The Abyei Award: Fitting a Diplomatic Square Peg into a Legal Round Hole

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 555-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARKUS BÖCKENFÖRDE
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Round Hole ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Small Patch ◽  
People's Liberation Army ◽  
People’S Liberation Army ◽  
The Government

AbstractOn 22 July 2009 a Tribunal of five leading international lawyers rendered their award at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), thereby redrawing the boundaries of Abyei, a small patch of land in the centre of Sudan and source of violent conflict throughout recent years. The arbitration was initiated by the two signatories of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that in 2005 brought an end to the longest civil war in Africa. Both parties, the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement, expressed satisfaction with the award, which conceivably saved the CPA from potential collapse. This article examines the legal oddities which accompanied the settlement of the dispute over the Abyei area. It analyses both the referral of the dispute to the PCA through the lens of the Sudanese Constitution and the legal ambiguities of the award itself.

Peacemaking, the SPLM/A’s Political Transition During the Comprehensive Peace Agreement Era and Conflict in the Sudans

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-115
Author(s):  
Benedetta De Alessi
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Military Leadership ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
National Party ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
People's Liberation Army ◽  
People’S Liberation Army

This chapter focuses on the flawed transformation of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLM/A) from a rebel movement into a political organisation during the years of implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Sudan and how that contributed to delivering an unsustainable peace in Sudan and South Sudan. The chapter examines in particular how approaches to peacemaking ignited and then failed to support the war-to-peace transition, and the extent to which the drivers and factors within and outside the movement contributed to that failure. It argues that while the CPA mediators and the SPLM/A negotiators considered the SPLM to be the engine of Sudan’s democratic transition - after two decades of civil war - they did not adequately consider the movement’s structural weaknesses, namely a divisive ideology, a fractured and hierarchal military leadership and weak political institutionalisation that would affect the movement’s transformation into a national party and its ability to bring about the transformation of Sudan.

scholarly journals A persuasive peace: Syrian refugees’ attitudes towards compromise and civil war termination

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Fabbe ◽  
Chad Hazlett ◽  
Tolga Sınmazdemir
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Syrian Refugees ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
War Termination ◽  
Peaceful Settlement ◽  
Critical Phases ◽  
Conflict Termination ◽  
Wartime Experience

Civilians who have fled violent conflict and settled in neighboring countries are integral to processes of civil war termination. Contingent on their attitudes, they can either back peaceful settlements or support warring groups and continued fighting. Attitudes toward peaceful settlement are expected to be especially obdurate for civilians who have been exposed to violence. In a survey of 1,120 Syrian refugees in Turkey conducted in 2016, we use experiments to examine attitudes towards two critical phases of conflict termination – a ceasefire and a peace agreement. We examine the rigidity/flexibility of refugees’ attitudes to see if subtle changes in how wartime losses are framed or in who endorses a peace process can shift willingness to compromise with the incumbent Assad regime. Our results show, first, that refugees are far more likely to agree to a ceasefire proposed by a civilian as opposed to one proposed by armed actors from either the Syrian government or the opposition. Second, simply describing the refugee community’s wartime experience as suffering rather than sacrifice substantially increases willingness to compromise with the regime to bring about peace. This effect remains strong among those who experienced greater violence. Together, these results show that even among a highly pro-opposition population that has experienced severe violence, willingness to settle and make peace are remarkably flexible and dependent upon these cues.

scholarly journals Using Power-Sharing to Win a War: The Implementation of the Lomé Agreement in Sierra Leone

2009 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helga Malmin Binningsbø ◽  
Kendra Dupuy
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
United Front ◽  
The Government

To end the civil war in Sierra Leone the government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) signed a peace agreement guaranteeing power-sharing in July 1999. Such power-sharing is a widely used, often recommended political arrangement to overcome deep divisions between groups. However, scholars disagree on whether power-sharing causes peace, or, on the contrary, causes continuing violence. One reason for this is the literature's tendency to neglect how power-sharing is actually put into place. But post-agreement implementation is essential if we are to judge the performance of power-sharing. Therefore, we investigate the role played by power-sharing in terminating the civil war in Sierra Leone. We argue that the government was able to use the peace agreement to pursue its goal of ending the war through marginalising the RUF.

scholarly journals Maoist Combatants’ Narratives: Partisan Attachment to Post-truce Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 31-40
Author(s):  
Khangendra Acharya
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Armed Group ◽  
People's Liberation Army ◽  
People’S Liberation Army ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Volunteer Group

Ten-year long war led by Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [hereafter CPN (M)] from February 1996 to November 2006 has been understood as one of the most violent times in Nepali history. The armed wing of CPN (M), People’s Liberation Army (PLA) formed in 2001, was the armed group combating in the war front. Prior to the formation of PLA, CPN(M) had set up its armed groups differently: they had three-tier structure in 1994 that comprised combatant group, security group and volunteer group, which was transformed in 1997 into Guerrilla Squad, and in 1997 into Guerrilla Platoon. Subsequent transformations were Guerrilla Company in 1999 and Guerilla Battalion in 2000. All these groups were involved in armed actions of various magnitudes including selected annihilation, sabotage, ambush, raids and attacks.When the peace truce, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), was agreed, CPN (M) claimed that the party had 32,000 People’s Liberation Army members, around 20,000 of whom were verified by the United Nations (UN).

Challenges of Regulating Non-International Armed Conflicts – an Examination of Ongoing Trends in South Sudan’s Civil War

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 414-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuyang Harriet Logo Mulukwat
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
The Government

The conflict in South Sudan became the only viable violent way of expressing underlying discontentment with the style of governance adopted by the incumbent government and unresolved issues from the 1991 split which occurred when Dr. Riak Machar, one of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (splm/a) leaders at the time, now turned rebel leader, fell out with Dr. John Garang, the chairman of the splm/a. The split, notably referred to as the “Nassir split”, led communities from both the Dinka and Nuer tribes to turn against each other. The referendum, a consequence of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (cpa) between the government in Khartoum, Sudan, and the splm/a, led to an overwhelming vote for secession, later paving way for the subsequent independence of South Sudan in 2011. The existing tension took on a violent expression. The article analyses occurrences the splm/a command pursued on a secessionist agenda in the 21 years of armed struggle and the attainment of independence on the 9 July 2011. It further denotes the insurgents’ pursuit of armed confrontation and the government’s response to the belligerents’ actions, while providing a genesis of the belligerence and laws governing non–international armed conflicts.

Who Wins, Who Loses, Who Negotiates Peace in Civil Wars: Does Regime Type Matter?

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 482-498
Author(s):  
Anup Phayal ◽  
T David Mason ◽  
Mehmet Gurses
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The State ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Negotiated Settlement ◽  
Peace Research ◽  
Conflict Duration ◽  
Regime Types ◽  
The Government ◽  
Competing Risk Models

Abstract Previous research has shown that the outcome of a civil war is related to conflict duration: military victory by either the government or the rebels occurs early if it occurs at all, and the longer a civil war lasts, the more likely it is to end in a negotiated settlement. The models of civil war duration and outcome that have produced these findings are built on characteristics of the civil war and less on attributes of the state itself, other than where the state lies on the Polity autocracy-democracy scale. We propose that how civil wars end varies not only between democracies and authoritarian regimes but among the different authoritarian regime types identified by Geddes, Wright, and Franz. The distinguishing attributes of these regime types—democracy, one-party, personalist, military, monarchical—should lead to different likelihood in defeating a rebel movement, being defeated by a rebel movement, and negotiating a peace agreement with a rebel movement. Results from a series of competing-risk models using the Uppsala–Peace Research Institute Oslo Armed Conflict Dataset demonstrate support for our claim that how civil wars end is partly a function of the characteristics of the regime.

scholarly journals Aid Targeting in Post Conflict Nepal

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Binetti ◽  
Martin C. Steinwand
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Peace Negotiations ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Government ◽  
Economic Need ◽  
Conflict Period

International aid plays an important role in the reconstruction of war-torn societies after the end of civil war, but its effectiveness depends on whether aid reaches the neediest recipients. We study how power sharing in Nepal's post-conflict transition affected the political capture of aid. We argue that despite the explicit inclusion of disadvantaged groups in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement from 2006 and the Interim Constitution, regions that neither aligned with the Maoist rebels nor the government during the civil war remained politically disadvantaged. A possible causal mechanism is the low threat potential of non-combatant groups, which results in under-representation during peace negotiations and in post-conflict institutions. We present statistical evidence that districts in which neither the government nor the Maoist rebels (CPN(M)) had political support during the conflict receive systematically less aid during the post-conflict period, regardless of economic need or damage caused by fighting. At the same time, support for the CPN(M) during the conflict is a significant predictor for higher post-conflict aid flows, but only in times when the CPN(M) holds government office.

scholarly journals The MoA-AD Debacle – An Analysis of Individuals’ Voices, Provincial Propaganda and National Disinterest

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Williams
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Stepping Stone ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Government ◽  
Peace Negotiation ◽  
The Way

For nearly forty years a violent conflict has been raging in Mindanao where the Moros are fighting for independence from the Philippine state. On August 5th 2008 the peace negotiation panels of the Government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front were set to sign a Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD), a final stepping stone on the way to a comprehensive peace agreement. However, a well-organised wave of protest swept from Christian settlers in Mindanao to the Supreme Court in Manila which declared the agreement unconstitutional. This paper presents a chronology of events surrounding the debate, analyses the arguments used in support and opposition of the MoA-AD and searches for causes of its demise, before looking at lessons to be learned for the future, especially regarding what President Arroyo can achieve before leaving office this year and what will be left to her successor.

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