Preview
Peacemaking: Negotiations and Treaties
IB DP Global Politics — Thematic study: Peace and conflict | SL | Nature, practice and study of peace and conflict
📋 What You Will Learn
- Define peacemaking and distinguish it from peacekeeping and peacebuilding
- Describe the key stages and mechanisms of peace negotiations, including the roles of different actors
- Explain what makes a peace treaty and analyse the conditions that affect its durability
- Analyse how power, legitimacy and sovereignty shape the peacemaking process
- Compare theoretical perspectives on why negotiations succeed or fail
- Evaluate the claim that negotiated settlements produce lasting peace
🔍 Guiding Question Can a negotiated peace treaty ever be truly just, or does the unequal distribution of power at the negotiating table mean that peacemaking simply freezes existing inequalities?
🌍 Why This Matters In November 2022, Ethiopia's federal government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front signed the Pretoria Agreement, ending nearly two years of devastating civil war. Yet within months, observers were questioning whether the deal addressed the root causes of the conflict or merely silenced the guns. The episode captures the central tension of peacemaking: ending violence is not the same as achieving peace.
🔑 Key Concept Link Peacemaking sits at the intersection of all four key concepts. Power determines who sits at the table and whose interests dominate the final text. Sovereignty is at stake whenever external mediators intervene in what states claim as internal affairs. Legitimacy determines whether parties — and the populations they claim to represent — accept the settlement. Interdependence explains why regional and global actors invest in resolving conflicts that spill across borders. Return to these links throughout.
Defining the Peacemaking Landscape
The language of "peace" is used loosely, and conflating different activities costs marks. The IB syllabus distinguishes three related but distinct processes. Understanding where peacemaking fits is the starting point.
📖 Definition — Peacemaking Peacemaking refers to the diplomatic and political processes aimed at bringing hostile parties to a negotiated agreement that ends or reduces armed conflict. It typically involves negotiation, mediation, and the conclusion of a ceasefire or peace treaty. It is distinct from peacekeeping (deploying forces to monitor a ceasefire) and peacebuilding (longer-term reconstruction of political, economic and social structures).
📖 Definition — Negative vs Positive Peace (Galtung) Johan Galtung's foundational distinction: negative peace is the absence of direct, organised violence; positive peace is the presence of social justice, equitable institutions and the conditions that prevent violence from recurring. Most peace treaties aim primarily at negative peace; whether they generate positive peace is the deeper evaluative question.
Why the distinction matters for evaluation
- A ceasefire or treaty can achieve negative peace without addressing structural violence (poverty, discrimination, exclusion) — the grievances that drove the conflict.
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