Mediators are inherently adaptive. Their work is grounded in the world as it is and, in their support of conflict parties and others seeking to move from war to peace, necessarily imbued with hope of what the world of tomorrow might become. Yet the policy and practice of mediation have struggled to keep pace with the changing realities of conflict and global politics. The value of mediation as a tool to facilitate political solutions to violent conflict is therefore under severe pressure.

At a moment of profound geopolitical polarisation, surging armed conflict, deep technological change, and the rising prominence of systemic threats such as the climate emergency and the risks associated with artificial intelligence (AI) and infectious disease, this publication develops ideas on how peace mediation policy and practice can adapt and innovate to tackle today’s challenges.

We focus on mediation as a specific activity within the wider sphere of peacebuilding and conflict transformation and follow the UN’s 2012 Guidance on Effective Mediation in understanding mediation as ‘a process whereby a third party assists two or more parties, with their consent, to prevent, manage or resolve a conflict by helping them to develop mutually acceptable agreements’. We do not distinguish between the type of armed conflict (international, internal, internationalised-internal, local) or the nature of the agreements (comprehensive, cessation of hostilities, issue-based) that mediation seeks to support. Recognising that there remains confusion around what mediation is (even within the parameters of the UN’s definition, as Govinda Clayton and colleagues have explored), we place emphasis on mediation as ‘third party assisted negotiation’.

In a period of geopolitical flux, we include analysis of the changing identities and approaches of mediators. But we also seek to recall the centrality of ownership of the process by the parties to the conflict and other affected local or national constituencies. We recognise a spectrum of mediation strategies, reflecting differing levels of engagement, support, and pressure on the part of third parties. And we acknowledge that terminology and practice may be determined by political sensitivities and realities. Conflict parties and third parties alike may refer not to mediation but ‘facilitation’ or other formulas they deem less intrusive. Some conflict parties opt squarely for direct negotiations but may still require support. Some third parties engage in peacemaking through the exercise of power and leverage that bears little resemblance to the mediation ‘fundamentals’ outlined in the UN Guidance.

If adaptation is intrinsic to mediation as a context-specific practice, at different moments in mediation’s history, innovation has also flourished. We approach innovation in line with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Declaration on Public Sector Innovation (2019), as understood to mean ‘implementing something novel to the context in order to achieve impact’. Innovation for mediation is thus not limited to methodologies introduced by digital technologies or even to practices that are themselves self-evidently ‘new’. In some situations, it may rather involve revisiting the ‘old’ and adapting it – as ‘something novel’ – to the current context. Four sections follow this introduction, each containing a selection of articles by different contributors that reflect a variety of perspectives and experiences. They address: (1) the current context and landscape for mediation; (2) diversified mediators, mandates, and ambitions; (3) engaging resistant, elusive, and excluded parties and constituencies; and (4) mediation with and on technology. Concluding recommendations help identify what is happening and what needs to happen for mediation to maintain contemporary relevance, and how to close the gap between the two.

Peace and security in crisis

The International Crisis Group began its annual review of the ten conflicts to watch in 2024 with a stark question: ‘Can we stop things falling apart?’ Inter-state conflict is on the rise, and internal armed conflicts are internationalised and fragmented, with multiple and often incohesive belligerents with diverse motives for their violent behaviour. Conflicts involve a fluid mix of political, economic, criminal and ideological agendas; the atomisation of non-state armed groups and local militias; porous borders; the accelerating impacts of climate change; a range of involvements of external actors; and a rapidly evolving digital landscape, all of which complicate mediation. The comprehensive peace agreements seen in the post-Cold-War period have become increasingly elusive, and the liberal peacebuilding they presaged has experienced failures and pushback.

The return of inter-state war on the European continent, regional escalation in the Middle East, an intensifying series of attacks, tensions and shadow-wars across multiple seas and oceans, and lingering fears of the potentially calamitous impacts of confrontation over Taiwan all point to an increasingly dangerous world. Military victories in Afghanistan and Nagorny Karabakh and active conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, in Sudan, and between Israel and Hamas all followed the failure or neglect of political processes. The current moment therefore represents a significant departure from the norm prevailing since the 1990s – first dented by the attacks of 9/11 – that political solutions should be sought to violent conflicts.

Even before Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel and Israel’s assault on Gaza in response, the war in Ukraine had fuelled a significant escalation in military budgets – 13 per cent in Europe, the biggest annual increase since the end of the Cold War, and 3.7 per cent across the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Foreign aid from OECD countries surged in 2022 due to spending on refugees and assistance for Ukraine, but by 2023 it was evident that sustaining such levels will not be feasible. Several governments with long trajectories as funders of the peace sector have either announced or are considering sizeable cuts.

More broadly, human suffering is increasing, exacerbated by the intertwining of armed conflict with the failure of states to respond to the needs of their populations, as well as transnational threats such as climate change, organised crime, and the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Except for a short period in the early 1990s, since 2014, according to the Peace Research Institute Oslo, the number of state-based armed conflicts has been at its highest level since 1946; in 2022, largely as result of the wars in Ethiopia and Ukraine, there were more people killed in conflicts than in any year since 1994, the year of the Rwandan genocide. Meanwhile the UN assesses that nearly 300 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection in 2024 as a result of conflicts, climate emergencies (the two increasingly converging) and other drivers. By mid-2023, 110 million people had been forced to flee their homes, more than double the 43 million a decade earlier.

A backsliding on human rights and the closure of civic space – although the protests seen across six continents in 2019, for example, spoke to the power of nonviolent mobilisation against governments of all political stripes – are among the more visible aspects of a broader contestation of the principles underpinning mediation. Some states have used the principles of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘national ownership’ to resist norms sustained by an always fragile international consensus, such as inclusion and respect for international law, as well as the less settled norms associated with transitional justice and emerging discussions around the relationship between the climate emergency, conflict, and peace efforts. Resistance to the meaningful participation of women in peace processes has different sources and forms but is widespread and intensifying. Impunity is rife.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine accelerated geopolitical re-alignment and the polarisation associated with the weakening of multilateral frameworks, a series of failed Western-led interventions and a collision of worldviews that has been a long-time brewing. The 2021 coup in Myanmar, the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan, the resurgence of coups across West Africa and the Sahel, the descent of the internationally backed transition in Sudan into open warfare, and Israel’s dismissal of appeals for it to adhere to international humanitarian law in Gaza all speak to the limitations of international leverage. Yawning differences among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the Council’s resulting inability to act on major conflicts in Ethiopia, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Israel-Palestine have accelerated demands for its reform and contributed to diminishing faith in the UN as a global peacemaker.

The war in Ukraine reinvigorated the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). But it also complicated relations between the West and states that either do not want to jeopardise trade and other relationships with China and Russia, or are inherently critical of what they see as hypocrisy in Western values and international interventions, or both. Many ‘swing’ states are increasingly active on the world stage, seeking to join new coalitions (as the August 2023 meeting and expansion of the BRICS, originally composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa demonstrated) and asserting their strategic independence, including as mediators or brokers of peace.

Among states in the Global South, accusations of double standards surged in response to the outpouring of Western support for Ukraine. The strong backing by the United States – outraged by the suffering inflicted on Israelis by Hamas’s attack on 7 October – for Israel’s response, despite the disproportionate suffering inflicted on Palestinian civilians, only reinforced divisions.

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza provide a vivid example of both the horrors and devastation wrought by conventional weapons and the potency of new means of warfare. AI-based advances in military technology, drones, missiles, cyberattacks (as Francesca Bosco discusses with regard to Ukraine) and the weaponisation of social media for mis- and dis-information are all in play. Alongside the devastating consequences of Israel’s retaliatory war on Hamas, the use and misuse of social media within and around the conflict has fuelled toxic divisions and violent hate crimes far from the Gaza strip, while in Gaza itself targeting by the Israeli Defense Forces has been accelerated by an AI target creation platform called ‘The Gospel’. Tech companies have emerged as important, if often reluctant, actors in conflict. As they own and largely operate much of the technology used by conflict actors, they have the ability to benefit one side or the other.

Meanwhile, stringent economic sanctions are regularly deployed by Western actors as a tool to influence war and peace as well as government and armed group behaviours. Relaxing sanctions can in turn serve a variety of purposes in conflict resolution efforts, as Zuzana Hudáková and colleagues have found; it will inevitably be a subject of negotiation in any denouement of the war in Ukraine.

Mediation at a crossroads

In a difficult global context, in which mediation has become increasingly fragmented, competitive and transactional, the need for both adaptation and innovation is clear. The diversification of mediators at a formal level – the UN and regional organisations, established peace actors like Norway, Switzerland and Qatar, power mediators such as the United States and Russia, but also a widening number of middle power states – is accelerating. Each have interests at stake – from the extension of norms in the interests of sustainable peace, to soft power influence beyond their borders, regional security, or the protection of proxies, economic interests, arms sales, or access to resources – and bring a wide variety of approaches to their engagements.

There are also high levels of activity by international private mediation entities and an increased recognition of the contributions made by an array of ‘insider’ and local mediators working at a subnational level. How different mediators relate to each other, and to what extent they can align their varied ambitions when they engage in the same conflict theatre, has become a critical question.

In recent years, mediation as a practice has seen extensive professionalisation. Since the establishment of the UN’s Mediation Support Unit in 2006, expertise on mediation and mediation support has been developed within regional organisations, states and non-governmental mediation actors, and by regular exchange among them. An explosion of guidance materials (on issues such as the mediation of ceasefire agreements; gender and inclusive peace processes; the potential and challenges offered by digital technologies; supporting local mediation; the implications of climate change; or peacemaking using Islamic principles), academic literature and courses on conflict resolution and mediation have greatly expanded the shared knowledge base, albeit with an obvious skew towards the production of knowledge in the West. A prestigious master’s programme at ETH Zurich is dedicated to preparing the next generation of global peace mediators and rightly prioritises the diversity of its cohorts. Meetings of the European Union’s ‘Community of Practice’ on mediation, the Oslo Mediation Forum hosted by Norway and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, and Türkiye’s Istanbul Mediation Meetings are among the many offerings in the mediation calendar, complemented by regionally hosted meetings such as the African Union’s High-Level Retreats of its Special Envoys, or the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) conferences on mediation.

Much that has been learned about mediation has been put to good use. Examples cited within this publication demonstrate that effective leadership and partnership among mediators – multilateral and regional organisations, states, international non-governmental mediators, civil society organisations, women’s organisations, religious leaders, or tribal and community leaders – have helped advance peace. The support given by third parties has enabled conflict parties to agree violence prevention and reduction mechanisms, security arrangements and modalities for reintegration, as well as agreements to manage environmental issues, to verify information relating to ceasefires and disarmament, or the mis- and dis-information spread through social media, or address conflicts related to disputes around, for example, water or the mining sector.

Collectively, this experience of mediation demonstrates that responding to fragmentation of the conflict with multi-level engagement offers a potent means of moving ‘beyond’ and ‘beneath’ the state. It reinforces the value of keeping talking, even as violence rages. It also underlines the need for new configurations of actors to manage the contemporary challenges of geopolitics and fragmented conflict.

Yet we also acknowledge that this is a moment for critical introspection. Thirty years of accumulated knowledge, expertise and resources have seen success in helping bring conflicts to an end, prevent violence, and save lives. And yet mediation processes too frequently are not welcome, not working, or not equal to the disruptive local, national, and geopolitical forces of the current moment. The informal rules of politics in many fragile and conflict-affected countries, as Alex de Waal and others have set out in their analysis of the contribution of the ‘political marketplace framework’ to peace processes, are determined by ‘those who command violence and control money’. Among the consequences are peace processes that ‘are neither liberal nor in conformity with customary norms’.

Affected populations are understandably frustrated and disillusioned. The Central African Republic has seen nearly a dozen peace agreements come and go since 1997 but, as Kenny Gluck, a former deputy head of the UN mission there has observed, with no lasting impact on the peacefulness of the country. In December 2023 50 civil society organisations from or working in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) petitioned the UN Security Council to press facilitators and participants in the Nairobi and Luanda processes addressing the conflicts in the country’s east to ‘move beyond short term interests and stalemates’ and ‘put peace and security for eastern DRC’s population first’. The devastating new war in Sudan has been met by chaotic and ineffective responses by multiple would-be mediators. Decades of work on the Middle East peace process, and then its neglect, have been swept aside by the worst violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict since 1948.

Mediation is never a panacea – it is, in the end, a tool that can be better or worse applied in support of conflict parties who have taken the difficult decision to take up arms, and may or may not be persuaded that circumstances are ripe to put them down again. But what adaptations and innovations can be introduced to better marry the available resources and interests in peacemaking across the globe with the enormous challenges at hand?

In their opening article, addressing ‘The evolution of innovation in international mediation’, David Lanz and Phillip Lustenberger suggest that significant mediation innovation comes at ‘critical junctures’ in world politics. They trace this history through four such moments – the founding of the United Nations after the end of the Second World War, the Cold War, the post-Cold War period, and the period that followed the 9/11 attacks on the United States – before addressing the developments and innovations in the period that has opened since the early 2010s.

We are at such a critical juncture now. Mediators can draw on valuable knowledge and expertise to shape relevant practice, as Sanam Anderlini’s analysis of innovations around the women, peace and security agenda argues. Experience over the years has underlined the benefits of early consultations with women’s organisations, the provision of gendered analysis and advice to mediation teams, and the direct engagement of independent delegations of women peacebuilders and other representatives of civil society with the warring parties.

Yet such work receives uneven take-up. And, as Hugo Slim addresses in his article on ‘Mediation in the world and wars of the 2020s’, the new distribution of global power and new types of warfare and violence have significant implications. Mediators of different kinds will pursue different goals, some working towards mutually acceptable agreements between conflict parties with political order, and thus the preservation of elite interests, as their goal, while others may hold out for inclusive processes and social justice. They will increasingly be drawn into new fields of work (climate, cyber, space, energy, as well as the mediation of urban violence) and new partnerships. And everywhere they will have to navigate polarised geopolitics.

Christine Bell in her article suggests that holistic or ‘comprehensive’ resolution of today’s highly fragmented conflicts, characterised by inter-related sets of communal, national, transnational, and geopolitical conflicts, is ‘almost impossible’. In its stead she proposes that we need to embrace ‘multimediation’ as a tapestry of different mediation processes for different purposes in different places and levels, and with different groups of actors that each address one dimension of the conflict in ways that can impact the whole.

A holistic and strategic approach to such processes of ‘multimediation’ is, of course, an extraordinarily difficult endeavour, born out by the critical analysis contained within articles included across the breadth of the publication. Yet, within a generally sombre picture, authors also point to areas for hope as well as need for more effective mediation, and identify adaptive and creative experience on which it is possible to build or suggest new avenues for engagement.

The recommendations summarised below and further developed at the volume’s conclusion attempt to capture many of them but cannot do justice to the wealth of experience and insight generously shared across the publication.

10 ways to adapt and innovate mediation policy and practice

Mediation strategy and process

1. Prioritise mediation and the pursuit of political solutions as primary objectives in strategies to tackle armed conflict.

2. Pursue mediation and political solutions below and beyond the state – the state should not be the only locus for conflict resolution.

3. Redefine ‘success’ in mediation as achieving specific or localised gains that make people safer, reduce violence and support momentum towards sustainable peace. 

Mediation partnerships and principles

4. Commit to partnerships between diverse mediators in order to support peace processes effectively, balance skills and interests, avoid competition and maximise collective impact.

5. Build consensus among diverse mediators around core peacemaking values and principles – but acknowledge that there will often be different worldviews that need to be managed carefully.

6. Defend impartiality as a mediation ‘fundamental’ – accepting that this may need to be balanced.

Mediation approaches and tools

7. Support engagement with ‘hard-to-reach’ armed groups as a policy imperative, facilitating pathways and reducing barriers to mediation.

8. Encourage and enable inclusion in mediation processes, emphasising its tactical and strategic value in generating momentum and achieving sustainable outcomes.

9. Upskill mediators to keep pace with rapidly changing conflict issues, and to adapt peace processes, talks and agreements to prevent and resolve them.

10. Do no harm to prospects for peace amid mediation adaptation and innovation.