Unpacking the Mystery of Mediation in African Peace ... - Swisspeace

“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to
work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”
Mediation in African Peace Processes:
Carefully Comparing Apples and Oranges
By Simon J A Mason, Mediation Support Project, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich
Introduction
Mediation is a mystery. Some peace processes are
successful, some are dismal failures, and most are
a bit of both. The transition of a society from
war to peace is extremely complex and difficult.
Conflict parties use military means to reach their
aims, sometimes killing thousands or tens of
thousands of people in the process. During a
peace process, conflict parties may slowly realize
that they can gain more from negotiating than
from fighting. This takes time, however. It also
takes people who talk to the conflict parties to
try and understand their motives and intentions,
and why they have chosen arms as their means of
settling issues.
There is no ethical reason for refusing to talk
even to the world’s worst human rights violators
if thereby lives can be saved, and if this helps to
transform a war-torn society into a society moving
towards peace, justice, and democracy. On
the contrary, there are good ethical reasons for
talking to such people, even if the task is a delicate
and very difficult one. The decision of talking
or not, however, must also be based on case
by case pragmatic and political considerations,
not only on ethical ones. 1 This challenge is one
reason why mediation in contemporary peace
1 UN Special Representative of the Secretary General, Lakhdar
Barhimi argues for this pragmatic approach: “If you accept
these kinds of jobs, you go and mediate between warlords, faction
leaders, bandits, all sorts of people, people whom the human
rights purists want to see hang. What I tell them is ‘Let
me finish, and then go ahead and hang them.’” He was also
asked if he would talk to Osama bin Laden. “If I were to mediate
between Al Qaeda and the United States, I suppose I
would have to. But we are not there yet, are we? And Osama
would refuse to talk to me, you have to remember that.” Martin,
Harriet: “Kings of Peace, Pawns of War: The Untold
Story of Peace-Making”, London, New York: Continuum International
Publishing Group (2006), p.25-26.
Nelson Mandela
processes is surrounded by a certain mysterious
aura. Simple answers are out of place, and it is not
helpful to examine mediation as a purely technical
or academic topic. Nevertheless, it is also wrong to
endow mediation with excessive mystification,
thus placing it beyond the bounds of systematic
research and learning.
Aim and rationale: The aim of this study is to
partially “unpack” the mystery of mediation, in
order to learn about the use of mediation in African
peace processes during the last decade. Ultimately,
the goal is to provide better support for
ongoing and future mediation efforts in such
peace processes. The study was mandated by the
Political Division IV of the Swiss Federal Department
of Foreign Affairs as preparation for their
2008 conference on “Mediation in Africa”. However,
it also springs from a longer-term interest in
Africa as the continent with the most peace
agreements signed world-wide. 2
Comparative approach: In order to avoid stereotypes
and commonplaces, the study uses a bottomup
approach, starting with individual cases, but
following a similar analytical structure in order to
allow for comparison. The subsequent comparison
2 In the period 1989–2004, 76 peace agreements were signed in 20
conflicts in Africa, 31 peace agreements in 6 conflicts in the
Americas (mainly Guatemala and El Salvador), 16 peace agreements
in ten conflicts in Asia, nine peace agreements in Europe
(e.g., former Yugoslav republics, Moldova, and Georgia), and in
the Middle East, seven peace agreements were signed in the conflict
over Palestine. Högbladh, Stina. “Patterns of Peace Agreements:
Presenting new data on Peace Processes and Peace
Agreements”. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International
Studies Association, Town & Country Resort and
Convention Center, San Diego, California, USA (22 March
2006). Available at http://www.allacademic.com/meta/
p99120_index.html quoted with permission of the author.
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