Category: Blog

This special session on the Peace Treaty Initiative at European University Institute´s State of the Union summit brings together Sarah Nouwen, member of the initiative’s Expert Advisory Group; Mark Freeman, IFIT’s executive director; Barney Afako, IFIT fellow; and Fleur Ravensbergen, co-founder of Dialogue Advisory Group. They will discuss today’s international peace architecture, look into the incentives to make negotiations a more attractive and safer choice for governments when facing conflicts, and assess the value of the Peace Treaty Initiative for the EU.

Date: Friday, May 6th from 3:00 – 4:00pm CET

IFIT’s Peace Treaty Initiative aims to develop new international law to incentivise and support peace negotiations. Governments, multilateral organisations, academia, faith-based entities, NGOs and think tanks from around the world will be invited to shape the content of an indicative draft of the proposed treaty through participation in thematic and regional workshops and outreach events.

As part of the process, IFIT is holding a special session at this year’s Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development entitled: ‘Building the International Law of Peace Negotiation’.

With the expert participation of Binalakshmi Nepram, General Oscar Naranjo, Professor Sarah Nouwen and Mark Freeman, the event will involve a panel discussion where attendees will learn first-hand about the origins and concepts underlying the Peace Treaty Initiative, and have a unique opportunity to examine and discuss the current indicative text for the proposed treaty.

Date: Wednesday, May 5th from 15:30 – 17:30 Stockholm time

Registration: To attend the session, create a profile on the Stockholm Forum website, select ‘Building the International Law of Peace Negotiation’, and click the ‘Register’ button.

NOVEMBER 11, 2020 | This Remembrance Day, the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT) launched a new global initiative to help develop an international law of peace negotiation. Filling a critical gap in the existing laws of war – which mainly regulate how to fight – the Peace Treaty Initiative aims to facilitate global consideration of a purpose-built international legal framework to incentivise warring parties to choose the pathway of negotiation, in order to prevent armed conflicts in the first place and to end them once underway.

“Needless suffering and destruction could be prevented if peace negotiation was more attractive at the start, more flexible and organised in the middle, and more secure at the end,” said Mark Freeman, Executive Director at IFIT. “This initiative to develop the first-ever, multilateral treaty on peace negotiations will draw on decades of lessons in negotiation to make international law more directly helpful in addressing the hard choices involved in peace talks, helping to bring peace one step closer.”

Governments, multilateral organisations, academia, faith-based entities, NGOs and think tanks from around the world will be invited to shape the content of the treaty through participation in thematic and regional workshops and outreach events. Additional expert interviews and a public comment process will also inform the future content of the treaty.

The launch of this initiative follows three years of private research, expert interviews, and global consultations by IFIT and its partners. These include a high-level International Law and Peace Summit hosted by IFIT in Barcelona, Spain in July 2019, and the formation of an Expert Advisory Group to guide the Peace Treaty Initiative.

For more information or to arrange an interview:

Eleanor Weber-Ballard
+44 781 77 77 114
[email protected]

To mark the 11 November 2020 launch of the Peace Treaty Initiative, Mark Freeman (IFIT Executive Director), Barney Afako (IFIT Alex Boraine Fellow) and Mariana Casij Peña (IFIT Research Associate) participated in a special 20-minute discussion of the key ideas behind this far-reaching global effort to develop the first-ever treaty on peace negotiations.