Over the past two decades, 140 different peace processes have taken place globally. The ‘handshake moment’ of a final agreement between warring parties receives the most attention, but this only captures one small part of the overall process. Peace negotiations are hard, often protracted, and often end in failure. While information asymmetries and commitment problems are common, they do not explain why some negotiations succeed whereas others fail (Heger and Jung 2017).
The negotiation framework in which conflicting parties engage in peace talks can have an enormous impact on their chances of success. It can either maximize a government’s short-term goals or encourage the conclusion of a lasting peace agreement. The article analyzes the difference between these two outcomes by studying the cases of Colombia and Turkey, which have similar backgrounds but drastically different negotiation frameworks.
It finds that the legalized, transparent, and inclusive negotiations of the former case were more likely to result in a peace agreement than the nonlegalized, opaque, and exclusionary negotiations of the latter. The reason lies in the political context of the two cases. Both had previously engaged in counterinsurgency campaigns and were not perceived as “doves” by their adversaries.
This research points to important lessons for those who seek to improve the odds of a successful outcome in future peace processes. First, a more holistic approach to support for women’s systematic participation in peace talks is needed. This includes making gender-responsive engagement a defining feature of the terms of reference for mediators, envoys and leaders of peace missions and including it in their official reporting. It should also be integrated into training for all participants, and the performance of these actors in promoting gender-responsive participation should be regularly assessed and reported on.