While third states and international organisations often co-sign peace agreements in the capacity of witnesses or guarantors, little is understood of the legal consequences flowing from these roles. The chapter aims to fill this gap. First, it highlights that the mere designation of witness or guarantor leads to few consequences. Second, it analyses how specific third-party rights and obligations are established and conceptualised under VCLT rules, extended by analogy to intra-state peace agreements. Third, it provides a brief illustration of common third-party rights and obligations in peace agreements. Finally, it examines whether the involvement of third parties can internationalise an intra-state peace agreement, i.e. render it to be governed by international law. Bringing together views from the literature, jurisprudence and the preceding analysis on the structure of third-party rights and obligations, the chapter concludes that such rights and obligations can be internationalised, in a manner that can only extend to the agreement as a whole when inseparable from the rest of the agreement.

National dialogues hold significant promise for conflict resolution because they enable diverse interests to engage in an inclusive negotiation process. However, peacemakers and conflict parties need to have realistic expectations. This chapter makes two arguments regarding the effectiveness of national dialogues. The first is that national dialogues are well-placed to strengthen and legitimise elite agreements that have already been struck, but not well-placed to develop elite-level commitment to dialogue when none has previously been built. The second argument is that, in order to make a positive contribution, national dialogues need to be able to adjust flexibly to changing political realities and to avoid rigid rules and structures. National dialogues which are able to adapt their negotiation formats are more likely to make reach decisions which are implemented by the parties.

This chapter examines settlement practice on detention in light of international humanitarian law and human rights law. Section 2 identifies the international legal frameworks that regulate detention, drawing the necessary distinctions between peacetime and armed conflict, and between international and non-international armed conflict, which frame questions on relevant applicable law. Section 3 then examines the specific legal norms relating to prisoners of war and civilian detainees within international armed conflict and their interaction with settlement practice; while Section 4 does the same in relation to legal norms regulating detention in non-international armed conflicts. In the context of peace agreements, the focus is on two interconnected issues which extend into a post bellum phase, as important subject matter for settlement practice: release and repatriation; and transitional justice. By way of conclusion, Section 5 considers whether settlement provisions on detainees reflect a common practice that develops international legal standards.

This chapter examines the role of international finance for post-war transitions and its relationship to international law. That relationship is considered in two respects: first, the international legal norms relevant to ‘who should pay?’; and second, the relevance of international aid to the development of international law. Section 2 tracks the evolution of post-conflict funding for settlement implementation and reconstruction in light of historical transformations in peace-making practice; and addresses the financial demands on conflict-affected states. Urgent needs for international aid to finance settlement implementation and peacebuilding, raises questions about whether third states might have a duty to provide finance. Thus, Section 3 evaluates prospects for international legal duties to provide that aid. The relevance of post-conflict finance and aid conditionality to the development of international law is considered in Section 4 to shed a different light on debates about an emerging law of peace-making or lex pacificatoria.

The increasing participation of armed groups in peace agreements, coupled with the relatively uncertain status of non-state actors under international law, raises a number of important but as yet unsettled questions. This chapter addresses three key issues. The first is the legal status of armed groups under international law. This has direct consequences with respect to the status of peace agreements, and whether they may be regarded as establishing binding international legal obligations or as mere political declarations of intent. The second is the designation of certain groups as ‘terrorist’, and the implications on their participation in peace processes. The third is the role of customary international law vis-à-vis the regulation of peace agreements. The focus of this component is on the potential role of non-state armed groups in the process of creating customary law. Of particular interest is the emergence of customary law regarding the inclusion of human rights considerations in peace agreements.

Peace settlements are notoriously difficult to reach in religiously associated conflicts, particularly in intra-state armed conflicts where the religious identity and nature of the state is at stake. Despite that apparent intractability, however, some peace settlements have been crafted for contemporary intra-state armed conflicts where there have been religious incompatible claims and aspirations. This chapter explores the legal tools developed in such settlements and discusses their wider applicability as conflict resolution mechanisms. The analysis identifies seven specific conflict resolution mechanisms that have been utilised to address the religious dimensions of armed conflicts: constitutional secularism, religious freedom, religious power-sharing, religious autonomy, legalisation of religious political parties, inclusion of religious civil society actors and religious bonding. These seven mechanisms are analysed as part of two fundamentally different approaches to conflict resolution of religious dimensions: division vs integration; and reinforcement or decrease in the role of religion. The chapter demonstrates how religiously defined conflicts can also be transformed and brought to peaceful, negotiated endings.

This chapter offers an insight into the complex relationship between peace-making, peace agreements and peacekeeping. It considers their interactions at the strategic, operational and normative levels. First, the chapter reviews the connections between peace-making, peace agreements and peacekeeping. It demonstrates that modern peacekeeping operations, typically deployed into contexts where there is little or no peace to keep, have an increasingly important role to play in the peace-making process. Second, the chapter assesses the normative issues that most impact on peace-making, peace agreements and peacekeeping. It discusses how the strategic peace versus justice debate manifests at the operational and tactical levels, and is amplified by the increasing trend of operations mandated with protection of civilians, human rights and international criminal justice tasks. It explores how this mandate trend can complicate an operation’s role in the peace-making process due to tensions between its multiple responsibilities.

This introductory chapter identifies the key questions and themes for the International Law and Peace Settlements volume, and provides a framework and conceptual map for analysing the relationship between international law and peace settlement practice. In particular, it examines the concepts of peace and war, and their relation to law, before developing a working lexicon for peace agreements and settlements. The chapter then critically examines the legal character of peace agreements and settlement commitments as ‘legal tools’ for peace-making. This analysis provides essential foundations to map out the ways in which peace settlements and international law can interact. Those forms of interaction become key focal points for the various contributions in the remainder of the volume. The thematic rationale and structure of the volume is explained to orientate the reader in light of its key themes and questions.

The chapter examines three distinct issues related to the sharing of resources in conflict settlements: revenue sharing, shared access to and use of a resource (e.g. water); and shared management arrangements. It draws lessons from how these issues have been handled in federal and devolved governance regimes. It distinguishes between how resource provisions may relate to ending a conflict on the one hand and to promoting longer-term development on the other hand. In finds that relatively few conflict settlements include meaningful provisions on these three aspects of resource sharing. The sharing of revenues, or of access to a resource, is easier to resolve than sharing of management, though there can still be important engagement of local and regional communities and governments in the decision-making process. Moreover, there are established guidelines on good resource and revenue management, including in devolved contexts, that should be considered in peace settlements.

While third states and international organisations often co-sign peace agreements in the capacity of witnesses or guarantors, little is understood of the legal consequences flowing from these roles. The chapter aims to fill this gap. First, it highlights that the mere designation of witness or guarantor leads to few consequences. Second, it analyses how specific third-party rights and obligations are established and conceptualised under VCLT rules, extended by analogy to intra-state peace agreements. Third, it provides a brief illustration of common third-party rights and obligations in peace agreements. Finally, it examines whether the involvement of third parties can internationalise an intra-state peace agreement, i.e. render it to be governed by international law. Bringing together views from the literature, jurisprudence and the preceding analysis on the structure of third-party rights and obligations, the chapter concludes that such rights and obligations can be internationalised, in a manner that can only extend to the agreement as a whole when inseparable from the rest of the agreement.

Self-determination conflicts have, for a very long time, been considered intractable. Given the apparent zero-sum game character to such conflicts, the only outcomes appear to be victory for either side or interminable conflict. While the post-Cold war era has brought about a further round of self-determination conflicts marked by very high levels of violence and civilian casualties, this period has also led to a significant number of self-determination settlements. In the main, these have been autonomy settlements or examples of federalisation; and are often combined with complex power-sharing arrangements. This practice has contributed considerable wealth to the tool-kit available to construct bespoke, internal settlement options in relation to the numerous secessionist conflicts or controversies around the globe. This chapter considers this settlement practice in light of international legal doctrine on self-determination, and in terms of the constitutional processes and transformations required to craft the particular autonomy, federal, transitional and secessionist solutions, which may be necessary to rejuvenate popular consent for the conflict-affected state going forward.

This chapter examines the relationship between peace treaties and territorial change. Distinguishing peace treaties from other related agreements, it analyses the critical role that peace treaties play in the acquisition of territorial sovereignty following the use of force, both under contemporary and classical international law. In this regard, it maintains that, besides cases of debellatio, conquest alone was never a valid title to territorial sovereignty. Based on the difference of the applicable legal regimes, it distinguishes peace treaties concluded between independent states from those concluded as part of the process of accession of a people to independence, as well as from those concluded with successful secessionist entities. In addition, particular attention is paid to the great variety of territorial clauses contained in peace treaties.

In the context of a difficult transition from war to peace, arrangements aimed at achieving peace (such as power-sharing, including autonomy) may come into tension with human rights (such as non-discrimination or indigenous rights). When this happens, peace and human rights are often unhelpfully characterized as binary or even mutually exclusive. The aim of this chapter is to query this binary characterisation, using three case studies where a particular tension was contested before a court: Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Philippines and El Salvador. The chapter shows that since neither peace, nor (most) human rights are absolute, it is possible to weigh the two against each other; and the tension can be framed in a way that is more conducive to its resolution, by conceptualising peace as a fundamental public purpose, a legitimate aim, and/or a human right, thus internalising it in human rights reasoning, rather than treating it as external.