First of all, thank you very much to the OCS team.
Um, for the invitation.
Um, second, I'm going to say that, uh, I am so, so pleased to actually be, um, in the room and sort of on a panel and with the morning speakers.
Uh, we're, we're kind of thinking through very similar issues from slightly different angles.
And so, um, it's I feel like these days it's, uh, almost, uh, exception when you end up on a panel where people actually speak about the same topic.
So, uh, congratulations to the organisers for pulling together people.
Um, and, uh, that actually is thinking through the same, um, uh, issues.
Um, the next thing I'm going to say is that I have an immense pleasure and I will say, uh, for an academic in particular that is,
uh, such a privilege to be working with a group of young researchers, uh, who are all involved in this project.
Um, and so I want to acknowledge them sort of, because there are, um, heavily contributing to, uh, sort of the way, uh, my thinking can shaped,
uh, about this, but also in terms of how we're implementing and, and I'll try to show you some of the tools, um, that we're developing.
So the project that I am doing, um, is kind of trying to capture peacemaking peacebuilding processes in the era of global fragmentation.
And so it's very much kind of touching on the issues we've been discussing this morning.
Um, and we're kind of guided by two overarching lines of inquiry, um, why,
when and how different third party actors intervene in conflicts and how they see themselves contributing to reduction of conflict,
um, and the risks of conflict, relapse. And, um, one of the sort of the early lessons, uh, that we got, uh,
out of sort of commissioning sort of studies on sort of how Russia is thinking about sort of conflict management,
how China's thinking about conflict management. Qatar, Turkey.
Uh, so these would have been studies in sort of 2020 was exactly that.
Some of the vocabulary that we're using is completely useless when you go into other contexts.
Um, and so it's basically trying to figure out even what are the words, uh,
that we are looking for when thinking about sort of conflict management in general,
but sort of what are kind of the priorities that are thrust in order, justice development, what is kind of thought of these, um, logics?
So that's one of the things that we're trying to look at,
sort of how the interveners themselves are thinking about it, how they're kind of approaching it.
Um, and then the other question that we're kind of trying to explore in parallel is how are let's call them local actors navigating, um,
this multiplicity of mediators, peace builders, uh, investors, uh, and so on and so forth,
and how this is shaping the conflict outcomes in post-conflict governance.
And so in this line of inquiry, we're looking, uh, both in sort of how, for example, the political elites, uh, today are able to form shop, uh,
who is going to be the preferred mediator, who is going to be the preferred peace builder or the investor,
which sort of 15 years ago might not have been an option.
But we're also looking at sort of how the civil society is impacted in sort of, uh,
through this processes, when some of the political elites or belligerents are able to, um, form shop.
So it's kind of looking at a very broad spectrum of questions.
Um, and we're approaching it through sort of different dynamics.
Um, so I'm not going to run you through too much in the interest of time on sort of what we know in terms of the research.
Um, because we've had a bit of a discussion about this already,
but essentially it's not going to come as a surprise to this room that peace mediation processes,
peacebuilding, conflict management, conflict resolution, whatever word you want to choose, um, is fundamentally changing.
And this has been kind of the change that we are seeing over the last decade.
Um, it's been growing and increasing and accelerating. Um, so the interesting aspect of it and a Roger, um, in the morning, very, uh, nicely put out.
We have so much peace architecture. Right. So there's so many international organisations working on it.
But in a lot of ways we're seeing is that's the less influential in a lot of these contexts that it might be the geopolitics, uh, driving it.
We see kind of multiple disconnected efforts.
Sudan example, uh, which we've seen is going to it was talking about uh, this morning but also yesterday.
The discussion shows how essentially we have multiple parallel processes running, uh, in sort of trying to address single conflicts.
Um, and basically because of that, we're probably getting less comprehensive, um, agreements.
Um, there's kind of more conflict management. There's a lot of actors interested in sort of some reduction of the conflict,
potentially for investments like the way that we're thinking about China before, um, and this kind of less conflict resolution.
So this idea that the complex or just protracted,
the other thing that we know is that the actors and I'm going to you're going to see that I'm very uncomfortable with the vocabulary that we're,
uh, adopting. In all of these authors, we call them non-Western, emerging new, um, sort of a lot of things, um, guilty of contributing to these, uh,
debates and labelling is but essentially these actors are introducing something different to conflict with the conflict management.
Um, and then the last thing I'm going to stress, because I think this is important for the way I've been, um,
sort of conceptualising some of the discussions about contemporary conflict management is
that increasingly we're seeing third parties who are actually involved as peacemakers,
peace builders. They're actually often also conflict parties.
Um, so it's very difficult to draw a line on sort of parties, sort of supplying weapons,
but at the same time trying to mediate the conflict between parties.
So we're seeing there's there's bit of a changing, uh, landscape to it.
And so the way I've started thinking about the conflict management today is that essentially that's kind of three aspects of,
um, that at least in my mind, we need to understand much, much better.
Um, and this is sort of something that my team has been kind of looking at.
On one hand, uh, we're seeing an increasing diversification of approaches, uh,
with the we're kind of beyond that idea of now that liberal peacebuilding was ever a unified approach, but it had some logic, uh, in it.
So we're seeing sort of increasingly diverse logics of peacemaking, conflict management coming into, uh, the field today.
The second thing that we're seeing, and this is not equal across all of the, um, uh, across different sort of conflict sites, uh, but in a,
in more and more states is we're seeing a congestion of efforts,
parallel efforts running in parallel with less efforts to kind of bring them together under one architecture.
And that is resulting in kind of delayed solutions. Um, so Roger was mentioning this morning, for example, much, much more local peace agreements.
Uh, uh, now in relation to sort of a lot of the conflict sort of management of sort of partial solution,
uh, instead of sort of looking for comprehensive agreements.
So what I'm going to talk about, uh, today, uh, and sort of what we are doing in sort of the project, it's, it's,
uh, multiple people, uh, involved and multiple authors, um, of, um, sort of different boards that we're writing.
So on one hand, we're kind of producing, trying to produce dedicated case studies as part of our, uh, Global transition, uh, series.
And so these studies have looked at sort of how, for example, Qatar is approaching,
how Turkey is approaching conflict management sort of more generally,
how what the philosophy is that they're doing, but it also sort of much more specific cases,
for example, how China is engaging with the liberal peace process in Bosnia.
Right? So it's like looking at sort of, um, very dedicated, um, studies.
But the exciting thing, at least the exciting thing for me, um,
at the moment is that in addition to sort of much more kind of granular, uh, cases that we're looking at and producing,
sort of which are kind of growing and growing, we're now trying to kind of develop two complementary data sets,
which will allow us to compare, um, uh, sort of, uh, the trends and explore trends much more systematically.
So the two data sets, I'm going to speak about one of them in particular today, because there's some fun visualisations, uh, involved.
Uh, and those have been developed already are the third parties and peace agreements.
So and particularly we're relying on the Pax data set, which is at the out of our university.
And we have extrapolated, uh, essentially from the 1992.
The last data that we have is for 2023, um, is essentially looking at somebody who is actually signing peace agreements.
Right. So who are the third parties, international actors signing?
Because based on that, we're actually able to see sort of the diverse approaches of third parties.
We're actually I'm going to walk you through some of the comparison between Russia and China, uh, today.
But essentially we're able to see the diversity that we often, um, sort of, uh, sort of brush aside the other,
uh, data set that we're developing and this is a much more comprehensive and much deeper,
uh, data set is looking at mediation and looking at much more sort of granular mediation events,
uh, which is going to allow us to explore those two other aspects.
I was talking about congestion at Layer Rank. Um, and just to sort of for those of you that have much more in the data, uh, in the room, for example,
the third party is in peace agreements because the peace agreements have become such a, such a priority, uh, in recent years.
This, for example, has five peace agreements related to Sudan in 2022 and 2023.
Those are mostly ceasefires, right? So they're not anything sort of big.
But through the mediation data set, we've identified over 300 different mediation, uh,
initiatives, uh, by third parties, which will allow us to kind of look at a bit more granular.
What is actually happening. Uh, in mediation data field.
But what I'm going to talk about today is a diversification, because I think this is one of the most important thing, uh,
to kind of wrap our heads around, uh, as both scholars, but as also as people who are interested in finding productive ways of engaging, um, actors.
We usually don't engage. Um, and so in general, we tend to think, I'm going to say we tend to think as academics.
Uh, but it's also my experience that a lot of the policymakers, especially at the governmental level, will tend to think of, uh,
sort of interveners in a very kind of dichotomous way,
sort of Western versus non-Western liberal versus a liberal, the old way smoulders, um, versus the new voters.
Right. So that's the way we tend to think about it. And we do actually have quite good research in sort of international relations
as a discipline that is kind of trying to pull together what might be kind of,
uh, differentiating, um, aspects between, um, the two groups.
Right. So there's a lot there's a lot of discussion and a particularly discussion between sort of liberal and chorley's, uh,
approach and sort of the idea of how important is to go through state institutions, sort of like norms of non-intervention.
Right? So if we think about it, how we write about global governance, it's the permanent three sort of France, UK, US versus Russia and China.
Um, so the idea is that it's about norms of non intervention.
Right. That's differentiated too.
And then sort of related to that and sort of how important is accountability accountability participatory processes and governance.
Right. So who do you need to include um as part of peace processes.
Who do you send money through. Uh, sort of all of those, uh, issues seem to be sort of the discussion about that.
There's a big differentiation between the West and the US.
Um, and then the last one which has come, uh, very that's a substantial it makes a substantive difference that has been identified,
um, in research is to what extent is development prior to democracy or the other way around?
So not enough second guess. I'm going to basically not contribute it to these debates.
I'm going to say that we need to move beyond this, uh, because one of the things that we are trying to actually do in, uh,
this project is to kind of show how dangerous it is to think of West versus non-Western Western actors and how dangerous it is to actually,
uh, sort of have these sort of hands when engaging in these projects.
So obviously, conceptually, this is, uh, morally problematic.
We don't live in a bipolar world. Actors don't have a choice between one or the other.
Um, and so the idea is that it's actually very bad for our theorising of sort of the contemporary conflict management.
Um, and you will see. So I encourage you to kind of look at some of the, uh, discussions of sort of in sort of top international relations journals,
but it will be guilty of this is like because we need to generalise, uh, things.
And so the idea is that we're still constructing the idea of a bipolar world.
But I think more important, especially because I'm speaking with some of you in the room,
like a lot of us care about this, a lot of us, uh, are sort of practitioners, uh, in some way back in heart.
It's actually practically also problematic, uh, in particularly because by thinking through the world, through this bipolar dichotomy,
uh, lens, we kind of this entry points for collaboration with these new actors, new entrants, uh, things that act.
And this is crucial in an era. Just think of sort of the peace processes that are even on the international agenda today.
Is many of these processes mediation peaceful because he's building, uh, sort of efforts are not spearheaded by the so-called Western actors anymore.
And so it does matter that you understand sort of the granularity of working with Turkey in Ukraine,
working with Egypt in Gaza, do working with African actors, or saw this in sort of Sudan and so inconsistent.
And so what I wanted to show I, I think, uh, I will I won't speak too much of it, but I think it's an exciting tool,
um, that we've been developing is exactly kind of trying to compare sort of China.
Okay. So this work. Oh, well.
After defending your. Do something about.
Somebody might actually help me. How about us? Uh, working on it.
Oh, we should work. Uh, it's kind of looking at some of the, uh, comparisons between the the full version of the clean version.
Uh, how, um, sort of how different, uh, the two actors that we very commonly put in just in one basket as Russia and China,
um, uh, are actually engaging in peace. Uh, agreement.
I'm just going to select Russia first, just because I think it's, uh, it's a lot more.
There's a lot more to show. Primarily because Russia is a signatory to much more, uh, peace agreements.
But and you can actually see the trends, uh, sort of separately on the, uh, to it.
So the interesting aspect, I'll just kind of very quickly let's see how the visualisation goes through,
uh, is that the Russia is actually after the United Nations.
So this would have been probably surprised. A lot of you is the second most prolific signatory of peace agreements.
So it sits at the table when peace agreements are signed.
So this it actually beats the United States, beats European Union, beats African Union in terms of the number of peace agreements signed.
So this is not going to be slightly less surprising when I tell you that the
reason why that's the case is that because it signs mostly peace agreements.
And so the former Soviet Union. So those are the white dots, uh, here.
So it's very much a regional, uh, sort of actors. It's how it's kind of acts as a guarantor, uh, in its neighbourhood.
Um, however, what we also been noticing, and this is something that I think it's, it's kind of interesting to see, is that while in sort of the 1990s,
most of the peace agreements that were signed were in the former Soviet Union, and those continue being on is since around 2013 or so.
So with Vladimir Putin is a lot of the agreements.
And these are the white dots here relate to the international internationalised
conflicts where Russia has actually kind of supporting one of the parties.
So in Libya and Syria, Central African Republic.
And so that kind of reflects a tiny bit sort of the interests of Russia as a sort of as a peacemaker, let's call it a peacemaker.
Uh, be generous and, uh, to it. And so the interesting thing is I'm going to quickly skip through this,
is that in some of the years, Russia actually signed some more agreements that United Nations.
Uh, so United Nations tends to be at the table at the end just signing things.
I'm not saying that they're most influential, but they do tend to cite some things, uh, to it.
And this well, sort of we would kind of expect that sort of active Break-Up of Soviet Union.
That would be the trend.
The interesting thing that is also happening is that there's kind of a couple of recent years where Russia has actually signed more,
has been much more active in signing peace agreements with the United Nations.
So we are seeing some of the, the, the sort of the trends.
But what is interesting to me, I'll skip this one, is that while overall and so this is one of the graphs that, uh, it requires a tiny bit, um,
of explanation, while overall, um, around 30% of agreements that are in our database are kind of pre negotiation and 18% ceasefire agreements.
Um, the reason why I'm pointing this this out is that what is interesting is that Russia tends to kind of sign
more agreements that are kind of about the military aspects of the pre negotiation ceasefire agreements,
and is far less involved in sort of comprehensive and implementation agreements compared to sort of the overall, uh, data set, uh, that we have.
I'm pointing this out because, uh, when it gets to China, it's exactly the opposite, um, to it.
So I'll skip through this, um, and have sort of just the geography kind of looking at it is, uh, where Russia ends up being involved.
So we're kind of seeing two things. On one hand, Russia is involved kind of around the world because it is a permanent five member.
And so it gets to be at the table. Uh, in the end, the reality is that most agreements that are signed are kind of in its immediate vicinity,
um, to it, um, and sort of the internationalised conflicts that I was mentioning.
So some of our research, again, going on China, these are all the tools that we have available now.
Um, so, so the kind of exciting, uh, for us, uh, in terms of the, the stories that we tell.
And if I just compare this very briefly with China and we can have a bit of discussion about this,
especially because our colleagues at Super World spoke so much about, uh, China.
So the first thing to notice is that when we kind of look at so, um, so China loading it is, uh,
John, so unlike Russia, which was involved in 100 plus agreements, China is at least until 2021.
Uh, so we don't have some of the recent agreements. Enter into this, um, visualisation app.
Uh, China is actually involved in much less, uh, peace agreements.
So it's actually by far the least prolific actor of the permanent five as a as a signatory.
Um. Um, in terms of frequency, it actually signs as many agreements as kind of Egypt, Kenya,
Nigeria, sort of reflecting kind of the status, um, that we're kind of seeing it.
But the difference is that so unlike sort of Russia, who gets involved primarily through sort of, um, through, um,
sort of in mediation efforts in sort of its immediate vicinity and it conflicts and it's actually militarily involved.
China is primarily involved in, um,
peace agreements have kind of resolved all the major international conflict conferences that are result of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Sort of conflicts such as Cambodia, Bosnia, um, Libya, sort of these big peace conferences.
Um, so it tends to sign these. So the only kind of international conference that China has not gotten involved.
Um, that other P-5 would have been involved have been conflicts in relation between Israel and Palestine.
So that's the only kind of big exception.
And so the interesting thing is that most agreements that China has signed, and so this kind of shows you the entry points of collaboration.
And non collaboration actually includes either the UN or all other permanent five.
All right. So all of the white bubbles. So the the the purple bubbles that are primarily regions of their conflicts in Myanmar.
And some of them uh, just don't include, uh, France.
Uh, and that's something for everybody else. Uh, but France in the South Sudan conflicts, for example, would be some of those.
Um, but so I already pre uh, uh, kind of highlighted this before, but I think for me,
the probably the most different difference in the approach that we're seeing in sort of the last 30 plus years between,
uh, China and Russia, is this, this is for example, the um, the, uh, the big kind of the difference, uh, in it is that China primarily.
So the why 32% here is China formally gets involved in implementation status of agreements.
I mean, so one of the examples.
So for example, for example, if you think about how, um, the Saudi Arabian deal was written about in sort of the Western media,
um, you know, sort of taking this place in the United States as a big actor, uh, in the Middle East.
One of the interesting aspects of this is that, uh, China came in at kind of the last stage.
While most of the details of that, um, deal were actually negotiated, negotiated by Iraq, uh, and Oman.
Right.
So in a lot of ways, one of the things that we're seeing so this is not, uh, represented in this, um, and these, uh, kind of graphs that we have.
But one of the things that we are seeing is that China, unlike Russia, puts a really great premium on having the neighbouring states involved,
um, in the peace agreements, sort of like making sure that the initiatives are regionally.
Right. So I say this not not to kind of say that, uh, this, this kind of data can give us, um, complete answers and sort of in particular,
it can't sort of highlight, um, sort of what are the strategies of the two states, uh, or other states are changing,
but I think it does highlight to us quite a lot on similarities and differences,
and it highlights kind of the dangers of looking at sort of the I'm going to,
again, use, uh, the dreaded words of non-Western actors as kind of the block that is on the other side that we need to negotiate.
And it does show us that it is actually dangerous to say, um,
kind of put everybody in one basket because this kind of closes the opportunities for cooperation.
And I will try to end on that semi positive. Uh.