Category: Initiative on Apex Court Appointments
NEWS RELEASE
IFIT and Paris IAS release new “fast-track negotiation” model in groundbreaking White Paper
Paris and Barcelona (17 January 2025)
The dominant but slow-moving negotiation model used for preventing and resolving situations of large-scale violence is a mismatch for most modern conflict and crisis situations. A new model is needed and today the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT) and the Institut d’Études Avancées de Paris (Paris IAS) are pleased to release the groundbreaking White Paper, “Fast-Track Negotiation: A 21st Century Paradigm for Negotiating Peace and Stability”.
“In today’s fragmented conflict and crisis landscape, we cannot afford to negotiate as though time is on our side. It’s not,” says Mark Freeman, Founder and Executive Director of IFIT and author of the White Paper. “We need to expand the toolbox of conflict resolution and incorporate a negotiation model that offers more balance between process and outcome, idealism and realism, product and market. Fast-track negotiation aims to do just that.”
The arrival of fast-track negotiation adds new options without removing existing ones. It offers an organised set of principles, practices and assumptions purpose-built to facilitate greater negotiation speed and pragmatism and thus help to produce more agreements and restore the missing utility of negotiation in preventing and ending situations of large-scale violence.
“The discomforting truth is that today’s dominant but slow paradigm of negotiation rarely produces a settlement, thus eviscerating the underlying promise that legitimacy of process produces sustainability of implementation,” says Freeman. “It’s time to return to first principles by recreating a model that prioritises the reaching of settlements. It’s time to acknowledge that sustainability is a vacant ideal in the absence of negotiated outcomes.”
The paper is available for download here.
For speaking engagements and media requests or to book a fast-track training session, please contact [email protected].
About IFIT. The Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT) is an international non-governmental organisation with peace projects worldwide. Often working behind the scenes to bridge political and social divides, IFIT’s 350+ local and global experts are recognised leaders on negotiation and transition. More information: https://ifit-transitions.org/.
To read more about the Fast-Track Negotiation Initiative in particular: https://ifit-transitions.org/initiative-on-fast-track-negotiation/.
About Paris IAS. The Institut d’Études Avancées de Paris (Paris IAS) is a global research centre comprising 14 universities and scientific institutions in the Paris region and supported by the City of Paris, the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation and the European Commission. More information: https://www.paris-iea.fr/en/
About Mark Freeman. Mark Freeman is the Founder and Executive Director of IFIT. A leading expert in political transitions and high-level peace negotiations with more than 30 years of experience, Mr Freeman is regularly consulted for advice on crisis management and conflict resolution. He has worked in countries including Ukraine, Venezuela, Colombia, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Bosnia, Burundi, DRC, The Gambia, El Salvador, Kenya, Mauritania, Morocco, Nepal, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe. His most recent book is Negotiating Transitional Justice (Cambridge, 2020), which draws upon his years as an adviser inside the Colombian peace talks in Havana.
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In May 2024 IFIT organized the convening “Worlds Apart” together with the Ford Foundation and media partner Economist Impact.
Here’s a mix of original articles and videos on overcoming polarization in divided societies, all of which are available on this special webpage.
Articles
🔸 Ten ideas on how to overcome polarization, by Mark Freeman and Hilary Pennington
🔸 Finding common
ground: Tackling polarization must begin with civil discourse, by Economist Impact
🔸 Exclusion and polarization in Northern Ireland, with Monica McWilliams
🔸 Overcoming war and polarization in Colombia, with Óscar Naranjo
🔸 Healing divides in Tunisia, with Ouided Bouchamaoui
🔸 Exploring the roles and attitudes of young people in a polarized world
Videos
🔹 The power of listening
Polarization: perspectives
🔹 Esther Perel
🔹 Anne-Marie Slaughter
🔹 john a. powell
🔹 Krista Tippett
🔹 Marco Lima
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Following three years of comprehensive research and worldwide consultations carried out against a worrying backdrop of judicial capture and polarisation in many countries, IFIT is honoured to announce the launch of the Constitution Hill Global Guidelines on Apex Court Appointments (in English, Arabic, French, Spanish and Portuguese).
Overview:
There are many important national, regional and international principles and guidelines on the selection and appointment of judges. What has been missing is a set of baseline principles tailored to the unique role and characteristics of Apex Courts and customisable to the unique conditions of diverse country and/or regional contexts.
To fill the gap, IFIT – in partnership with Constitutional Transitions and a High-Level Advisory Panel composed of distinguished judges and jurists from a wide spectrum of legal systems – established the Initiative on Apex Court Appointments in 2021. The Constitution Hill Global Guidelines on Apex Court Appointments mark the final outcome and will be the subject of a global dissemination, engagement and uptake process starting this fall.
About the Guidelines:
The Guidelines are entirely original but draw from a range of key sources including: (i) a detailed IFIT study of existing global and regional principles on judicial appointments and judicial independence; (ii) a comprehensive survey of national standards; (iii) in-depth interviews conducted with the initiative’s High-Level Panel members and with additional judges and jurists globally; and (iv) early work in the Southern African region from whence the project originated with the support of IFIT’s Zimbabwe Resource Group.
Starting in July 2023, a first draft of the Guidelines was the centrepiece of an expert consultation and feedback process with 100+ leading global and regional legal and judicial institutions, associations and networks. In early 2024, an updated version of the Guidelines passed through a second phase of global consultation and feedback, culminating in a high-level judicial and legal summit held at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, South Africa in May 2024.
Read the Guidelines here.
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The Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT) is pleased to announce the launch of the Initiative on Apex Court Appointments. This special new initiative seeks to build upon existing regional and international principles and guidelines on the selection and appointment of judges, which offer valuable guidance but neglect critical and unique characteristics of apex courts.
An apex court is the highest judicial body on constitutional matters in a given country. It may be a supreme court, a constitutional court, or something else – depending on the legal system. Such courts have a combination of important distinguishing features: for example, they constitute the highest national court on all constitutional matters; they adjudicate in plenary format or in multi-member panels; and they deal regularly with politically-charged cases that have foundational consequences for a country’s democracy and rule of law.
With these and other unique characteristics in mind, the Initiative on Apex Court Appointments seeks to develop and ultimately publish 1) a set of minimum global principles and guidelines on the appointment of judges to such courts, and 2) a parallel set tailored to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region out of which this initiative grew. The work is expected to last up to 18 months and will comprise in-depth research and expert interviews and convenings, both globally and regionally.
The Initiative on Apex Court Appointments is being conducted by IFIT in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Transitions and a High-Level Advisory Panel composed of distinguished judges and jurists from a wide spectrum of legal systems. King & Spalding is providing pro bono research support.
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