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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Ceasefire Commitments vs. Ground Realities: Assessing the Role of State Declarations before the UN during Armed Conflicts

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

One of the diplomatic elements that has been frequently observed in modern armed conflicts is the declaration of a ceasefire before the United Nations. States often make such declarations to stop hostilities, provide humanitarian access, and seek political remedies, by making speeches in the General Assembly, debating in the Security Council, or by written communications to the Secretary-General. Such statements are usually presented as historic landmarks or humanitarian pauses. However, as practice has always shown, there is an unpleasant trend to it; such promises go hand in hand with ongoing violence, territorial domination, humanitarian blockage, and political stalemate on the ground. This continued difference leads to serious doubts regarding the real purpose and validity of ceasefire promises made at the international level. Even though the legal force is not binding in most cases, declarations before the United Nations are not insignificant. They determine the expectations of the international community, diplomatic pressure, and the formal record against which a state’s behaviour is evaluated afterwards. They also contribute to normative guidelines on armed conflict, such as the protection of civilians, good faith, and the peaceful resolution of disputes.

KEYWORDS *

Ceasefire, United Nations, unilateral declarations, good faith, Security Council, humanitarian pause, monitoring and verification, symbolic compliance, opinio juris, accountability, credibility, ceasefire diplomacy

INTRODUCTION

With the increasing number of armed conflicts being played out on the international platform, states use United Nations forums not only to negotiate de-escalation but also to manage legitimacy and international image. The paper takes an opinion-based analytical perspective, drawing on academic literature, resolutions and reports of the United Nations, Security Council debates, and noted state practice. It contends that, as much as declarations by states before the United Nations serve important normative and political purposes, the continuing gap between ceasefire promises and the facts on the ground indicates structural flaws in international enforcement systems and challenges the principle of good faith in international law. This paper will first explain the conceptual and legal framework of ceasefires and declarations before the United Nations, then discuss the value of ceasefire commitments, and finally explain the failure of these commitments to materialise in practice. It ends by evaluating the role of the United Nations and attempts to formulate possible avenues to reduce the disparity between promise and accountability in diplomacy.

MAIN CORPUS

Conceptual framework: ceasefires and declarations before the United Nations

In a general sense, the term ceasefire is defined as an agreement or a promise to put the active hostilities between sides in an armed conflict on hold. Ceasefires can be either temporary, humanitarian, or comprehensive. Temporary ceasefires are usually limited, intended to allow a pause or to permit negotiation. Humanitarian ceasefires aim at enabling aid to be delivered, civilians to be evacuated, or medical services to be accessed, whereas comprehensive ceasefires are meant as transitional steps towards political settlements or peace agreements. Contemporary ceasefires are not so much final as intended to be pre-negotiation mechanisms that redirect parties away from battlefield reasoning.

There are three main avenues through which state declarations are often made in reference to ceasefires before the United Nations. To begin with, statements in the General Assembly have more to do with political and declaratory roles, and are concerned with the position of the state before other states. Second, the debates and resolutions of the Security Council carry more normative weight, especially where they are associated with binding mandates or enforcement. Third, commitments are placed on record by formal letters to the Secretary-General, usually by appeal to international law or to the imperative of self-defence.

An important difference is found between political commitments and legal obligations. Political promises reflect will, policy direction, or diplomatic stance, but do not in and of themselves create enforceable obligations. Legal obligations become effective only under certain conditions, such as binding Security Council resolutions or a valid unilateral declaration made with the purpose of being legally bound. Unilateral declarations have been recognised by the International Court of Justice as creating legal obligations when clear, specific, and publicly given with such intent, but this is very rare.

The framework is based on such fundamental principles of the Charter as the peaceful resolution of conflicts and the duty of good faith. Although ceasefire declarations typically refer to these principles rhetorically, the legal impact of a declaration is a matter of fact, case-specific, and dependent on what the declaration states and on the conduct that follows. This section is neutral and explanatory in nature and provides the conceptual tools used to evaluate the gap between ceasefire commitments and ground realities in the sections that follow.

Legal value of state declarations at the United Nations

Legally speaking, most state statements made before the United Nations do not have binding effect. Words spoken on the floor of a debate or at press conferences are typically considered policy statements rather than obligations. International law does not assume that diplomatic statements create binding obligations except where the intention to be bound is demonstrated. As a result, ceasefire commitments declared at the United Nations are usually politically substantial but legally weak.

Nevertheless, there are exceptional situations in which such statements can acquire legal validity. First, a statement can be obligatory where it conveys a definite and unambiguous intention to enter into legal obligations, as set out in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice on unilateral acts. Second, the repetition and consistency of such declarations over time can increase their normative force, especially where a state relies on them to justify its behaviour. Third, where declarations are associated with resolutions of the Security Council, particularly those adopted under Chapter VII, this may add an element of binding commitment under Article 25 of the Charter.

In addition to direct obligations, state declarations are significant in forming customary international law insofar as they contribute to opinio juris, the view that a particular course of action is legally obligatory. The fact that, on numerous occasions, hostilities are pledged to be suspended, civilians safeguarded, or humanitarian access granted, reinforces expectations of what is regarded as lawful conduct in armed conflict. In addition, such statements often recur in subsequent accountability procedures, such as fact-finding missions, commissions of inquiry, and international judicial proceedings, where they are used to assess intent, credibility, and consistency of conduct.

The paper argues that the legal validity of declarations before the United Nations is often overemphasised in diplomatic discourse and underemphasised in discussions of accountability. Although these statements do not often lead to immediate legal consequences, they set the standards against which transgressions are subsequently assessed. Declarations acquire evidentiary value when states publicly declare ceasefires and then act against them. In this way, their significance lies not in enforcement but in their cumulative normative and accountability role within the international legal system.

Ground realities: why ceasefire commitments fail in practice

Even with a regular series of ceasefire pledges, breaches are the rule rather than the exception. Numerous practical reasons are outlined in the literature and in reporting by the United Nations.

The first is broken control of armed forces. It is a common phenomenon that even with genuine political commitments, governments have ineffective control over all military forces, allied militias, or proxy forces. The existence of non-state armed groups and proxy actors makes the implementation of a ceasefire even more complicated. These actors can reject the terms of a ceasefire, use pauses to re-equip, or sabotage negotiations to increase their bargaining power. In situations involving more than two armed forces, states may declare a ceasefire that is not universally observed on the ground.

Strategic misuse of ceasefires is another common occurrence. A ceasefire may be used as a tactical measure to reduce international pressure, to restructure military forces, or to manage humanitarian criticism without modifying underlying policies. Humanitarian pauses in particular are occasionally instrumentalised, with access to aid being conditional or applied selectively, strengthening the vulnerability of civilians instead of reducing it.

Weaknesses in the institutions of the United Nations also contribute to the discrepancy between promise and reality. Monitoring and verification mechanisms are few, delayed, or denied access, and cannot independently assess compliance. In the absence of verifiable confirmation, ceasefire violations become routine rather than discouraged. Moreover, non-compliance often goes unenforced or unpunished even where violations are well documented, because of political stalemate in the Security Council, particularly the politics of the veto.

Reports by the Secretary-General record recurring instances of proclaimed ceasefires accompanied by escalating violence, limited humanitarian aid, and the seizure of territory. These trends demonstrate that this is not only a matter of individual non-compliance but a system of structural incentives. The cost to states of declaratory compliance is low and the advantage of making public commitments is high. Such an imbalance promotes apparent compliance as opposed to actual modification of behaviour.

In line with this, the paper argues that the failure of ceasefires has more to do with political economy and less with legal ambiguity. Pronouncements are diplomatic currency, and they are also weak, partial, and partisan. The international response will continue to leave the gap between ceasefire commitments and realities on the ground if that response is concerned with statements rather than with lasting verification and accountability.

Good faith, credibility, and international trust

The principle of good faith takes a central place in international law and serves as the foundation of duties arising from treaties, negotiations, and unilateral acts. The declaration of a ceasefire before the United Nations, even in a non-binding manner, rests implicitly on this principle. The problem of good faith arises whenever states announce ceasefires repeatedly and at the same time conduct themselves in a manner contrary to their promise. Recurrent failure to honour undertakings made to a population undermines the credibility of the states concerned and of the structure of ceasefire diplomacy itself.

This phenomenon is increasingly criticised by scholars as symbolic compliance, whereby states adhere to international norms in form but do not change substantive behaviour. Such conduct destroys confidence between negotiating parties, decreases the motivation to comply, and reduces the belief of civilians in international protection mechanisms.

From a normative view, the gap between statement and action cannot be considered a politically neutral issue. Although international law may not impose actual sanctions, continued bad-faith conduct should carry reputational and institutional costs. It influences the evaluation of state responsibility, affects diplomatic relations, and shapes further negotiations. The paper claims that credibility is a legally relevant value in its own right. Even where a state does not incur formal liability, historical inconsistency between promises and actions should be recognised as relevant to assessing the reliability and good faith of that state in international procedures. This should not be overlooked, because it may otherwise lead to the normalisation of declaratory politics that weakens international norms and makes ceasefire diplomacy a performance instead of a protection.

The role of the United Nations: symbolism or substantive influence?

The United Nations has an ambiguous role in ceasefire diplomacy. On the one hand, it is severely limited in structural terms, by the absence of enforcement powers, reliance on the consent of states, and the politics of the veto in the Security Council. Such limitations frequently lead to an inability to take decisive measures even in cases of blatant non-compliance. The multifaceted involvement of the United Nations in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict and in others emphasises the limitations of peacekeeping missions in achieving permanent political resolutions.

On the other hand, the United Nations still has a significant normative and evidentiary impact. It establishes an enduring record of promises and actions through resolutions, debates, reports, and investigative mechanisms. Its documentation is important in framing sanctions regimes, informing international courts, and assisting future accountability measures. In commissions of inquiry, human rights reporting, and fact-finding missions, ceasefire declarations presented before the United Nations are often used as points of reference. The organisation retains institutional memory and continuity of evidence, even where enforcement is obstructed or delayed.

To this extent, the role of the United Nations is not so much coercive as cumulative. This paper takes the position that the United Nations is procedurally weak and evidentially strong. Its most significant contribution lies not in enforcement but in maintaining international scrutiny and normative pressure over the long term. This recognition helps to explain why states still use its forums to declare ceasefires even where violations are habitual.

SUMMARY *

The article’s most useful observation is that the failure it describes is not a failure of law but a rational response to an incentive structure. A public undertaking before the United Nations is cheap to give and produces immediate returns in diplomatic pressure relieved and legitimacy acquired; it produces no cost when broken, because the mechanism that would impose one requires the assent of members who may include the party concerned or its patron. The author’s second observation follows and is the more interesting: what the declarations do produce is a record, and the record has consequences at a different pace and in different forums, since a statement made and then contradicted is admissible in every subsequent proceeding concerned with intent. The conclusion is accordingly that the United Nations should be assessed by what it preserves rather than by what it prevents.

CONCLUSION

The paper has discussed the persistent disparity between the commitments to ceasefire made before the United Nations and the ongoing violence on the ground. It has shown that although such statements are hardly ever legally binding, they have important normative, political, and evidentiary consequences. The breakdown of ceasefires is not just an issue of non-observance but an element of structural incentives that reward declaratory conformity without meaningful penalty. Recurrent failure to honour commitments compromises good faith, diminishes international trust, and undermines the legitimacy of ceasefire diplomacy. At the same time, the United Nations remains an important venue for documentation, the articulation of norms, and long-term accountability, although it has a constrained enforcement capacity.

Going forward, realistic improvements should include the enhancement of monitoring and verification measures, greater clarity and less vagueness in ceasefire wording, and the treatment of repeated violations as indicators of bad faith within the mechanisms of the United Nations. Instead of relying further on symbolic declarations, international actors need to focus on consistency, transparency, and follow-through. Finally, diplomatic promises should be aligned with accountability structures to ensure that ceasefires are not used as instruments of delay, legitimation, or the administration of humanitarian access. Ceasefire diplomacy can only play a meaningful role in protecting the lives of civilians and sustaining peace when this gap is reduced.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The article’s diagnosis is sound and the response to it has been developed in practice more than the text acknowledges, which is encouraging because it means the remedy is a matter of design rather than of invention.

The decisive variable in the research on ceasefire durability is not the language of the undertaking but whether a mechanism exists to establish what happened when each side accuses the other. Without it, every incident becomes a contest of assertions in which the party with the better communications prevails, and the agreement erodes through accumulated grievance rather than through any decision to abandon it. The mechanisms that work share a common form: a joint monitoring body with representatives of both parties and a neutral chair, a standing procedure for reporting an alleged violation within hours rather than weeks, and a technical capacity to verify. Satellite imagery, acoustic sensors and unmanned observation have reduced the cost of that capacity substantially, and the constraint is now political consent rather than technical feasibility.

The second element concerns what the article calls vagueness. Ceasefire texts that record an undertaking to cease hostilities without specifying what constitutes a hostility, where the lines run, what movements are permitted, and what happens to reinforcement and resupply, are texts that will generate disputes on the first day. The drafting checklist developed by practitioners in this field is unglamorous and effective: define the prohibited acts, define the geography, define the permitted activity, provide for liaison at unit level as well as at command level, and specify what each party does when it believes the other has breached. Most collapses examined after the event turn on one of these omissions rather than on any decision to resume fighting.

Two additions bear on the article’s treatment of the United Nations. The evidentiary function the author identifies has become more consequential than the framing suggests, because the courts that use that record no longer depend on Security Council referral in every case: proceedings under the Genocide Convention require only that both states be parties, and the Court’s provisional measures orders are binding whether or not the Council acts. A record built for one purpose is therefore being used for another, and that is the clearest available answer to the charge that the documentation is merely symbolic. And the Assembly has acquired one modest instrument the article does not mention: since 2022 any veto in the Council triggers an automatic debate in which the vetoing state must explain itself. It changes nothing about the outcome and it does something to the cost.

Finally, one observation from the perspective of this field. The article treats the strategic use of a humanitarian pause as an abuse, and mediators who work on such arrangements would put it differently: a party that agrees to a pause for its own reasons has still agreed, aid has still moved, and people who would otherwise have died have not. The distinction that matters in practice is not between sincere and cynical motives, which cannot be established and would not change the outcome if they could, but between a pause that is used and one that is announced. What determines which occurs is not the good faith of the parties but whether corridors were agreed in detail, whether convoys were ready, and whether someone was monitoring. Those are the things a mediator can affect, and they are available whatever the parties intend.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Bell, Christine. “Ceasefire.” Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law. Oxford Public International Law.

Berg, B. R. “UN Security Council Passes Resolution Calling for Gaza Ceasefire.” BBC, 25 March 2024.

Clayton, G., Nathan, L., and C. Wiehler. “Ceasefire Success: A Conceptual Framework.” International Peacekeeping 28, no. 3 (2021): 341 to 365.

Delegation of France to the United Nations. “The Security Council Must Transform the Ceasefire into Lasting Peace.”

Öberg, Marko Divac. “The Legal Effects of Resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly in the Jurisprudence of the ICJ.” European Journal of International Law 16, no. 5 (2005): 879 to 906.

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. “Mediating a Ceasefire.” OSCE Magazine, 15 November 2024.

Puttick, M., Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights, and Minority Rights Group International. Eyes on the Ground: Realizing the Potential of Civilian-Led Monitoring in Armed Conflict. 2017.

Reuters. “UN Security Council for the First Time Demands Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza.” The Hindu, 25 March 2024.

Security Council Report. “The Middle East, Including the Palestinian Question: Briefing and Consultations.”

Sosnowski, M. “Not Dead but Sleeping: Expanding International Law to Better Regulate the Diverse Effects of Ceasefire Agreements.” Leiden Journal of International Law 33, no. 3 (2020): 731 to 743.

United Nations News. “Gaza: Security Council Passes Resolution Demanding an Immediate Ceasefire during Ramadan.” 26 March 2024.

United Nations News. “Security Council Must Seize Moment of Renewed Hope in Gaza.” 25 November 2025.

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

Charter of the United Nations, 1945, Articles 2(2), 2(3), 25, 33 and 39 to 42.

International Law Commission (2006). Guiding Principles Applicable to Unilateral Declarations of States Capable of Creating Legal Obligations, with commentaries.

International Court of Justice, Nuclear Tests (Australia v. France; New Zealand v. France), Judgments of 20 December 1974, on the binding character of unilateral declarations.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 76/262 (2022), establishing the standing mandate for a debate following the use of the veto in the Security Council.

United Nations, Guidance for Effective Mediation, Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, New York, 2012.

Chounet-Cambas, L. (2011). Negotiating Ceasefires: Dilemmas and Options for Mediators. Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Geneva.

Brickhill, J. (2018). Mediating Security Arrangements in Peace Processes. Centre for Security Studies, Zurich.

Fortna, V. P. (2004). Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Thirty Years After the Dayton Agreement

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

Thirty years after the Dayton Peace Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains a fragile post-conflict state: peace endures, but democratic consolidation and societal reconciliation lag. Dayton’s consociational framework halted violence and ensured short-term stability but entrenched ethnonational divisions, political paralysis, and stalled European integration. This article examines ongoing institutional, societal, and international challenges and proposes targeted reforms to strengthen governance, protect minority rights, and foster cohesion.

KEYWORDS

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dayton Peace Agreement, post-conflict governance, reconciliation

INTRODUCTION

In December 1995, the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, commonly known as the Dayton Peace Agreement, brought an end to nearly four years of armed conflict marked by mass atrocities, sieges such as that of Sarajevo, ethnic cleansing, genocide in Srebrenica, and the displacement of over half the country’s population. The accords not only halted hostilities but also established a complex constitutional framework, codified in Annex 4, which sought to reconcile the country’s three constituent peoples, Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs, within a consociational, highly decentralized political system. While Dayton achieved its immediate objective of silencing the guns, the architecture it created has, three decades later, become both the guarantor of peace and a structural impediment to democratic consolidation, functional governance, and interethnic reconciliation (Toal and Dahlman 2011; Bose 2002).

Thirty years on, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains caught between the legacies of war and the demands of European integration. The constitutional order, designed to balance power among ethnonational elites, has entrenched identity-based politics, fostered patronage-driven governance, and hindered meaningful reform. Persistent non-compliance with European Court of Human Rights judgements, most notably Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina (2009), underscores the incompatibility of Dayton’s ethnic provisions with fundamental democratic principles (Venice Commission 2005; Venice Commission 2012). At the societal level, the endurance of ethnically segregated education systems, symbolised by the two schools under one roof phenomenon, continues to reproduce wartime divisions, limiting the emergence of a shared civic identity (Salcedo 2023).

The 30th anniversary of Dayton offers not only an occasion for commemoration but also a moment for critical re-evaluation. The international community’s role, oscillating between assertive intervention and gradual disengagement, has shaped Bosnia’s post-war trajectory in ways that both stabilised and constrained political transformation. With renewed EU engagement, mounting secessionist rhetoric from Republika Srpska, and ongoing debates about constitutional reform, Bosnia faces a decisive juncture: either move beyond the limitations of the Dayton framework or risk perpetuating a cycle of institutional paralysis and deepening ethnopolitical fragmentation. This article examines the post-Dayton settlement’s successes and failures, with particular attention to institutional design, societal cohesion, and the prospects for sustainable reform, before advancing policy-oriented solutions aimed at aligning Bosnia’s governance with both democratic norms and the imperatives of long-term stability.

MAIN CORPUS

The Dayton framework: successes and built-in limitations

The Dayton Peace Agreement, negotiated in November 1995 at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, stands as one of the most detailed and rigid post-conflict settlements in modern history. Its institutional design, codified in Annex 4, the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, established a consociational arrangement intended to accommodate the three constituent peoples of the country within a single sovereign framework. In practice, this meant the creation of two highly autonomous entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, predominantly Bosniak and Croat, and Republika Srpska, predominantly Serb, alongside the self-governing Brčko District under international supervision.

From a conflict resolution perspective, Dayton achieved its principal aim: it brought an immediate and durable cessation of hostilities, halted mass atrocities, and provided a framework for the return of displaced persons under Annex 7. It also embedded robust mechanisms for international oversight, most notably the Office of the High Representative, endowed with so-called Bonn Powers to impose laws and remove obstructive officials. In the short term, these measures prevented a relapse into armed conflict and ensured a degree of stability in a highly polarised post-war environment (Bose 2002).

However, the very architecture that ended the war has, over time, become a source of chronic dysfunction. The rigid ethnic quotas for high political office, the identity-based veto powers, and the complex layering of governance have entrenched identity-based politics and incentivised obstructionism. Rather than fostering cross-ethnic coalitions or a shared civic identity, the system has reinforced the wartime division of territory and political authority. The persistence of these arrangements has been widely critiqued by scholars and international bodies alike. A key illustration of this is the Sejdić and Finci case of 2009, in which the European Court of Human Rights found that Bosnia’s constitution, by allowing only Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs to run for the tripartite Presidency and the House of Peoples, discriminates against citizens from other backgrounds, such as Roma and Jews, underscoring the incompatibility of those provisions with democratic equality and the European integration process.

Three decades later, Dayton remains both a shield and a cage: it safeguards Bosnia’s fragile peace yet constrains the political imagination necessary for substantive reform. The challenge, therefore, lies not in dismantling the framework wholesale, an approach likely to destabilise the tense post-war balance, but in reconfiguring its provisions to enable functional governance, protect minority rights, and align with Bosnia’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Persistent ethnopolitical divisions and governance paralysis

While the agreement ended armed conflict, it also embedded ethnicity as the foundation of the political order. This architecture has hardened into a structural barrier to functional governance. Political parties in the country rarely compete on policy platforms; instead, elections are framed as zero-sum contests to defend ethnic prerogatives. This logic fuels electoral cycles dominated by fear-based mobilisation rather than programmatic debate, leaving cross-ethnic political cooperation both rare and politically costly (Bieber 2006).

These divisions are not abstract; they manifest in everyday governance failures. The two schools under one roof arrangement, which started as a temporary measure to integrate displaced children, is still present in parts of the Federation and symbolises a broader unwillingness to invest in and promote integrative institutions. Children of different ethnic groups attend classes in the same building but are physically separated, follow different curricula, and even enter through different doors; this separation perpetuates stereotypes from an early age and undermines the development of a shared civic identity (OSCE 2018). In the judiciary, recruitment patterns often mirror political and ethnic affiliations, undermining perceptions of impartiality (European Commission 2022).

Policy deadlock has repeatedly blocked reforms in areas ranging from environmental regulation to public healthcare, illustrating that the paralysis is not only institutional but also deeply rooted in political culture. Beyond institutions, public discourse remains polarised by competing victimhood narratives in which each ethnic group frames itself as having suffered the most during the war of 1992 to 1995. These narratives fuel denial of atrocities committed by one’s own side and create ongoing disputes over memorialisation, with separate monuments, commemorations, and historical accounts reinforcing divided collective memories, lacking countrywide policies to deal with the past, including strategies on transitional justice. As the European Commission has recorded, leaders engage in historical revisionism, genocide denial and glorification of war criminals, contesting established facts and the impartiality of tribunals (European Commission 2022: 29).

Entity-level dynamics further complicate the state’s functionality. The leadership of Republika Srpska has pursued a strategy of gradual institutional withdrawal, boycotting state institutions, blocking legislation, and creating parallel administrative structures (International Crisis Group 2014). In the Federation, disputes over electoral reform have pitted Bosniak and Croat political actors against each other, with the latter insisting on mechanisms to guarantee legitimate representation in the Presidency. Both trends weaken central authority, reinforce entity autonomy, and erode the cohesion of the state.

International oversight, once decisive, now struggles against diminishing leverage and waning consensus among external actors. The Office of the High Representative remains formally empowered to intervene, yet its willingness to use the Bonn Powers has decreased, partly to encourage local ownership, partly due to geopolitical fragmentation among the members of the Peace Implementation Council, where Western states generally support a more assertive role for the Office, while Russia and occasionally others advocate reducing its authority and closing it altogether. The conditionality framework of the European Union, seeking to improve accession prospects through constitutional reform, has failed to generate breakthroughs, as domestic elites who feel their dominance threatened block reforms without immediate political cost (Brljavac 2011). This stalemate has kept Bosnia in perpetual transition, formally post-conflict yet unable to move decisively toward consolidated peace and governance.

The state of peace in 2025

Three decades after Dayton, Bosnia and Herzegovina presents a unique lens through which to assess the long-term outcomes of international mediation. While the formal conflict ended in 1995, the country’s trajectory since then demonstrates that peace maintenance is not solely a product of institutional design but also of evolving political, social, and international dynamics. By 2025, the post-conflict landscape is characterised less by overt violence than by systemic stagnation, institutional fragility, and the continued salience of ethnic divisions, all of which complicate both governance and societal reconciliation.

The international community’s engagement has shifted markedly over time. The Office of the High Representative, once a decisive arbiter with the authority to impose laws and dismiss officials, has gradually curtailed its interventionist role. This change reflects a strategic recalibration: external actors now prioritize fostering domestic ownership of reform processes while facing diminishing consensus among the members of the Peace Implementation Council. Divergent priorities, ranging from differing approaches to European integration, scepticism about intervention, and broader geopolitical competition, have reduced the Council’s capacity to act collectively, leaving the Office in a position where formal power exists but is exercised selectively. Simultaneously, Bosnia’s accession perspective has functioned as both an incentive and a source of tension. Conditionality mechanisms, designed to stimulate reforms in governance, constitutional alignment, and human rights, have often failed to produce tangible change (European Commission 2022). Domestic elites exploit structural vetoes embedded in the Dayton framework to block reform and create a form of reform inertia.

The 30th anniversary in 2025 offers a symbolic and analytical milestone. Commemorative narratives frequently emphasize continuity and stability, portraying Bosnia as a success story of externally mediated peace. Yet anniversaries also expose unresolved tensions, including enduring debates over constitutional reform, inter-ethnic mistrust, and the limited effectiveness of mechanisms for accountability and transitional justice. These narratives are further complicated by selective memory politics; victimhood hierarchies, genocide denial, and contested memorialisation continue to shape public discourse, illustrating that the symbolic dimensions of peace are as contentious as the institutional ones.

From a mediation perspective, the country in 2025 exemplifies the challenge of sustaining peace when local political incentives diverge from external expectations. The stagnation highlights a critical gap: international frameworks can create the architecture for peace, but they cannot, by themselves, generate the political will necessary for transformative reform. This underscores the necessity for adaptive mediation approaches that integrate long-term societal reconciliation, support for civic institutions beyond ethnonational frameworks, and sustained international engagement calibrated to evolving local dynamics (Mujkić 2007).

Pathways to reform

The challenges facing Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2025, namely constitutional rigidity, entrenched ethnopolitical divisions, governance paralysis, and stalled European integration, require a multi-layered reform strategy that addresses both institutional design and the deeper societal cleavages perpetuating the status quo. Solutions must avoid the destabilising risks of dismantling Dayton wholesale while tackling its most obstructive provisions, combining constitutional adjustments, robust civic integration policies, and reinvigorated international engagement.

The priority for constitutional reform should be compliance with the Sejdić and Finci ruling and related judgements, which demand the elimination of ethnic exclusivity in eligibility for the Presidency and the House of Peoples. For, as Fazlić puts it, unless ethnicity or affiliation to a single nation stops being the basic condition for conducting office in government, there is little chance of progress (Fazlić 2020: 183). Rather than imposing a comprehensive redesign, politically unrealistic in the current climate, incremental amendments could remove discriminatory language while maintaining protections for constituent peoples. Models from other consociational contexts, such as Belgium or Northern Ireland, suggest that power-sharing can be preserved while expanding eligibility to all citizens (Bieber 2006).

An intermediate step could involve creating an additional, ethnically neutral civic seat in the Presidency, enabling citizens outside the three constituent peoples to participate in the highest offices without undermining entity representation. This would symbolically and practically signal a shift towards civic equality; a civic state is on this view the only option under which the country may make progress and realize a stable and harmonious life for its citizens (Fazlić 2020: 183).

Additionally, the complexity of the multi-tiered governance system, with its many institutions, prime ministers, and overlapping competences, has created fertile ground for obstructionism. International practice in post-conflict federal systems indicates that consolidating overlapping administrative structures can improve efficiency without destabilizing power balances (International Crisis Group 2014). A gradual functional integration approach could begin with harmonizing key sectors such as environmental regulation, energy policy, and public procurement under state-level agencies. Joint service delivery in non-sensitive areas, such as disaster response and digital infrastructure, could reduce duplication and foster practical inter-entity cooperation. By demonstrating that cross-entity cooperation can deliver tangible benefits, such measures could lower political resistance to further integration.

A key impediment to integration remains the persistence of the two schools under one roof system, which undermines interethnic contact and sustains parallel narratives of the past. Comparative studies in divided societies, such as post-apartheid South Africa and post-conflict Northern Ireland, underscore the role of integrated education in fostering social cohesion. Reform should begin with a nationwide curriculum framework that preserves cultural and linguistic diversity while introducing common modules on civic education, human rights, and shared history. This must be complemented by teacher training programmes in intercultural competence and conflict-sensitive pedagogy (Emkić 2018). Given the political sensitivity, pilot programmes in municipalities with existing interethnic cooperation could serve as models before broader rollout, supported perhaps by conditional funding tied to integration benchmarks.

Another key point is that judicial reform remains essential to restoring public trust. Recruitment and promotion processes should be depoliticized through transparent, merit-based appointments, ideally with international observers during the transition period. The High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council must also be empowered to address high-level corruption and political obstruction. Recent events underscore the urgency of such reforms: in August 2025, the state court commuted a one-year prison sentence imposed on the President of Republika Srpska to a fine, while upholding a six-year ban from public office. The ability to avoid incarceration, coupled with public defiance of the ruling, illustrates both the fragility of judicial enforcement and the entrenched impunity of political elites (Melez 2025). Without stronger safeguards for judicial independence, such cases will continue to erode institutional credibility and undermine the state’s democratic trajectory.

International actors must recalibrate their engagement from sporadic crisis management to sustained, strategic support. This requires a dual approach. First, enhanced conditionality should move beyond generic reform demands towards targeted, sequenced roadmaps with clear political and financial incentives for compliance, coupled with automatic disincentives for obstruction (Brljavac 2011). Second, there should be better selective use of the Bonn Powers; while overuse risks undermining local ownership, a credible willingness to deploy those powers against actors obstructing compliance or threatening state integrity would re-establish the deterrent value of international oversight (Toal and Dahlman 2011).

Finally, addressing the legacies of wartime atrocities requires a coordinated national strategy on transitional justice. International partners could facilitate a truth and reconciliation commission modelled on experiences ranging from South Africa and Colombia to Argentina and Peru, adapted to Bosnia’s multi-ethnic context (Subotić 2013). This should be complemented by state-supported memorial sites and education campaigns acknowledging crimes committed by all sides, thereby countering historical revisionism and genocide denial. As evidence from other post-conflict states shows, sustained public recognition of past atrocities can reduce intergroup hostility over time (Hayner 2011).

SUMMARY *

The article’s organising formulation, that Dayton is at once a shield and a cage, states a difficulty that the literature on power sharing has not resolved: the arrangements that end a war by guaranteeing each group against domination are the same arrangements that make the group the unit of political life thereafter, and a system in which office, veto, and representation follow ethnicity gives every politician a standing interest in ethnicity remaining salient. The author’s response is deliberately incremental rather than transformative, on the reasoning that the settlement cannot be reopened without reopening what it settled. The proposals accordingly work at the margins the framework leaves available: a civic route into offices now closed, functional cooperation in sectors where nothing symbolic is at stake, and integrated schooling, which is where the reproduction of division is most directly observable and most directly interruptible.

CONCLUSION

Three decades after Dayton, Bosnia and Herzegovina stands both as a testament to the power of negotiated peace and a cautionary tale about its limits. The country has avoided a return to violence, yet the institutional scaffolding that once guaranteed stability now locks politics into a narrow corridor defined by ethnonational vetoes, governance paralysis, and competing historical narratives. In this sense, Bosnia illustrates that peace agreements can end wars but cannot by themselves create the societal and political will for transformation.

The anniversary marks more than a symbolic milestone; it is an inflection point. The choice is not between dismantling Dayton or preserving it unchanged, but between allowing its provisions to ossify into permanent obstacles, or adapting them to foster inclusive governance, civic equality, and a functioning state capable of meeting the standards of European integration. Incremental constitutional reform, depoliticised institutions, integrated education, and credible international engagement are not merely technical fixes; they are investments in a political culture that privileges cooperation over zero-sum ethnic mobilisation.

Bosnia’s future will depend on whether domestic actors and international partners can move beyond the minimalist logic of no war toward a more ambitious vision of shared citizenship and accountable governance. In that sense, the real challenge for the next decade is not just sustaining peace but redefining it.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The article’s diagnosis is accurate and the obstacle to its remedy is worth naming precisely, because it explains why sixteen years of non-compliance with a binding judgment have produced nothing.

Every constitutional amendment must pass the Parliamentary Assembly, in which the same actors who benefit from the present arrangement hold vetoes. The reform therefore requires the assent of those it would disadvantage, which is the structural reason that the incremental proposals set out here, sound as they are, have been on the table since the failed package of April 2006 and have not moved. Any realistic path must supply those actors with a reason to consent, and the two candidates are a benefit they cannot obtain otherwise, which is what accession was supposed to provide, and a credible cost for obstruction, which is what the Bonn Powers were supposed to provide. Both have weakened, and the sequence matters: the incentive must be visible before the concession is asked for, not promised after it.

That points to a specific difficulty with the conditionality instrument as currently used. Candidate status was granted in 2022 and negotiations opened in 2024 without the constitutional question being resolved, which taught domestic actors that the requirement is negotiable. Conditionality works where the benchmark is specific, the reward is defined, and the sequence is not adjusted for political convenience; where it is adjusted, it teaches the opposite of what it intends. The proposal for sequenced roadmaps in the article is right, and the harder half of it is the willingness to withhold when a benchmark is not met.

Two additions on the substantive proposals. The civic seat is an attractive formulation and it is worth noting that the Court’s judgment does not require any particular design, only that eligibility not be restricted by ethnicity; several models satisfy it, including an indirectly elected presidency, a single president with rotating vice-presidents, or the retention of quotas without exclusivity, and presenting a range rather than a single solution makes the requirement harder to characterise as an attack on any group’s position. And on education, the comparative evidence supports the article’s emphasis with a qualification that strengthens it: integrated schooling reduces prejudice where the contact within it is genuine, meaning shared classes, shared activities, and staff who reflect both communities, and produces little where children merely share a building, which is precisely the criticism the author makes of the present arrangement.

Finally, one observation that follows from the article’s own framing. Dayton was designed to stop a war and it did so; that it functions poorly as a constitution is not a failure of the negotiators but a consequence of what they were asked to produce, under bombardment, in three weeks. The transferable lesson for this journal’s readers is about sequencing rather than about Bosnia: an instrument drafted to end fighting acquires permanence by default, because the moment at which it could be revised is the moment at which the parties have least reason to agree to anything. Agreements of this kind are therefore better drafted with their own revision built in, through review clauses, sunset provisions on the most contested arrangements, and a defined procedure for amendment that does not require the unanimity of those who benefit from the status quo. Dayton contained none of these, and thirty years later that is the difficulty the author is describing.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Bieber, F. (2006). Post-War Bosnia: Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Bose, S. (2002). Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention. Oxford University Press, New York.

Brljavac, B. (2011). Europeanisation Process of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Responsibility of the European Union? Balkanologie, 1 to 19.

Emkić, E. (2018). Reconciliation and Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina: From Segregation to Sustainable Peace. Springer International Publishing.

European Commission (2022). Bosnia and Herzegovina 2022 Report. Brussels.

Fazlić, F. (2020). Twenty Five Years of the Dayton Agreement: Peace Project or Difficult Journey towards a Functional State. SEER Journal for Labour and Social Affairs in Eastern Europe, 165 to 186.

Hayner, P. (2011). Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions. Routledge, New York.

International Crisis Group (2014). Bosnia’s Future. Europe Report No. 232. Brussels.

Melez, S. (2025). Bosnian Court Commutes Milorad Dodik’s Jail Sentence to a Fine. Balkan Insight, 12 August 2025.

Mujkić, A. (2007). We, the Citizens of Ethnopolis. Constellations, 112 to 128.

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (2018). Two Schools Under One Roof: The Most Visible Example of Discrimination in Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina. OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo.

Salcedo, J. (2023). When Coexistence Becomes Parallel Existence: Two Schools under One Roof. Balkan Diskurs, 25 June 2023.

Subotić, J. (2013). Remembrance, Public Narratives, and Obstacles to Justice in the Western Balkans. Studies in Social Justice, 265 to 283.

Toal, G., and C. Dahlman (2011). Bosnia Remade: Ethnic Cleansing and Its Reversal. Oxford University Press, New York.

Venice Commission (2005). Opinion on the Constitutional Situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Powers of the High Representative, CDL-AD(2005)004. Council of Europe, Strasbourg.

Venice Commission (2012). Opinion on the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Electoral Law, and Their Compatibility with the ECHR, CDL-AD(2012)019. Council of Europe, Strasbourg.

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Paris, 14 December 1995, in particular Annexes 4, 7 and 10.

European Court of Human Rights, Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, judgment of 22 December 2009; Zornić v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2014; Pilav v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2016; and Kovačević v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2023.

Peace Implementation Council, Bonn Conclusions, 10 December 1997.

Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, 10 April 1998, and the arrangements for review of its institutions.

Lijphart, A. (1977). Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. Yale University Press, New Haven.

Horowitz, D. L. (2000). Ethnic Groups in Conflict (2nd edition). University of California Press, Berkeley.

McCrudden, C., & O’Leary, B. (2013). Courts and Consociations: Human Rights versus Power-Sharing. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers, decisions on the supervision of execution of the Sejdić and Finci group of judgments.

The Illusion of Last Resort: Procedural Sovereignity and the Failure of Adjudication in Sudan v. United Arab Emirates

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 allegations described here are those made by Sudan in its application to the International Court of Justice. The Court did not reach the merits, and nothing in these proceedings established or disproved them; the United Arab Emirates denies them. The characterisation of the parties reflects the author’s own perspective and that of the sources cited; this journal’s editorial position is neutral.

The manuscript contained a section discussing the judgment in Germany v. Italy on state immunity, a different question in a different case, which was presented as though it concerned the reservation at issue here. That passage has been removed, since retaining it would mislead readers about what the Court decided. The comparison it gestures at is a legitimate one and is taken up in the section added by this journal.

ABSTRACT *

This article examines the relationship between the failure of mediation and the limits of judicial recourse, through the case brought by Sudan against the United Arab Emirates at the International Court of Justice in 2025. After diplomatic efforts failed to halt alleged external support for the Rapid Support Forces, Sudan applied to the Court for provisional measures under the Genocide Convention. On 5 May 2025 the Court found that it manifestly lacked jurisdiction, because the respondent had entered a reservation to Article IX of the Convention, and removed the case from its list without examining the substance of the allegations. The article sets out the arguments advanced against the validity of that reservation, the majority’s reasoning in upholding it, and the objections raised in the dissenting opinions, before considering what the outcome implies for the availability of legal remedy where political channels have collapsed.

KEYWORDS

Article IX, mediation failure, Genocide Convention, jurisdiction, reservations to treaties, state consent, erga omnes partes, provisional measures, Sudan, International Court of Justice

INTRODUCTION

When mediation breaks down, how far can states rely on international courts to settle disputes? This article explores that question through the case of Sudan against the United Arab Emirates at the International Court of Justice. Before turning to the case it is necessary to understand why mediation failed in this situation and what mediation is. Mediation has long been a principal means of resolving international disagreements under Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations. It is a political process in which third parties help conflicting states reach agreement, often addressing the cessation of hostilities, the building of trust, and the design of longer-term arrangements. Unlike court proceedings, mediation depends on the willingness of both sides to cooperate and to compromise, which makes it vulnerable where trust is low or interests are in direct conflict.

MAIN CORPUS

The collapse of mediation and the turn to legal recourse

In the Sudanese case, mediation began with efforts to construct a framework that included a ceasefire, confidence-building measures, and the establishment of a transitional administration. Regional and global actors encouraged participation in a high-level dialogue support framework, with the United Arab Emirates playing a prominent role in supporting ceasefire arrangements and providing humanitarian assistance, including substantial funding, aircraft, and shipping (Ahmad 2025). These efforts nonetheless failed.

Although the respondent state was active in humanitarian assistance, allegations of its support for the Rapid Support Forces damaged its standing as a neutral party. The Sudanese government regarded the process as unbalanced and considered that questions of accountability and security were not properly addressed. Diplomatic initiatives were also insufficiently coordinated to arrest the escalating violence, particularly the threat to El Fasher, a city sheltering hundreds of thousands of people. The violence had by then become a major humanitarian emergency.

Although mediation should in principle have reduced tension and moved the parties toward settlement, in practice it did not, owing to conflicting international interests, the weakness of voluntary diplomacy, and the urgency of the situation. With mediation having failed, Sudan turned to the International Court of Justice as a means of obtaining measures to prevent further harm to the Masalit population.

After diplomatic efforts had broken down and support for the Rapid Support Forces allegedly continued despite international criticism and reports by United Nations panels of experts, judicial intervention was sought (Spivey 2025; Wintour 2025). The initiation of proceedings followed directly from the failure of diplomatic approaches, and the case therefore serves as a study of the relationship between collapsed political mediation and the subsequent, often compelled, turn to adjudication. As articulated in its application, Sudan turned to the Court as a last resort in order to secure urgent provisional measures.

The Court, however, removed the case from its list on 5 May 2025, exposing the limits of legal recourse as a fallback. The ruling, turning on the respondent’s reservation to Article IX of the Genocide Convention, demonstrates how procedural questions of consent can determine the outcome even where allegations concern a peremptory norm. The majority, following its earlier jurisprudence in the case brought by the Democratic Republic of the Congo against Rwanda, held that the reservation was clearly formulated and compatible with the object and purpose of the Convention, on the basis that it related only to the jurisdiction of the Court and not to substantive obligations. This foreclosed any examination of the central allegations.

This outcome bears out the concerns raised in the joint partly dissenting opinion, which argued that the summary removal of the case at the provisional measures stage deprived the applicant of a full hearing on significant questions of international law. The narrow division on removing the case from the general list indicates the extent of disagreement on the bench and suggests that the absence of jurisdiction was not regarded by nearly half the Court as manifest. Judge ad hoc Simma, in his declaration, contended that the Court had missed an opportunity to reassess the validity of such reservations in the light of the purpose of the Convention.

The case therefore illustrates a paradox: a state compelled to seek legal recourse by the collapse of political channels found its case dismissed on a point that is itself the subject of intense doctrinal debate. This raises questions about the viability of legal forums as instruments of last resort, and suggests that without reform the international community risks maintaining a system in which broad reservations to compromissory clauses can indefinitely delay or deny adjudication of the most serious international crimes (Carli 2025).

The Court’s procedural approach: reservations to Article IX

The Court’s handling of the reservation represents a firm adherence to a formal, consent-based view of its jurisdiction, and this served as the procedural basis for dismissal. The approach, while consistent with long-standing precedent, has drawn criticism for prioritising procedural sovereignty over substantive adjudication in a case alleging violations of a peremptory norm (Becker 2025).

Sudan mounted a multifaceted challenge to the reservation in oral pleading. It argued that the wording was ambiguous, since it omitted the phrase concerning the responsibility of a state for genocide that appears in Article IX itself, creating uncertainty as to its intended scope. More fundamentally, it contended that even if the effect of the reservation was clear, it was incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention. Sudan emphasised that the Convention is unique among human rights instruments in allowing for and depending upon direct access to the Court as the sole available international judicial forum for interstate enforcement, lacking any treaty body for supervision.

The majority dismissed these arguments. It found the reservation to be formulated in clear terms and concluded that the omission of certain language did not result in uncertainty as to its effects. It reaffirmed the distinction drawn in its earlier jurisprudence between substantive obligations and dispute settlement mechanisms, holding that a reservation to Article IX does not affect substantive obligations relating to acts of genocide but merely excludes a particular method of settling a dispute, and was accordingly not incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention. This reasoning allowed the Court to find a manifest lack of jurisdiction and to remove the case from its list.

The consequences are considerable. By declining to re-evaluate the validity of such reservations, the Court left the allegations without any judicial forum. The joint partly dissenting opinion of six judges criticised what it described as a rush to judgment, arguing that the complex questions surrounding the validity of the reservation and the development of the law since the earlier case deserved a full hearing at a preliminary objections stage rather than summary dismissal at the provisional measures stage. Carli (2025) argues in the same direction that, for a convention establishing obligations erga omnes partes, the compromissory clause is not a peripheral mechanism but an enforcement tool integral to the treaty’s purpose, so that a reservation removing it undermines that purpose.

The decision underscores a deep tension within the international legal order. While the prohibition of genocide is a peremptory norm, its adjudication remains contingent on state consent to jurisdiction. The Court remains unwilling to challenge the legitimacy of reservations, even those that may create an accountability gap for the gravest crimes. As Becker acknowledges, whatever view one takes of such reservations, decades of practice have cemented their validity under the current framework. The ruling thus reaffirms that the Court’s role as guardian of international law is constrained by the very principle of consent it is tasked to uphold.

The tension between state consent and the object and purpose of the Convention

The central legal question turned on the primacy of state consent against the imperative of upholding the purpose of a peremptory norm. Counsel for Sudan argued that a formal interpretation prioritising consent would remove the essence of the Convention.

Central to the pleadings was the contention that the Convention is of a special character. Unlike other treaties, it was created not to facilitate reciprocal state interests but to protect the right of groups to exist and to serve a purely humanitarian and civilising purpose, as the Court itself recognised in its advisory opinion of 1951. Counsel emphasised that the Convention relies uniquely on the Court as the sole available international judicial forum for interstate enforcement. A reservation that severs this mechanism cannot therefore be a mere procedural formality; it strikes at the treaty’s reason for being. To allow a state to commit to the substantive prohibition while opting out of the only mechanism for adjudicating alleged violations would render the guarantees illusory.

This argument rested on a purposive reading, urging the Court to look beyond the text of the reservation to its effect. Sudan invoked the guidance of the International Law Commission on reservations, which cautions against reservations purporting to exclude or modify the legal effect of a provision essential to a treaty’s raison d’être. In a convention establishing obligations owed to the international community as a whole, the compromissory clause is not a dispensable accessory but the engine of collective enforcement.

The majority reaffirmed the orthodox, consent-based view, relying on a sharp distinction between the substantive and the procedural: the reservation bears on the jurisdiction of the Court but does not affect substantive obligations relating to acts of genocide themselves (Babu and Garimella 2025).

This approach was criticised in the dissenting and separate opinions, which argued that the Court had missed an opportunity to develop its jurisprudence. The joint partly dissenting opinion lamented the summary dismissal, which prevented a full hearing on whether the law regarding such reservations has developed since the earlier case, given the now-established understanding of the Convention’s erga omnes partes character. Judge ad hoc Simma went further, arguing that the unique character of the Convention means its procedural provisions cannot be isolated from its substantive goals.

The majority’s decision privileged sovereignty and procedural certainty over a dynamic interpretation of enforcement. It cemented the validity of such reservations. The dissent underscores a growing normative rift, leaving unresolved whether a treaty aimed at eradicating genocide can tolerate reservations that allow states to immunise themselves from legal accountability, thereby creating a gap between diplomatic failure and access to justice.

No review of the merits: the legal consequence

A critical consequence of the provisional measures phase, as underscored by the Court’s own directions and accepted by both parties, is that its procedural conclusions were reached without any review of the substantive allegations (McIntyre 2025). This ensures that the urgency of interim relief does not compromise the thorough examination required for a final judgment.

The Agent for Sudan explicitly acknowledged this limit, structuring the presentation to align with the Court’s criteria and separating the jurisdictional argument from the factual narrative. While detailing the allegations, he accepted that definitive proof was a matter for a later stage, which would be the subject of full argument at the merits stage (Kennedy et al. 2025).

This mutual recognition confirms that the purpose of the hearing was procedural and protective. Any order indicating provisional measures would have rested on a conclusion that the assertions were sufficiently credible to warrant protection pending a full investigation, not that they were proven. It would have implied only that the Court might have jurisdiction, that the rights claimed were capable of protection, and that there was an urgent need to avert irreparable harm. Whether genocide is occurring, and whether any state is legally complicit, remained entirely reserved for a merits phase that never came.

Implications for prevention, mediation, and justice

The outcome carries several consequences. First, it establishes that carefully drafted reservations can render the enforcement of the Genocide Convention optional, allowing states to accept its principles while avoiding legal accountability before its designated forum. Second, it weakens the standing of the Court as a final option when diplomacy fails, since a state that has exhausted political channels finds a forum that gives priority to procedure. Other routes, such as universal jurisdiction or action through the Security Council, remain available in principle but face political obstacles. The outcome therefore points to the need for states parties to consider objecting collectively to such reservations, or to amend the Convention so as to preclude them. If this is not addressed, the international community must accept that for some states the legal prohibition of genocide operates without the mechanism designed to enforce it.

SUMMARY *

The article traces a sequence that is more consequential than its individual steps. Mediation failed, in part because a party to the mediation was alleged to be a party to the conflict. The applicant then turned to the forum designed for precisely this situation and found that the respondent had removed itself from that forum’s reach decades earlier, by a single sentence entered at the moment of accession. What makes this more than a technical outcome is that the removal was accomplished without touching the substantive obligation: the respondent remains bound not to commit or facilitate genocide, and is simply not answerable to the body established to determine whether it has. The dissenting opinions, and the closeness of the vote, indicate that the bench itself is divided on whether an obligation without a forum is an obligation in the sense the Convention intended.

CONCLUSION

The case illustrates a critical difficulty in the international legal order. The dismissal on the basis of the reservation to Article IX gives priority to procedural consent over the enforcement of a peremptory norm. This adherence to a consent-based jurisdiction creates an accountability gap, allowing states to endorse the principles of the Convention while insulating themselves from judicial scrutiny of alleged violations. The ruling validates reservations that remove the treaty’s sole interstate enforcement mechanism, rendering its guarantees potentially illusory. Consequently, when mediation fails, judicial recourse is revealed as an uncertain last resort, constrained by the very sovereignty it seeks to regulate. This outcome calls for a reassessment of the permissibility of such reservations, so that the prohibition of genocide is supported by accessible and effective adjudication.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The article identifies the gap correctly, and the routes that remain open are more numerous than its conclusion suggests. Naming them matters, because the finding that one door is closed is only useful alongside the knowledge of which others are not.

First, the reservation binds only the two parties to that case. Any state party to the Convention may bring proceedings against any other that has not entered such a reservation, on the basis of obligations owed erga omnes partes, and this route is now established: the Gambia proceeded against Myanmar on precisely that footing without itself being affected by the events, and the Court confirmed its standing. The consequence is that the accountability gap here is specific rather than general, and it exists because of a choice made by one state at accession rather than because of a defect in the Convention.

Second, the reservation may be objected to. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties permits objections within twelve months of notification, and the practice of objecting to Article IX reservations has been sporadic, which is one reason such reservations have accumulated an appearance of acceptance. A coordinated set of objections by states parties would not remove existing reservations, but it would establish a record bearing directly on the question the dissenting judges wished to examine, namely whether the law has developed since the earlier case. Objections cost nothing and are the instrument states parties actually hold.

Third, the routes that do not depend on the respondent’s consent remain open. The Security Council may refer a situation to the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals rather than states and is unaffected by treaty reservations; universal jurisdiction is available in national courts in a number of states; and the General Assembly may request an advisory opinion, which requires no respondent at all. That last route is worth emphasising because it addresses the article’s own question directly: the validity of Article IX reservations in the light of the erga omnes partes character of the Convention could be put to the Court as an abstract question of law, without any state having to submit to jurisdiction it has declined.

Two observations on the comparison the removed passage gestured at. The judgment on state immunity is genuinely instructive here, because the Court reached the same structural conclusion in a different field: the peremptory character of the underlying norm does not by itself displace a procedural bar, since the two operate on different planes. Whether that reasoning is right is the central doctrinal question, and stating it as a consistent position of the Court, rather than as a peculiarity of this case, makes the criticism sharper. The Court is not evading genocide; it is applying a view of the relationship between substance and procedure that it holds generally, and the argument for changing it must therefore be made at that level.

Finally, for readers of this journal, the sequence the article describes contains a warning about mediation itself. The process failed at least in part because a state that was a party to the mediation was alleged by the other side to be a party to the conflict. That is not a novel problem and it has a known remedy: disclosure of interest at the outset, and a distinction between the convener, who may have interests and leverage, and the mediator, who should not have a stake in the outcome. Where those roles are merged, the party that comes to believe it is negotiating with its adversary’s sponsor will leave the table, and the forum it turns to next may not be open.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Ahmad (2025) On humanitarian assistance and mediation efforts in Sudan.

Babu, P., and S. R. Garimella (2025) No Hearing, No Harm? Rethinking Jurisdiction and Protection in Sudan v. UAE. Critical Legal Thinking, 15 July 2025. https://criticallegalthinking.com/2025/07/15/no-hearing-no-harm-rethinking-jurisdiction-and-protection-in-uae-v-sudan/

Becker, M. A. (2025) Article IX Reservations to the Genocide Convention Are Here to Stay: A Response to Diamond. SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5389015

Carli, E. (2025) The Sudan Genocide Case and the Legal Effect of Reservations to Compromissory Clauses in Disputes Concerning Obligations Erga Omnes Partes. EJIL:Talk! https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-sudan-genocide-case-and-the-legal-effect-of-reservations-to-compromissory-clauses-in-disputes-concerning-obligations-erga-omnes-partes/

International Court of Justice (2006) Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (New Application: 2002) (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Rwanda), Jurisdiction and Admissibility, Judgment, ICJ Reports 2006.

International Court of Justice (2012) Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy), Judgment, ICJ Reports 2012.

International Court of Justice (2025) Sudan v. United Arab Emirates, verbatim record of the hearing of 10 April 2025. https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/197/197-20250410-ora-01-00-bi.pdf

International Court of Justice (2025) Sudan v. United Arab Emirates, Order of 5 May 2025, and the Joint Partly Dissenting Opinion of Judges Bhandari, Charlesworth, Gómez Robledo, Cleveland, Tladi and Judge ad hoc Simma. https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/197/197-20250505-ord-01-02-en.pdf

Kennedy, N., Ebrahim, N., Saifi, Z., and A. Schmitz (2025) Sudan Accuses UAE of Support and Complicity in Genocide at World Court. CNN, 10 April 2025.

McIntyre, J. (2025) Sudan v. United Arab Emirates: Short-Lived but Meaningful? Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore. https://cil.nus.edu.sg/blogs/sudan-v-united-arab-emirates-short-lived-but-meaningful/

Milanović, M. (2006) State Responsibility for Genocide. European Journal of International Law 17(3), 553.

Spivey, M. (2025) Sudan Takes UAE to World Court over Complicity in Genocide. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w1nzpg5dgo

Wintour, P. (2025) Sudan Fails in Attempt to Make UAE Accountable for Acts of Genocide. The Guardian, 5 May 2025.

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948, Articles I, III and IX.

Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports 1951, p. 15.

Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969, Articles 19 to 23.

International Law Commission (2011). Guide to Practice on Reservations to Treaties, with commentaries.

International Court of Justice, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar), Preliminary Objections, Judgment of 22 July 2022, on standing based on obligations erga omnes partes.

Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company, Limited (Belgium v. Spain), Judgment, ICJ Reports 1970, paragraphs 33 and 34.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, Article 13(b) on referral by the Security Council.

Tams, C. J. (2005). Enforcing Obligations Erga Omnes in International Law. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Truth Commissions and the Politics of Memory in South America

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 article explores how truth commissions in Argentina, Chile, and Peru have addressed past violence and shaped collective memory. While they offered recognition and documentation, their impact has been limited by political resistance, institutional weakness, and the exclusion of marginalised voices. The analysis presents memory as a contested space, vulnerable to revision and denial. The article argues that truth-telling must be supported by institutional, educational, and civic mechanisms if it is to sustain a lasting democratic culture.

KEYWORDS

Truth commissions, politics of memory, transitional justice, Argentina, Chile, Peru

INTRODUCTION

In the aftermath of authoritarian regimes and internal armed conflicts, societies are often confronted with the pressing question of how to reckon with past atrocities. Truth commissions have emerged as one of the most prominent mechanisms of transitional justice, tasked with documenting human rights violations, acknowledging victims, and laying the groundwork for reconciliation. In South America, countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Peru have established such commissions, with Latin America as a whole pioneering transitional justice mechanisms to confront the legacy of military rule and internal armed conflict (Skaar et al. 2016: 43 to 44). While these commissions have produced landmark reports and uncovered crucial truths, their long-term impact on national memory and democratic consolidation remains uneven and contested.

This article addresses a critical yet often overlooked dimension of transitional justice: the politics of memory. Memory is not simply a passive compilation of past events; it is an active, ongoing process shaped by political interest, institutional dynamics, and cultural narrative. In each of the three countries under study, the findings of truth commissions have been subject to various forms of politicisation, through denial, instrumentalisation, or selective remembrance, ultimately limiting their ability to foster a shared and inclusive historical consciousness. The central question, therefore, is not merely whether truth was revealed, but whether that truth has been preserved, institutionalised, and internalised within the broader fabric of society.

By examining the cases of Argentina, Chile, and Peru, this article investigates the relationship between truth commissions and the construction of collective memory in post-authoritarian and post-conflict settings. It explores how different political and social contexts have shaped the reception and legacy of truth-telling initiatives, and how memory continues to be a site of contestation. In doing so it draws attention to the fragility of historical justice and to the conditions under which memory work can either support or hinder long-term reconciliation.

The analysis proceeds in five parts. The first outlines the theoretical framework, focusing on transitional justice, truth commissions, and memory politics. The next three examine the experiences of Argentina, Chile, and Peru respectively, considering the origins, limitations, and outcomes of their commissions. The final part proposes a regional, inclusive, and institutionalised approach to memory building, arguing that the protection and activation of historical memory are essential components of sustainable peace and democratic resilience.

MAIN CORPUS

National truths and contested memories

Efforts to confront legacies of violence in post-authoritarian and post-conflict societies are often guided by the framework of transitional justice. This field encompasses a variety of mechanisms, including criminal trials, reparations, institutional reform, and truth commissions, aimed at addressing systemic human rights violations and rebuilding social trust. Among these, truth commissions have gained prominence for their capacity to produce an official narrative of past abuses without the adversarial character of court proceedings. Defined by Hayner (2011) as bodies tasked with investigating patterns of gross violation over a specified period, they seek not only to document the past but to catalyse moral and political renewal by publicly acknowledging the suffering of victims.

However, truth-telling is not a neutral or purely technical process. It operates within a broader field which scholars have termed the politics of memory, the dynamic and often contested struggle over how societies remember, interpret, and narrate episodes of collective trauma. As Jelin (2003) argues, memory is both social and political; it is shaped by institutions, media, education systems, and the differential power of actors to impose or resist dominant narratives. The construction of public memory is therefore not merely a reflection of past facts but a process of negotiation over identity, legitimacy, and responsibility in the present.

This intersection between truth commissions and memory politics raises several tensions. First, while such commissions aspire to uncover the truth, there is rarely a single or universally accepted narrative. Competing interpretations often lead to selective remembrance, in which some victims are recognised while others are excluded, and some perpetrators are condemned while others are shielded by political consideration. Second, the institutional fragility of many Latin American democracies has left commission findings vulnerable to revisionism, denial, or suppression. In some cases governments have actively dismantled or reinterpreted their legacy for ideological or electoral purposes.

Furthermore, the effectiveness of truth commissions must be evaluated not only by the comprehensiveness of their reports but by their afterlife: the extent to which findings are disseminated, internalised, and translated into concrete reform or social change. This may include the implementation of recommendations, the establishment of memorials or museums, the incorporation of historical memory into civic life, and the continuing engagement of civil society in preserving and activating what has been established. Commissions are best understood not as endpoints but as opening moments in a longer process of historical reckoning.

Finally, scholars of transitional justice increasingly emphasise the cultural and decentralised dimensions of memory. As Theidon (2013) shows in her ethnographic work, the experience and remembrance of violence often differ across class, ethnicity, and geography. National narratives may obscure or marginalise the voices of indigenous communities, rural victims, or non-state actors. A comprehensive understanding of truth and memory must therefore also consider who is authorised to speak, whose suffering is recognised, and which stories are rendered visible or erased.

Argentina

Argentina’s approach to transitional justice is widely regarded as among the most ambitious and the earliest in Latin America, the report of the national commission having served as a model for truth commissions across the region (Crenzel 2015: 21). Following the collapse of the military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983, the restored democratic government under President Raúl Alfonsín sought to address the grave human rights abuses committed during the period the regime called the Process of National Reorganisation. This period, marked by forced disappearance, systematic torture, and widespread state terror, left many thousands dead or missing, most of them unarmed political dissidents, activists, students, and trade unionists.

One of the earliest acts of the Alfonsín administration was the creation of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons in December 1983. Tasked with investigating the fate of the disappeared, it collected thousands of testimonies and documented more than 8,900 cases of forced disappearance. Its report of 1984, entitled Nunca Más, was a landmark in the construction of the post-dictatorship narrative, providing the symbolic foundation for a national commitment to human rights. Yet from the outset the pursuit of justice was constrained by political and institutional pressure. While Alfonsín initially authorised the prosecution of the military juntas, fears of destabilising a fragile democracy led to the passage of the Full Stop Law in 1986 and the Law of Due Obedience in 1987, which effectively halted further investigation and trial.

In this context civil society became the primary guardian of memory and justice. Organisations such as the Madres and the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo played an instrumental role in documenting cases, demanding accountability, and raising international awareness. Their persistent activism kept the injustices alive in public discourse, challenging narratives of reconciliation based on forgetting, and using their identity as mothers of the disappeared in a manner powerful enough to challenge the state itself (Burchianti 2004). Over time a broad-based human rights movement emerged, encompassing lawyers, educators, artists, and survivors, which helped to transform memory into a cornerstone of democratic identity.

The landscape shifted in the early 2000s under the presidencies of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández, who made human rights a central pillar of national policy. In 2003 Congress annulled the amnesty laws, and in 2005 the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional, opening the way for the reopening of human rights trials (El País 2005). Since then hundreds of former military and police officials have been prosecuted for crimes against humanity. This judicial development was accompanied by a broader institutionalisation of memory. Former clandestine detention centres, notably the Navy Mechanics School, were transformed into public memory sites; school curricula were revised to include the history of the dictatorship; and commemorations such as the Day of Memory for Truth and Justice on 24 March were established as national holidays.

Despite these advances, memory politics in Argentina remain contested. Conservative sectors have sought to relativise the scale of state violence or to promote the theory of two demons, equating the crimes of the dictatorship with those of the guerrilla groups it sought to destroy. These narratives resurface during electoral cycles and in public discourse, revealing the continued vulnerability of historical memory to politicisation.

Chile

Chile’s transition from dictatorship to democracy represents a paradigmatic case of negotiated transition, in which the pursuit of truth and justice was constrained by the institutional continuity of the authoritarian regime. The military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, from 1973 to 1990, was marked by extensive and systematic violations of human rights, including thousands of cases of extrajudicial execution, enforced disappearance, and torture. Unlike Argentina, Chile’s initial post-authoritarian approach was shaped by an explicit political compromise: in order to move forward, society had to accept the limits of justice in exchange for democratic stability.

In 1990, shortly after assuming office, President Patricio Aylwin established the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, known as the Rettig Commission, with a mandate to investigate deaths and disappearances committed by state agents or with state consent between 1973 and 1990. Crucially, it was not authorised to examine torture, exile, or sexual violence, nor was it empowered to identify perpetrators or to recommend prosecution. The report documented 2,279 cases of disappearance and extrajudicial execution. Although a groundbreaking acknowledgement, it fell short of addressing the full scope of abuse and preserved the legal immunity of the military, particularly of Pinochet himself, who remained Commander in Chief of the Army until 1998 and a senator for life thereafter.

It was not until the presidency of Ricardo Lagos that the state established the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture, known as the Valech Commission, in 2004, which collected more than 35,000 testimonies from survivors of political imprisonment and torture. However, the confidentiality imposed on those testimonies for fifty years, ostensibly to protect survivors, limited the use of the material in legal proceedings and in historical research. This restriction has been a long-standing source of contention, fuelling debate over the role of archival access in justice processes and making these records a crucial arena in the wider struggle over memory (Ferrara 2021).

Given the state’s initial reticence, Chilean civil society played a fundamental role: victims’ organisations, human rights groups, artists, and academics mobilised to document repression (Jara 2020). Sites of former torture and detention, such as Villa Grimaldi, Londres 38, and José Domingo Cañas, were recovered and converted into spaces of memory. Literature, film, and the visual arts also served as instruments of intergenerational transmission. Over time, pressure from civil society, together with international human rights jurisprudence, led to a gradual opening of judicial pathways. The arrest of Pinochet in London in 1998 under the principle of universal jurisdiction marked a turning point (Connett, Hooper and Beaumont 1998); although he died in 2006 without conviction, the precedent had been set for a limited but expanding process of accountability.

Peru

Peru’s experience with truth-seeking and memory politics diverges significantly from those of Argentina and Chile, owing to the nature of its conflict, the ethnic and geographic diversity of its victims, and the ambiguous position of the state as both perpetrator and target. Between 1980 and 2000 Peru endured a brutal internal armed conflict involving the Maoist insurgency Sendero Luminoso, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, and state forces. The violence resulted in an estimated 69,000 deaths and disappearances, with the vast majority of victims belonging to rural, indigenous, and Quechua-speaking communities in the Andean highlands (CVR 2004).

In the aftermath of the authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori, the transitional administration of Valentín Paniagua established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2001. It conducted more than 17,000 interviews, held public hearings, collaborated with forensic teams, and made a concerted effort to centre the experience of marginalised communities (Hayner 2011).

The final report, issued in 2003, challenged dominant narratives about the conflict. While it condemned the atrocities committed by Sendero Luminoso as the principal driver of the violence, it also held the state accountable for widespread extrajudicial execution, forced disappearance, sexual violence, and systematic discrimination. This framing marked a departure from traditional accounts, which cast the conflict in simple terms of terrorism and counterinsurgency. By naming both the state and insurgent groups as perpetrators, and by foregrounding the ethnic and class dimensions of suffering, the commission reframed the conflict as a national trauma with deep historical roots in exclusion and inequality. Despite its rigour, its findings met with immediate political resistance. Key institutions, including the armed forces, conservative media, and Fujimorista factions in Congress, rejected the report’s conclusions, particularly what they regarded as an equivalence drawn between state and non-state violence.

Efforts to implement the recommendations were partial and inconsistent. The creation of the Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion in Lima was a major achievement, but its content and public reception have been the subject of continuing controversy, as the armed forces, civil society, and victims’ families have all used public space as a ground on which competing narratives of the internal armed conflict are curated, contested, and negotiated (Milton 2018). In this context the institution’s ability to act as a site of broad social reconciliation remains limited (Willis 2021: 665).

Peru’s fragmented geography and profound social inequalities have deeply shaped its memory politics. Unlike Argentina or Chile, where state repression was highly centralised and largely urban, the violence in Peru was dispersed, peripheral, and ethnically coded. This produced multiple and often incompatible memory narratives: for many in Lima and other coastal cities the conflict remained distant, while for highland communities it is a lived and intergenerational trauma. These divergences reflect the dominance of perspectives produced in the capital, particularly by whiter and more middle-class groups, and despite greater indigenous input in recent years, scholarship remains largely produced by academics based in Lima or abroad (Willis 2021: 665). The memory of violence is mediated not only by politics but by language, identity, and historical exclusion. For many victims truth remains unheard, not because it was never spoken but because it was not understood or valued by the dominant society. As Theidon (2013) notes, reconciliation in Peru must contend with a legacy of structural marginalisation and not merely with political violence.

Towards sustainable memory

The persistent politicisation, fragmentation, and contestation of memory in these three countries point to the limitations of transitional justice where it is not accompanied by long-term, inclusive, and institutionalised memory policy. A viable response lies not in replicating or expanding truth commissions as such, but in reconceiving memory as a plural, participatory, and continuing political process that outlasts formal transition.

First, states must institutionalise memory beyond the lifespan of particular governments or commissions. This requires permanent and autonomous public bodies dedicated to historical memory, such as national memory councils or ombudspersons for transitional justice, operating independently of political cycles, since sustained cooperation is essential if such measures are to have lasting impact and legitimacy (Eleftheria 2015). These institutions should have a mandate to oversee the implementation of recommendations, to protect memory sites, and to mediate disputes over historical narrative.

Second, education systems must be mobilised as central pillars of memory policy. Curricula should incorporate the findings of truth commissions and include multiple narratives of past violence, ensuring their broad dissemination so that the whole population can engage with them (Brahm 2004). Training teachers and developing inclusive teaching materials can help to address generational gaps and to counter revisionism.

Third, judicial accountability must be aligned with memory work. While not all perpetrators can be prosecuted, symbolic trials, the public naming of perpetrators, the removal of laws that entrench impunity, and reparations are all signs of a government’s commitment to addressing past harm (Brahm 2004), and are essential if memory work is to carry moral and legal legitimacy.

Finally, international and regional bodies, such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the special rapporteurs of the United Nations, can support national processes by providing normative guidance, technical expertise, and advice, as well as exerting pressure against regressive political forces (Brahm 2004). Memory politics is not merely domestic; it is embedded in transnational networks of rights, solidarity, and resistance.

In sum, a sustainable approach requires reframing truth and memory as continuing civic responsibilities rather than finite exercises in historical clarification. Only through institutional resilience, participatory practice, and cultural pluralism can these societies ensure that memory serves not as a battleground for political interests but as a foundation for democratic coexistence.

SUMMARY *

The comparison across three cases isolates a finding that a study of any one of them would not yield. Each commission was shaped by the terms on which the previous regime left power, and each produced a report that was not, in itself, decisive. What determined whether the findings survived was what happened afterwards: in Argentina, a civil society movement that outlasted the amnesty laws and a later government willing to reverse them; in Chile, a negotiated settlement whose constraints, including the sealing of testimony for fifty years, still shape what can be established; in Peru, a report of exceptional quality addressed to a country in which the affected population could not command the attention of the capital. The author’s conclusion follows: the commission is the beginning of the process rather than its completion, and the institutions that carry it afterwards determine whether the truth established remains established.

CONCLUSION

Truth commissions in Argentina, Chile, and Peru have played a pivotal role in documenting past atrocities and offering recognition to victims of state and non-state violence. Yet their legacies reveal the fragility of truth in the face of political change, ideological polarisation, and structural inequality (Skaar et al. 2016). While initially conceived as instruments of national reckoning, they have frequently become sites of contestation, vulnerable to denial, selective appropriation, and revisionist narrative.

This article has argued that the limitations of these commissions are not merely procedural or technical but deeply political and cultural. Memory, far from being a neutral recounting of facts, is shaped by power, exclusion, and struggle. In South America this has meant that even the most rigorous truth-seeking efforts can be undermined without institutional guarantees, civic participation, and a sustained commitment to pluralism.

The response lies in reframing memory work as a continuous democratic project rather than a finite phase of transition. Institutionalising memory through education, decentralising it through grassroots initiative, and reinforcing it with judicial and regional mechanisms are essential steps. The inclusion of marginalised voices must become a central axis of historical justice.

Ultimately, the politics of memory cannot be avoided; it can only be navigated. Whether truth commissions contribute to reconciliation or to division depends on the willingness of societies not only to uncover the past but to defend and inhabit it as part of their democratic future.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The article’s central proposition, that a commission is an opening rather than a conclusion, is well supported and one comparison would sharpen it, because the three cases differ in a way that explains their divergent afterlives.

What Argentina had and the others lacked was a constituency with a personal stake that outlasted every government. The Madres and Abuelas were not a civil society sector in the general sense but a group of people looking for their own children and grandchildren, who could not stop and did not, through the amnesty laws, through the years when the subject was closed, and into the period when the courts reopened. When the political opportunity came in 2003 the movement was already there and the cases were already documented. Chile’s civil society was strong and faced a settlement that had constitutionalised the constraints; Peru’s affected population was rural, indigenous, and Quechua-speaking, and its distance from the capital was precisely the condition that had made the violence possible in the first place. The lesson is uncomfortable and worth stating: the durability of a truth process correlates less with the quality of the report than with whether those most affected are positioned to press for it over decades.

Two mechanisms deserve naming because they have altered outcomes and the article mentions them only in passing. The first is the regional court. The Inter-American Court has held amnesty laws for grave violations incompatible with the American Convention, in Barrios Altos concerning Peru and in Almonacid concerning Chile, and those judgments have been invoked in domestic proceedings in both countries. A regional body that can set aside a domestic amnesty is a far stronger instrument than normative guidance, and it exists. The second is forensic identification. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team has worked across the continent and beyond, and the return of identified remains does something that no report achieves: it converts a contested number into a named person with a grave, which is considerably harder to deny.

Two additions on the article’s own proposals. The recommendation for autonomous memory institutions is sound and carries a risk the record now demonstrates: bodies established by one government can be defunded, restructured or redirected by the next, and the protection that has proved most effective is not autonomy on paper but constitutional or treaty anchoring together with the distribution of custody, since archives held in several places, including outside the state, cannot be closed by one decision. And the education proposal is the most consequential and the least examined; comparative work on history teaching after conflict suggests that curricula presenting a single authoritative account are frequently rejected by families whose experience differs, and that the approach with the better record presents multiple accounts and teaches pupils to weigh evidence, which is also what makes them resistant to the revisionism the article is concerned about.

Finally, one observation for readers of this journal. The article notes that in Peru the truth was spoken and not heard, and this is the finding with the widest application. Every process examined here rested on the assumption that establishing what happened would change what people believed, and in each case belief moved less than the evidence warranted. What has moved it, where it has moved, is proximity: a neighbour’s testimony, a returned body, a site one can walk through. That is a mediator’s observation rather than a historian’s, and it suggests that memory work succeeds through the same mechanism as reconciliation itself, which is contact between people rather than the publication of findings about them.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Brahm, E. (2004) Truth Commissions. Beyond Intractability. https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/truth-commissions

Burchianti, M. (2004) Building Bridges of Memory: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Cultural Politics of Maternal Memories. History and Anthropology, 133 to 150.

Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (1984) Nunca Más: Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas. Eudeba, Buenos Aires.

Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura (2004) Informe sobre la Prisión Política y Tortura. Gobierno de Chile, Santiago.

Connett, D., Hooper, J., and P. Beaumont (1998) Pinochet Arrested in London. The Guardian, 18 October 1998.

Corporación Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación (1996) Informe de la Comisión Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliación, Tomo I. Santiago.

Crenzel, E. (2015) Genesis, Uses, and Significations of the Nunca Más Report in Argentina. Latin American Perspectives, 20 to 38.

Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (2004) Hatún Willakuy: Versión abreviada del Informe Final de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. Lima.

El País (2005) La Corte Suprema argentina declara inconstitucionales las leyes de amnistía. 14 June 2005.

Eleftheria, K. (2015) The Role of Transitional Justice Processes in Building Peace in Latin America. E-International Relations, 23 January 2015.

Ferrara, A. (2021) Archives and Transitional Justice in Chile: A Crucial Relationship. Human Rights Review, 253 to 278.

Hayner, P. (2011) Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions. Routledge, New York.

Jara, D. (2020) Truth Commissions, Their Narratives and Long-Term Effects: Debates on the Representation of Perpetrators in Post-Dictatorial Chile. Atenea, 249 to 264.

Jelin, E. (2003) State Repression and the Labors of Memory. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Milton, C. (2018) Conflicted Memory: Military Cultural Interventions and the Human Rights Era in Peru. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.

Skaar, E., García-Godos, J., and C. Collins (2016) Transitional Justice in Latin America: The Uneven Road from Impunity towards Accountability. Routledge, Abingdon.

Theidon, K. (2013) Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

Willis, D. (2021) A Politics of Placelessness? The Limits of Democratising Memory in the Centro de Documentación e Investigación of Lima’s Lugar de la Memoria. Memory Studies, 663 to 674.

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Barrios Altos v. Peru, judgment of 14 March 2001, and Almonacid Arellano v. Chile, judgment of 26 September 2006, on the incompatibility of amnesty laws with the American Convention on Human Rights.

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.

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, annual editions, United Nations, Geneva.

Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense, annual reports on forensic identification, Buenos Aires.

Sikkink, K. (2011). The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics. W. W. Norton, New York.

Collins, C. (2010). Post-Transitional Justice: Human Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park.

Cole, E. A. (Ed.) (2007). Teaching the Violent Past: History Education and Reconciliation. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham.

Assmann, A. (2016). Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity. Fordham University Press, New York.

Critical Thinking – A Starting Point for Impact Building

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 proposes an alternative to the accumulation of theory as preparation for mediation practice. The author sets out what conventional preparation demands, namely conflict analysis, conflict theory, management strategies and de-escalation techniques, observes that the list is unmanageable, and asks the reader to consider setting it aside. What remains when the conceptual apparatus is put down is described as the practitioner themselves: the experiences gathered in a life, the social competencies developed over time, and the skills learned in family, friendship and neighbourhood. From this the author develops the idea of working from an inner centre characterised as empty mind and nothingness, from which questions arise that are formed by the situation rather than imposed on it. The reflection closes with the three competencies the author calls mindful mediation: deep listening, critical thinking and wise speaking.

KEYWORDS

Mindful mediation, empty mind, practitioner formation, letting go, self knowledge, questioning, authenticity, deep listening, critical thinking, wise speaking, inner logic, preparation

INTRODUCTION

When we talk about mediation, negotiation, and conflict management in general and in its widest sense, we face two main options of how to proceed and start our labour. The most common and most broadly practised concept is the one of getting as well prepared as possible, which may mean that we need to study as many conflict theories, conflict management strategies, and potential crisis de-escalation techniques as possible. This, obviously, is quite a task, but it is worth its price if we wish to impress our colleagues with our knowledge.

Being well equipped with all available conflict theories, conflict management strategies, and potential crisis de-escalation techniques, we still missed one very crucial point, namely the skills that we need to analyse and understand the conflict properly. By understanding the conflict, I do not only refer to ourselves but also to making the parties understand their dispute, as this may turn out to be the key for them to work towards a settlement.

MAIN CORPUS

We may find ourselves at a point where we genuinely need to question the concept that ought to prepare us fully for conflict counselling. Somehow, the list seems too long to me. We need to study all available skills of conflict analysis. We need to know all conflict theories to have an idea of the potential conflict dynamics that we may face during the mediation. We need to be able to put into practice, at least, the most common conflict management strategies in order to settle the dispute, while we hope that our strategies match the nature of the conflict. And we need to be able to make use of an endless list of potential crisis de-escalation techniques that may help us maintain a non-harming environment for dialoguing.

If you feel overwhelmed and pretty helpless at this point, you are not alone, as I totally feel the same. So the question is, what can be done, or better said, what is the other option of treating a conflict? When we talk about professionalism in conflict counselling, we should not misunderstand our task. First of all, we get in contact with real people, and therefore we need to be authentic, we shall create empathy, and we may set up an environment where dialogue can take place. As there is no mediation without dialogue.

In order to progress with our journey, I would like to ask you: what would you think about letting go? Namely, to detach from all these models, theories, dynamics, and strategies that you learned. Take your time, imagine such a setting, and try to identify how you might feel. Would you feel like you are unprepared, unequipped, and somehow not professional? Or would you say that being somehow professionally nude makes you feel uncomfortable?

So let us go into this topic much deeper. Who, by the way, told you that you are naturally unequipped, and who told you that you need to study this horrific number of topics to be an effective professional? Maybe it is the general impact of institutes, colleges, and universities that make you believe that they offer the solution to all our challenges in life. Please do not get me wrong. We are talking about a field within the theme of social science, and I simply believe that before you are able to appreciate or evaluate the content of such educational authorities, you need to take some preliminary steps, and this is what we are targeting.

It is my belief that first of all you need to commence a journey with a unique destination, which I will not communicate right now but a bit later, and yes, maybe you will be able to name it by yourself. So, in order to get started, I kindly ask you to detach mentally once again from everything that you heard of or learned so far. Just free your mind, detach, let go, and leave things behind.

The question is, what can you see and find right now, being rid of all this professional and conceptual luggage? Open your eyes and see, identify, and evaluate, but do not only look in an external way, look also in an internal way. So what you see, first of all, is yourself. You, being here, at this point in your life, in this specific spot, and at this very private level of your personal development.

See what your status of being unconscious veiled from you, and learn from what your status of being conscious now teaches you. The question is, who are you, where do you come from, and what do you bring with you? This is a simple example of a set of questions that breaks you free by offering you information about yourself. All you are going to work with is the set of the experiences that you gathered in your life, the social competencies that you obtained and that you developed up to a certain level, and the social skills that you learned within the environment where you received your initial education, namely in your family, with your friends, and in your neighbourhood.

See, listen, and understand, that these are the features that make you unique, and this is the starting point for critical thinking. Everything in life can be questioned, and it has an impact on the environment, as everything in life is interconnected and follows the rules of action and reaction. Now that you have learned about the initial starting point of discovering yourself, you will also understand that once you know who you are, you will be able to understand the interlinkages of life and the impact that our actions and reactions have. Being conscious about that, you are now free to break this rule up, and to become a change-maker.

Now that you have started the journey towards your inner self by questioning who you are and who or what made you be yourself today, you will see that once you understand and dominate the power of these questions, you do not need a vast quantity of techniques, strategies, and models. Once you know and understand who you are, you will find peace inside yourself. This specific peace, or status quo, will be guarded in your inner centre, where your empty mind and nothingness reign. This is where your journey ought to lead you, namely to your inner core, from where all your actions and questions may be born.

Being conscious regarding the empty mind and nothingness enables you to go professionally into the mediation setting and to place the proper questions. Learn to work with the questions that are born out of your nothingness and empty mind, focus on the content delivered by the parties, exclude assumptions, and keep the mediation setting clean and transparent.

SUMMARY

The text moves in one direction and arrives at a destination it withholds until the end. What is set down first is everything a practitioner is told they must carry; what is picked up in its place is the practitioner. The turn on which the piece rests is that the alternative to accumulated technique is not improvisation but self knowledge, since a person who has examined where they come from and what formed them can meet a situation without needing to sort it into a category first. From this follows the practical instruction that closes the argument: questions asked from an empty mind are formed by what the parties actually say, while questions asked from a framework are formed by the framework and arrive at the room already knowing what they expect to find.

CONCLUSION

This is correspondingly the setting that you can adapt to all conflict situations, settings, and environments. Act or work from your inner centre in a way that you now know everything about yourself but nothing at all about the rest of the world. Now you are free, able, and entitled to work from the core, showing you that all situations in life, including our mediative dialoguing, are based on an inner logic. You simply have to ask yourself what is required, what is expected, and what shall I do?

All these questions will now guide you the way to be a mindful mediator, a conflict counsellor who works from the inner core, following a situation’s inner logic, having an empty mind, and being a change-maker by creating a new and more peaceful reality. Put trust in yourself, as you are key to all your questions, answers, and the new and more peaceful reality that you can build.

Thank you for your attention, and I kindly ask you to practise Deep Listening, Critical Thinking, and Wise Speaking. The world needs people like you.

A NOTE FOR READERS AND TRAINERS

The instruction at the centre of this reflection carries a precondition that the text leaves unstated, and naming it makes the invitation safer to accept.

Setting something aside requires that it be there. A practitioner who has absorbed frameworks thoroughly enough that they no longer need to be consulted is describing expertise, and the research on decision making under pressure documents exactly that phenomenon: experts perceive situations whole and act on recognition rather than analysis, and they experience this as intuition precisely because the learning has ceased to feel like knowledge. A beginner who has learned nothing and calls the result intuition is describing something else, namely whatever assumptions they happened to arrive with. The reflection is therefore addressed to people who have already done the work, and it should be received that way.

Read with that qualification, the argument is stronger than it first appears and its consequence for training is the opposite of what a quick reading suggests. One studies frameworks in order to be able to stop consulting them. The list the author calls too long is not wrong, it is simply the wrong thing to be holding in the room, and the discipline being taught here is when to put it down rather than whether to pick it up.

Two further observations for those using this text in a group. The invitation to question who one is and what formed one is not neutral in its effect, and participants have on occasion arrived at material they were not prepared for. A trainer should be ready for that, should not press, and should be able to say plainly that the exercise is not therapy. And the emptiness described here is a working condition rather than a permanent state: it is what allows a question to be shaped by what was just said instead of by what one expected to hear, and it is entered and left rather than achieved once.

Finally, the same destination can be reached by a route that suits participants at the beginning of their training better. Rather than asking them to let go of what they know, ask what they already bring, and let them find that the list is longer than they assumed. The recognition is the same, and it does not require anyone to feel professionally undressed before they have had a chance to get dressed.

FURTHER READING

Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. Free Press, New York.

Klein, G. (1998). Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Kahneman, D., & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree. American Psychologist, 64(6), 515 to 526.

Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.

Lang, M. D., & Taylor, A. (2000). The Making of a Mediator: Developing Artistry in Practice. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.

Bowling, D., & Hoffman, D. (Eds.) (2003). Bringing Peace into the Room: How the Personal Qualities of the Mediator Impact the Process of Conflict Resolution. Jossey Bass, San Francisco.

Erdmann, D. (2021). Mindful Mediation: The Shapeless Art. Lulu Press.

Fragmented Germany: An analysis of the European Elections 2024

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

The 2024 European Parliament elections highlight Germany’s deepening social and political fragmentation, with the AfD emerging as the second-strongest party. This article explores the historical context, rising extremism, and societal divisions, concluding with a call to reinforce democratic values, enhance social cohesion, and counter extremism for a more united future.

Editorial note: the assessment of the parties and movements discussed reflects the author’s own perspective. This journal’s editorial position is neutral on contested questions of party politics. *

KEYWORDS *

Germany, political fragmentation, social cohesion, European elections 2024, AfD, right wing extremism, populism, East and West Germany, political education, radicalisation, democracy, trust in institutions

INTRODUCTION

The results of the elections of the European Parliament 2024 show that the social fragmentation Germany has been experiencing for years has made its way into the political landscape. The AfD has become the second strongest force, overtaking the party of the Social Democrats (European Parliament 2024). After months of mass protests against right-wing extremism on German streets (Tagesschau 2024a) and court proceedings concerning the classification of the AfD as a suspected case of right-wing extremism (Jeske et al. 2024), this election certainly shows how fragmented German society is at the moment.

MAIN CORPUS

Election results of the European election 2024

In Germany, the conservative parties of CDU and CSU are clearly the winners of the European elections, with around twice as many votes as the second-placed party, the AfD. Interestingly, the AfD, the SPD, and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen only differ by 1.5 to 2 percentage points each in their votes. Also, other parties reached very similar shares of the votes. In total, 11 parties got more than 1 per cent of the votes (European Parliament 2024). This shows how fragmented German voters are. How can this political fragmentation be explained? Let us take a step back and look at Germany’s civil society.

Drifting apart: social fragmentation in Germany

Humans are social beings. Having social relations with the people of our surroundings is therefore crucial for humans in order to feel content. In an ideal society, humans deal with each other based on respect to reach the best possible circumstances for society. “Therefore, personal interests can never surpass the community’s needs” (Erdmann 2024a). Unfortunately, citizens of a country usually strongly disagree on what is best for the community. While most, maybe all, individuals of a group might agree that peace is the best option for the community, what this “peace” would look like may be different to each individual (Erdmann 2024b).

German society has arguably been fragmented for decades. Looking at historical events like the separation of Germany and its reunification, the divide between West Germany and East Germany is still noticeable today (Regev 2020). There are many attempts at explaining the economic disadvantage of the eastern part of Germany, which is evident even three decades after Germany’s reunification. Stereotypes about people from East Germany are still present in German civil society. One especially relevant stereotype is the tendency of East Germans towards extremism, be it left-wing or right-wing extremism.

Looking at empirical data, however, this stereotype cannot be supported in the simple form in which it is usually stated (Högele 2019). However, whether due to distorted media coverage or a different form of right-wing extremism, East Germany seems to be in the news more often on topics related to right-wing extremism. In the new federal states the PEGIDA movement evolved and has been holding regular protests since the arrival of many Syrian refugees in 2015. An attack on a synagogue by a right-wing extremist, in which two people were killed, also happened in East Germany (bpb 2020). However, there are also signs of racism and other right-wing tendencies noticeable in the western parts of Germany. In May, a video of young adults partying and chanting racist slogans on Sylt went viral on social media (Tagesschau 2024b), just to mention one example.

The question arises: where does this radicalisation come from? While right-wing extremism has a long history in Germany, for many decades right-wing extremism seemed to have been a marginal appearance only. Perhaps the most prominent example is the murder series of the NSU, a neo-Nazi group that killed ten people over the course of more than a decade (Radke 2013). For some years, however, extreme right-wing beliefs and patterns of racism and antisemitism like the above-mentioned incidents have made their way more and more into the midst of society. This radicalisation can have several reasons.

Maybe these beliefs have been there the whole time and they only now surface because of new media types like social media. But that can hardly suffice as a full explanation. Radicalisation seems to be rooted in “profound discontent and scepticism at a fundamental level towards their political system” (Erdmann 2024b). Political fragmentation as shown in the European elections is thus rooted in social fragmentation. What does this fragmentation mean for the political landscape?

Political fragmentation in Germany

Compared to other nations, Germany has always been politically more fragmented than most other nations which rely on a two-party system. Even at the beginning of the Federal Republic of Germany, at least three parties held political power: the CDU and CSU as the conservative camp, the SPD as the social democratic camp, and the FDP as the liberal party. A few decades later, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and Die Linke joined. For a long time, four or five parties were represented in the German parliament. Since 2017, with the AfD moving into parliament for the first time, six parliamentary groups have been forming the Bundestag. Another trend can be noticed: the vote totals of the individual parties are converging in some cases, blurring the boundaries between the traditional large parties and the smaller ones. This can at least be noticed with votes of CDU and CSU, with exceptions, as well as SPD, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and the AfD.

Looking at the AfD, we can see the above-mentioned loss of confidence in the political system. Analysing statements, a populist speech pattern which uses racism and other forms of discrimination can be detected. In the election campaign of the AfD for the German parliament, the slogan was “Deutschland, aber normal” (AfD TV 2021). Traditional life concepts and highly regulated or closed borders are at the centre of the campaign video. The AfD’s election programme in the European elections was even clearer: there was talk of “Festung Europa”. The critical examination of the colonial era is also not desired by the AfD, as this would fuel what the programme calls “antiweißen Affekt” (AfD 2023). Traditional gender roles as well as the family of husband, wife and children are to be preferred to other life concepts.

Democracy: living with different ideologies

Living in a democracy means that every voter has the right to vote for whatever party they want. If we dismiss this fundamental right, we no longer believe in the basis of democracy. However, the electoral result of the AfD in the European election of 2024 still harbours dangers that need to be addressed. First, the tone in politics has changed very much. Campaign posters no longer set out the goals of the respective party; in the last election campaign, many campaign posters were used to differentiate one party from another. This was also very much the case with the established parties. The ÖDP, a minor party, used the slogan “Alternative ohne rechts” (ÖDP 2024), using the rhetoric of the AfD.

Blaming this trend on the rise of populism is too simplistic; however, it may play an important role. Second, aligning with the post-factual age, allegations concerning AfD politicians did not appear to matter to AfD voters. Even though an employee of one of the lead candidates was suspected of espionage for China and the other lead candidate faced allegations of unlawful conduct, the AfD came out much stronger than anticipated in the elections (Pfeffer and Schmidt 2024). This may be due to the AfD presenting itself as a victim of the media, or, as can also be seen in the United States (Murray 2024), to the fact that allegations against politicians no longer influence the voting decisions of their supporters.

This points to a blatant social divide, as people no longer recognise the same rules for social and communal life. Last but not least, slogans of the AfD and other right-wing parties can lead to people in Germany being put into an unsafe position. When a political party openly makes racist and other discriminatory statements or puts corresponding contents into its electoral programme, then it can also lead to individuals with the same views seeing their opinions reinforced and legitimised and behaving accordingly. In the last decade alone, the number of annual offences motivated by right-wing extremism has climbed from 16,557 offences in 2013 to 25,660 in 2023 (BMI 2024). This makes up more than 60 per cent of politically motivated extremist offences.

SUMMARY *

The article’s argument runs from society to politics rather than the reverse. On this reading, the distribution of votes in June 2024 did not create the fragmentation it displayed but registered a division that had been forming for years, along a line the author traces to the incomplete convergence of east and west and, more fundamentally, to a loss of confidence in the political system among people who feel unrepresented by it. The second half examines what follows from that within a democratic order: that the right to vote for any lawful party is not in question, that the tone of political competition has shifted from proposing programmes to positioning against opponents, that allegations against politicians appear to have lost their disciplining effect, and that party rhetoric shapes what individuals believe they may say and do, with the recorded increase in politically motivated offences cited as the measurable consequence.

CONCLUSION

The election result of the AfD in the European elections shows that the AfD and its ideology are an integral part of the German political landscape and an expression of a profound social divide in Germany. Speaking up against right-wing extremism will not be enough anymore; rather, we need to address the underlying social dilemmas of people drawn to right-wing extremism to rebuild trust in the state and democracy. Political education, a more targeted welfare state and integration processes for people who feel left behind by politics are crucial to achieve this goal. Of course, this will not erase right-wing extremism, as extremism is a part of democracy as well. However, the general public should be united to a certain degree so that extremism will be a marginal appearance only. Addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive and coordinated effort from all sectors of society. By reinforcing democratic values, enhancing social cohesion, countering extremism, ensuring media responsibility, promoting political accountability, and encouraging civic engagement, Germany can work towards a more united and stable future.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The article’s central proposition, that addressing grievances matters more than denouncing those who hold them, is well supported and requires one important qualification, because getting it wrong wastes effort and can make matters worse.

The research on this question does not find a simple relationship between economic disadvantage and support for radical parties. Regions in decline show elevated support even where individual incomes are not low, and the stronger predictors are perceived loss of status, the sense that one’s region or way of life is disregarded, and the experience of being spoken about rather than to. That finding points away from redistribution alone and toward what has been called the geography of discontent: the closure of the last bank branch, the bus route, the school, the clinic, the local paper. Places where people have no reason to encounter one another and no institution that belongs to them produce the conditions the author describes. Restoring that infrastructure is expensive, slow, and among the few interventions with a demonstrable effect.

The article’s opening question about east and west deserves the answer the research supplies, since the alternative is the stereotype the author rightly rejects. Attitude surveys find the differences between east and west smaller than the electoral results suggest. What differs is the composition of civil society: fewer associations, unions, churches and local media, a consequence of the institutional collapse of 1990 rather than of any disposition, and a corresponding absence of the intermediary bodies through which discontent is ordinarily channelled and moderated. That is a structural account and it identifies something that can be rebuilt.

Three points belong here from this field’s own experience. First, on how such conversations are conducted: dialogue formats that succeed do not debate positions but begin from concrete local questions on which participants have direct experience, and they are facilitated rather than moderated. Formats that place opposed camps on a stage reliably harden both. Second, on what to expect: the evidence on deradicalisation and on cross camp dialogue shows small effects on entrenched views and considerably larger effects on the much bigger group who are undecided, disengaged or ambivalent. Programmes aimed at the committed frequently fail; programmes aimed at holding the middle generally do not. Third, on the boundary the article implicitly draws and could draw more explicitly: a democracy accommodates disagreement about policy and does not accommodate the denial of others’ equal standing. Locating that line clearly, and defending it consistently rather than selectively, is what makes engagement with grievance something other than concession.

Finally, the increase in politically motivated offences the article records is the point at which this ceases to be a debate about political competition. Where rhetoric is followed by threats against local officials, attacks on places of worship and violence against individuals, the people affected need protection now, and that is a matter of policing, prosecution and support for those targeted rather than of dialogue. The two tracks are not alternatives, and confusing them serves neither: the long work of rebuilding cohesion does not substitute for the immediate obligation to keep people safe, and the immediate obligation does not remove the need for the long work.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

AfD (2023) Europawahlprogramm 2024.

AfD TV (2021) Deutschland. Aber normal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHNlw2tuuDk

Bundesministerium des Innern (2024) Anzahl der extremistischen Straftaten aus dem Bereich der politisch motivierten Kriminalität in Deutschland nach Bereichen von 2013 bis 2023.

Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (2020) Der Anschlag von Halle.

Deutscher Bundestag (w.D.) Bundestagswahlergebnisse seit 1949, Zweitstimmen.

Erdmann, D. (2024a) The Dynamics of Polarized Pluralism: On the Benefits, Challenges, and Threats of a Constantly Changing Fragmented World Order. WMO Conflict Insight.

Erdmann, D. (2024b) Personal Identity and Peace Building. WMO Conflict Insight.

European Parliament (2024) Ergebnisse der Europawahl 2024, Deutschland. Results as of 10 June 2024.

Högele, T. (2019) So unterscheiden sich rechtsextreme Einstellungen in Ost- und Westdeutschland. Zeit Online.

Jeske, A., Baumbach, V. and Langer, S. (2024) AfD: Ein rechtsextremer Verdachtsfall. ZDF.

Murray, M. (2024) What the First Polls after Trump’s Conviction Show and Don’t Show. NBC News.

ÖDP (2024) Wir präsentieren: die Wahlplakate der ÖDP.

Pfeffer, K. and Schmidt, M. (2024) Stark trotz Gegenwind. Tagesschau.

Radke, J. (2013) Rechtsextremismus: Der Nationalsozialistische Untergrund (NSU). Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.

Regev, D. (2020) German Reunification: What Still Divides East and West? Deutsche Welle.

Tagesschau (2024a) Die Menschen feiern die Demokratie.

Tagesschau (2024b) Große Empörung über rassistisches Partyvideo.

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, Verfassungsschutzbericht, annual editions, Cologne.

Decker, O., Kiess, J., & Brähler, E. (Eds.), Leipziger Autoritarismus Studie, successive editions, Psychosozial Verlag, Gießen.

Rodríguez Pose, A. (2018). The Revenge of the Places That Don’t Matter (and What to Do about It). Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11(1), 189 to 209.

Gidron, N., & Hall, P. A. (2017). The Politics of Social Status: Economic and Cultural Roots of the Populist Right. British Journal of Sociology, 68(S1), 57 to 84.

Mudde, C. (2019). The Far Right Today. Polity Press, Cambridge.

Kalla, J. L., & Broockman, D. E. (2020). Reducing Exclusionary Attitudes through Interpersonal Conversation. American Political Science Review, 114(2), 410 to 425.

Berghof Foundation, handbooks on dialogue facilitation and on preventing and countering violent extremism, Berlin.

Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, materials on political education and democratic resilience, Bonn.

And give us our daily bread: Why food aid has not led and will not lead to food 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/

ABSTRACT

Since the end of World War II, the International Community has made an effort to fight hunger worldwide. After the 90’s, the outcome looked promising. However, food insecurity levels first became stagnant, and are now on the rise again. This article will argue how food aid cannot eradicate global food insecurity.

KEYWORDS *

Food security, food aid, hunger, agricultural policy, subsidies, import dependency, Global South, food poverty, lobbying, Farm to Fork, right to food, structural inequality

INTRODUCTION

With devastating famines and food shortages after World War II, the International Community made an increasing effort to fight global hunger (Shaw 2007). For the first time, the right to freedom from hunger was established as a human right (Rosenman 1950 cited after Shaw 2007). The FAO and other international organisations were founded to meet that daring challenge. In the 20th century, many milestones were reached: Global food production rose exponentially and could feed now the whole world population, making hunger a problem of distribution rather than production (Serageldin & Landell-Mills 1994). However, hunger stayed prominent, especially in the Global South. Even today, most people suffering from hunger and undernutrition live in Africa and South Asia (Swinnen & Kosec 2023). This is mirrored in my experiences growing up, seeing African children on massive billboards of non-profit organisations, asking for donations to support food aid. Hunger seemed and still seems to be a problem for poor countries, that rely on richer countries for their goodwill in food distribution. But food security is much more complicated than that.

MAIN CORPUS

The political economy of food security

Agricultural policy, which is closely intertwined with food policy and food security, underlies a specific problem other industries do not face: Agricultural production takes time. Because market reactions are only possible with a time lag due to the growth period of agricultural products, it is more difficult for the market to be regulated by supply and demand. This affects all countries, however, the situation becomes more complicated as the agricultural sector is now connected globally and has been for quite some time. In the 20th century, the U.S. and the EU were the most important international players in the agricultural sector and thus controlled grain prices (Schanbacher 2010). The EU agricultural policy was heavily criticised in the late 20th century because of the massive subsidies leading to overproduction and dumping of agricultural products on the global market (Bulmer et al. 2020). Due to the reorganization of the global agricultural market with the U.S. and the EU at the top, countries of the Global South found themselves highly dependent on the two leading actors because of food import dependency (Schanbacher 2010). Also, the industrialization of the agricultural sector in the Global North contributed to climate change (Mbow et al. 2019), which in turn leads to the responsibility of industrialized countries towards countries without an industrialized agricultural sector.

However, countries of the Global South are in a more difficult position due to other factors. First, due to their proximity to the Equator, countries of the Global South already suffer more from the effects of climate change. Natural catastrophes are prone to happen more regularly in these regions with unstable climates (Huq & Adow 2022). Second, in countries of the Global South, armed conflicts are more common (Uppsala Conflict Data Program & Natural Earth 2022). Thus, food policy and food security can easily be neglected by political decision-makers due to the government setting other priorities. People who hunger or starve are usually part of the poorer and more uneducated population. Thus, they do not have a strong lobby to stand up for themselves. Non-profit organisations can administer acute assistance with food aid. However, this dependency on the goodwill of others cannot be a long-term solution for ensuring food security.

Why food aid will not lead to food security

The general public’s contemporary perception of food security leads to several problems. First, as already mentioned in the introduction, food insecurity, and especially hunger, are considered to be a problem of the Global South. This becomes evident as special indices for measuring food insecurity do not even include North America and Europe in their statistics (GHI). But, contrary to this widespread conception, food insecurity is on the rise in North America and Europe. This does not only include the malnutrition of people due to high-calorie, nutrient-poor diets but hunger becomes more prevalent as well. The term “food poverty” (Rost & Lundälv 2021) refers especially in European research to people who are too poor to afford a balanced diet that meets their needs. Researchers argue that hunger is only not as prevalent in European countries due to welfare state systems and the efforts of local food banks (ibid.).

This situation points out the real problem of food insecurity: Structural food insecurity, meaning consistent food insecurity, not food insecurity and famines due to natural catastrophes or other extreme situations, affects poor people, no matter where they live (Gregório et al. 2014). Thus, food insecurity is not a geographical, but rather a global problem that must be tackled by governments in a national and international approach.

Second, there is a structural problem with the global food markets. Food insecure people are often in a situation where they cannot change their situation and are dependent on food aid or food relief programs for several reasons. One of them is the lobbyism of the food industry. Food industries are global players with immense annual revenues. This economic asset can be used, and is used, to influence political decision-makers at national and international level (Lee 2023). One prominent example is the protest against the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy, which aims for more sustainable food production in the EU and a healthier diet for EU citizens (EU Commission 2020). Other examples include lobbying for domestic initiatives such as import taxes or bio-fuel initiatives which drive up global food prices, in turn weakening food security in food-importing countries (Gillson & Fouad 2015). Thus, citizens are dependent either on the goodwill of governments to pursue a food policy which makes healthy and nutritious food affordable or on the goodwill of international organizations involved in food aid. This food relief, however, is nothing more than symptom management. Governments have a responsibility to ensure human rights for their citizens. Rather than listening to lobbyists, governments must stick to their commitment to achieving and realizing human rights globally. We need a change in global food systems to establish global food markets offering affordable prices for everyone.

SUMMARY *

The article’s argument rests on a single reframing. If enough food is produced to feed everyone, then hunger is not a shortfall to be made up but an outcome of how food is distributed and priced, and aid that supplies the shortfall leaves the mechanism producing it untouched. From this the author draws two consequences that cut against the conventional framing. Structural food insecurity is a condition of poverty rather than of geography, which is why it is now measurable in wealthy countries whose absence from the standard indices conceals it. And the policies that shape access, subsidies, tariffs, biofuel mandates and the trade rules that follow from them, are set through political processes in which those most affected have no representation and the food industry has a great deal.

CONCLUSION

The International Community has been trying for about a century now to end hunger globally and has always failed. Global food insecurity persists and is even on the rise, driven by different factors like climate change and economic instability in the global market. Especially countries in the Global South are affected by this dynamic, which exacerbates the north-south divide.

Therefore, crucial change is needed. Food security is a human right and important for everyone to live self-determined. Thus, policymakers must prioritize the well-being of their citizens over the interests of powerful food industries, promoting sustainable and equitable food systems. It has been possible for several decades to feed the entire world population with agricultural production. It is a moral disgrace that this is still not put into practice today because of economic interests.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The article’s central claim is well established and its most important qualification is worth stating, because it determines what any remedy must address. Sen’s finding that famines occur amid adequate food supply, and that what fails is people’s entitlement to obtain it, is the theoretical foundation for exactly the argument made here. It also carries a consequence the article does not draw out: if the binding constraint is purchasing power rather than availability, then income support, employment and social protection are food policy, and in many settings they work faster and more cheaply than anything done to agricultural markets.

That points toward the most significant development in this field over the past two decades, which the article does not mention and which supports its case directly. Cash and voucher assistance has largely replaced in kind food aid in humanitarian response, because it delivers more value per unit of donor money, supports local markets rather than displacing them, and allows recipients to buy what they actually need. The traditional model the article criticises, in which surplus grain from donor countries is shipped to recipients, was for decades sustained by domestic agricultural and shipping interests in the donor states, and reforming it required overcoming precisely the lobbying the article describes. The reform is incomplete but it demonstrates that such interests can be defeated.

Two structural remedies deserve naming. The Agreement on Agriculture and the subsidy regimes it permits remain the largest single distortion in world food markets, and the negotiations to address them have been deadlocked since 2008, which is a mediation failure as much as a trade one: what blocks agreement is that reform imposes concentrated costs on organised producers and delivers diffuse benefits to unorganised consumers. And the right to food, which the article invokes, is a justiciable right in a growing number of jurisdictions, with courts in India and South Africa having ordered concrete measures on its basis. Framing food insecurity as a rights violation with an available remedy is more actionable than framing it as a moral failure.

Two qualifications strengthen the analysis. Conflict is now the principal driver of acute food crises, ahead of climate and economic factors combined, and the article treats it as one factor among several; the practical implication for this journal’s readers is direct, since access negotiations, ceasefires around harvests and arrangements such as the Black Sea grain corridor are food security instruments operated by mediators. And the position of the Global South is more differentiated than the framing allows: several formerly food importing states have become exporters, and the countries in the most difficult position are typically those combining conflict, currency weakness and import dependence rather than those defined by latitude.

Finally, the article’s observation that hungry people lack a lobby is the most important sentence in it, and it identifies where the work lies. Every remedy discussed here depends on political decisions taken by people who answer to organised constituencies. Producer organisations, consumer bodies, urban food councils and the participatory mechanisms established under national right to food frameworks are how an unorganised interest acquires a voice, and building them is slower and less visible than delivering food. It is also the only thing that changes the outcome the article describes.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Bulmer, S., Parker, O., Bache, I., George, S. and Burns, C. (2020) Politics in the European Union. Fifth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

European Commission (2020) Farm to Fork Strategy: For a Fair, Healthy and Environmentally Friendly Food System. Brussels.

Gillson, I. and Fouad, A. (2015) Trade Policy and Food Security: Improving Access to Food in Developing Countries in the Wake of High World Prices. World Bank, Washington, D.C.

Global Hunger Index (GHI) The Power of Youth in Shaping Food Systems, https://www.globalhungerindex.org/

Gregório, M. J., Grace, P. and Costa, A. (2014) Time and Regional Perspectives of Food Insecurity during the Economic Crisis in Portugal, 2011 to 2013. Saúde e Sociedade 23(4): 1127 to 1141.

Huq, S. and Adow, M. (2022) Climate Change Is Devastating the Global South, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/5/11/climate-change-is-devastating-the-global-south

Lee, C. (2023) How Does Lobbying Impact our Food and Agricultural Policies? https://www.foodunfolded.com/article/how-does-lobbying-impact-our-food-and-agricultural-policies

Mbow, C., Rosenzweig, C., Barioni, L. G., Benton, T. G., Herrero, M., Krishnapillai, M., Liwenga, E., Pradhan, P., Rivera-Ferre, M. G., Sapkota, T., Tubiello, F. N. and Xu, Y. (2019) Food Security. In: Shukla, P. R., Skea, J., Calvo Buendia, E., Masson-Delmotte, V., Pörtner, H. O. and Roberts, D. (eds.) Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report. Cambridge University Press, 437 to 550.

Rost, S. and Lundälv, J. (2021) A Systematic Review of Literature Regarding Food Insecurity in Sweden. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 21: 1020 to 1032.

Schanbacher, W. D. (2010) The Politics of Food. Santa Barbara: Praeger Security International.

Serageldin, I. and Landell-Mills, P. (1994) Overcoming Global Hunger. World Bank, Washington, D.C.

Shaw, J. D. (2007) World Food Security: A History since 1945. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Swinnen, J. and Kosec, K. (2023) The Road to Resilience: Rethinking Responses to Food Crises. In: International Food Policy Research Institute (ed.) Global Food Policy Report 2023, Washington, D.C., 6 to 19.

Uppsala Conflict Data Program and Natural Earth (2022) Deaths in Armed Conflicts Based on Where They Occurred, https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966, Article 11, and General Comment No. 12 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the right to adequate food.

Food and Agriculture Organization, Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food, Rome, 2004.

Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, annual editions, Rome.

Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, Global Report on Food Crises, annual editions.

World Trade Organization, Agreement on Agriculture, 1994, and the Nairobi Ministerial Decision on Export Competition, 2015.

Barrett, C. B., & Maxwell, D. (2005). Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role. Routledge, London.

Devereux, S. (2016). Social Protection for Enhanced Food Security in Sub Saharan Africa. Food Policy, 60, 52 to 62.

Protests for environmental protection

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

Environmental movements in several European countries recently have held unusual forms of protest pointing to the alarming situation caused by global pollution, warming, and the exponential increase in the emission of harmful gases. To demonstrate the gravity of the problem, they used an unusual form of protest by destroying valuable works of art, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and Claude Monet’s “Les Meules” impressionist artwork. When destroying Monet’s painting, which was estimated at over 100 million euros, the organization Letzte Generation said that the works of art would not be worth anything because “people are starving, people are freezing, and people are dying” and that by 2050 there will not be enough food and that ecosystems will be completely destroyed and that life on earth will practically not be possible due to the high level of pollution.

KEYWORDS

Climate change, protests, making senseless social activism.

INTRODUCTION

Global climate change is a challenge that, according to experts in the field of ecology and environmental protection, requires a quick response and finding solutions that will reduce the emission of harmful gases into the atmosphere, which creates a greenhouse effect. The anthropogenic factor and the result of its activity are directly related to the consumption of fossil fuels, which are the cause of the emission of harmful gases. Measurements show that the average temperature on earth has increased by about 0.8°C since temperatures have been officially and continuously measured in cities around the world since 1880. The surface of the earth in Europe has warmed by 1.4°C. Analyzes indicate that temperature changes increase the chance of irreversible and potentially catastrophic consequences of global warming.

An interesting fact is that the temperatures on earth have been increasing since the moment when industrialization began. Dramatic climate and ecosystem changes are possible if the average temperature rises by 2°C compared to pre-industrial temperatures.

Institutions of all countries are dealing with the anthropogenic factor that affects the spread of the greenhouse effect, numerous variables that adversely affect the environment through increasing pollution of water, air, and soil. We will place special emphasis on significant international institutions such as the United Nations and bodies of the European Union, as well as on the non-governmental sector. The United Nations has adopted several important documents concerning environmental protection and the reduction of harmful gas emissions. The most significant is the Paris Agreement, which entered into force in November 2016. We will also mention the 2030 Agenda, whose goal is to preserve peace, improve life in developing countries, and preserve the environment. Hundreds of ecological movements around the world promote the preservation of the environment, participate in the creation of models for decarbonization and reduction of the greenhouse effect, and promote the use of renewable energy sources in order to prevent pollution in the future. It is important to point out that green agendas have become an indispensable element of political programs of parties, which indicates the fact that the importance of political action within state institutions that contribute to the realization of environmental protection.

When we talk about non-governmental organizations, their number is growing, so the movement’s activism is also visible in the public eye.

In Serbia, the work of such movements is focused on banning the construction of buildings near protected ecosystems, actions to clean riverbeds, reforestation, and protests against the construction of a lithium mine in the Donje Nedeljice, that is, in the area of Jadar. The environmental movement March from the Drina leads a national campaign against the mining of lithium, boron, and similar metals in Serbia. The mission of this organization is to protect Jadar from the pollution of fertile soil from potential mining activities in this part of Serbia. One of the methods of struggle of this organization is the protests, which we will compare with the protests of the Letzte Generation organization to point out similarities and big differences.

MAIN CORPUS

Characteristics of the protest

Protest is defined as a strong expression of criticism and disapproval. Protests are a form of public action by groups gathered around the same idea, interest, or ideology. This form of action is characterized in the broadest sense by the struggle for freedom of speech and public expression of attitudes and human rights. In authoritarian regimes where freedom of speech is limited and access to the media is difficult, protests represent the only way of public communication and promotion of the values that activists are fighting for.

Civil disobedience

Civil disobedience is defined as an illegal, public and non-violent act. The goal of action is aimed at change unjust laws. Legal positivism does not justify civil disobedience, while legal neutralism finds understanding for this type of organized activity that is directed towards unjust laws and other acts that are contrary to basic human rights. Although the mechanisms of disobedience are directed towards unjust systems of government, rules exist in the sense that this act is non-violent and not destructive in any sense.

In recent months, we have witnessed unusual protests in which representatives of environmental movements in Great Britain and Germany protested against the consumption of fossil fuels and the increasing emission of harmful gases. Both acts were unusual in that the activists destroyed two works of art. Claude Monet and Van Gogh. The pictures are poured with tomato soup and mashed potatoes. Activists asked the question, what is more valuable, a work of art or human lives, and pointed to the problem of environmental pollution. The Letzte Generation movement is aware that the act is violent and illegal and is ready for prison and fines. Although such actions cannot find a foothold in legal neutralism and even less in positivism, we will agree that human life has no price.

Why is this type of protest unusual? For the reason that the destruction of valuable and old works of art, and the destruction of cultural heritage was chosen as the subject of the demonstration of dissatisfaction. The justification of the Letzte Generation movement is that the protest was designed in such a way as to attract as much attention as possible to the world public. Museums and the very act of destroying works of art have been transformed into a powerful and very effective communication channel that has reached the largest part of the world’s public. The act of protest contains elements of performance, which we justify by the fact that we live in a period of spectacle society in which theatricality plays a significant role.

The Letzte Generation environmental protest gathers young people for whom modern information technologies are the basis for communication, which is why they know that the trigger for gaining the attention of as many people as possible is an act that initiates the effect of surprise. The phenomenon of a protest performance in a museum for the purpose of environmental protection could also be the subject of a philosophical discussion.

Knowing that art, unless it is socially engaging and promotes, for example, greater energy consumption and industrialization, is thematically related to the fundamentals of the movement. However, Monet and Van Gogh are the wrong choices in that sense. One gets the impression that a direct link between art and environmental protection was not sought, but the goal was to destroy and render valuable works of art meaningless. The Letzte Generation movement is active on social networks, where they posted a protest against the destruction of a painting by Claude Monet. The comments below that post were shared. The percentage of people who support this kind of activity is smaller. The majority directs sharp criticism, seeing in the protest a violation of socially unacceptable behavior and an illegal action that is counterproductive. The strangeness of the protest can best be explained by comparing it with the protests of other environmental movements. The Marš sa Drine (March from the Drina) movement in Serbia has so far organized a series of protests supported by numerous public figures. It is a practice for associations that have the same goals to unite and perform together. The concept of the protest is such that rallies are held in front of the institutions of the Republic of Serbia, and the leaders of the protest address the citizens with the support of famous figures, primarily from cultural life, thus putting direct pressure on the decision-makers in the country. Thus, on one occasion, the doyen of the Serbian theater scene, Svetlana Bojković, stopped a truck with construction waste that was to be unloaded at a landfill in the natural habitat of Reva in the vicinity of Belgrade. One of the more significant protests, the March from the Drina movement, in cooperation with the organization Kreni promeni (Go for Change), organized a peaceful rally in the form of a three-day camping in front of the Presidency of the Republic of Serbia in the aim of the Parliament passing the Law on banning the exploration and exploitation of lithium and boron in Serbia. On that occasion, they brought the citizens agricultural products that are grown on fertile land near which there are lithium deposits, pointing out the fact that lithium mining would be carried out near fertile fields and rivers. Common to both protests is that they are organized in places where the environment is threatened or in front of institutions that make decisions related to legal regulations on environmental protection. In this way, the organizers exert direct pressure on decision-makers or prevent wrong decisions from being implemented by actions in places in the country where pollution has increased, or there is a threat of potential pollution.

What is the difference between the described protests and acts of destruction of works of art?

Letzte Generation chose the wrong place and object of protest. True, it did attract the attention of the public, which resulted in negative reactions and criticism of the organizers of the protest. On the other hand, the March from the Drina organizes protests in front of the institutions that make decisions on whether lithium will be exploited or not. The elements of the protest are directly related to the potential problem of environmental pollution, and their message is clear, and therefore the organization’s actions are productive. Analyzing the previous work of Letzte Generation, it was observed that the wrong places and dates of protests are often chosen. That the messages are confusing and cause more negative than positive reactions. The activities of the Letzte Generation movement cannot be classified as a classic form of protest or civil disobedience. Applying the method of binary oppositions as a methodological tool of the philosophical direction of Poststructuralism, the opposition of protest is anti-protest. However, the activities of the movement cannot be classified in that category either, because they are not in opposition, but supposedly on the side of the ideology of environmental protection. It is certainly a new form of activist activity that we must pay special attention to so that we can recognize them in the future. The reason for this is the fact that acts such as the destruction of valuable art paintings render the work of non-governmental organizations, international institutions, and countries that are looking for models to preserve the environment meaningless.

We will call the new form of protest Vanitas protests.

The word Vanitas of Latin origin means meaninglessness, relativization, and transience. Vanitas is a style of painting that depicts still life. At the beginning of creation, skulls were represented in the paintings, which indicates mortality and transience. The meaning of the word fully imitates the referent of a new form of social action, and we can define and identify it as Vanitas Protest.

SUMMARY *

The article proposes a distinction and a name for it. Protest and civil disobedience, on the author’s account, both direct pressure at those with the power to decide and do so in a place connected to the grievance, which is what the Serbian campaign against lithium extraction illustrates. The museum actions do neither: the target holds no decision making power, the location bears no relation to the cause, and the act itself is destructive rather than obstructive. The author’s further claim is that such actions carry a cost beyond themselves, since public hostility toward them attaches to the wider environmental movement and to the institutions working on the same problem. For this category the author proposes the term Vanitas protest, drawing on the genre of painting that depicts transience and the futility of worldly value.

CONCLUSION

Social actions in the form of civil protests and more radical in the form of civil disobedience are known forms of action and exerting pressure on state and international institutions in order to protect basic human rights, social equality, and greater freedoms. Nowadays, the climate crisis requires action in all fields, that’s why protests represent a significant activity that leads to changes for the better. Vanitas protests can relativize the previous work of the non-governmental sector, state, and international institutions. Vanitas protests threaten to relativize past achievements and the further progress of activities that will prevent new pollution and the survival of ecosystems as we know them. That is why the definition and identification of Vanitas protests are important. Mapping them and creating a distance from them will prevent further relativization of realistic plans and activities in the field of ecology and environmental preservation. A clear identification of the Vanitas protest will preserve the credibility of the previous work of the organizations and institutions that are making a huge effort to prevent new and reduce existing environmental pollication.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The distinction the article draws is a useful one and it can be sharpened by separating three questions that public discussion of these actions usually runs together: whether the action was destructive, whether it was effective, and whether it damaged the cause it served.

On the first, the record matters. The paintings involved were behind glazing, chosen for that reason by the groups concerned, and neither was destroyed; the damage was to frames and the works were returned to display within days. That does not make the actions lawful or unobjectionable, and prosecutions followed in both jurisdictions. It does mean that the category the author is defining is not destruction of cultural heritage but the appearance of it, staged so that the possibility of destruction rather than its fact carries the message. That is a meaningful distinction for anyone attempting to classify the phenomenon, and it strengthens the author’s reading of these actions as performance.

On the second, the evidence is genuinely mixed and worth stating. Research on such tactics finds that disruptive action reliably generates attention and reliably generates disapproval of the actors, while its effect on support for the underlying cause is less clear. Some studies identify a radical flank effect, in which the presence of a disruptive group increases public willingness to engage with moderate organisations pursuing the same aim. Others find that identification with the cause itself declines. Both findings can be true at once, which is why the movements themselves disagree about these tactics as sharply as the public does.

The third question is the one this journal is best placed to address, because it is a question about conflict rather than about climate. An action succeeds as communication when the recipient can understand what is being asked and can imagine doing it. Blocking the entrance to a ministry names an addressee and a demand. Soup on glazing in a gallery names neither, which is why the ensuing conversation was about the tactic rather than about emissions. That is the analytic core of the author’s argument, and it holds independently of anyone’s view about the paintings.

Two additions would complete the picture. The Serbian case the author uses as a contrast is stronger evidence than the article claims, since the campaign it describes achieved what it sought when the government revoked the spatial plan for the lithium project in early 2022; the dispute has since reopened, which makes it a live illustration of how such campaigns actually proceed, in reversals rather than in conclusions. And the article’s own concern for the credibility of the wider movement suggests a practical response that goes beyond naming the category. Where a movement contains groups whose tactics divide it, the constructive step is internal dialogue about strategy rather than public distancing, since the latter confirms the fragmentation while the former can resolve it. Facilitated conversations of exactly this kind, between organisations pursuing the same aim by incompatible means, are among the least visible and most valuable things practitioners in this field do.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Climate Change Analysis, Climate Action Plan, European Commission 2014, klimatska-akcija.pdf (europa.rs)

Paris Agreement, legally binding international treaty on climate change, United Nations 2016, The Paris Agreement, UNFCCC

United Nations 2030 Agenda, 2015, Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (un.org)

News report on the activities of green parties in the European Union and the Western Balkans, BBC Serbia, 2022, Ekološke stranke i pokreti u Srbiji: Zašto je zeleno postalo omiljena boja u srpskoj politici, BBC News na srpskom

The mission of the organization to ban mining in Serbia, March from the Drina, 2022, O nama, Mars Sa Drine

Snežana Pantelić, Marija Čukanović, Sociology, PIM University, Banja Luka, 2014, Sociologija.pdf (univerzitetpim.com)

Ivana Krešo, Justification of civil disobedience, University of Zagreb, 2017 (unizg.hr)

News about Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in Great Britain, Guardian News, 2022, Just Stop Oil activists throw tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting at National Gallery, YouTube

Footage of the protest against a Claude Monet painting, Letzte Generation, 2022, Aktivisti bacili pire krompir na sliku Kloda Monea vrednu 110 miliona, YouTube

News about the blockade of the road to the natural habitat of Reva in Serbia, Nova S television, 2021, Ćuta o protestu: Ovom kamionu se “desila” Ceca Bojković (nova.rs)

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, p. 146, 1967

Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction, p. 46, Službeni Glasnik, Belgrade, 2002

The origin and meaning of the word Vanitas, Dictionary.com

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group I, Summary for Policymakers, Geneva, 2021.

Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice, chapter on civil disobedience. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Chenoweth, E., & Stephan, M. J. (2011). Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. Columbia University Press, New York.

Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Kovacheff, C. (2020). The Activist’s Dilemma: Extreme Protest Actions Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(5), 1086 to 1111.

Simpson, B., Willer, R., & Feinberg, M. (2022). Radical Flanks of Social Movements Can Increase Support for Moderate Factions. PNAS Nexus, 1(3).

Ostarek, M. et al. (2022). Analysis of public opinion following disruptive climate protest in the United Kingdom, Social Change Lab, London.

Just Stop Oil and Letzte Generation, public statements on the National Gallery and Museum Barberini actions, October 2022.

Insights on African Child Soldiers and their Living Paradox

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 contribution documents a WMO Gathering held on 5 September 2021 and gathers the reflections of participants alongside those of the speaker. Its purpose is to record a conversation rather than to advance an argument, and the participants’ statements are reproduced as they were given.

ABSTRACT

This report documents a WMO Gathering on child soldiers and restorative practice, addressed by a researcher whose fieldwork was conducted in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rather than reproducing the lecture, it assembles the responses of participants from five continents and the speaker’s own reflections on the questions they raised. The discussion covers the conditions from which children enter armed groups, including the finding that some join in search of better circumstances than they have alone; the rejection and displacement that follow their return; and the use of community based restorative practice as an alternative to imprisonment, drawing on the Baraza in the Congo alongside comparable traditions in Mozambique, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Burundi. Participants raise the tension between forgiveness and punishment, the absence of long term follow up on whether reintegration measures work, the necessity of adapting restorative models to local culture rather than importing them, and the limited attention the subject receives internationally. The speaker closes with an account of peacemaking circles conducted in North Kivu and with the question of where responsibility ultimately lies.

KEYWORDS

Child soldiers, restorative justice, reintegration, Democratic Republic of the Congo, peacemaking circles, indigenous practice, forgiveness, community acceptance, post-traumatic stress, rehabilitation, transitional justice, recruitment

INTRODUCTION

On September, 5th, 2021 – WMO members from 5 continents joined a common conference call under the project name of WMO Gathering. The event was chaired by Daniel Erdmann and moderated by Yousra Hasona. Prof. Chrys Kiyala, from Bandundu University, attended the meeting being the speaker.

Prof. Kiyala was kind enough to share with us his first-hand experiences and insights from his long-term field of research. The topic for this WMO Gathering was: ‘Child Soldiers and Restorative Practice’.

The purpose of this event summary is not to offer Prof. Kiyala’s content once again, but more likely to bring together selected reflections of some attendees. As we all witnessed the high-level content that was delivered by the speaker, we would like to give the same level of attention to the audience’s perspectives. Therefore, we will now learn more about such points of view by having a look at the attendee’s statements.

MAIN CORPUS

The conditions the children face

Tina Jones breaks the ice on a very emotional level by saying: ‘Listening to Prof. Kiyala describe the inhumane conditions and violence that child soldiers in the Republic of Congo are subjected to, was jarring and horrifying. These are children. I could not imagine their pain after surviving mental and physical abuse, abduction, rape and other unspeakable violence as a bystander or even worse as a child-offender holding the gun that they are then subjected to more trauma being ostracized and displaced in their communities or shamed by their own families. Forgiveness and acceptance is so desperately needed when a child soldier returns home to start the process of healing and redemption.’

The absence of long term evidence

Nana Amma Adjovu expressed her concern by sharing that ‘there is no long-term continuity plan to check whether rehabilitation and integration measures for child soldiers have worked.’

Her statement describes best the critical situation that all engaged parties of such rehabilitation projects face. Even though Child Soldiers are not a recent phenomenon, the projects to reintegrate Child and Youth Soldiers into society are commonly just starting. Thereby, these projects and researchers are currently creating their own case studies to learn from. This is one of the reasons why short-term reactions to socio-psychological findings during these rehabilitation processes are highly important. These projects intend to minimize the pain and to maximize a potential future for the ex-soldiers.

Alternatives to punishment

Bernie Bain stated that ‘it was commendable to hear that Restorative Adjustment and Rehabilitation is a focus in dealing with ‘Child Soldiers.’ That there are alternatives: to enhance child wellbeing and the promotion of educational and vocational programs for these children.’

This reaction shows how unfamiliar these approaches still are to many, and it perfectly confirms what Victor Berger adds by saying that he: ‘is afraid the West, generally, demonstrates extraordinary insensitivity and, dare I say, disinterest. As much as there are myriad of causes swirling around the world in the main, those who engage in them do so with very narrow perspectives, little beyond their own immediate self-interest and pursuit of self-gratification.’

Assuming that peace supportive action could be initiated if we only knew about the situation in full, we should ask ourselves who actually generates a benefit out of the fact that so little information on this topic is communicated in the western world, and the conflicts in the potential areas continue to exist. Obviously, the fact that child and youth soldiers join actively such war zones, make the conflict grow and sustain. So, what are the consequences that a destabilized country or area faces? I suggest that all kinds of price levels decrease and are kept at a minimum, including natural resources such as Cobalt, Lithium, etc.

Forgiveness and the demands of law

Building the bridge from the sustainable support of conflict and its consequences to the topic of restorative practice and reconciliation, Eloise Zeume makes us know that the point that caught her attention was: ‘that restorative justice was implemented in the eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo concerning the child soldiers’ perpetrators of crime. Prof. Kiyala mentioned that within the framework of restorative justice in the community, the locals use forgiveness, compensation, and other practices such as cultural rituals, the alternative to imprisonment to maintain the peace in the community and to preserve the significant interest of the child, as stated in the convention on the rights of the child. All those practices and actions are perfect for maintaining peace in the community in a social view. Also, from the psychological point, forgiveness can powerfully heal the child soldiers’ mental. However, from a legal point of view, where crime was committed, must be punishment. So, I asked myself whether preserving the child’s interest in such a situation will not encourage other child soldiers or even the same perpetrator to commit further atrocities. And how far will the alternative to imprisonment of child soldiers for the crime committed be?

Another point is the psychological trauma and sufferings of children soldiers. When I listened to Prof. Kiyala, I had an impression there is no particular system put in place to take good care of those children, especially for the long-term care and insertion into the society. In this perspective, what is the future of child soldiers in general and in the East Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo?’

And yes, as previously stated, there is no long-term study or guideline on how to handle such a situation and reintegration process in the most beneficial way. Accordingly, we do not know yet, the impact of rehabilitation camps, the use of traditional reconciliation systems, and the possible lack of psychological trauma care.

What we can say is that the awareness and willingness to make use of local systems of social healing may have a positive impact on rehabilitation. Commonly known practices are deeply rooted in a cultural mindset and may have a deeper impact on the individual than imported practices only.

Local systems and the limits of imported models

Sokfa John outlines the importance of: ‘the use of indigenous community accountability and reconciliation systems are actually very effective in the context of transitional justice. They offer a more comprehensive and dynamic way to address the crimes, reintegration, rehabilitation of former child soldiers as well as achieve justice beyond how it is understood and pursued in the international criminal justice system. These indigenous systems do not only demonstrate a contextualization of justice, but also offer resources for continuous interrogation of the notion of justice in international law.’

Anne Kristine explains once more the importance of being flexible and of adopting the strategies and methods to the actual needs by saying: ‘Although Restorative Justice has universal principles, there is no single universally applicable system; it is thus not merely helpful but even essential to take into account the local context and specificities of culture and tradition etc in designing effective Restorative Justice models. Restorative Justice promotes peace and healing mechanisms but it cannot be only dictated from the top down, it needs to be (also) a grassroots movement, involving all members of the community, in a bottom-up approach. Furthermore, the event highlighted the importance of listening to the child’s voice, to always have that at the back or better: at the forefront of our minds when legislating.’

The speaker’s reflections

Prof. Kiyala sums up his proper findings while giving this lecture: ‘From my vantage point, the conference was very enriching in terms of attention paid to it by the participants, and the pragmatic and discursive nature of their interventions.

There were intriguing questions that opened up our research horizons and raised new interests in specific issues that need to be considered when applying restorative justice approaches for child soldiers in conflict zones. These include:

Restorative justice approaches should be cognizant of the religious beliefs, cultural contexts and ensure that the response by the affected communities met their needs.

How to assess the long-term effects of restorative justice after child soldiers have come out of hostilities. This is a complex problem. However, child soldiers could initiate support groups where former child soldiers could meet and share their experiences of social reintegration. My research of child soldiers’ life after exiting hostilities found that psychosocial rehabilitation programs framed within Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological systems theory had the potentials to enhance child soldiers’ well-being, human growth; and in reducing potential violent behavior. We could extrapolate that the resilience of child soldiers will increase if society does offer them rehabilitation programs.

Long-term benefits restorative indigenous approaches were another area of interest for participants. While appreciating the impact of restorative community-based practices of justice in Sub-Saharan Africa where these have brought about reconciliation, healing, reintegration for former child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Uganda, a suggestion emerged that such dynamic models of restorative justice be promoted at international level. Similar experiments are needed along the Baraza in the DRCongo, Ka pahla in Mozambique, Mato oput in Uganda, Fambul Tok in Sierra Leone; in the context of Rwanda, the Gacaca could be used as jurisprudence and Bushingantahe in Burundi as indigenous restorative jurisprudence. One way to lead global advocacy towards restorative justice could consist in involving the International Peace Research Association, World Mediation Organisation, Save the Children, UNICEF, etc.

There was a very critical problem with justice for child soldiers themselves. The speaker alluded to restorative justice peacemaking circles that took place in Rutshuru, North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the father of two rape and kidnapping survivors facilitated the circle. His surviving daughter and himself decided to forgive young soldiers who systematically abused the girls for two weeks. The benefits of such circles included vicarious justice, namely the plea by child soldiers to the audience to forgive dead child soldiers and those who never participated in the series of circles that the speaker organized in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and the acceptance and reintegration of former child soldiers into their communities.

An emerging aspect of restorative justice to which the discussion turned was the mental healing and child soldiers’ well-being. Definitely, healing child soldiers who had developed post-traumatic stress disorders should be the priority of the justice and rehabilitation programs of all war-affected children including child soldiers.’

SUMMARY

The exchange recorded here turns on a tension the participants name from several directions and do not resolve, which is the more useful outcome than resolving it would have been. Restorative practice offers a child a route back into a community that would otherwise cast them out, and it does so by declining to punish acts that in any other context would be punished; one participant asks directly whether that invites repetition, and the question is not answered from the floor. Alongside it runs a second and quieter difficulty raised by another participant, namely that nobody knows whether any of this works over years, because the follow up has not been done. What the speaker’s own material supplies in place of proof is a description of what has happened in particular places: circles in North Kivu convened by the father of two girls who had been abused, at which former child soldiers were accepted back. The report’s closing question, whether the guilt belongs to the child or to the recruiter, is where the whole discussion has been heading.

CONCLUSION

To me, it was once again an eye-opener to hear Prof. Kiyala explaining that children and adolescents join such forces, not only by being kidnapped but also because of the motivation to find themselves in better living conditions than being on their own. And this fact also builds a heart-moving scenario, namely that many ex-soldiers stay in the rehabilitation camps for years, because they have no families to return to. Bringing the complexity of this content on the point, especially at the moment of a potential reintegration and act of forgiveness, is the question of who actually remains to be guilty, the Child Soldiers or the recruiter.

Tina Jones sums it once more up by sharing: ‘The Restorative Justice initiatives implemented by Dr. Kiyala to improve the lives of these child soldiers, their families and communities is truly remarkable. Dr. Kiyala’s work provides the opportunity for healing, forgiveness, reparations and the reintegration of child soldiers back to their communities. That is a gift too so many.’

While many questions stay with us for further reflection, I would like to give credit to all the attendees, to the moderator, and to the speaker. It remains to be my personal wish to hope that such findings will have a positive impact on our daily routine, and that the fact that we all came together in order to exchange on this topic, and to learn from each other’s experiences and insights, may support you on your path towards sharing a glimpse of hope and to initiate peace on a global level.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

Two questions posed by participants during this Gathering are among the most difficult in the field, and it is worth setting out where established practice stands on them, both for readers who were not present and for those who left with the questions unresolved.

The first was the question whether, a crime having been committed, there must not be punishment, and whether an alternative to imprisonment invites repetition. International law answers this more clearly than the discussion may have suggested. A child recruited into an armed force is, in law, primarily a victim of the crime of recruitment, and the framework adopted internationally in the Paris Principles holds that children associated with armed forces should be treated through restorative and rehabilitative measures rather than through prosecution and detention. This is not leniency but a judgment about responsibility: an eleven year old who was abducted, drugged and made to kill did not choose in any sense the law recognises. The deterrence concern is also weaker than it appears, since children are not recruited by their own decision and are therefore not deterred by the prospect of punishment. What deters is accountability directed at commanders and recruiters, which is where the closing question, who remains guilty, points.

The second was the observation that no long term follow up exists, and it identifies a real gap. Tracking former child soldiers over years is expensive, methodologically difficult and rarely funded, and the consequence is that programmes continue on the strength of plausibility rather than evidence. What research exists points consistently in one direction: community acceptance predicts long term outcomes more strongly than any programme component, and interventions that stigmatise former child soldiers by separating them from other war affected children tend to impede the acceptance they depend on. That finding argues for exactly the community based approaches described here, and it argues equally for the documentation the participant called for.

Two further observations follow from what participants raised. The point about grassroots involvement and the point about indigenous systems converge on something the field has learned repeatedly: reintegration succeeds where the community performs it and fails where it is administered to the community from outside. And the remark about attention, uncomfortable as it is, connects to the discussion of resources in a way worth stating plainly. Where a conflict economy makes instability profitable for those buying from it, recruitment does not stop because rehabilitation improves. Restorative practice repairs what recruitment has done; it does not by itself remove the reason recruitment continues.

Finally, the speaker’s own reflection deserves emphasis. The account of the father who facilitated a peacemaking circle and, with his daughter, chose to forgive the young soldiers who had abused her describes a moral act that no framework can require and none should. It is offered here as something that happened, not as a model to be replicated, and the distinction matters: forgiveness that is expected of survivors ceases to be forgiveness and becomes another thing asked of them.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, 2000.

The Paris Principles: Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups, 2007.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, Articles 8(2)(b)(xxvi) and 8(2)(e)(vii), and Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Judgment of 14 March 2012, on the conscription and use of children under the age of fifteen.

Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards, United Nations, module 5.30 on children and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration.

United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1612 (2005), 2225 (2015) and 2427 (2018) on children and armed conflict.

Kiyala, J. C. K. (2019). Child Soldiers and Restorative Justice: Participatory Action Research in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Springer, Cham.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Betancourt, T. S., Borisova, I., Williams, T. P., et al. (2013). Research Review: Psychosocial Adjustment and Mental Health in Former Child Soldiers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(1), 17 to 36.

Wessells, M. (2006). Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Baines, E. K. (2007). The Haunting of Alice: Local Approaches to Justice and Reconciliation in Northern Uganda. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 1(1), 91 to 114.

Zehr, H. (2002). The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Good Books, Intercourse.