Peace Processes and the Challenges of Violence

Abstract

Violence poses fundamental challenges to peace settlements. Peace processes are often rife with strategic and tactical deception, and even those who sign peace agreements may cultivate violence in order to undermine their new ‘partners’ in peace. Multiple actors in civil wars rarely simultaneously choose peace; those who seek to end a violent conflict will often face opposition from parties who are excluded or who exclude themselves from peacemaking. Such spoilers — leaders and factions who view a particular peace as opposed to their interests and who are willing to use violence to undermine it — pose a grave threat to those who risk making peace.¹ Beyond strategic and tactical uses of violence, there is the obvious need to convince those with the guns to lay them down and reconstruct their lives in a peaceful manner. War may end, but if former combatants lack jobs and skills and if weapons are easily available, then violent crime may increase and rob citizens of their security and their hopes for a robust peace dividend. Finally, there are the effects of past violence: addressing the needs of victims and examining issues of accountability and culpability for atrocity and murder.