In our November newsletter, we introduced our new content series peacebuilding lessons where we give you key insights and lessons learned from a variety of peacebuilding and peacemaking processes. This month, we hear from our Executive Director, Thania Paffenholz, who gives us insights into her role in the Colombian process and the key lessons she learned.

Q: About five years ago, you went to Colombia to act as an expert facilitator in the peace process that led to the ratification of the Colombian Peace Deal in November 2016. Could you tell us about when you entered this moment in history and what role you played in it?

TP: Talking about the Colombian peace process, we first need to define which process because there were several peace processes consisting of negotiations between the different armed groups and the government. I entered two of these processes: the process between the government and the FARC and the process between the government and ELN. In the FARC process, which culminated in the Colombian Peace Agreement in November 2016, I entered in the last phase when it had already gone public. In the ELN process, I started my engagement in the first phase of informal and confidential bilateral negotiations and then continued during the formal negotiation phase.

Colombian flag waving in front of a historic building in Cartagena, Colombia. The white stripe has been added to symbolize the peace process. Photo: Shutterstock

In the final phase of the FARC process I worked with a variety of actors in and around the process. I worked with Colombian civil society organisations including the Catholic church and supported different civil society consultations that fed ideas into the talks, both in Colombia and the Diaspora.

I also worked with international actors supporting the two sides. As an example, during the last round of talks our research team developed a non-paper – which we later published as a report – on the role of civil society in ceasefire monitoring which helped to inform the implementation design of the agreement.

Overall as an organisation, we played very much a behind-the-scenes role in providing ideas and options for those inside and around the talks. After the peace agreement was signed we provided assessments and ideas to both the government, civil society and international actors about strategies for the referendum. The signed peace agreement was put to referendum which failed in October 2016. When the referendum failed, we helped facilitate a new process design to renegotiate the agreement .

In this work, I pushed for what you could call the survival of the peace process despite a failed peace agreement. I provided ideas and options for next steps the week after the referendum to the government and civil society actors such as the student movement, the unions and international actors.

During the ELN process, I worked intensively with the ELN and later also with the government and the facilitators to design a participatory process for the talks and the broad societal consultation process.

Q: Could you outline the key lessons you learned as an expert facilitator working in these processes?

TP: Sure, of course there’s a multitude of lessons that I as an expert facilitator and we as an organisation learned, but I’d say that three lessons stand out from the Colombia process.

TP: In Colombia it showed, as it has in all the peace processes I’ve worked in, that good entry points on all levels are key.  From these entry points you have to build your networks among a broad spectrum of actors from the parties as well as those who can influence the parties, key constituencies in the country as well as the public, and the internationals.

In Colombia, I worked very closely with governments that had access to different actors inside and outside the country. This gave me both access and the ability to enter these spaces. It was an essential strategy to have government partners that were supportive to give the needed political greenlight and protection. So, when I say build your networks, I don’t mean only working with a network of local partners, but with a huge international network of various stakeholders. And it also means to leverage your existing network in the country – in the Colombian case, we had a broad network of civil society and religious actors that we activated throughout the work.

As an example of important entry points in this case, I would mention that we as a Geneva-based organisation, had a close collaboration with the Colombian ambassador in Geneva which provided excellent contacts. We also worked with global religious networks and women groups that gave us access to Colombia specific actors such as the Catholic Church and women networks in the country.

TP: In the Colombia case there was such a conducive environment for peace, regionally and internationally – the US was very supportive, the whole world was supportive. And you could say that there was such a hype for peace, that at times, the resistance to the peace agreement that existed in Colombia was forgotten. If you look at it from a comparative perspective, such a resistance is normal. The key lesson is to take the resistance into account and not only talk to the moderate pro-peace parties but also to those that are not in the pro-peace camp.

In Colombia for example, a large part of the population was against a peace agreement with the FARC. Many people had suffered from the human rights violations that took place during the war and were of the opinion that making peace with the FARC was like selling out and avoiding justice. The political opposition built on this resistance since it was the ruling political party who entered the negotiations with the FARC. As a consequence, the opposition built a very strong social media campaign that resulted in the lost referendum, where Colombian voters rejected the ratification of the peace deal to great surprise for all international actors.

In this case the opposition – in contrast to the government – understood the powers of public communication and took advantage of the “peace hype” that meant that resistance was forgotten and remained non-addressed. A key lesson coming out of this is that as an expert facilitator you have to be aware of the “hype” for peace and pay close attention to the resistance that exists and come up with options for how to deal with resistance. Just because the international community or regional actors are supportive, it doesn’t mean that the majority of the population will be supportive.

TP: On the morning of the failed referendum, I boarded a plane to Bogotá. And this choice was entirely based on intuition – we didn’t have funding besides for the flight ticket and to many this could seem like an unwise decision. However, I knew I had to go to Bogotá and to engage with counterparts in person to share ideas on what can be done after a lost referendum. It turned out to be a very wise decision as I was able to speak to many stakeholders including the government, to provide solidarity and most of all, ideas for the immediate next steps to safeguard the peace process.

Photo: Milo Miloezger/Unsplash

Leading up to the referendum, we had done research comparing previous referendums that took place in peace processes. We looked into what were the conditions in those countries compared to the conditions in Colombia and we shared those findings with the Colombian government as well as international actors. When the referendum then was lost we could – based on this research – provide comparative insights from other processes where similar failures had happened.

So, I would also say that this is a lesson I learned as an expert facilitator: you need to trust your intuition and the fact that sometimes you don’t always know what the right thing to do is, but you have to trust your instinct.

TP: Do you need to know your audience before you enter a new context? And what does it mean to know your audience? In the mediation and peacemaking world there used to be two broad philosophies about how much knowledge you need when you enter a context. One school of thought argues that you should only have minimal knowledge in order to not get dragged into details and preserve a neutral perspective. The other school of thought argues the opposite – namely that you need to know a lot.

My experience is that it depends on your role, the setting and your style. The advantage of Inclusive Peace’s comparative evidence-based approach is that it allows us to bring a lot of knowledge from what has worked and what has not worked in other processes. This approach allows me to start a conversation on options with the parties and other constituencies that all parties find relevant.

Is it possible to do this work without knowing the context and the audience? Not really. In the Colombia case it was essential to assess strategies from other processes with similar conditions in order to develop ideas for Colombia. When assessing the strategies, we looked at the context variables and the mindsets of the audiences in question. In the Colombian case I worked very closely with our research team to prepare and accompany our missions to Colombia in order to provide the most relevant knowledge and examples.

Here we profited hugely from our prior research into previous peace processes in Colombia and research about the mindsets of different armed groups similar to the FARC and the ELN.
This allowed for a fast and profound understanding of their needs, interests, red lines and the best way to communicate with them.

I call this approach to play the role of a critical friend – and this will be the final lesson: Be a friend that listens and asks critical questions but also provides ideas and options.

Colombians on the streets in October 2016. Photo: Leon Hernandez/Flickr

Want to read more about Thania’s and Inclusive Peace unique approach to peacebuilding? Dive into her blog Perpetual Peacebuilding: Changing the way we think about and make peace.

November marks fifteen years since the Nepal Peace Agreement was signed. We reflect on the anniversary in this first instalment in our series of inclusive peacebuilding lessons.

This peacebuilding lesson is based on our case study on women’s participation in Nepal’s constitution-making process 2008-2012. In this lesson we break down two key strategies that Nepali women’s groups applied to advance inclusion in the process.

STRATEGY 1: introduce a quota

APPROACH: target/effect policies and policy makers to influence direct decision-making

PROBLEM/BACKGROUND: Historic and deep-seated gender inequalities led to women having never comprised more than six percent of Nepal’s parliamentarians until 2007.

MOTIVATION: Pushing for progressive inclusion mechanisms in a peace process can help to jump-start and institutionalize more inclusive governance beyond the peace process itself.

OUTCOME: The quota ensured that women made up 33 percent of the members of the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly was the most representative body of its kind in Nepal’s history in terms of gender, caste, and minority inclusion and provided a critical juncture to shifting some of these structural barriers. This precedent set by the peace process has created momentum and attention to permanently enshrine inclusion, including in relation to women’s participation in governance. The new Constitution passed in 2015 has ensured a 33 percent representation of women in national and state Parliaments and 40 percent in local legislatures.

THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS: In relation to this strategy, here are some lessons learned – both positive and less positive – that can be applied by or relevant for peacebuilders in other contexts and peace processes.

1.  Identify the right allies: It is key to identify those actors who are well-placed to help achieve your objective by leveraging their position or influence. In this example, if the objective is to establish a quota in governance mechanisms, who in the parliamentarian landscape is strategically wise to approach to introduce the quota strategy? Peacebuilders should also consider if there are any external/non-governmental organisations you can bring in to support your initiative. Likewise peacebuilders should consider if there are women politicians and peacebuilding practitioners available that would be suitable for positions within the political system and if these could be mobilised to push for a quota.
2. Back up with evidence: When you have identified which parliamentarians, external/non-governmental organisations and women politicians or peacebuilders to approach, consider what evidence can you bring forth to support the effectiveness of a quota in general and for your specific situation.
3. Consider protection issues: As many as 70 percent of all women Constituent Assembly members in Nepal were confronted with some form of violence. Women also faced legal action due to their political involvement, and routinely struggled with men politicians’ negative attitudes towards them. Knowing this it is important to consider what measures need to be taken to ensure that women’s participation and uptake in political decision-making bodies does not result in additional safety risks and violence towards the women after the quota has been introduced.

STRATEGY 2: mass action

APPROACH: mobilise civil society and create spaces for influencing indirect decision-making by targeting delegations instead of mediators

PROBLEM/BACKGROUND: In many peace processes, civil society advocacy exclusively focuses on the mediating or convening entity, roles sometimes played by the UN or the AU, for example. However, targeting the mediator or convenor may lead to some gains in terms of inclusion in the process, but are often limited in their ability to influence and change behaviour of the conflict or negotiating parties themselves.

MOTIVATION: mass action can lead to direct political representation at the negotiation table, and beyond the negotiation process itself

OUTCOME: By targeting delegations, mass action in Nepal led to direct representation at the negotiation table which in turn carried over into the Constituent Assembly. This did not simply involve public advocacy and mass action, as women’s groups strategically engaged with the 23 parties to prepare lists of potential female candidates.

THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS: In relation to this strategy, here are some lessons learned – both positive and less positive – that can be applied by or relevant for peacebuilders in other contexts and peace processes.

1. Think seriously about communication: Identify delegations and individuals to address and create a system for sustainable, long-term communication and think about how this communication will be most effective. Consider channels, length, frequency, engaged members, women group representatives etc.
2. Identify political allies: Consider how you can create ties with political relations which influence and penetrate indirect decision-making (these are often still male and elite-driven even after the inclusion of women in decision-making bodies). These allies will help you further in mobilising mass action.
3. Focus on meaningful inclusion: In order to engage as many women’s groups as possible, think about how to advance past paternalistic or crony politics where most of the women in politics are there by virtue of their family relations and undermines the ability to pursue a common and distinct agenda for women in a particular country. Sure, such individuals may be well-placed as champions to help advance the broader cause, but one needs to be clear-eyed and continuously seek to broaden the definition of inclusion. Set a strategy for cultivating and managing a meaningful inclusion agenda and preventing cosmetic and superficial inclusion.

At Inclusive Peace we are thrilled to have welcomed two new researchers to the team over the summer. This means that our research capacities are getting even stronger and enables us to provide the latest evidence-based advice in peace processes. Meet our new team members here.

New Head of Research: Sarah Clowry

Sarah Clowry is our new Head of Research. She leads the research team in managing and expanding Inclusive Peace’s knowledge base and will co-develop our broader research agenda in partnership with our Executive Director, Thania Paffenholz. Sarah also shares Inclusive Peace’s evidence-based research with practitioners, policy makers and academics.

Sarah recently submitted her PhD thesis at Durham University. Her doctoral research was funded by the UK Government Economic and Social Research Council, and examined identity construction through international third-party peacemaking, focusing on the conflicts in Syria and Yemen. Prior to her PhD, Sarah worked in international development – she spent two years working in Nablus, Palestine before returning to the UK to manage global grants programmes for the British Council.

Sarah holds a First Class BA (Hons.) from the University of Oxford and an MA with Distinction from Durham University. She is also a trustee of the British-Yemeni Society.

New Researcher: Kaitlyn Hashem

Kaitlyn Hashem is our new researcher, and she will support the Inclusive Peace team in research, knowledge management and peace process support. Kaitlyn’s background is in Middle Eastern politics and conflict resolution and, before joining Inclusive Peace, she most recently worked as a researcher for the Inclusive Peace Processes and Reconciliation team at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington DC.

As a student, Kaitlyn worked as a research assistant at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security where she supported programming focused on advancing the WPS agenda and broadening inclusion. She also worked as a research intern on the Yemen and Sudan portfolios at an international law firm that provides pro bono legal advice to parties involved in peace negotiations.

Kaitlyn holds an MA in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University. She completed her undergraduate studies at Georgetown, graduating magna cum laude with a BA in International Relations and Arabic.

In a recent Inclusive Peace event, we explored the inherently political nature of National Dialogues with peers or practitioners from Africa and Southeast Asia. Read an excerpt of their recounts or dive into key takeaways from the discussion.

There is no way around it – National Dialogues will always be political. Our peers and fellow practitioners, who are experts in National Dialogue processes in their respective contexts, know this very well and all find strategies to manoeuvre this fact at the local and country level.

To bring practitioners and experts together to share experiences, we recently convened a peer exchange on National Dialogues and politicisation as a part of our National Dialogue peer exchange series. As with our first exchange in the event series, our approach was to have peers from different country contexts lead the exchange, while international experts had the opportunity to listen and learn from these experiences. Read a summary of the participants’ recounts here.

“An unfinished business with a long way to go for inclusive conflict resolution”

Cameroon’s ‘Grand Dialogue National’ took place in 2019 and is a highly relevant example of how much politics influence a National Dialogue process. According to the exchange experts, the 2019 National Dialogue process was organised, run, and managed by the government. In reality this meant that the dialogue could be described as a government monologue.

The government succeeded in imposing their agenda on the proceedings, and left almost no room for other stakeholders’ input into the process. A few pre-consultations were held, but they functioned as more of a smokescreen as everything had already been decided in advance. The participants also said that the situation in Cameroon could benefit from a new genuine all-inclusive National Dialogue process, but the government is still not willing to engage in a genuinely inclusive dialogue.

There is potentially scope for bilateral discussions with some armed groups or opposition actors, but not a polyphonic discussion. The situation may alter with a change in the country’s political landscape with the current president’s term ending in 2025.

“The National Dialogue was a process to try to work out a vision for Myanmar”

In Myanmar, the overarching peace process, the Union Peace Conference (UPC), can be compared to a National Dialogue. It involves representatives of Myanmar’s ethnic armed organisations (EAOs), political parties, and the government. The agenda is a comprehensive peace settlement to Myanmar’s more than 70-year-old armed conflict. The framework of the UPC encompasses a plan for nationwide consultations on ethnic, regional, and civic issues. These consultative forums are also called “National Dialogues”.

There was agreement that at least 30% of the representatives of the National Dialogue participants should be women, but unfortunately this did not play out. The UPC process has been ongoing since 2015, but its future following the military coup in February 2021 is now uncertain. Since the coup, there has been ad hoc dialogue among some political parties and ethnic armed organisations focused on continuing civilian elected government.

The event participants estimated that currently the political tension is too high to even discuss the possibility of a new National Dialogue process. But there are hopes to move towards renewed dialogue once all actors in the country get to an understanding that the complexity of the political transition in Myanmar can only be addressed through truly inclusive dialogue.

“A culture of dialogue is key, but hard to cultivate”

South Sudan has only been a country for the past 10 years, and the post-independence conflict has taken a major toll on the hopes of the country, underlining the difficulty of the shift from fighting for independence to state-building.

The Christian churches have been involved in a number of dialogue initiatives, and, among other Church leaders, met in Addis in 2015 to discuss a National Dialogue. This happened in parallel with the president announcing the formation of a National Dialogue Committee which was largely a government-controlled initiative.

The Churches felt that they could not be a part of such an initiative and convened a meeting among a diverse set of stakeholders that concluded that the National Dialogue process was important in and of itself, but for it to be meaningful, it requires input from a broad range of stakeholders, including the general public.

The situation in South Sudan is currently unstable with outbreaks of violence and food shortages in many parts of the country, which halts any dialogue process to move forward.

“We are still looking for a genuine, transformative dialogue process”

The situation in Zimbabwe is characterised by the unfinished business of the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA), and specifically issues stemming from contested electoral outcomes. As long as this situation remains unchanged any dialogue process will be discontinuous. The 2007-2008 GPA process was far from inclusive – both civil society, the churches, and the public were excluded in the dialogue process.

The latest dialogue – the Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) in 2019 – involved the president and some other political leaders, but was seen by participants as an endeavour of the president talking to himself. Zimbabwe is still looking for a genuine, transformative dialogue, and a series of parallel initiatives – led by the Church and civil society – are trying to build an inclusive, non-politicised process.

There is now a deadlock, as the ruling party has not only monopolised the running of the official process but has appropriated all national institutions to direct the process in their favour. As such, a broad, inclusive process is currently unlikely.

“It was an elite-driven dialogue to buy time”

In Sudan, the post-independence landscape has been characterised by a period of prolonged autocratic rule succeeding a military coup, followed by a series of popular uprisings, conflicts, and political instability – including the civil war in, and conflict with, South Sudan, and the conflict in Darfur.

During this period there have been several dialogue attempts: some have focused on conflict resolution, some on governance and economic reforms, and others tried to draft a constitution. However, most dialogues have been elite-driven and underpinned by conflict dynamics.

The most recent National Dialogue took place from 2015-2016 and had more than 100 political parties and 30 armed groups taking part. However, only a very small number of the participating parties had real political influence and the envisaged timespan was too short for genuine input of a variety of voices. In conjunction with the Dialogue, the government cracked down on the opposition and continued its offensive against armed movements and civilians in Darfur, Blue Nile, and South Kordofan.

After the next round of public uprising in 2018-2019, Sudan has started a democratic transition. However, in the current context many of the same questions still prevail such as constitution-making process, governance modalities, resource management, decentralisation. There are currently multiple endeavours to address them, but these remain fragmented, elite-driven, and lack public participation and ownership.

Key takeaways
So what to take from these experiences onwards? Here is a brief sum up of the five key insights that our peer exchange revealed:

Expectation management is key
National Dialogues often occur in complex contexts with multiple competing processes and problems that they are expected to address. But National Dialogues are not a cure-all solution. Instead, they should be seen for what they are – which is just one instrument among others in a country’s political transition. Managing expectations about what a National Dialogue can achieve is key to generating faith, trust, and buy-in for the process.

Trust is essential
Trust between the facilitators of a National Dialogue process and the public is a condition for the Dialogue to achieve meaningful outcomes. If this trust is not established, then it can cause frustration that discredits both the current and most recent National Dialogue process, and can also create a lasting distrust that may influence future processes.

Outcomes are determined by who’s in control
Outcome and legitimacy of a National Dialogues process is determined by who organises, runs, and controls a process. Dialogues that have been co-opted are designed and undertaken in an exclusionary manner, and are also more likely to be unfinished. It requires some degree of genuine and meaningful inclusion of political parties, armed groups (if relevant), civil society, and the public for a National Dialogue to reach sustainable outcomes.

National Dialogues should take place on multiple levels
The political space in a country is not confined to one level and National Dialogue processes should reflect that and take place on multiple levels. Whether these multiple processes are parallel or sequenced depends on the context and each process should be tailored to the unique context in which it occurs.

Dialogue processes do not occur in isolation
National Dialogue processes are constant renegotiations of the social and political contract and are by no means linear – instead, they are characterised by progress and setbacks. Seen in this light, National Dialogue processes cannot exist in isolation, and are instead just one dialogue within a series of dialogues. This makes a certain degree of unfinished business inevitable, as one dialogue process cannot fix the underlying causes of conflict. Seeing National Dialogue processes in the context of political transitions also means identifying progress and opportunities from a process that can be picked up again by another process at a later stage.

About our work on National Dialogues

Inclusive Peace contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of National Dialogues and explores strategies to improve their effectiveness with our partners in different contexts.