Agreements are negotiated settlements or understandings aimed at resolving conflict, or at the very least, fundamentally transforming a conflict so as to enable it to be addressed constructively (Hartzell, 1999, p. 4). Different forms of agreements can be negotiated and reached in the process of conflict settlement, with each serving a different purpose in developing steps towards a comprehensive settlement. Agreements may cannot easily be differentiated because they may contain similar provisions, but they still differ and every conflict requires a distinct agreement depending on how it’s perpetrated.
In some arrangements, smaller progressive agreements are reached and built upon towards a final agreements, while in other cases, the negotiation process is geared towards achieving one comprehensive settlement. Categorizing agreements can be a difficult task but there are nevertheless, various classifications under which agreements are differentiated according to the United Nations (UN, 2006). Some of the common categorizations of peace agreements include the following:
Ceasefire/cessation of hostilities agreements; is where warring parties agree to temporarily halt attacks towards each other within specifically defined areas and for a specific period of time, without the obligation to make further concessions. Such agreements are aimed at unilateral, bilateral or multilateral suspension of aggressive activity in order to build an environment for good-faith negotiations. By their very nature, such agreements are very short-term and extremely fragile because they depend on the goodwill of warring parties who are highly suspicious of each other. Therefore, they have to be constantly renewed and updated as the negotiation processes progress. For example, a ceasefire agreement was reached in 2002 which facilitated negotiations between the Sudan government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, resulting into the 2005 Comprehensive peace agreement in Kenya.
Pre-negotiation agreements; is where a detailed procedural understanding is reached on how the negotiations for peaceful conflict settlement will be conducted. It outlines and clearly defines agreed positions concerning the location and agenda of negotiations, participants, negotiation schedules as well as the mediator(s) and their roles in the process. This is intended to ensure that the negotiations are structured and the key issues and timelines kept on track, and the precision for drafting comprehensive settlement frameworks. Pre-negotiation agreements form the first step in any peace process, and serve good-faith gestures to build trust and confidence among warring parties. The Machakos protocol which outlined the substantive issues to be negotiated upon in the Sudan peace process, is an example of a pre-negotiation agreement.
Interim agreements; Are initial commitments towards meaningful engagement to negotiate peace, in other words, an ‘agreement of willingness to agree’ (Wallensteen & Sollenberg, 1997, p. 338). Interim agreements aim to build confidence and show commitment towards the peace process, as they re-echo the terms of the pre-negotiation agreements as well as signal the desire to uphold ceasefire agreements, without necessarily outlining the structural or procedural details of the process. These may be used to re-ignite negotiations that have derailed or stalled, and just like ceasefire agreements, they also need to be constantly redrafted and updated as the peace negotiations go on.
Framework agreements; Are understandings which detail the key points and principles upon which comprehensive issues are negotiated. Such agreements are reached after lengthy negotiations and settlements on numerous key points, which in some cases are compiled together to constitute a comprehensive agreement. The provisions of the six-year transitional period where southern Sudan was governed as a semi-autonomous region prior to the 2011 independence referendum can be a good example of a framework agreement.
Comprehensive agreements; Are the end-product/final understanding of substantive issues and reflects the common positions reached on fundamental issues. Comprehensive agreements signal the end of the peace process that ultimately end the aggressive actions among parties. They outline the areas of common interest reached by the parties and a collective commitment to abide by the final declaration on the disputed issues.
Implementation agreements; Are agreements which detail the specific ways through which the comprehensive agreements will be practically executed on ground. Implementation agreements are reached after fine-tuning the specific provisions of the comprehensive agreements and mechanisms of how those provisions will be achieved. Implementation agreements are therefore the parties’ show of commitment and obligatory guarantee to ensure the successful realization of comprehensive agreements.
Agreements may or may not be structured depending on how they are negotiated and reached. In some cases they are one wholesome document detailing numerous elaborate issues, and in other cases, each issue may be negotiated and agreed upon separately from the rest. The substance and structure of agreements also differs depending on the type of conflict at play, the key issues under contention and how the conflict is contained. For example, theoretically, civil/internal conflicts result from a breakdown of governance systems, and therefore agreements to settle such conflicts have to be focused on rebuilding and strengthening the mechanisms of governance. On the other hand, inter-state conflicts usually result from territorial and security contentions, which requires agreements on common boundary demarcation and security arrangements to the satisfaction of both parties (Khadiagala & Motsami (2014). It is no wonder therefore that in the two cases above, the structure and substance of intra- and inter-state conflicts will be significantly different.
Agreements are not an everyday occurrence that happens out of curiosity or luxury, rather, they are fundamental, well thought-out tools in the pursuit of peace, which are explored with purpose and in many cases as a last resort. As such, agreements cannot be considered or viewed as mere scraps paper because as Forten (2003) pointed out, their contents dictate either a prevalence of peace or an escalation of war. In many conflicting and post-conflict societies, agreements are the difference between continued destruction and progressive prosperity.
There are various theories in as far as the relevance of agreements towards the achievement of negotiated settlement to armed struggles are concerned. The constitutive theory upholds the structural component of peace agreements as being of utmost importance to the general peace process. It holds that well thought-out agreements lead to sustainable peace, and in the same way, poorly-structured agreements results into delayed and even total failure of the peace process. To avoid coming out with a ‘bad agreement’, this school of thought stipulates the need for stringent standards that any worthy agreement must meet, including precise and clear wording, meeting legitimacy standards and clearly defined implementation timelines. These standards serve to ensure that the resultant agreement meets international recognition and acceptance and that its contents have substantive power to transform the conflict.
In order to preserve the substantiality and consequentiality of agreements, mediation or arbitration teams are obligated to steer the negotiations based on these standards. The Angolan peace agreement (the Lusaka protocol of 2002) and the Colombian peace agreement (2016), are examples of agreements negotiated to meet international standards, and whose implementation and monitoring were led by the United Nations and other international bodies, thus ensuring their success in preserving peace. Both agreements offered blueprints outlining the comprehensive steps to be followed by each of the parties in implementing the agreements, including institutional reform, democratic reforms and reconciliation efforts. This provided the international legitimacy upon which international bodies based their supportive roles towards the agreements, which in turn ensured their substantiality, an important component in ensuring that the agreements would be view as anything but ‘scraps of paper’.
However, according to the instrumental school of thought, the above standards may serve to deter the peace process if over-emphasized. In cases where there are multi-stages of negotiations on various different contentious issues, it might not be possible to ensure the standards of precision and clarity as demanded by the constitutive school. Imperfections in the provisions of agreements, including wording, implementation feasibility or collective endorsement may have to be accommodated for any progress to be made, bearing in mind the balance between maintaining a delicate momentum in negotiations and overhauling the entire process, with the risk of derailment. Instrumentalism provides that maintaining momentum is the most important, since in due course, amendments can be made to fix the ambiguities without jeopardizing the whole process.
For example, since the Sudan-SPLM peace agreement was faced with numerous contentious issues that needed to be addressed, some areas of interest were intentionally left out to be addressed later, such as the Abyei issue, the boundary between Sudan and Southern Sudan as well as utilization of joint resources like the Greater Nile Oil pipeline. Much as these were as important as the peace itself, setting them aside enabled the negotiations to proceed and ultimately result into an agreement that was acceptable to all. It is important not to lose sight of the main issue, as was illustrated in the Sudan-SPLM peace negotiations, because in due course, hardline positions on some of the issues were gradually eroded, which was necessary to reduce tensions and achieve a negotiated agreement. This kind of foresightedness helps to foster gradual accommodation between the aspirations of agitators and the realities on ground, thus paving a path to peace.
It nevertheless must be pointed out that the instrumental school, in trying to compromise on the standards acceptable in the international realm, can become an impediment to lasting peace if ambiguities become too many that they affect the legitimacy of the agreement. For example, the Burundi peace agreement (Arusha Accord of August 2000) which was negotiated in ambiguity (some of the armed groups did not participate in the peace process with the hope that they would come on board at a later stage), resulted into an agreement some of whose provisions were contested by the very people who were supposed to be bound by it.
According to the cooperation theory, observing peace in a post-conflict environment requires cooperation. Cooperation is necessitated by the shared interest to end a mutually destructive and equally costly war (Johnson et al., 2012, p. 16). Nevertheless, the obvious common interest does not automatically translate into peace, since warring parties have deeply embedded divisions which drive them to take advantage of their strengths and exploit their enemies’ weaknesses. And since they have justifiable suspicious towards each other’s underlying intentions, cooperation between them cannot easily be achieved. Such a state of affairs requires a carefully curated series of actions, compromises and processes that can lay a suitable ground for meaningful cooperation. Any agreement(s) reached and signed in the pursuit of such a delicate and noble endeavor cannot be said to be ‘mere scraps of paper.’
This theory is anchored on the assumptions that; states and peoples are governed logically, that wars are not waged aimlessly due of their destructive and costly nature, and that former warring parties continuously exploit their opponents weaknesses and retain justifiable suspicion of each other. The nature of conflict stipulates different levels of advantage and there can never be completely equal compromises for negotiations to take place. Therefore at least one of the parties must be willing to or is coerced to compromise more in order to kick start the peace negotiation process, unless there is a complete defeat of one side, for example in the case of the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (Tamil Tigers) by the Sri Lankan government forces in 2009. Short of this, anything that slightly speaks to a stalemate will have adverse costs for both parties and will further complicate the establishment of cooperation necessary for peace engagement. Such maneuvering cannot be said to result into a ‘mere scrap of paper’ since failure means far-reaching consequences, which all parties involved are eager to avoid.
An agreement must be inclusive enough to secure the support of all the parties to the conflict which it’s intended to address, as well as the population which is the greatest stakeholder in any conflict resolution agreement. Public support, which is necessary for the legitimacy of the agreement can be secured through transparency and inclusiveness of the civil society and free public debate about the negotiations in the media. Negotiations to any legitimate agreement must be seen to be responding to the population’s aspirations, and if it’s seen to be contrary, the power of legitimacy necessary to facilitate its effective implementation will be severely constrained, rendering the agreement a ‘mere scrap of paper’. Whereas complete transparency might not be possible, efforts are taken to ensure maximum representation, with the desire to maintain some degree of openness needed to legitimize the outcome.
All parties to a conflict would ideally prefer to first achieve military victory and then dictate the terms of their adversaries’ surrender. The uncertainties of war however; the risk of losing instead of winning, the high monetary cost and loss of lives, extensive destruction among others, makes it unattractive, so people would rather prefer peace. Ideally, people prefer to achieve the outcome that an armed victory would provide, without actually fighting the war, and would therefore prefer to resolve their disagreements without fighting. Negotiations must therefore bear in mind the cost of compromise to bring all the warring parties to the table. If the outcome/agreement does not offer enough practical incentives to offset the compromises that parties have made in the pursuit of peace, the agreement will in essence be just a ‘scrap of paper’, which will very easily be disregarded in preference of resumption of conflict.
During the course of peace negotiations, if the cost of compromises needed to stay at the negotiating table outweigh the benefit of fighting, it will most likely push parties back to war. Therefore as negotiations proceed, facilitators must ensure that as they increase the incentives to negotiating, they at the same time increase the costs to returning to war. For example in the recently signed ceasefire agreement in the Ethiopian civil war, Tigrean rebel forces were required to give up control over territory in neighboring provinces (a cost they had to incur) in exchange for access to humanitarian supplies and telecommunications network connectivity (which was a huge relief for their people). Without maintaining that delicate balance for all the parties involved, the negotiated outcome/agreement will be a ‘mere scrap of paper’ which cannot in any way stop war from resuming.
For any agreement to carry the weight of determining whether peace prevails or conflict resumes, its implementation provisions must include significant sanctions in case any of the parties abrogates their commitments (Fortuna, 2003, p. 342). Implementation provisions for any agreements must consider the fact that all parties involved will continuously weigh their benefits from peace and conflict. Therefore, to dissuade them from considering absconding their commitment, serious and practical sanctions must be put in place, with very minimal capacity for parties to avoid. An agreements which has such sanctions in place cannot be viewed as a mere ‘scrap of paper’ because ignoring it comes at a huge cost that parties cannot ignore. For example, in the numerous peace negotiations for resolution of the South Sudan civil war, an arms embargo was imposed on both parties in order to reduce their military arsenal and limit their capacity to wage further war. By so doing, each of the parties who hoped to further exploit their military advantage were curtailed, thereby pushing them to the negotiating table.
Agreements also have in place mechanisms for verification and monitoring, with the aim of maintaining the fragile trust between the parties. Due to the nature of war, warring parties have more reason to be suspicious rather than trustful of their adversaries, and given the fact that the desire to achieve their outcomes forcefully does not subside just because they came to negotiate, any avenue that provides a chance of achieving that is very appealing to all. Therefore to avoid the temptation to take advantage of each other during negotiations or even after the agreement has been signed, mechanisms for monitoring verifying compliance must be put in place and enforced selfishly by the neutral party. An agreement is a ‘mere scrap of paper’ if it does not have enforceable verification and monitoring provisions, because then its binding power is eroded and upheld on at the mercy of the parties, who may decide to abrogate it at any time and resume conflict.
In conclusion therefore, agreements by their very nature are initiated with the desire to address a certain specific challenge, in this case armed conflict. The parties to such an agreement are attracted to it because of the realization that they can still achieve their objectives (or at least some of them) without suffering the costs of continued conflicts. In order to achieve that, agreements must be reached and signed in an environment of trust, transparency, mutual compromise and willingness to allow neutral third parties to play an observatory role. Agreements must also be able designed in a way that offers continued incentives for warring parties to stay committed to its provisions and at the same time increase the costs or penalties for abandoning it. That way, agreements can maintain their capacity to determine whether peace prevails or conflict resumes, and not be just ‘mere scraps of paper.’
References
- Caroline Hartzell, C. (1999). Explaining the Stability of Negotiated Settlements to Intrastate Wars, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 43(1), p. 3-22.
- Fortna, V.P. (2003). Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace. International Organization, 57(2), 337–372.
- Johnson, W.D., Johnson, R.T. & Tjosvold, D. (2012). ‘Effective cooperation, the foundation for sustainable peace,’ in Psychological components of sustainable peace. Minnesota: Minnesota State University Press.
- Khadiagala, G.M. & Motsamai, D. (2014). ‘The political economy of intrastate conflicts,’ in Bruce Currie-Alder and others (eds), International Development: Ideas, Experiences and Prospects. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
- UN (2006). ‘Peace Agreements,’ in UN Peacemaker Databank, Policy Planning Unit, Department of Political Affairs, United Nations.
- Wallensteen, P. & Sollenberg, M. (1997). Armed Conflict, Conflict Termination, and Peace Agreement, Journal of Peace Research, 34(3), 334-339.
- Yawanarajah, N. & Ouellet, J. (2003). ‘Peace Agreements.’ Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder.