29 January 2026 – Earlier this month, we sat down with IFIT executive director Mark Freeman to talk about the origins of the Peace Treaty Initiative.
At the heart of this groundbreaking initiative are the Draft Articles of the Convention for the Support, Protection and Acceleration of Conflict Prevention and Resolution: a 21st century peace and security treaty that Freeman began work on nearly ten years ago and that later served as the centrepiece of a years-long global consultation process.
“Until now, the world has lacked a treaty designed to increase the chances of negotiation and mediation success,” Freeman explained. “This new Convention will change that forever, making international law less of a hindrance and more of a help to the cause of peace deals and political settlements.”
As explained in the video, the treaty process has had numerous critical phases and today is being steered toward adoption through a special partnership between IFIT and the Republic of Kenya.
“More than 80 years after the adoption of the UN Charter and the corpus of international law that followed, the world is ready for a refresh and a reset,” Freeman observed. “Helpfully, as the new treaty demonstrates, this can be done by adding valuable new options for peace and security without taking away what already exists.”
You may also be interested in
Negotiations with organized crime groups occur more often than realized, and raise complex questions of ethics, practice and policy. Currently, law provides few incentives for States to choose the path of negotiation, and thus the political costs and moral hazards remain very high and a mano dura (“firm hand”) approach prevails. This paper examines some of the challenges faced by those who in good faith might initiate or participate in negotiations with such groups, offering an assessment of how those challenges can be mitigated and an inquiry, in particular, into how law and policy might be improved or reimagined to make such negotiation more feasible and effective in contexts of armed conflict or other situations of violence.
Originally published in International Review of the Red Cross.