Inside Geneva
Inside Geneva is a podcast about global politics, humanitarian issues, and international aid, hosted by journalist Imogen Foulkes. It is produced by SWI swissinfo.ch, a multilingual international public service media company from Switzerland.
Inside Geneva
What makes a good peace deal?
In this week’s Inside Geneva podcast episode, we ask: what makes a good peace agreement?
“Peace is not just a status. Peace is a process, and it’s a process that is part of politics in general,” says Laurent Goetschel from Swisspeace.
So, are quick peace deals possible?
“When someone says, ‘I want to have an agreement in 24 hours,’ my response as a professional is, ‘Okay. What are our ideas? What is possible right now? What is the most that can be made out of this possibility, if indeed it is a possibility?’” says Katia Papagianni from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue.
Does peace mean more than just the end of fighting?
“Peace, meaning just the absence of war, can be the result of a negotiation, maybe even a short negotiation between powerful actors directly or indirectly involved in the conflict. But it’s not only about stopping hostilities. It’s about working towards conditions that tackle the major issues. And this is a longer-lasting process,” adds Goetschel.
Can a peace agreement offer everything that everybody wants? Can all human rights be protected immediately?
“A peace agreement cannot guarantee the protection of human rights; it can just keep the door open and create some form of foundation for the political actors of a country to actually pursue the aspiration of protecting human rights,” adds Papagianni.
Join podcast host Imogen Foulkes to hear about the tough, practical realities – and the hard work and patience needed – to create a sustainable peace agreement.
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Host: Imogen Foulkes
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This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, imogen Fowkes, and this is a production from Swissinfo, the international public media company of Switzerland.
Speaker 1:In today's program, Peace is not just a status. I mean peace is is a process and it's a process which is part of politics in general.
Speaker 3:When someone says I want to have an agreement in 24 hours, my response as a professional is OK. What are our ideas? What is possible right now? What is the most that can be made out of this possibility, if indeed this is a possibility?
Speaker 1:Peace, meaning just the absence of war, can be the result of a negotiation, maybe even of a short negotiation between powerful actors directly indirectly involved in the conflict. But it's not only about the stop of hostilities. It's about working towards conditions which tackle the major issues, and this is a longer lasting process.
Speaker 3:The peace agreement cannot guarantee the protection of human rights. It can just keep the door open and create some form of foundation for the political actors of a country to actually pursue the aspiration of protection of human rights hello and welcome again to inside geneva.
Speaker 2:I'm imogen folks, and in today's program we're going to take a look at a very topical subject peace deals, how to create them and how to sustain them. Is peace simply the end of fighting or is is it more than that? Why do peace agreements fail? Would a fair peace deal in Ukraine be easy to achieve? Why has peace in the Middle East been so elusive for so long? And what about human rights? Where do they fit into peace negotiations? I should tell you, the interviews in this programme were done amid rumours of a ceasefire in Gaza, but before it was officially announced. And as I record this, we are still waiting for that ceasefire to begin and for the release of the hostages. Our two guests today are experts in the field of peace, so let's hear from them.
Speaker 3:My name is Katia Papagiani and I work for the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, and we call ourselves HD for short.
Speaker 2:And what does the HD Centre do? I mean humanitarian dialogue sounds great, but what do you do exactly?
Speaker 3:So we are a conflict mediation organisation. We are based in about 30 countries around the world and practically this means that we facilitate dialogue among a number of different conflict actors. It can be at the local level, among communities, it can be at national level, among governments, militia and armed groups, or it can be at the international level, among actors who are invested in resolving any conflict that we may be engaged in. And our particular contribution to this work is that we are a non-governmental actor. We're impartial and independent, and this is becoming a great advantage in today's geopolitical realities. We see the multilateral system struggling to respond to armed conflict around the world.
Speaker 1:My name is Laurent Goeckel. I'm a professor of political science at the University of Basel and director of Swiss Peace, a Swiss Peace Research Institute.
Speaker 2:Tell me about Swiss Peace, because peace at the moment is a kind of a rare creature. What does Swiss Peace? Because peace at the moment is a kind of a rare creature.
Speaker 1:What does Swiss Peace actually do? Swiss Peace does research, so we do basic research on mediation, transitional justice, all kinds of themes which are relevant in the practice of peace politics and peace policy. The bulk of our work, however, is a mandate project. We advise governments, international organizations, large non-governmental organizations on all kinds of peace-related matters.
Speaker 2:I often hear people say, oh, why can't we just have peace? Why can't we just have peace? Do you think that many people, including politicians, misunderstand what creating the conditions for peace are?
Speaker 1:I guess there is still more to be found out about how to actually promote peace, and that's why also, an institution like ours makes sense, has a reason to exist, makes sense, has a reason to exist. But on the other side, peace is not just a status, peace is a process, and it's a process which is part of politics in general, be it within states or between states. And because it is part of politics, it is also subject to changing power, relations, constellations.
Speaker 2:The hunger created by war made this tragedy. The dead and wounded were starving people.
Speaker 3:And once again in the center of Europe, innocent women, men and children are dying of fear for their lives.
Speaker 2:During war it's quite rare to hear people, even those fighting, insist they want to just carry on with the conflict whatever the cost, but neither often can they be brought to the peace negotiating table. As Katia Papagiani explains, the suffering and loss endured by a population at war may make it hard to accept a peace agreement with the enemy.
Speaker 3:Once people are engaged in armed conflict, once they choose the violent way of resolving differences as opposed to the peaceful way, then they have made a lot of sacrifices along the way peaceful way, then they have made a lot of sacrifices along the way. During wartime, properties are lost, lives are lost, territories are lost and, of course, populations are displaced. People pay a very heavy price during wartime and, as a result, making the leap from war to peace is extremely complicated. So, yes, everyone wants peace, but once you get to the details and the practicalities of how to get there, it becomes messy.
Speaker 2:What practicalities would you say are essential then? As you say, when countries go to war, they lose particularly their civilians, and their armed forces lose an awful lot.
Speaker 3:It's the million dollar question right now, with so many conflicts around the world, imogen. But if I step back, I would come up with four main components of what gives a peace agreement the greatest chance of survival, and the first is that all the important actors, those who have military and political power, have to be part of the agreement. If they're not, we run the risk that they will become what we call, in our field, spoilers, that sooner or later they will come back and challenge whatever it is that has been agreed. And so the first inescapable reality of peace agreements is that everyone, even those that in some quarters may be seen as really distasteful partners in peace, they have to be at the table.
Speaker 3:The second requirement is that the neighbourhood, those around the conflict, have to support the agreement, and in many cases we see that the opposite happens, that the neighbourhood actually doesn't support an agreement, doesn't see themselves and their interests reflected in the agreement and, down the line, may end up undermining it.
Speaker 3:The third is that we have to have some form of guarantees and this is a word now we hear a lot also on front page news the guarantees, security guarantees, guarantees for peace. And what does this mean? It means that essentially all those who lend the support to the agreement feel that there is some sort of mechanism that gives them confidence that the other side will not serve the conflict again, that their own security and the security of their constituencies is not going to be sacrificed and that their interests somehow will be protected. And the fourth is some form of what we call peace dividend, meaning that the ordinary person living in any given country will see a difference between their life before the agreement and after the agreement. And there is a very important short window opening once agreements are signed to deliver this peace dividend, to make people happy, realize that there is something different, to know that their children can go to school, that there is water that can be consumed safely, that there is food, that there is possibility to return to their homes, etc.
Speaker 2:And so, keeping Katia's four essential preconditions for peace in mind, I had a question for Laurent Guttel of Swiss Peace. Can you give me an example of a peace agreement that has worked, and maybe one which was clearly destined to fail from the beginning?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean in terms of working. One has to say it's never absolute, but there are relative successes. A relative success is what has been achieved. In Bosnia-Herzegovina. There was a lot of violence going on. If we think about Srebrenica, there were really terrible things happening during the civil war. It's a complex situation with three different ethnic groups and there was the involvement of the international community the UN, but also the European Union and in the end an agreement was found which tries to include the major relevant ethnic groups over there.
Speaker 1:Nothing is perfect. We can read a lot about many problems, particularly also socio-economic problems in this region, but there is no violent conflict going on. If I may just add another successful example, people tend to forget about it, but it's of course European integration. The European Union didn't just fall from the sky. I mean, it started as a totally open-ended process after a major war and well, until today, if we think about the two former major antagonists, france and Germany, it's still working Well. And if we think about failure, obviously the case which comes to mind is the Israel-Palestine conflict, where we did have an attempt and a moment with a lot of optimism with the Oslo agreements in 1993. But then it became clear very soon afterwards and possibly it was already clear for the parties themselves because they had been involved in the negotiations but we weren't that there were actually no real serious intentions from the major parties to implement it. And if you negotiate an agreement just to move on with the same line of behaviour you had before, then of course you're doomed to fail.
Speaker 2:So I think we're beginning to see that the road to peace is a challenging one, requiring commitment, compromise and inclusivity. I will prevent, and very easily.
Speaker 3:World.
Speaker 1:War III very easily.
Speaker 2:So what do our seasoned peace experts make of Donald Trump's claim that he can end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours?
Speaker 3:I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled.
Speaker 2:It will be settled quickly. I had expected Katya to suggest this was a fantasy, but in fact she was more optimistic.
Speaker 3:The first thing I think of is maybe there's something there In the mediation field. We're always saying to ourselves we have to always be ready. Should an opportunity open, even a slight opening of a door for reduction of violence or possibility of ending a conflict, we have to be ready to jump at the opportunity. So we have to have ideas up our sleeves, proposals and options. So when someone says I want to have an agreement in 24 hours, then my response as a professional is okay, what are our ideas? What is possible right now? What is the most that can be made out of this possibility, if indeed this is a possibility?
Speaker 3:The second thing that I think of is that, even if it looks like it would be 24 hours, or even if, in some cases, agreements have been reached quickly in a few weeks or a couple of months, the reality is that there is months and months, and sometimes of years, of ideas that have been developing, that have been discreetly exchanged among parties, options that have been meticulously developed, contacts that have been made, trust that has been developed.
Speaker 3:So even if conflict is continuing on the front page news, it doesn't mean that all of this work is not taking place in the background. So when someone says I can have peace in 24 hours, then I'm thinking what kind of work has taken place? What foundation is there, what can be built on so that something can happen quickly, if indeed there is political will to make something quickly? And my third response to it is that there better be a commitment for the long term, because agreement is the almost the part.
Speaker 3:The difficult part is how to actually stick to supporting the parties and the people of a gantry to implement these difficult things and very controversial and sensitive things that they have agreed to implement. And so sure, let's support someone who says that they want an agreement 24 hours or whatever, someone who says that they want an agreement 24 hours or whatever. Let's build on whatever has been taking place in the background, discreetly, confidentially, quietly. But then let's ask the very difficult question of what is the staying power of those who are proposing a quick agreement to help parties to implement that agreement.
Speaker 2:Laurent Goethal, though, was a little more cautious.
Speaker 1:Peace is a word and people understand very different things when they use it. So if you use peace in the sense of, it's called negative peace, meaning just the immediate absence of violence, which should not be underestimated as a value, by the way, if we think about ongoing hostilities in a war. But peace meaning just the absence of war can be the result of a negotiation, maybe even of a short negotiation between powerful actors directly indirectly involved in the conflict, and then they agree to stop the fighting. This may be also the necessary first step in certain contexts, but the way an institution like SwissPeace understands peace is in a so-called positive way. It's not only about the stop of hostilities. It's about working towards conditions which are of mutual benefits to involved parties and which tackle the major issues. And this is a longer lasting process. So this cannot be achieved just with a deal, but a deal can be part of a peace process.
Speaker 2:What's your take, though, on what some analysts have called the approach of a quick deal, say between Russia and Ukraine, that it won't be a peace deal, it will be more like an imposed defeat? Can it sustain or does it store up problems for the future?
Speaker 1:It depends the way it's being achieved and its substance.
Speaker 1:So if we now take the case of Ukraine, let's assume that the government in place in Kiev would be forced to recognize the new borders within its country and to definitely forego its aspirations to recover these territories, and that no proper security guarantees would be linked to it.
Speaker 1:Then this might just be an intermezzo for future military conflicts, because most probably Russia would feel encouraged to restart the war in a certain moment and the world community wouldn't really believe in a long-lasting peace. But it could also be, if we take the same situation, that there would be like a short-term freeze. This would be the first step to start a longer process of negotiations which would include more parties and which would be part of a rethinking of the so-called European security and peace architecture. Then this might be a first step towards, maybe a different solution. What it would look like is one thing, but what is more important is that there would be a higher probability that whatever following steps would emerge out of such a deal, they would be handled in a non-violent way. This would be closer to peace than the first version.
Speaker 3:After months of war and negotiations that lasted almost as long, a ceasefire has finally at last been agreed by Israel and Hamas. Just a few hours after the ceasefire agreement was announced, men in northern Gaza were back digging through the rubble for the dead and wounded after an Israeli strike.
Speaker 2:And what about Gaza, if I dare ask, because there are certain ideas being floated that this could be, it's destroyed now it could be redeveloped, could be good real estate. I've heard people say Is this kind of rebuilding investment just that? Would that be a good idea?
Speaker 1:Now, the way you describe the situation is Gaza is a very materialistic, hardware perspective. I think we have to think about the people. You have these two, two and a half million people and unless you transfer them to some desert in the area, they will remain there. So you have to deal with the people, and the question who is building what where is dependent on how you deal with the people. And in my view, I mean it's not just Gaza, it's the whole context. And if we take this whole context, we have about the same amount of Palestinian inhabitants, be they Israeli or not, be they in the West Bank or in Gaza, and of Jewish Israelis. There are about seven, seven and a half million people in each group and if we are thinking about the long-term peace perspective, they have to find the solution, how to coexist in this context.
Speaker 1:So it's not about building a real estate for whoever in Gaza or not. It's about finding a solution for the people living there. Otherwise, unless there is a massive forced transfer of population, there will be no peace. Listening to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, listening also to persons not being in the government there and even further to the right, or listening to certain statements of the incoming US-American administration. I don't doubt that there are certain ideas going into this direction, but personally I'm convinced this wouldn't lead to a peaceful solution of the conflict.
Speaker 2:Something else I was beginning to learn talking to Katia and Laurent. A peace deal rarely brings everything everybody wants.
Speaker 3:All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Speaker 2:It's very common to hear United Nations officials suggest that no peace can be sustainable without respect for human rights.
Speaker 1:Peace, like development, is built and nourished through rights.
Speaker 2:But can those rights really all be guaranteed for every group and community? The moment the guns fall silent? Katia believes pragmatism and patience are needed.
Speaker 3:I think we need to look at this question, take a step back and think a bit more comprehensively. What do we mean by peace and what do we mean by sustainable peace? Of course, respect for human rights is a very long-term goal. Societies who are exiting conflict don't have the institutions, don't have the political cultures, don't have the emotional and mental capacities to be thinking in very advanced ways and to be implementing in advanced ways, like in other societies, protection of human rights.
Speaker 3:However, what the agreements have to do is to keep the door open. To keep the door open for these conversations to continue taking place, for negotiations to continue taking place, so that we can have, so to speak, a progressive realization of human rights. The most important thing that a peace agreement can do is to create the political space for these negotiations to continue, for these discussions to continue, for domestic actors to battle with each other peacefully about what they want for the country, what is their vision for the country, what do they mean for protection of human rights and, of course, with the support of the international community. So, building a capacity to resolve disagreements peacefully, including on human rights, is the job of the peace agreement. The peace agreement cannot guarantee the protection of human rights. It can just keep the door open and create some form of foundation for the political actors of a country to actually pursue the aspiration of protection of human rights.
Speaker 3:The day's other headlines begin in Russia, where President Vladimir Putin held his annual year-end press conference. Putin reaffirmed his commitment to continuing the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 1:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing to keep up the retaliatory attacks against Hamas.
Speaker 2:But watching the news, listening to some government leaders, it's hard to feel confident that the willingness to compromise, the creativity and, above all, the patience and staying power required to negotiate a workable peace deal are really present.
Speaker 3:We need Greenland for national security purposes. People really don't even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up. The Panama Canal is vital to our country. It's being operated by China.
Speaker 2:China President Donald Trump, now just back in office, has suggested he might use military force to annex Greenland or the Panama Canal. How does that fit into any kind of peaceful negotiation? Laurent Guchel again.
Speaker 1:I think, also based on the experience of his first presidency, that Donald Trump says many things, many short things, according to his preferred formats of communication. He gets attention, he's center stage, but the implementation usually doesn't go into a totally different direction but isn't like a one-to-one work on what he suggested in his tweets Basically, I mean I would translate what he said in regard to Panama and Greenland he thinks these are interesting territories for the US and they have to look at it more closely and the rest is just Trump style. But obviously it gets media resonance. If he had said, well, greenland is getting more important in view of climate change and natural resources and the strategic importance of the Arctic, we wouldn't be talking about it right now.
Speaker 1:I don't I mean from the first presidency of Donald Trump, but also from what he's been saying. Otherwise, he has his personal style of communication and he has his affinity to cutting deals linked to his businessman past, which is marketing quite efficiently. But I don't see him in international politics as a warmonger. And the Republicans in general. They live this America first logic. And this America first logic doesn't imply that they conquer half of the world. It rather implies that they disentangle and they protect their interests and there might be rising taxes and cut down on globalisation, which is not good, but it doesn't mean a military war and conquest.
Speaker 2:We can only hope that Loroy's right, that the bark in this case is much more worrying than the actual bite, but still there are currently, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, over 120 conflicts raging around the world. It's hard really to see a promise of peace anywhere, and so, in the hope of leaving you listeners with at least a hint of optimism, I had one final question for Katya Papajani. People are very concerned about the kind of conflicts that we're looking at right now Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza. When you look at them, just with your experience, do you think that there's a possibility to end them fairly?
Speaker 3:Yes, very much so.
Speaker 3:That's why we are in this business, in this effort, of course, because we believe that there is always a possibility.
Speaker 3:And one thing that keeps me going in my work is to be on a daily basis, in contact with all of my colleagues who are working in Sudan, who are working on the Ukraine conflict and all the other conflicts that you have mentioned, and to know that there are ideas that people are exchanging with each other in safe and confidential spaces about all of those conflicts, that there are steps that are being explored, that there are steps that are being explored, that there are options that are being developed and that the space for dialogue never dies, even when the conflict is at its highest. So, yes, I think that there are solutions out there, that there are people, serious people, who are working for these solutions, and what we need is a momentum, so to speak, a push to make the leap from war to peace in some of those settings and, of course, a political vision to enter the eventual settlements and the commitment, as I said earlier, to stay in it for the long term, to help all the parties to implement whatever it is that they agree on.
Speaker 2:So the message is never shut the door on the chance for peace. Always be prepared to compromise. Include everyone, from the most brutal warring parties to ethnic and indigenous groups, political leaders, civil society and, of course, women, who tend to be left out of the decisions both to start wars and to end them. That brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to Laurent Guchel and to Katia Papagiani for their time and their analysis. I hope you've enjoyed this week's episode and do join us next. Review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our previous episodes, how the International Red Cross unites prisoners of war with their families, or why survivors of human rights violations turn to the UN in Geneva for justice. I'm Imogen, folks. Thanks again for listening.
