functionalist literature describes: cooperation in narrow technical domains proceeds among parties who share nothing else, and it sometimes generates the trust that broader cooperation requires. Judged as a coalition of convenience with limited objectives, the record is more substantial than the framing of an incoherent alliance suggests.
The support comes at the point where the ambition exceeds that. A common currency, a coordinated political position, or collective action against a third party each require members to accept costs for the group, and that is precisely what identity supplies and what interest alone does not. The author’s diagnosis therefore holds for everything BRICS says it wants to become, and the internal disputes he lists, between two members over a border, between two over regional primacy, and between two over a river, are the concrete form of the difficulty.
Two additions belong here. The observation that members trade extensively with those the group defines itself against is accurate and it points somewhere the text does not go: it is evidence that the anti-Western framing is a rhetorical register rather than an operating principle, and the states concerned have been explicit that they seek additional options rather than an alternative bloc. Read that way, the incoherence the author identifies is less a failure of the alliance than an accurate representation of what its members want, which is not to choose. And the difficulty of building identity in a heterogeneous grouping has been studied in the case the text sets aside as incomparable: the European experience suggests that shared identity followed decades of functional integration rather than preceding it, that it remains contested, and that the institutions which produced it were courts, parliaments, exchange programmes and a common market rather than declarations.
Finally, the closing turn deserves to be taken as seriously as it is meant. The argument that exclusive groupings reproduce the fragmentation they are formed to protect against is the same argument this journal makes about identity at every other scale, and its consistency is the point. It also carries the difficulty that every universalist proposal carries: an identity that excludes no one motivates no one, and the practical work therefore lies not in replacing particular loyalties but in nesting them, so that a person can be a citizen of a place and of the world without the first requiring the second to be false. That is the dual identity finding from the intergroup literature, and it is the mechanism by which the aspiration in the final paragraph could become something other than an aspiration.
*Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Adams, Mubarak (2023) BRICS and the New World Order: Implications for the Existing World Order. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371804604_BRICS_AND_THE_NEW_WORLD_ORDER_IMPLICATIONS_FOR_THE_EXISTING_WORLD_ORDER
Akuche, Andre Ben Moses (2016) Nation Building and the Impediments of Building the Nigerian Nation. https://www.academia.edu/31350929/Nation_Building_and_the_Impediments_of_Building_the_Nigerian_Nation
Baunov, Alexander (2024) New Identity of BRICS. Carnegie Endowment. https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2024/10/brics-russia-global-power-opposition?lang=en
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (2023) Erweiterung der BRICS Gruppe. https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/hintergrund-aktuell/540816/erweiterung-der-brics-gruppe/
Cambridge Dictionary (2025) Alliance. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/alliance
Desta, Teddy (2011) The Iran Saudi Arabia Power Struggle. https://www.academia.edu/42105879/The_Iran_Saudi_Arabia_Power_Struggle
EFSAS (2023) The BRICS: Origins, Evolution and 2023 Expansion. https://www.efsas.org/publications/study-papers/the-brics-origins-evolution-and-expansion/
Erdmann, Daniel (2024a) BRICS: Minus x Minus = Plus? About the Art and Challenges of Growing from Within. WMO Conflict Insight. ISSN 2628 6998. https://worldmediation.org/brics-minus-x-minus-plus-about-the-art-and-challenges-of-growing-from-within/
Erdmann, Daniel (2024b) The Dynamics of Polarized Pluralism: On the Benefits, Challenges, and Threats of a Constantly Changing Fragmented World Order. WMO Conflict Insight. ISSN 2628 6998. https://worldmediation.org/the-dynamics-of-polarized-pluralism-on-the-benefits-challenges-and-threats-of-a-constantly-changing-fragmented-world-order/
Erdmann, Daniel (2024c) Personal Identity and Peacebuilding: A Critical Reflection. WMO Conflict Insight. ISSN 2628 6998. https://worldmediation.org/personal-identity-and-peace-building/
Glogowski, Aleksander (2024) India, Pakistan and BRICS after the 2024 Kazan Summit. https://www.academia.edu/125302884/India_Pakistan_and_BRICS_after_the_2024_Kazan_summit
Harrison, Philip (2018) South Africa in the BRICS. https://www.academia.edu/116590774/South_Africa_in_the_BRICS
Iqbal, Badar Alam (2021) BRICS as a Driver of Global Economic Growth and Development. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09749101211067096
Mostafa, Mahmood (2013) The Rise of the BRICS and Their Challenge to the G7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271724885_The_rise_of_the_BRICS_and_their_challenge_to_the_G7
Norton, Ben (2024) BRICS Keeps Growing in a Multipolar World. https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/10/26/brics-13-partner-countries-summit-kazan-russia/
O’Neill, Jim (2001) Building Better Global Economic BRICs. Goldman Sachs. https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/goldman-sachs-research/building-better
Solomon, Mussie (2022) BRICS Plus and Its Major Impacts on Poor Members. https://www.academia.edu/124839172/BRICS_and_its_Major_Impacts_on_Poor_Members
Tseen Fu, Brice Lee (2024) Legitimacy through Diversity: China’s Leadership in the BRICS Plus Expansion for Global Balance. https://www.academia.edu/122725632/Legitimacy_through_Diversity_Chinas_Leadership_in_the_BRICS_Expansion_for_Global_Balance
Yzerbyt, Vincent (1997) Building a European Identity. https://www.academia.edu/84255502/Building_a_European_identity
Further reading added by the WMO Editorial Team
Agreement on the New Development Bank, Fortaleza, 15 July 2014, and the Treaty for the Establishment of a BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, 2014.
Kazan Declaration of the XVI BRICS Summit, 23 October 2024.
Haas, E. B. (1958). The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social and Economic Forces 1950 to 1957. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
Acharya, A. (2018). Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Stuenkel, O. (2020). The BRICS and the Future of Global Order (2nd edition). Lexington Books, Lanham.
Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2000). Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model. Psychology Press, Philadelphia.
Risse, T. (2010). A Community of Europeans? Transnational Identities and Public Spheres. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Where Do War Children Go!!!
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
EDITORIAL NOTE *
The opening epigraph of the original manuscript, an unsourced claim about the number of people who take their own lives daily, has been omitted here. The claim is not supported by any evidence and the subject is one on which a journal with an ISSN should not carry unverified assertions. The article’s argument does not depend on it. The Mandela and Kennedy quotations that structure the remainder of the text are retained.
ABSTRACT
Several crimes are perpetrated under the cover of conflict and chaos. One of the most terrible of these is sexual violence. This paper examines the predicament of children born as a result of rape, forced maternity, and forced marriage during armed conflict. These children’s difficulties are emotional, social, and economic. Armed conflicts do not simply occur and come to an end without consequences. There are victims that society cannot deny or neglect. This work aims to call attention to children whose existence is the direct result of sexual violence during armed conflict, to argue for a safe place for these victims, for the healing of their wounds, for measures to curb the recurrence of such crimes, and for the peaceful settlement of violent conflicts through mediation, negotiation, and diplomacy.
KEYWORDS *
Children born of war, conflict related sexual violence, stigmatization, social exclusion, statelessness, citizenship, Boko Haram, Lord’s Resistance Army, Norway, reparations, Convention on the Rights of the Child, peacebuilding
INTRODUCTION
It happens often, very often, that the distress and pain associated with war does not end when the white flag is waved to invite and accept peace or the whistle is blown to cease destruction. Many will relive the agonies of the war for a long time, perhaps for the rest of their lives. That is the sad ordeal of war children. Many may never have the opportunity to experience paternal care. Many, in addition to their economic disadvantage, are mentally distressed and likely to drop out of educational institutions. Highly distrustful and self-protective, many cannot maintain healthy social relationships. Angry and frustrated, some yield to a life of crime in response to the hostility that surrounded the beginning of their lives. However, these individuals can live a normal life despite the circumstances of their birth. International organizations, individuals, governmental and non-governmental organizations can contribute to easing the pain of these victims.
MAIN CORPUS
Case study
Anthill Broadway Bar buzzed with activity as evening turned to night, visitors locating a good spot for the night out, waitresses fulfilling orders, and cooks turning menu instructions into piping hot dishes. Behind the scenes, Rani dutifully washed dirty dishes and sorted them into shelves and drawers. His mind kept wandering to his quiet and peaceful friend, Dani. He yearned to have Dani working beside him at Anthill Broadway Bar, but Dani had no means of identification to secure a job because of the circumstances of his birth. Dani’s story is unsettling: even the less privileged call him unfortunate.
Sixteen-year-old Rani and seventeen-year-old Dani have one thing in common; their lives have been unfavourably defined by war. The untimely death of Rani’s father during the military defence of Anthill from foreign invasion thrust him into early fatherly responsibilities, because his sick mother and his two siblings had become dependent on him for their livelihood. His educational and career goals took second place because the pressing financial and family needs of his relatives could not be delayed. Dani’s story runs in a different direction.
Dani grew up with broken family affiliations. According to what is said, Dani’s father was a foreign soldier who abducted and raped his mother during the military invasion of Anthill. His mother was victimized and discriminated against because his birth was a constant reminder of the brutality inflicted by the foreign soldiers in Anthill. As Dani grew up, so did his resemblance to the foreign invaders, and with it a proportionate hostility from the people of Anthill.
Jeers, mockery, and reproach trailed him like his shadow. Some called him the enemy’s child, others referred to him as the devil’s offspring, while those who seemed more cultured ignored him as though he did not exist. His mother was pressured to abandon him to fend for himself. Dani was immersed in anguish, bitterness, and confusion. From his perspective, the hatred and mistreatment were irrational, because he and his unknown father were distinct persons with divergent interests, ambitions, and personalities. In Anthill he was rejected, excluded from the family, and denied Anthill’s nationality, which consequently meant the loss of access to social benefits and work rights. He had no connection with his unknown father or the foreign affiliation that caused his troubles.
As much as Rani and Dani tried to keep their friendship and conversations positive, like the practised routine of a clock their thoughts and conversations kept reverting to what the future holds for war children. Rani and Dani’s story does not describe isolated instances. Tens of thousands like Rani, and unnumbered, unrecognized thousands like Dani, keep striving under the crippling shadow of war over their lives and families. This case study highlights the multifaceted effects of war on families and on individual war children. This article, however, is dedicated to war children like Dani, whose birth was non-consensual, and whose origin threatens their integration into the only society they know.
Definition of terms
War and armed conflict. War has been defined as a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country. The main component of war is armed conflict. Conflict is a strong disagreement between people or groups, often resulting in angry arguments, or differences in ideas or feelings that prevent agreement. However, it should be noted that conflict can be armed or unarmed. Armed conflict is a contested incompatibility concerning government or territory, where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths.
Rape. Rape is a crime, usually committed by a man; it entails forcing another person to have sexual intercourse against their will. Typically one party asserts power by using force or violence to achieve submission and fear in another person, committing an offence against the dignity and bodily integrity of that person. During armed conflict, women and girls are frequently coerced by the fear of death or captivity at the hands of armed men. For the purposes of this work, the scope of rape includes forced sexual acts in which a victim is compelled to rape someone else, and sexual acts performed in forced marriages in conflict zones.
War children. The term war children has also been expressed as children born of war in other research. War children are persons of any age conceived as a result of violent, coercive, or exploitative sexual relations such as rape in conflict zones. The term includes the offspring of forced marriages in conflict zones. War children and children born of war are used interchangeably in this work.
The predicaments of war children
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” Nelson Mandela
Sexual violence is one of the most terrible crimes committed during conflict all over the world, and its consequences linger long after the fighting has stopped. According to the Grieg report on war and children’s identity, the number of living children born of war is estimated at 500,000. War children are vulnerable to social exclusion and stigma in the societies into which they are born.
Other vulnerabilities include physical and psycho-social challenges, poor access to resources, risk of separation in future relationships, abuse or neglect by caretakers, and early childhood mortality, including deaths resulting from infanticide. In many instances, these children also experience psycho-social stress associated with feeling responsible for the care of their traumatized mothers. I will consider some of these issues in detail.
Stigmatization. Stigmatization has been defined as treating a particular behaviour as wrong or embarrassing and trying to make people who behave that way feel ashamed. In the case of war children, most are stigmatized as illegitimate, as devil’s children, children of shame, monster babies and enemy children. Their human rights may be compromised in several ways, from rejection, abuse, or neglect by immediate and extended family members to stigmatization by the broader community and even denial of citizenship.
Social exclusion. Social exclusion involves the denial of resources, rights, goods, and services, and the inability to participate in normal relationships and activities available to the majority of people in a society, whether in the economic, social, cultural, or political arena. Like Dani, many children born of war are deprived of the love of their extended family and the comfort of social networks, particularly where their foreign origins are evident in their physical features.
In many settings, such individuals prefer to exclude themselves from social circles to hide their identity and pain. In their instability and distress, some reproduce the violence that initiated their birth. In the words of Lloyd deMause, “the source of most human violence and suffering has been hidden in the history of billions of innocent human beings who afflicted by war grow up as emotionally crippled adults.” It has been suggested that these children are particularly vulnerable to becoming street children or being trafficked, because social exclusion can lead to depression, low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, and a craving for belonging even in dangerous settings.
Poor access to resources. War children are likely to experience economic hardship because they are raised by single mothers in most instances. They often lack access to social benefits and education where their citizenship is questioned. They also lack access to information about their identities or family origins, which can have negative implications for their health care. In cultures where such children are stigmatized or rejected, as Dani was, their disadvantages are more pronounced, because they withdraw in shame rather than reach out to family members, neighbours, government agencies, or social groups for assistance.
Early marriage and unhealthy relationships. If children born of war do not recover emotionally, their social lives and relationships may be lastingly damaged. Many suffer in silence until the consequences begin to manifest in depression, low self-esteem, low productivity, and the attendant health problems. Many drop out of school, marry prematurely, and enter relationships that repeat the cycle of pain they are familiar with. Studies have also found that children who experience or suffer the consequences of sexual violence are considerably more likely to perpetrate sexual violence as adults. Hence it is important to work with children to promote emotional healing and to address beliefs and attitudes, in order to break the cycle.
Physical and psycho-social challenges. In numerous instances, these children experience psycho-social stress associated with feeling responsible for the care of a traumatized parent. They may also face health risks arising from the circumstances of their birth, and the psycho-social trauma of their mothers, especially where those mothers are rejected by their peers and by society, may affect early childhood development. Depression and anxiety can affect growth and development, depriving them of the chance to reach their full potential.
War children: a global perspective
“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” John F. Kennedy
The fact that there are war children, children whose conception would not have taken place but for the occurrence of war, is not a new reality. From the Middle East to African countries such as Nigeria and Uganda, there are many persons whose origin can be traced to sexual violence that occurred during war. In this section I consider several instances in different countries where children were born in violent conflict or war settings.
Nigeria. There have been many armed conflicts in Nigeria since its independence on 1 October 1960, such as the civil war, also known as the Biafran War, which lasted from 6 July 1967 to 15 January 1970. In recent times, the Boko Haram crisis has disturbed the peace of Nigeria. The group, also known as Jama’atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda’Awati Wal Jihad, is an extremist sect that has violently attacked government offices, organizations, places of worship, and markets, particularly in northern Nigeria and in the capital, Abuja.
The Boko Haram crisis included the abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok. These girls were abducted on the night of 14 to 15 April 2014 from Chibok, a local government area in Borno, about a two-hour drive from the Nigerian border with Cameroon. The militants entered the school in a convoy of trucks and buses, engaged in a gun battle with school security guards, forced the girls from their dormitories, loaded them into trucks, and drove them into the Sambisa forest.
In another instance, over 700 young Nigerian women abducted by Boko Haram were rescued, with 214 visibly pregnant. The women were rescued from the Sambisa forest by the Nigerian military and taken to a camp for displaced people in Yola, Adamawa State. Reports indicated that the women had been raped repeatedly, in what officials and relief workers considered a deliberate scheme to dominate rural populations. Unfortunately, some community members have shunned the women as Boko Haram wives; this is not a good precedent for their children.
Northern Uganda. The story of Uganda is another instance in which armed conflict served as a breeding ground for war children. In northern Uganda, more than a million people were forced to flee their homes by the conflict between government forces and Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Since 1987, the LRA has abducted as many as 70,000 children and young people, forcing them to serve as soldiers, porters, or sex slaves. The LRA later operated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic, though it originated in northern Uganda.
The Lord’s Resistance Army and other armed groups committed sexual and gender-based violence against thousands of young women and girls over nearly three decades. Children born of these acts have been rejected by their communities and denied ownership of property, education, and the means to earn a living.
Norway. German forces occupied Norway from 1940 to 1945 and left behind between 10,000 and 12,000 children born to Norwegian mothers with German fathers. The Nazi regime considered Norwegians racially suitable for its soldiers to father children with. In Sør-Varanger alone, a municipality in Finnmark, there are at least 200 war children. After the departure of the German forces, the Norwegian war children suffered many forms of abuse: many were placed in mental institutions, many lost the opportunity to acquire formal education and thus meaningful employment, and there are documented accounts of extreme mistreatment.
A member of the Norwegian Ministry of Social Affairs said of them in July 1945: “To believe these children will become decent citizens is to believe rats in the cellar will become house pets.” Between 1946 and 1958, special rules and regulations in social legislation excluded some war children, creating poor economic conditions for them. However, several efforts have been made by the Norwegian state since: Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik apologized to them in his New Year’s speech of 2000.
Attempts by the Norwegian war children to obtain justice from the state were dismissed by national courts on limitation grounds. Only a few were offered limited financial recompense, and officials continued to decline to accept responsibility. In 2005 the Norwegian parliament decided that war children were eligible for financial compensation of up to 20,000 kroner each, a sum the victims regarded as inadequate. In 2010, 157 of them applied to the European Court of Human Rights on account of the discrimination, lost years, and abuse they had suffered, but the application was unsuccessful on the ground that the events had occurred too long ago.
Recommendations
“Safety and security don’t just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.” Nelson Mandela
To protect war children, priority should be given to emergency care, financial support, and emotional healing for women and girls who are sexually abused during armed conflict; this care will pass from the mothers to their children. War children should not be discriminated against; they should benefit from every existing programme designed for children of their age.
A means should be created to raise awareness through advocacy for children’s human rights, without exposing individual children in the course of programme work, since they could be stigmatized. Efforts should be made to identify and prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes so that justice may take its course. Finally, peacebuilding and reconciliation should be pursued to ensure that such conflict does not arise again. Several suggestions follow on how to curb sexual violence in armed conflict, and to support these children in society.
Citizenship. Because of the circumstances of their birth, war children like Dani may be denied citizenship, particularly where the identity of a child is traced through the father’s lineage. Children whose mothers were raped, and the offspring of forced marriages in conflict zones, should be permitted by national law to acquire the nationality of their mother. If the state does not take responsibility for them, then they may have no citizenship and no rights. Children born of rape in war zones should not be identified with the perpetrator. The Nigerian Constitution, for example, in section 25 expressly recognizes as citizens every person born in or outside Nigeria either of whose parents is a Nigerian citizen.
Justice. A significant proportion of those committing acts of sexual violence in conflict zones have been identified as armed men. Regrettably, sexual abuse and exploitation are also committed by aid workers and peacekeepers in times of conflict and insecurity. This contributes to normalizing sexual violence in communities already facing trauma and upheaval. War children and their mothers will be more secure and more confident in the justice system if steps are taken to identify and punish the perpetrators.
Article 7(1)(g) of the Rome Statute defines crimes against humanity to include rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity. In line with this provision, national laws should criminalize rape, indecent assault, and abduction. This will provide the basis for prosecution, help transform beliefs and attitudes, and serve as a deterrent in times of peace and of war. Limitation periods should not bar claims by war children, or should be extended so that those children can reach the age of majority and decide for themselves whether to seek redress or compensation.
Peacebuilding. Peacebuilding has been defined as identifying and supporting structures that strengthen and consolidate peace in order to avoid relapse into conflict. After an armed conflict comes to an end, pain and suffering linger in the hearts of many. There is a need for reconciliation to heal wounded hearts and prevent a recurrence of such conflicts. For war children, this process could lead to reconciliation with their families, identification of their fathers, and prospects of paternal support. Peacebuilding and reconciliation after armed conflict are delicate but essential processes, because wars begin in the minds of men, and it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.
Research and statistical documentation. Deliberate efforts should be made to research the incidence of rape in war, forced marriage, and the births resulting from them. This will support the preparation of welfare provision, monitoring, and emergency response. It will also assist the administration of justice and the design of preventive mechanisms.
State welfare schemes. Measures should be taken to ensure that the consequences of events in lawless circumstances do not determine the lives of innocent children. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides basic rights; the combined effect of Articles 3, 5, and 25 is that everyone has the right to life, to a standard of living adequate for health, and to access to medical care and social security.
In line with these provisions, war children should be informed of the benefits available to them from the state. The welfare arrangements chosen should be sustainable in addressing the needs that have arisen. Particular attention should be given to the emotional, social, and physical well-being of victims. Health care should extend to nutritional needs and a consistent supply of medication for children affected by conditions such as HIV, which is prevalent in circumstances of sexual violence in war zones.
Care should be provided according to age and to the diversity of needs, for ease of administration and monitoring. States should devise strategies to ensure access to education and to land. In countries where access to family land is determined by the paternal clan, welfare and policy provision should accommodate war children, as they may have no access to inheritance.
Social security. The Convention on the Rights of the Child can be used as a legal ground to protect war children against all forms of discrimination, and to preserve the child’s identity, nationality, name, and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference. The best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration in every action concerning a child, whether undertaken by an individual, a public or private body, an institution, a court of law, or an administrative or legislative authority.
The role of the mass media. In many countries, electronic and print media have carried out advocacy on the rights, welfare, and protection of children through publications that have influenced behaviour and prompted intervention for child victims of abuse and violence. The Nigerian Children’s Parliament, inaugurated in 2002, developed into a significant symbol of child participation and representation in the country, with the capacity to advocate for visible changes in the lives of children.
These avenues can also be used to make society aware of the situation of war children and to campaign for humanitarian assistance. Additionally, there should be effective grassroots work involving non-governmental organizations, government agencies, communities, and the media to inform the public about violence against women and to encourage the reporting of such cases to the appropriate authorities.
Legislation and policy formation. Government should enforce existing penal, civil, and administrative sanctions to punish and redress acts of violence against women and children. Government should also make policies, implement strategies, run programmes, and establish administrative bodies to eradicate such acts. In Nigeria, several agencies have assisted victims of sexual violence. The National Human Rights Commission, established by Decree No. 22 of 1995, has a mandate for the promotion, protection, investigation, and monitoring of human rights, the provision of legal aid, and the handling of complaints from citizens about violations of their rights. The Legal Aid Council, established by the Legal Aid Act, makes legal aid and financial assistance available to indigent citizens to facilitate the submission of complaints and the obtaining of redress.
An international fortress for war children. Many war children begin their lives as the children of traumatized single mothers. The position of war children in developing countries is particular, because citizens must bear their housing and maintenance costs without unemployment benefits. They also bear educational expenses and largely provide for their own health care. Unlike in many developed countries, where poor people can rely on state welfare in times of need, a special welfare arrangement should be created for war children, nationally and internationally, since welfare provision is not guaranteed, especially in developing countries.
War children would be cared for better if there were an international scheme to address their needs, rather than a momentary emergency response, given the nature of their difficulties. There could also be numbers of war children whose needs exceed a nation’s resources. The number of Norwegian war children would have made it very difficult for the Norwegian government to compensate them substantially. In addition, some nations may be party to the conflict and may see the children as part of it rather than as innocent victims of war, so an international scheme would address their needs better.
Effective dispute resolution mechanisms. Throughout the history of humankind, war has brought more loss than gain. In the words of John F. Kennedy, “mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.” Considering the effects of war on citizens, on the economy, and on future generations, serious efforts should be made to promote mediation, negotiation, international diplomacy, and other peaceful avenues for the resolution of political, cultural, and socio-economic disputes. That also means that government officials, especially those engaged in international relations, should be trained by reputable bodies in mediation, international diplomacy, peacebuilding, and conflict management. States have established centres for alternative dispute resolution or peace centres to assist in dispute resolution. Family dispute resolution is relevant to war children, because they can bring complaints at such centres, inviting persons they believe may be their father on the basis of their mother’s testimony or other circumstantial evidence. This could lead to a DNA test to establish paternity and to an agreement on maintenance if the test proves that the person invited is indeed the father.
SUMMARY *
The article’s contribution is to name a category of victim that the frameworks for conflict-related sexual violence consistently fail to reach. Where responses are directed at survivors of the violence, the children conceived by it are treated as a secondary consequence rather than as persons with their own claims. The article shows why that omission has practical effects: the harm they suffer is not primarily the assault, which they did not experience, but the status it confers, and status is the one thing that law can readily change. The Norwegian material is placed to demonstrate that this is not a problem confined to weak states or to recent conflicts. A wealthy country with functioning courts placed such children in institutions, excluded them from social provision, and then defeated their claims on limitation grounds seventy years later.
CONCLUSION
“Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace.” Charles Sumner
The most shocking fact about armed conflict is that its victims and its instruments are human beings. Armed conflict is a destroyer of past labour, an initiator of death, suffering, and pain. It projects hopelessness, grief, and deprivation into the future. In many respects armed conflict is a loss to humanity, and determined efforts should be made to secure peace within our borders. Thoughtful measures should be taken by international organizations, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and individuals to ease the suffering of war children. Collective steps should be taken to address social exclusion, stigmatization, physical and psycho-social challenges, poor access to resources, emotional difficulties, abuse or neglect by caretakers, and early childhood mortality. Providing security for war children, restoring a prospect of a future, and restoring their confidence in the human race is possible, if we stand up to the challenge.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article identifies the decisive point and it is worth stating as plainly as possible: the principal harm these children suffer is inflicted after birth, by law and by community, and both are alterable.
Citizenship is where the greatest gain is available for the least cost. Where nationality passes only through the father, a child of unknown or foreign paternity is stateless from birth, and statelessness closes off school, work, travel, property and legal identity for a lifetime. Several dozen states still restrict the transmission of nationality by mothers, and the reforms that have followed campaigns in a number of them demonstrate that this is a legislative act rather than a social transformation. The Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and the Convention on the Rights of the Child both bear directly on the question, and the second requires registration immediately after birth and the acquisition of a nationality, which makes the omission a treaty violation rather than a policy shortcoming.
Registration deserves separate mention because it precedes everything else. A child without a birth certificate cannot demonstrate age, parentage, or nationality, and cannot access what is nominally available. Mobile registration in displacement settings, retrospective registration for those now grown, and the removal of requirements that a father be named are technical measures with disproportionate effect.
The evidence on stigma points toward one finding that should shape any programme, and it cuts against the instinct to target assistance. Interventions directed specifically at children born of war identify them, and identification is the mechanism of the harm. What has worked better is provision for all children affected by conflict, within which these children are reached without being marked, combined with support to the mothers, since maternal acceptance is the strongest single predictor of a child’s acceptance by the wider family and the wider family’s by the community. Work with community and religious leaders on the framing of these births has changed reception in several settings, and the argument that carries is the one the article makes through Dani: the child is not the perpetrator.
Two additions on the article’s own proposals. Paternity claims and maintenance are treated here as achievable through family dispute resolution, and the international record is discouraging: claims against foreign soldiers and peacekeepers have almost never succeeded, because the claimant must litigate in the contributing state’s courts, without assistance and without access to evidence. The mechanism that would change this, centralised handling of DNA testing, paternity determination and support orders, funded from the existing trust fund for victims of sexual exploitation and abuse, has been recommended repeatedly and not established. And on limitation, the article’s proposal is sound and can be sharpened: the standard now emerging in litigation over historic abuse is that time runs from the point at which the claimant could reasonably have brought the claim, which for a person unaware of their origins may be decades after birth. The Norwegian case turned on exactly this and would be decided differently under that approach.
Finally, the article’s insistence that these children can live ordinary lives is not sentiment but the finding of the follow-up research. Where they were accepted by a mother, registered, schooled and not publicly marked, outcomes have been unremarkable. The variable is not the circumstance of conception but what was done afterwards, and that is the most hopeful thing that can be said about a subject which offers little else.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
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Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
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Mother Nature Is A Battleground: Patterns In Conflict Over Natural Resources
The role of natural resources in driving international conflict has been a consistent feature of human history, influencing economic stability, political power, and global security. This paper examines a series of case studies involving a range of resource-related conflicts, highlighting the drivers and variables involved in disputes over various types of resources to examine conflict patterns over resource security and distribution. From disputes over the Mekong River and South China Sea, to Venezuela’s claims over Guyanese territory and oil, and exploitation of peoples and nations of the global south, these cases underscore how resources transcend national boundaries, intertwining economic necessity with geopolitical strategies. The analysis also explores the dual role of mediation, showing how cooperative frameworks like the Mekong River Commission and the Suez Canal agreement have successfully mitigated tensions, while other attempts, constrained by power imbalances or unilateral actions, have fallen short. Through these examples, the paper illustrates that the success of mediation depends on balancing incentives, addressing structural inequalities, and fostering mutual assurance among stakeholders. In most cases, protectionist policies and geopolitical rivalries overshadow altruistic cooperation, reinforcing polarization and deepening global divides. Yet, when evenly matched parties engage in dialogue, there remains potential for equitable resolutions that prioritize sustainability and shared prosperity. The findings emphasize that resolving resource-driven conflicts requires diplomatic innovation and a commitment to addressing the underlying power dynamics that shape access and control.
Keywords: Natural Resources, Trade Policy, Exploitation, Climate Change, War, Diplomacy, Water, Oil, Agriculture, China, Venezuela, Egypt, Congo, Taiwan.
Introduction: Why Fight?
Natural resources have historically been a catalyst for many international conflicts, as states compete for access to vital materials such as water, minerals, oil, and agricultural goods. The control over these resources can directly influence a nation’s economic stability, security, and political influence, making them critical drivers of both cooperation and conflict. Resources like rivers, oil, and fisheries, which often transcend borders, are particularly contentious as they are vital for sustaining economies and populations. Since the dawn of civilization, natural resources have been weaponized in conflict, such as the poisoning of wells, burning of crops, or salting the earth. This reflects how even our earliest societies understood the value of natural resources and their impact of the sustainability and strength of a nation. The same is true to this day, though now resource wars are fought not just on the battlefield (though that still remains ever present) but also fought diplomatically and politically, ever changing as power dynamic shift and aliances bend, every nation looking out for their own interest over others, as resources insecurity seemingly approaches from all directions. Imbalances in resources remain central to war aims, as nations must weigh the cost and benefit to gaining control over, access to, and loss of resources as tools of leverage over both advisories and allies alike. When these resources are scarce or unequally distributed, tensions can rise between neighboring states, leading to disputes that often require mediation to prevent an escalation to violence. Here, we will explore specific cases of conflict over different types of natural resources, what those resources mean to the nations involved, the domestic and international dynamics at play, and how mediation has succeeded or failed to resolve disputes. Success in mediation is frequently tied to the willingness of states to share and compromise, which is too often tied to power imbalances.
Conflict Over Rivers: The Case of the Mekong
Rivers fill many roles, both culturally, economically, and politically. They are often the crux of communities, where major settlements and cities grow around a major source of fresh drinking water. These waters often serve as cultural resources as well, where communities gather for events and hold historical and religious significance to the communities they sustain. Of course, rivers are major sources of food for many and act as crucial trade routes, sustaining economies on both local and regional scales. They often serve as borders as well, both internally to a nation and broader international divides, due to the naturally defensible barrier rivers create militarily. This underscores just how multi-faceted and vital rivers can be to a nation. The Mekong River is one of the largest rivers in the world and a crucial water source for several Southeast Asian countries, including China, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam; it also serves as a natural border between many of these nations. The river provides essential water for agriculture, fishing, and electricity through the use of hydroelectric dams, supporting hundreds of millions of people across the region. However, conflicts have arisen due to China’s construction of dams along the upper reaches of the Mekong, which have disrupted water flow and harmed the agricultural and fishing sectors of its southeast neighbors (Eyler 2020). China’s control over the river’s headwaters has given it significant influence over the river’s flow, heightening tensions with countries reliant on the river for survival.
Mediation has been attempted through regional organizations such as the Mekong River Commission (MRC), which includes Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, established as a result of the Mekong River Treaty, which acts as a forum for these nations to communicate and collaborate with one another over the use of the river (Jacobs 2002). The MRC also facilitates negotiations and discussions to promote sustainable river management. In some cases, mediation has successfully created temporary agreements on water sharing and dam operation schedules, reducing the immediate risk of conflict. These agreements demonstrate how regional cooperation, supported by multilateral dialogue, can mitigate tensions over shared resources. In many ways this mirrors other efforts in river use mediation, such as the Colorado River Compact in the United States (US), which involves partnerships between states in the American Southwest, First Nations tribes in the region, and even Mexico. This compact has mitigated the economic tensions between communities and legal jurisdictions as climate change threatens water security in the region, though challenges remain. Another case in successful river management can be seen in the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, which is a framework that establishes various organizations to monitor and collaborate over the Danube River in Eastern and Central Europe, which continues to strive for equitable usage of the waters and environmental sustainability.
However, mediation over the Mekong has often fallen short of achieving long-term solutions, particularly due to the lack of involvement by China, who have routinely declined to participate in the MRC. Unlike the other examples of successful mediation over river usage, there is outsized influence over the Mekong by China which has characterized the MRC as a threat to its sovereignty over the headwaters in its territory in response to criticism over the intense construction of dams within its borders, including 11 major dams with more planned, and not counting the nearly 430 minor dams (Eyler 2020). China likely views the Mekong as a strategic bargaining chip when engaging with its junior neighbors to down river, which renders the MRC political disadvantageous from its geostrategic position (Tran 2021). The regime is overlooking the advantages gained by cooperating with its neighbors, which we will explore in the following section. China’s geographic advantage, combined with its economic and political influence, has limited the effectiveness of the MRC, and undermines the organization’s ability to enforce agreements or hold Beijing accountable for its actions.
Conflict Over Maritime Waters: The South China Sea Dispute
Maritime waters are often another source of conflict, not only in regards to food sources and marine exports, but also the intrinsic territorial claims that come with access and ownership over these coastal waters. Territorial and fishing rights in the South China Sea have long been a source of conflict, as China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and other nations compete for access to the region’s rich fishing grounds. The South China Sea is also strategically important, as it is home to significant oil and gas reserves, and vital shipping routes pass through its waters. Like rivers, marine resources are multifaceted and thus very contentious. China’s expansive claims, demarcated by their ‘nine-dash line’, has sparked disputes over fishing rights with neighboring countries (Gao and Jia 2013). The Nine-Dash Line policy was invented whole-cloth by China to give themselves dominion over the sea arbitrarily and has no international recognition or historical validity; to the contrary, it violates international law, which demarcates the ownership over international water (Darmawan 2021). Chinese fishing fleets, often supported by the country’s navy, have clashed with vessels from other nations, exacerbating tensions in an already volatile region. This tension is greatest between China and the Philippines, who have come into direct conflict over some of the many small islands and atolls that dot the sea, some of which both countries (or more) lay claim to, and would expand their respective Exclusive Economic Zones considerably (De Castro 2015). Private fishing vessels too, under the guise of this conflict, have been documented attacking rival fishing vessels and murdering fishermen from other nations to reduce competition, or in response to piracy in the region. This is not to say the other involved nations do not come into conflict with one another and share disputes, but by large, China has sought dominance over the region and has played a pivotal role in escalating the conflict. In contrast, an example of successful mediation over maritime waters includes the plethora of treaties regarding both the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean, which while their resources are mired in various interests from many nations; these interests arguably more numerous and complex than that of the South China Sea, yet are shared with relative equitability and peace through dialogue and diplomatic cooperation.
Mediation efforts over the South China Sea, largely led by regional organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), have sought to de-escalate conflicts and negotiate disputes diplomatically and equitably. The 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea was a major effort to create a peaceful resolution and cooperation framework. It outlined principles for behavior in the contested waters, including refraining from actions that could escalate tensions (Thao 2003). ASEAN, along with pressure from the international community, has attempted to bring the conflicting parties to the negotiating table and establish legal frameworks for resource sharing. Despite these efforts, mediation has largely failed to resolve conflict in the South China Sea, and in fact altercations has continued to escalate. China’s growing military and economic power, along with its disregard for the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling, which invalidated its claims in the region, has undermined diplomatic efforts. The lack of enforcement mechanisms and China’s refusal to accept third-party rulings have left ASEAN and other mediating organs with limited influence (Kipgen 2018). As a result, fishing conflicts continue, with Chinese vessels routinely intruding into the territorial waters of neighboring countries, leading to skirmishes.
This conflict mirrors that of the Mekong previously discussed, where China has sought to leverage its outsized influence to pressure junior neighbors into policy decisions that overtly favor China. This has arguably worked towards China’s increased detriment, as many of their neighboring countries have pivoted away from China, seeing it as an existential threat to resources and economic security, and instead turned to the US, which has increasingly partnered with Southeast Asian and Indonesian countries to reaffirm its interest in the region and defend international law, routinely patrolling the South China Sea as a show of force, and supporting nations like Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, and the Philippines economically and militarily. Indeed, the US has capitalized on these conflicts itself through its Pivot to Asia policy established during the Obama administration to further counter Chinese global influence. These countries likewise are leveraging their partnership with the US and other Western nations to push back against China’s outsized influence and bring them closer to the bargaining table (Beeson 2004).
Conflict Over Oil: Venezuela and Guyana
Oil is one of the most in-demand resources and has defined our modern world in many ways. Petroleum products are used in the creation of fuels and plastics, which are used in tens of thousands of products used in every industry around the world. The US is typically criticized for instigating oil wars, primarily in the Middle East, where it has become a hegemonic force, deploying Western-based private oil interests to secure and capitalize on the rich oil reserves in the region. Many nations have completely defined the economies of their oil resources, as seen in many Arab states. The Middle East is the typical focal point for discussion over oil conflict; other areas of the world also come into conflict over these fossil fuels, such as the Arctic, where drilling rights are often contended and environmental interests are often hotly debated. The eastern Mediterranean is often argued over by coastal nations, particularly Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, and Israel. The dispute between Venezuela and Guyana over oil-rich maritime territory in the Essequibo region has been ongoing for decades but has recently flared into a political conflict. Venezuela claims sovereignty over the region of Guyana, which has recently been discovered to have rich offshore oil reserves, while Guyana maintains its territorial integrity. The conflict intensified as oil exploration activities by oil companies heightened the stakes for both nations, leading to diplomatic tensions and military posturing. Venezuela went as far as to hold a ‘referendum’ to officially annex the territory this year, though a referendum in an authoritarian / illiberal nation is somewhat of an oxymoron. They have also engaged in military mobilizations, though like the referendum, this is simply posturing to leverage against Guyana, as no action has been taken to materialize its territorial claims (Wilkinson 2024).
Mediation efforts, primarily led by the US and regional organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS), have aimed to resolve the dispute peacefully. The United Nations (UN) Secretary General has appointed personal representatives to facilitate dialogue, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has been involved in assessing legal claims (ICJ 2023). One may argue that these attempts at dialogue have prevented an escalation in the conflict, but it appears more likely that security guarantees and naval exercises between Guyana and the US has been the leading deterrent for any escalation by Venezuela. This reflects the strategic control the US holds over the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico at large, as it has used its partnerships with the Bahamas and Antilles island chain nations to encircle both Venezuela and its close ally Cuba, greatly limiting their ability exert economic or military influence in the region (Plummer 2011).
The primary failure of mediation has been the inability to produce a lasting settlement that satisfies both Venezuela’s territorial claims and Guyana’s rights to oil exploration. Venezuela’s political instability and domestic crises have made sustained diplomatic engagement both difficult and easier, depending on the perspective one takes. On the one hand, the economic weakening of the authoritarian state has reduced its ability to escalate the conflict, which bodes well for the international community the US has fostered in the region to prevent such conflicts. On the other hand, one could argue that the weakening of Venezuela has pushed it into further isolation and conflict, incentivizing leadership to make increasingly rash decisions as they have “less to lose” on the international stage. Though admittedly, there is no reason to assume that Venezuela would suddenly relinquish its long-standing claims over Guyanan territory if it were in a better economic and military state. As things stand, while mediation has maintained peace, it has failed to bring about a resolution, leaving the conflict in a state of diplomatic limbo, as has more-or-less been the case for decades now.
Conflict Over Agricultural: Congo’s Rubber Atrocities
Agricultural goods come in a wide variety, typically domesticated horticultural products, which vary from nation to nation based on variables involving climate, soil conditions, and demand from local and international customers. Considerable farmland is reserved for the cultivation of these crops, with nations even incentivizing production with special tax laws, land use zoning, and subsidies designed to benefit producers. These products range from staple foods such as fruit and nuts, grains and cereals, livestock feed and spices, textile products such as cotton, and products like soy, corn syrup, palm oil, and more used in a vast array of products. Not only do these products sustain domestic populations, but serve as major exports. A major modern example of conflict involving agriculture can be seen in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While there are many overlapping drivers of this conflict, a major one is the control over the vast farmlands in eastern Ukraine, described as one of the ‘breadbaskets’ of the world, a great deal of grain exports from Ukraine sustain African and Middle Eastern countries. Blockades imposed by Russia on grain shipments in the Black Sea, combined with attacks on ports, caused a real threat of famine in many regions. A great deal of tension during the conflict has been over Black Sea grain shipments being able to leave Ukrainian ports, particularly Odessa, which has been under fire by Russia in their attempt to maintain control over the Black Sea and force concessions from Ukraine and its western partners.
Here we will focus on a much older conflict over rubber harvesting in the Congo ‘Free’ State during the late 19th and early 20th century. This is one of the most infamous examples of resource exploitation and cruelty in modern history. Under the control of King Leopold II of Belgium, the Congo was subjected to brutal labor conditions as local populations were forced to harvest rubber from the trees of the region. Millions of Congolese were enslaved, murdered, worked to death, or mutilated by the horrible regime implemented by Belgian authorities, using the indigenous Congolese to harvest rubber from their homeland (Stanard 2013). This shares some parallels with the Banana Republics that the US had installed in some Central and South American countries, where the high demand for Bananas proved so profitable that it allowed corporate and government interests to interfere with the governance of their junior neighbors and install political regimes that prioritized exports. Local communities were exploited and subjugated in order to secure production, even resulting in labor activists losing their lives at the hands of militias serving at the behest of political and commercial leaders.
The Congo Reform Association, an early international NGO, played a pivotal role in raising awareness and pressuring Belgium to reform its colonial administration. Through extensive documentation of the atrocities and ad campaigns, the association garnered widespread support for its cause (Clay 2016). Ultimately, this pressure forced the Belgian government to take control of the Congo from King Leopold in 1908, ending the worst of the abuses. While the Congo Reform Association’s efforts succeeded in ending the immediate atrocities, they failed to address the systemic exploitation and colonial oppression that persisted in the Congo. The reforms imposed by Belgium did little to improve the long-term well-being of the Congolese people, as many of those who enacted said abuse retained their positions and faced no repercussions. But it paved the way to the Congo’s independence, as part of Europe’s larger exit from Africa.
There are similarities between the Congo Reform Association’s methods and the approach many modern activist groups engage in, particularly when it comes to media engagement and high-profile endorsements from cultural icons and political leadership. For example, the Kony 2012 movement pivoted an international spotlight onto the crisis of child soldiers and human rights abuses by the Lord’s Resistance Army, ironically continuing the legacy of horrific abuse in the Congo region, force attention to a cause through outrage which the developed world may otherwise ignore (Cukic 2024). Other organizations advocate for communities that are under threat or exploited by cartels and companies in order to maintain control over major global exports, such as cocoa beans, mangos, and avocados (literal cash crops). This demonstrates the roles NGOs and private organizations can play in resolving resource-driven conflicts and how public pressure, particularly in regard to human rights abuses, can be used to resolve conflict through reputational damage.
Conflict Over Trade Routes: The Suez Crisis
Trade routes act as the circulatory system of the global economy, getting resources where they need to go, and allowing nations to capitalize on surpluses of natural resources. A threat to a trade route, such as an embargo, piracy, or conflict near a choke-point, can render a country’s natural resources economically mute if it can not deliver goods to international partners. A trade route may itself be seen as a natural, geographical resource, and nations certainly see it as such when it comes to conflict. We have seen these types of tensions rise recently in various conflicts, including the Houthi attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, Ethiopia’s military posturing to Eritrea for port access, and Russia’s threat to Ukrainian grain shipments through the Black Sea discussed earlier, just to mention a few. The focus here is on the Suez Crisis of 1956, which provides a key example of conflict over access to one of the most vital trade routes in the world. Following WWI and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom (UK) administered the Suez Canal directly (Morewood 2016). After Europe’s colonial exodus from Africa, the newly independent Egyptian government gained limited control over the canal. When Egyptian President Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, a critical trade route for Europe’s oil supply, the UK, France, and Israel launched a joint military intervention to regain control. The conflict risked spiraling into a larger war, as the canal was and is of immense strategic importance for global trade.
This joint military incursion was launched against Egypt, with a handful of skirmishes leaving a few thousand dead, though it had not escalated to full-blown war just yet. Mediation efforts, led by the UN and US, were instrumental in resolving the conflict. The US pressured its allies to reverse their military intervention, even going as far as to threaten full sanctions against Israel, as they facilitated dialogue on the control and regulations of the canal. Former US President Eisenhower adamantly opposed any move that could be seen as colonial (Skardon 2010). Meanwhile, the Soviet Union supported Nasser’s position as they competed with the US for arms trade with Egypt, threatening to send troops to support Egypt which poised them as allies to the Arab world at large, as the conflict had become a symbol of Arab struggle against western occupation, particularly given the recent establishment of the modern nation of Israel, and subsequent conflicts. Ultimately, US diplomacy proved successful with the adoption of UN Resolution 997 (ES-I), which formally called for troop withdrawals, among other agreements regarding the administration and access to the Suez Canal (UN 2024). The successful mediation prevented further escalation and ensured that the canal remained open for international trade while still under Egyptian control, yet further solidified Arab and Jewish divisions, as the assault by Israel and subsequent victory by Nasser, was hailed in the Arab world as a triumph. This division opened the doors for Soviet influence in Arab countries and the Mediterranean, particularly Egypt.
Conflict Over “Unnatural” Resources: Mediation Between Taiwan and China
There is something to say about man-made, or ‘unnatural’, resources, which functionally fill the same economic roles as many natural resources. While the differentiation between “natural” and “unnatural” are ultimately arbitrary, the distinction here has some relevance as it helps us contextualize the dynamics pertaining to the resources discussed. Many man-made products are not necessarily determined by a nation’s climate or geography, but are a result of a nation (or private interest therein) adapting its industry to fulfill a need. Yet in some cases, a man-made product is more-or-less unique to the nation producing it, and thus can be thought of as a ‘natural’ byproduct of a nation’s cultural-commercial behavior and industrial investments. A prime example of this can be seen in the microchip and semiconductor industry of Taiwan, who produce the premier types of these technologies for global consumption, heavily used in artificial intelligence and computing, and even everyday products such as refrigerators and vehicles. This resource is desperately needed in China, as sanctions led by the US and European Union (EU) have kept this technology largely out of reach. This is done to stifle China’s technological growth as fears that the authoritarian regime will exploit these emerging technologies, as evident in China’s abuse of AI technology to pursue a surveillance state within its borders, as demonstrated in its use in oppressing the Uyghur peoples (Healy 2021). This blockade has strategic significance as well, as it has prevented Chinese allies from obtaining these technologies, as seen in Russia following recent conflicts. While mediation between Taiwan and China over trade, particularly in electronics and machine parts, has been a key factor in maintaining the status quo between the two nations (Chen 2009), and as has been seen, the weakening of these agreements has resulted in conflict. Taiwan has leveraged this manufacturing resource when engaging in trade agreements with China. This economic interdependence has, to some extent, moderated Chinese aggression and allowed for a complex relationship of both rivalry and cooperation, but also applies pressure to China in its retaliatory military posturing and claims of sovereignty over Taiwan.
As Taiwan seeks to diversify its trade partners, particularly with the US and Europe, tensions with China have escalated. Mediation attempts, largely through unofficial channels, have succeeded in preventing direct conflict but have failed to resolve the underlying political dispute over Taiwan’s sovereignty. Taiwan continues to strengthen its military and economic ties with the West, even building semiconductor manufacturing centers in the US (Ngo 2024). This continued pull from China risks further economic and military escalation, highlighting how economic partnerships and dependencies promote peace and how the absence of such relationships may create a vacuum for conflict. While mediation attempts have been successful in the past in establishing various trade agreements, including a free-trade relationship, as tensions have increased these agreements have been frozen or discontinued, including China exiting the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement after the election of current president of Taiwan, and pro-independence politician, Lai Ching-te in 2024 (Kang 2024). This is not to say that a nation should yield its sovereignty over its resources and products in response to military threats, but it remains important to acknowledge the response to trade policy (or any policy) by partners and adversaries alike.
What More Is There To Say?
Success in mediation, in terms of resolving conflict over natural resources, appears to largely depend on mutual assurance coupled with a balance in incentives to engage in agreements. Nations with little incentive to engage in resource sharing or those who can leverage a resource against partners rarely appear to engage in meaningful dialogue willingly. This drives junior partners to seek leverage through alliances and collective pressure. When it comes to natural resources, protectionist policies appear to outweigh sentiment for altruistic cooperation, values that all nations preach but rarely engage with when it comes to their own interests. More often than not, approaches relating to realism and securitization, usually involving military posturing, result in forced agreements. Too often, junior parties in these disputes rely on the existing superpowers, which are happy to intervene in the dispute to further their aims and reinforce hegemony against opposing world leaders, demonstrating a tendency to favor the polarization of the global community rather than seeking pathways that seek multi-polar, pluralistic collaboration (Erdmann 2024). In terms of natural resources, which are intrinsically tied to the viability of a nation, it sadly appears that parties in conflict usually default to taking advantage of the situation in the absence of incentives to pursue an equitable agreement. There are, of course, examples of entirely diplomatic resource sharing, but these appear more or less constrained to parties that hold relatively equal power between one another. Power, it seems, is always exploited.
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Mediating Wars: What Can Mediators Do?
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT
Mediation has been instrumental in resolving diverse disputes ranging from commercial to extremely violent conflicts like wars. Several factors contribute to successful war mediation. The mediator’s neutrality, the promised confidentiality, and the voluntariness that characterizes mediation lubricate war relations locked by fears and distrust. This article examines the legislative framework of mediation and armed conflict, the attributes of a war mediator, and possible concessions that can arise from war mediation.
KEYWORDS *
War mediation, armed conflict, confidentiality, neutrality, humanitarian corridors, prisoners of war, ceasefire, international humanitarian law, self-determination, leverage, de-escalation, Geneva Conventions
INTRODUCTION
War has been defined as armed fighting between two or more countries or groups. Declaration of war heralds millions of deaths, suffering, and destruction in many nations. In addition to the deployment of military personnel and guns, modern warfare is attended by the use of long-range weapons like missiles. Mediators have diverse roles to play in these chaotic territories. War mediation does not ideally take place on the raging battlefield. Rather, war mediation can occur digitally and, where safety and necessity dictate, physical meetings may be conducted with states’ decision-makers. Heads of state have played the role of mediators because these persons will have established trust and ongoing relations with the leaders and decision-makers in warring states. Professional and experienced mediators can be engaged as neutrals to mediate wars. Despite the brutality, devastation, and death that is associated with wars, there are internationally agreed humanitarian guidelines regulating tumultuous war scenes. These guidelines offer insights into possibilities mediators can look out for while mediating wars. Given the obligatory requirement of self-determination and the delicacy of war mediation, mediators should be skilled and disciplined to obtain the desired resolution.
MAIN CORPUS
Case study: the mutual agreement to destroy
Warnings turned to threats of war and intimidating displays of military prowess across media outlets. From the confines of heavily protected and stocked hideouts, the leaders of Andril and Sobril had taken to the media to announce their decision to engage in a military contest. Justifications for the war include the protection of the right to life, territorial integrity, and security. Ironically, these rights have been progressively eroded with the intensity of the war. In Andril and Sobril, massive and deadly explosions swept across densely populated cities while weary human figures stealthily crept and crawled in bushes and battered buildings like rodents. Friends quickly turned to enemies as the warring nations exchanged deadly weapons. The dead, the wounded, and the destroyed infrastructure rapidly mount on both sides. No territory can rationally be declared a winner. Foreign allies hurriedly inspire the warring territories with a fresh supply of military personnel and sophisticated armament. Would warring nations have arrived at the mediation table sooner without their allies’ encouragement?
The unending shriek of missiles, mortars, and explosives replaces the hopeful noise of construction, the banter of artisans and traders, and the joyful celebrations, enterprise, and cultures that characterize the Andrils and Sobrils. A few days of intense battle has erased the sense of security and civilization created by centuries of consistent hard work. In less than one week, the inhabitants of the warring nations have painfully admitted the limited supply of basic needs like food and water. The tension and fears are not imaginary. The cold stare of death from their enemies’ military artillery, falling trees and infrastructure, hunger, thirst, and unrefined terror haunted them in their unsanitary hideouts. The solidarity and patriotism that inspired their territorial leaders to war quickly lost priority as civilians moaned and cursed in the face of widespread deaths, human suffering, and hopelessness. Infants, youths, and the elderly are not spared. Who will survive when the territories are secured? The ripple effects of war, destruction, and pain continue their unending rounds in Andril and Sobril. No one knows how long the war will last. What can mediators do?
Legislative framework
The mediator and warring parties should consider local and international laws if they opt for mediation. Article 3 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights advocates for the right to life, liberty, and the security of person, which is often severely threatened during wars. Recital 1 of the Preamble of the 1945 United Nations Charter decries the scourge of war, which has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and Article 33 of the UN Charter requires that all Members resolve their international disputes peacefully, in the interest of global peace, security, and justice, and highlights mediation as a dispute resolution medium. Notable regulations warring parties and mediators should be concerned about include Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 on the protection of victims of armed conflicts, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, and the Rome Statute, which defines war crimes and criminal jurisdiction. Applicable mediation guidelines and regulations like the European Mediation Directive and the Singapore Convention on Mediation should also be complied with to avert contests over settlement agreements. Case law precedents on the use of nuclear weapons, military and paramilitary activities, and access to ports are noteworthy.
Qualities of a war mediator
The mediator’s role is multi-faceted. The mediator is a problem-solver, advocate, communicator, educator, expert, coordinator, and representative. Mediators often lean on established norms, institutions, governmental and non-governmental structures, and varied actors during conflict resolution. Thus, credit for a successful war mediation does not belong to the mediator alone. A good mediator embodies positive attributes like empathy, neutrality, emotional sensitivity, trustworthiness, friendliness, and a non-judgemental disposition. The section below focuses on three essentials of a war mediator. An effective war mediator should be very discreet, tactful, and knowledgeable.
Confidentiality. Every mediation code of conduct and regulatory instrument holds confidentiality as an obligatory tenet for mediators and the mediation process. The primary exceptions are permitted disclosure by parties and disclosures mandated by law or court. In a war context, mediators may need to consider international laws for exceptions to confidentiality. This requires tact and sensitivity to prevent further misunderstandings and conflict escalation. Confidentiality is important for the safety of the mediator and parties involved. The war mediator often operates as a go-between physically or virtually while the violent conflict persists. Given this, the mediator is trusted to represent each party’s interests and positions without bias. The mediator should strive to eliminate actions or inaction that may be misconstrued as spying on foreign intelligence or treachery. The consequences of such misunderstanding can be grave and unpleasant. Mediation should not facilitate betrayal; mediators should obtain permission before disclosing confidential information, particularly about a warring party’s weaknesses. Mediators should also commit to transparency in information gathering and the presentation of settlement proposals, as well as respecting parties’ deadlines and the need for breaks to improve the chances of a peaceful resolution. Caucuses, rather than face-to-face or joint sessions, are encouraged to prevent violent exchanges and de-escalate the conflict.
Neutrality. Neutrality combines an unbiased and a fair-minded approach to dispute resolution. How do war mediators maintain neutrality? States in conflict may not come to a formal agreement on who should be appointed as a mediator. Mediators may be self-appointed heads of state, professionals from neutral organizations like the Red Cross, or diplomats from allied states. Mediators working towards resolving conflict should be transparent about affiliations with warring parties, or benefits from warring states that could suggest a conflict of interest. An indigenous mediator from a warring nation who agrees to mediate risks being regarded as a spy in a foreign country and a traitor in the home country if they do not act discreetly. This is a delicate position. It is a common occurrence that a mediator may be closely aligned with one party or too involved in the conflict to be neutral. In these instances, it seems that credibility is exalted above neutrality. Such actors may be relevant mediators because their past or established relationships and shared interests with the warring nation form the bridge of trust, openness, and flexibility that can lead to a peaceful resolution.
Professional and knowledgeable. War mediators should be well-versed with the historical facts that resulted in the war. Many wars are rooted in generational histories. A peripheral comprehension of current events may not be sufficient knowledge for mediation. The knowledge of parties’ cultures and practices is also beneficial to keep parties engaged. War mediators should be conversant with applicable international laws which may be triggered by the conflict. This will enable the mediator to facilitate within international legal boundaries. This would also ensure mediators are not embroiled in international war crimes and prosecution for confidential information conveyed or concealed. The resolution of violent conflicts should be holistic, considering diverse religions, ethnicities, and political and socio-economic perspectives. It should also be fair and transparent, involving relevant stakeholders and avoiding the natural inclination to exclude the troublesome ones. Knowledge of relevant stakeholders is important. Mediation involves a host of governmental and non-governmental, as well as national and international, supporting actors. Their roles, motivations, strengths, and weaknesses should be carefully mapped for coordinated mediation sessions. Additionally, mediation should be prudently conducted to enhance parties’ self-determination and the success of the mediation. The success or failure of war mediation may depend on the mediator’s skill and professionalism. Unsuccessful war mediation may arise from vague mandates, uncoordinated mediation, presenting insensitive proposals, wrong timing, partiality, inconsistency, and excluding important stakeholders. Consequently, compromise achieved during mediation may be rejected by the parties; a failed mediation may result in lost trust and a lower likelihood of a peaceful resolution of the violent conflict in the future.
What really can mediators do?
Violent conflicts like wars spring from inequalities in access to land and resources, discrimination against minorities, and aggression between states. Mediation is an effective tool for the prevention, de-escalation, and resolution of wars. Why mediation? Mediation is futuristic and focuses on mending relationships. Mediation is an enlightening, cost-effective, and flexible form of conflict resolution. It enables a face-saving expression of the parties’ commitment to genuine conflict resolution. What can mediators do?
Open humanitarian corridors. Warring states often target infrastructure that enables mobility and comfort. Destruction of infrastructure affects production and access to basic needs like food, shelter, and transportation. Humanitarian corridors are ceasefire arrangements to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and the movement of civilians, wounded, and other protected persons where active hostilities make movement particularly dangerous. In this regard, Article 18, paragraph 2, of the First Geneva Convention of 1949 states that “The military authorities shall permit the inhabitants and relief societies, even in invaded or occupied areas, spontaneously to collect and care for wounded or sick of whatever nationality.” Mediators can facilitate meeting these needs, intermittently, throughout the war. Conversely, humanitarian breaks may be employed to buy time to regain military strength. The efficiency of mediation may depend on the mediator’s character, expertise, and sometimes their institutional affiliations, such as being a staff member of the Red Cross.
Release of prisoners of war. Taking hostages and imprisoning military personnel from opposing states is a common war strategy. There are several opportunities for the mediator where hostages and military personnel are held captive by an opposing state. Mediators can facilitate the custody of prisoners of war in humanitarian conditions. Mediators can also aid the release or exchange of prisoners held by opposing states while deliberations are made on the primary issues that triggered their capture and imprisonment. Article 1(2) of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance provides that no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability, or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for enforced disappearance. It is an instructive guide for warring nations.
Restoring communication lines. The outbreak of war is usually evidence that the relationship between antagonized states has broken down. It is noteworthy that the intervention of foreign allies tends to increase resistance to peaceful communication and mediation because these allies escalate conflict via the supply of weapons and resources to their warring ally; this also engenders disregard for the interests of local people and businesses. Mediators should gradually work towards re-opening communication lines between the parties. War mediation may not be attended by the formalities of a standard mediation. Nonetheless, the mediator should employ the essentials that designate mediation, like confidentiality, voluntariness, and self-determination, to breach the hostilities associated with war, re-establish communication between warring nations, and rebuild a working relationship.
Facilitate ceasefire. In addition to the destruction, death, and chaos associated with the violent exchange of explosives and gunfire by warring states, intensive war deters everyday activities, delivery of humanitarian aid, and medical relief to the sick and wounded. A temporary or ultimate ceasefire is required to deliver essential supplies to war-torn territories, release or exchange prisoners of war, and assist the sick and wounded. Mediators may facilitate monitoring and control mechanisms for ceasefire agreements to prevent sabotage. This can be achieved by engaging peacekeepers, establishing a monitoring committee in the territory, and maintaining good relationships with social and political actors.
Dissuade provocative acts that can escalate the war. Mediation can be engaged towards dissuading extensive use of destructive weapons, infuriating media communications, unfavourable conditions for prisoners of war, disrespect of another country’s territorial integrity, commission of mass atrocities, and towards facilitating better terms for civilians in the war zones. Article 8 of the Rome Statute defines war crimes that mediators can dissuade parties from perpetrating. War mediators aim to resolve the conflict that initiated the war. The mediator’s duty should be subject to the parties’ self-determination in conflict resolution. Often, the resolution of such conflict does not occur overnight. In the interim, the mediator should engage parties towards de-escalation of the conflict and the preservation of lives and property threatened by violent military intervention. Mediators can leverage moral persuasion, trading concessions, threat of withdrawal, and loss of compromises already made by parties in mediation towards achieving a settlement. Other forms of leverage include the mediator’s personal prestige and informational power.
Restoration of peace. The ultimate goal of war mediation is the cessation of violence, resolution of conflict, and the restoration of peace to war-torn territories. The mediator can only achieve those goals with the parties’ mutual self-determination to embrace a peaceful resolution. Mediation supports the monitoring and verification of settlement agreements. The mediator facilitates a mutual solution to disputes, outlines the costs and benefits of resolution, and encourages the parties to reasonably commit to peace. Genuine reconciliation requires mutual recognition of wrongs, investment in peaceful and trustworthy relations, sensitivity, and collective self-healing.
SUMMARY *
The article’s organising move is to disaggregate what war mediation actually consists of. Rather than treating it as the pursuit of a settlement that may or may not be reached, the author sets out six distinct tasks, corridors, prisoners, communication, ceasefire, restraint from escalation, and eventual peace, each of which can be attempted independently of the others and each of which produces something even where the war continues. The discussion of the mediator’s qualities is organised around the same practical concern: confidentiality is treated not as a professional courtesy but as a condition of personal safety and of the parties’ willingness to speak, and neutrality is examined honestly enough to reach the conclusion that credibility with both sides sometimes matters more than distance from either.
CONCLUSION
The war rages on. Nestled in safe havens, leaders toss the options that determine their citizens’ lives or deaths like a coin. The sad reality for many in war-torn nations like Andril and Sobril is that there is no safe place for civilians in conflict. The inhabitants of Andril and Sobril cringe with fright as fresh rolls of thunderous sound fill the atmosphere. The fearful expectations are more deaths, more hardship, and more destruction. Their fate hangs uneasily on their leaders’ decisions. What will these be? Peace, life and restoration, or war, death and destruction? Mediation still offers a suitable conflict resolution mechanism for warring nations, as it promotes confidentiality and self-determination in the embattled nations’ quest for peace. The war mediator plays a crucial but delicate role in the de-escalation and ultimate resolution of such violent conflicts. The cardinal principles of mediation double as the mediator’s working tools, promising healing and restoration to embittered relations and a guard shielding the mediator from virulent suspicions of betrayal and treachery.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The list of six tasks is the most useful thing in this article, and the practical distinction that would sharpen it is the one the field draws between humanitarian and political negotiation. Corridors, prisoner exchanges, protection of medical facilities and the treatment of the detained are humanitarian matters, conducted by different people from those pursuing a settlement, with different counterparts, on different timescales, and to different standards of success. Keeping the two tracks separate protects both: a humanitarian negotiator suspected of carrying a political mandate loses access, and a political process that depends on humanitarian outcomes gives each side a hostage. The Red Cross the author mentions is the standard example precisely because its mandate is confined in this way and known to be confined.
That leads to the point on which the article’s treatment of confidentiality can be strengthened. Confidentiality in commercial mediation protects a negotiation; in armed conflict it protects people, and its limits are correspondingly different. A mediator who learns of an imminent attack on civilians, or of the location of detainees at risk, faces a question that no code of conduct answers cleanly. The practice that has developed distinguishes between confidentiality as to the content of discussions, which is close to absolute because access depends on it, and the separate function of documentation and public reporting, which is deliberately performed by other organisations. Knowing which role one occupies, and saying so at the outset, is what allows both to continue.
On neutrality the article reaches the right conclusion and can go further. The distinction the field now draws is between impartiality in the conduct of the process, which is required, and neutrality as to the substance, which is neither achievable nor always desirable. A mediator is bound by the same law as the parties and cannot treat a violation as a negotiating position; equally, a mediator with a relationship to one side may be the only person able to deliver that side, which is why Norway, Oman, Qatar and Switzerland have each been effective in situations where a genuinely distant party could achieve nothing. What preserves the process is transparency about the relationship rather than the pretence that none exists.
Two additions would complete the picture. The article’s question about whether allies prolong wars has an established answer worth stating: external support does tend to extend conflicts by improving each side’s expectations of continued fighting, and the corollary for practice is that mediation without engagement of the sponsors addresses only half the parties. And the article rightly notes that humanitarian pauses can be used to regroup, which is why such arrangements are designed with defined duration, defined geography and independent monitoring, and why the decision to accept that risk is taken on the basis that the lives saved during the pause are certain while the military advantage conferred is speculative.
Finally, the choice to build the article around an invented war deserves a word, because it is unusual in this journal and it works. Naming a real conflict would have drawn the reader into assessing who was right; naming none allows the reader to consider what a mediator would actually do. That is the pedagogical value of the piece, and it is why it would serve well as a training text: the six tasks are a checklist, and the fictional frame lets a group work through them without first having to agree about the world.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
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- Fictitious country.
- Fictitious country.
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- Ibid.
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- Ibid.
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- Ibid. at 6.
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- See International Peace Institute, supra note 28.
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Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
Geneva Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 1949, and Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 1949.
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 1977, Articles 48, 51 and 57.
United Nations Guidance for Effective Mediation, Department of Political Affairs, New York, 2012.
Centre of Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation, professional standards and field manuals, Geneva.
International Committee of the Red Cross, Commentary on the Geneva Conventions, updated editions, Geneva.
Mancini, F., & Vericat, J. (2016). Lost in Transition: UN Mediation in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. International Peace Institute, New York.
Bercovitch, J., & Gartner, S. S. (Eds.) (2009). International Conflict Mediation: New Approaches and Findings. Routledge, London.
Cunningham, D. E. (2010). Blocking Resolution: How External States Can Prolong Civil Wars. Journal of Peace Research, 47(2), 115 to 127.