I'm going to bring us down from the like, high level, cross world global perspective to focus on a couple of killer countries.
Um, and um, and I'll try to relate this to the, the,
the theme of the conference by asking a question about your actors and changes in, uh, in, in peacemaking and, um, and peacebuilding.
Um.
In doing this, I want to focus on what I consider a two fundamental shortcomings and contributors to, um, contributors to failure in peace processes.
These are, firstly, the tendency in peace processes to be excessively externally constructed and let ownership in a nutshell.
And secondly, the tendency of peace processes to be framed around external understandings,
the conflict and external visions for peace, rather than the understandings and visions, um, of the people whose country it is.
Context. In a nutshell. The case for the importance of local ownership and contextual knowledge has been made before,
and and it's been made in various ways to take three examples that come to mind from me from the past 30 years.
Think back to an 1994 work by James Ferguson called The Anti Politics Machine,
which whose arguments were focussed on development but are applicable, I think, in some ways, to peacemaking.
Ten years, nearly ten years after that project, Mckinty and colleague um wrote a book called Contemporary Peacemaking in 2003,
and getting one quote from that that speaks to the factors I'm mentioning here in that book.
They wrote, some peace processes are largely creatures of the international community.
They reflect the desired outcomes of key states and the international community, rather than the wishes of local communities.
That's something which I've seen and peace process as I've engaged with in the past ten years.
And then a third. Instance of these issues is factors in literature.
Peace literature from the past, uh, two decades is, uh, Severino two says work in 2014 peace land where she wrote about the, you know,
thematic and local knowledge work best in combination thematic meaning the the sometimes being used as the label for the external expertise,
the generic expertise of the of the outsiders internationals.
She wrote thematic and local knowledge work best in combination,
but knowledge hierarchies in the international system mean that local knowledge
tends to be much less valued than generic thematic competency and expertise.
So it's my view that peace processes that I've seen, and I and I, and I can see it in others, I think continue to fall very short on on these counts.
I want to focus on two examples South Sudan and uh,
during the period for the past ten years from 2014 and Yemen in the same period, 2014 through to the present.
I'll focus on these because, um, I spent time working in both countries, in South Sudan with the UN peacekeeping mission in 20 1718,
and from a much longer engagement with the two Sudans, reaching back to academic work on the second civil war in the Darfur conflict and in Yemen.
My engagement has been from working with the uh UN's political mission for Yemen,
the office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General, working being based in Sanaa, um, during 2020 and 2022 to 2023.
So being at the um, the from involved in mediation in country.
Firstly South Sudan peacemaking in South Sudan.
2014 to 2018 was a period of peacemaking started following the outbreak of South Sudan's civil war in December 2013.
This was a period 2014 2018,
which was saw a peace process that was very strongly externally led and ultimately ignored uh, South Sudanese initiatives.
And it pushed an external vision and concept for peace, particularly the concept of power sharing as a solution,
um, and power sharing with no firm framework for those sharing of power to cede and leave power.
So the international approach to peacemaking pushed that, and it produced and resulted in keeping alive a very dysfunctional national peace agreement.
What happened exactly? I'll get through some of the details, so don't worry if you don't follow all of them people.
Some of you may may know some of some of South African story of the past decade.
When peacemaking began in response to South Sudan civil war and to an end to end of 2013 early 2014.
It followed initially the path of ceasefire negotiations, reaching ceasefires, ceasefire agreements of limited effectiveness,
and then talks about political agreements, power sharing agreements and in 2015, minute or think.
August 2015, the first peace agreement was reached and it was signed with extraordinary reluctance.
It was signed firstly by the main um opposition signatory Rick Machar, and then a week later by the president of the country, the incumbent president,
who signing it appended to his with the signature to his signature,
a 7 or 8 page statement of reservations to the peace agreement and the international machinery to support that peace agreement.
Was opposite went into effect, but a year later, 2016, the agreement collapsed and war resumed.
The power sharing, uh, combination of care and Machar broke down.
And the peacemaking, the international peacemaking response was to restart an initiative, um again led by GATT,
the East African intergovernmental body, which had a history of peacemaking, and it was pulled.
Its initiative then was called the Revitalisation Forum.
There was a and I get on voy, a secretariat supported by Western donor countries,
very much following a model that had been seen been used before in Sudan and in East Africa.
The outcome in 2018 and September 2018, after a lot of pressure from regional states,
was the September 2018 Revitalised Agreement, the revitalised agreement for the resolution of conflict in South Sudan.
Uh hyphen arcs or arcs, as South Sudanese and foreigners took to saying,
and the heavy use of acronyms and abbreviations that has become common and um, in South Sudan.
These are the cover pages of of the two agreements.
The one on the left, hidden behind was the 2015 agreement.
The one on the right was the September 2018 revitalised one with the letter R added to its abbreviation.
Was this a good outcome? It was a really extraordinary outcome and quite questionable.
Power sharing can sound good, but the reality and the success or another matter.
And was it South Sudan? Was it the South Sudanese peoples and South Sudanese civil societies aspiration or choice at all?
This revitalised agreement, it meant the country going from having one president and two vice presidents,
having a structure of government of one president and five vice presidents.
It meant putting back together at the top of power the two men who had fallen out violently twice before.
It meant expanding the parliament by the terms of the agreement, from 400 to 550 members.
For a country of with a population of just 10 million, that parliament having been expanded already once,
twice before the 2015 agreement, which only operated or functioned barely for a year, expanded the parliament from 330 to 400,
while the parliament had been expanded partly to independence,
and this revitalised agreement meant that part of its terms were the elections were postponed again, the transition timetable was reset.
South Sudanese did question this very strongly from senior uh elder ex political figures.
One I remember saying quietly to me in August September 2018, saying it's a joke through two people in the streets ordinary south to.
If you were not to who are not maybe in civil society organisations, but the person in the street who would say,
what country in the world has five vice presidents and has a country of 10 million, has a parliament of 550, but has had no elections.
How is this a solution?
A during the talks that led to this agreement close to the end, remember one opposition leader saying quietly, although he was part of the talks,
but saying as he scratched his head and uh, dealt with the pressure, the mediation pressure to to agree with what was being tabled.
Um, he said that the approach made him think of the saying, often attributed to Einstein, but incorrectly.
But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
However, the machinery of international support, an ongoing legitimisation for the agreement was set in place.
Um, it meant that um, the, the, the East African regional body, the troika uh, of Norway, US, UK,
though its confidence was waning and a whole other array of organisations are j match um miss the UN country team and traditionally
funded or overall the internationally funded initiatives for civil society engagement with the revitalised agreement.
They they rolled into they went into practice.
And so implementation of this agreement limped on with accumulating delays and shortcomings.
For example a planned the agreement specified an eight month pre pre interim
period before the new expanded unified power sharing government would be formed.
That eight months had to be expanded, extended to um by an extra six months and then a further three months.
So it was more than doubled before the president and the next president came together to form the new power sharing government.
That was just one of the delays. Many more delays ensued.
And then, um, the the expanded Parliament, for example, was only, um, inaugurated in 2020, two years behind schedule.
And in August 2022, the signatory parties to this peace agreement.
Uh, they agreed to extend the agreement by a further two years because they were so far behind the schedule.
So what did this this very orthodox peace process exclude?
It excluded what I would say is scope for other complementary and peace and positive initiatives to have had more effect,
more influence, rather than ending up being shelved or limited.
Limited to preferred entrants. There were two examples.
There were two South Sudanese peace initiatives, peacemaking and peacebuilding,
that were happening in parallel at the same time as the the 2014 to 2018 revitalisation initiative.
One was here, South Sudan National Dialogue, which was a four year process from 2017 to 2020, was South Sudanese that didn't have an international.
It had a little bit of international donor money, very small amount, but a lot of international scepticism, um,
because international actors had committed themselves to supporting the, the, the orthodox framework, an approach to to making peace.
The national dialogue which to give it zoom into a little bit of its detail.
It conducted grassroots consultations which and then it conducted three regional conferences.
And that culminated in a two week final conference in 2020 and a report.
And and there were reports published and available in South Sudan of all of its consultations.
And that report, which the cover pages on the left here and sample page bottom left, which talks about failure of leadership.
That report didn't pull its punches. And it it was a total contrast with the revitalised agreement among um.
It convey what the people had said in the consultations?
And for all the imperfections of this South Sudanese led national dialogue.
And there were imperfections, as there are usually national dialogues with or without international support in countries.
Um, still, that national dialogue, it had some strikingly impressive or significant uh,
aspects, such as conveying that the people of South Sudan were demanding.
So they demand that both President Timbuktu react. Mitchell must leave politics with the countries to to move forward.
So this was and then the second South Sudanese initiative I mentioned that was happening in parallel with
the International Peacemaking Initiative was a much smaller one by the South Sudan Council of Churches,
which had bought it for many years, had what it called an action plan for peace.
They that but they made efforts to engage with the like and led an international supported mediation.
But were the door was only fractionally open to them.
It was very difficult for them to engage. Including on this example, South Sudan.
Only two notes were a new actors in this example.
Not really. I get the East African body, as I mentioned already had a history of mediation in Sudan and South Sudan.
Um, there were cajoling roles for the presidents and governments of neighbouring countries to South Sudan,
Uganda and Japan under its then new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, and also for Sudan.
Um, but the role in neighbouring countries, such as those playing a role and in mediating a peace process that's also not so new.
And uh, um, Uganda, um, those countries had played some roles in the past.
Ethiopia, for example, was the, uh, the venue for and the host for 19 very important 1972 peace agreement with um.
China was China, the new actor. And then South Sudan's peacemaking story in the 20 tens largely avoided involvement in peacemaking efforts.
It had had some it had engaged a little bit in 2012, when relations between the then newly independent South Sudan and Sudan broke down.
And, uh, and there was a small conflict on the border and a disruption to, uh, oil operations.
Um, but China limited its subsequent involvement in, uh, this peace process on the incidentally,
there's a there's an interesting article on this topic in the latest issue of International Affairs by Lee Patey on China's engagement in um,
in peacekeeping changes in South Sudan's example, no clear changes.
Um, uh, happened in that history, but it would be good to see more, see a change to more effective, more successful peacemaking in the coming years.
It's. Moving to Yemen?
I don't know. I think I've five minutes.
Um, so in Yemen, peacemaking from 2015 or 2014 through to the present has mostly been a UNled UN Security Council supported peace process.
And it has been an approach which has fitted with external political preferences
and positions rather than the realities of the situation in the country.
The approach, I would argue, tried to produce a nation wide agreement but largely was unrealistic.
Exit ignored was that wasn't aligned with the context and also was very externally led,
contributing to a widening gap between the parties, the Yemeni parties, and increasing the space for war to continue.
For healthy hardliners,
conservatives to feel that there was a Western conspiracy against them and for the official internationally recognised government of Yemen,
or sometimes referred to as the exile government, to believe that it had little or nothing to concede.
What happened briefly in Yemen? Unlike in South Sudan, there was no national.
A national peace agreement reached from 2014 through until 2022, when a truce was reached.
2011 to 2014 was a period of Yemen's Arab Spring uprising,
channelled into a November 2011 Gulf Gulf Cooperation Council transition initiative with a new president and and then a national dialogue in 20 1314.
But then events were. Derailed by twin in 2014,
what was almost a counter coup by the ousted president and allied to these forces until they turned against him several years later.
And in 2015, Saudi Arabia launched its military intervention, a coalition called Operation Decisive Storm,
in principle aiming to restore the exiled government of Um Ahmadi.
And that was the situation from 2015 through to 2022, with an international concept and vision for peace process,
which was largely based on Security Council resolution in 2015,
and a view and an aim that the officially internationally recognised government
of Yemen was the government that should be restored to return to power,
and that the Houthis were just the militia.
That dominant concept and vision for peace process continued through that time, despite the fact that was this.
These two maps are just to show that the the blue highlighted areas where there's not what needs to be known as northern Yemen,
and that was the zone of has been the zone of through the summer of control from 2015 through to the present.
The map on the left shows the area of control and 20s as it was in 2017,
and the one on the right shows as it was in 2022, very little changed militarily.
The Saudi led coalition campaign did not produce a change.
And during this so under this framework and this approach to peacemaking.
International mediation led by the UN was essentially unable to convene sustained talks, leading to large agreements.
The only outputs products were several rounds of talks held in Kuwait in 2016 and then
in 2018 as an agreement signed in Stockholm for a local ceasefire and redeployment.
And then between 2019 and 2021, there were no talks, though there were several draft agreements.
This is a little selection of them. On the bottom right is from the very short Stockholm Agreement.
There were three additional pages to it. Um, so that was an actual signed agreement.
The top two pages were from a draft comprehensive transitional agreement.
But during this very in this that was prepared in 2019 entirely outside the country, that was never tabled.
And um, so it was nothing that was signed,
but it's illustrative or emblematic of a peace process where a lot of effort is being made from outside and papers are being produced,
but they're not being produced by the people who's whose conflict it is.
The third example, bottom left, was a draft joint declaration that was again being prepared by international mediation in 2020 2021,
but was not really a product of of into Yemeni talks.
And the change came in 2022 only with Saudis efforts to extract itself and from the war, when, uh,
a formal truce agreement was signed and that truce agreement was not on paper, it's very short agreement.
Ironically, it's not doesn't take the format of these.
It's not written down. Uh, it was essentially verbal.
So that's a picture of peacemaking in Yemen over 2014 through to 2022 is when a short truce was agreed,
which has was renewed for over and survived for six months and then carried on and.
What are the outcomes and consequences of that kind of or of that process?
That peacemaking approach?
The Houthis have been able to entrench themselves in power, the government that they have led with their political movement.
And Sala has been able to deepen and pursue an ideological program.
De-escalation and peace in the country have essentially been delayed and have become harder.
The gap between the government and Sunak not recognised internationally, mostly,
and the government that is mostly internationally recognised, that is based mostly out of the outside the country, partly in Camden.
Um, the gap between them has grown, partly because of the of been possible for it to grow because of the inappropriate or um,
approach to peacemaking during it.
Um, why we also have that approach because political preferences among some states, regional, Arab and Western, encourage that approach.
Also because another factor that can be forgotten is international engagement,
which tends in terms of staff for diplomatic or aid organisations or political missions,
tend to be what in the literature sometimes been referred to as bunker ized, like behind high walls.
It's difficult for them to engage with people whose country in conflict.
It is. So yemini, I'd argue, is it is it has been an example where the peace process fell short on both counts.
Ownership. The process wasn't Yemeni led and shaped, not by the key parties and the Yemeni stakeholders and on contacts.
The process wasn't adequately shaped to and uh to and by the context.
Of include. Coming back to uh, the subject of um the conference and.
I've argued that's two important reasons why some peace processes are unsuccessful are firstly,
when a peace process is too externally led and orchestrated,
and secondly, when the understandings and concepts that are dominant in the peace process come from outside rather than the country itself.
What can be done to minimise those shortcomings, which is I in the beginning, aren't really new shortcomings.
The problem of ownership and recognising the real situation, the projects.
What can be done to minimise those shortcomings?
Um, what changes are needed to prevent those shortcomings affecting future peace processes and efforts?
International actors that seek to contribute to peace processes need to put more value on detailed knowledge about a country.
They need to be more cautious and humble about their external role in a peace process.
And they aim, and they need to aim more to facilitate processes rather than orchestrate.
We put the groups and people whose country it is at the front of the process.
They the people whose praise his country. It is you whose every day peace it is or they're trying to strengthen.
They are the key actors, neither necessarily neither new nor old and for civil society.
But change it. What changes needed there the they need to find ways to assert their voice and their views and their place in peacemaking,
especially when the international international actors are setting the terms of a peace process.
The progressive reforming policy shift in international aid towards localising and decolonising aid is perhaps an example for peacemaking to note.
There's no progressive and reform and policy shift in international politics yet to counter the ebbing in internationalism,
multilateralism and democratisation on the rise and authoritarianism and conflictual multi polarity.
But if and when efforts are made to renew and reinvigorate that planet's positive internationalism and multilateralism, it would be good luck include,
if that support locally and contextually led peacemaking and peacebuilding more than it has done in the past 20 years.
Thank you.