There is a broad global consensus that inclusion matters in peace processes. The 2018 UN and World Bank report, Pathways for Peace, asserts that ‘addressing inequalities and exclusion’ and ‘making institutions more inclusive’ are key to preventing violent conflict.
The challenges now are to strengthen that consensus and to better understand what inclusion in peace processes means in practice. Effective peace processes do not mean including all of the people all of the time but making informed decisions about who should be included in what and how.
Navigating inclusion in peace processes is structured in three main sections:
Section 1) Frameworks for understanding inclusion in peace processes. In this first section, authors introduce an essential vocabulary of concepts with which to navigate the challenges, dilemmas and opportunities for inclusive peace.
Section 2) Inclusion in practice in national peace processes. This second section of the publication explores how more inclusive representation, processes and outcomes have been attempted in two peace processes – in Colombia and Nepal, where social, political and economic marginalisation lay at the roots of both armed conflicts.
Section 3) Inclusion in practice in sub- and supra-national peace processes. The third and final section comprises four case studies that explore international and sub-national dimensions of navigating inclusion in peace processes - with case studies on Turkey, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria and Afghanistan.
***
This publication is an output of the Political Settlements Research Programme - a four-year project to better understand how political settlements are reconfigured in conflict and peace processes, and how forms of ‘horizontal’ elite inclusion can be transformed into more ‘vertical’ forms of societal inclusion. As part of this project, Conciliation Resources has produced a number of publications exploring inclusion in peace processes and political settlements.
