Global Fragmentation and Peacemaking: Lessons from Non-Western Powers and their Conflict Management

Hosted by the Scottish Council of Global Affairs (SCGA) and the PeaceRep consortium

This panel will present findings of a multi-partner project on global fragmentations of peace approaches, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). The Global Transitions project – spearheaded by Edinburgh and St Andrews universities, both partners in SCGA – is exploring motivations and approaches of non-Western interveners and how their approaches ‘land’ on the ground in select countries. A growing selection of findings from the project is published under a new series Global Transitions.

The event will feature regional and thematic experts working on the Global Transitions project. They will share key findings and policy recommendations from their ongoing work, with plenty of opportunity for discussion and questions.

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The management of conflict and political transitions today is starkly different from what existed a decade or two ago. We are seeing dramatic changes in conflict dynamics and an infusion of new approaches by a more diverse set of actors.

• In Syria, the Geneva peace talks conducted under the auspices of the United Nations, have been supplemented by Astana talks, sponsored by Russia, Turkey, and Iran.
• In Sudan, the influence of the Troika – Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States – which played pivotal roles in the Darfur conflict since 2003 and in the 2005 peace agreement leading to the independence of South Sudan, has waned. The two neighbours – Egypt and Ethiopia – and the Gulf states are emerging as the main actors in Sudan’s current transition.
• In April 2022, President Macron announced the withdrawal of French troops supporting political transition in Mali. French priorities were deemed incompatible with those of the Mali military government in place since 2020. Soon after, Mali authorities invited the Russian company Wagner to help in their fight against the jihadist groups. A couple of years earlier, a similar story unfolded in the Central African Republic.
• In Myanmar, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is the main mediator, and China’s influence in conflict management is central.
• Who will emerge as the dominant mediator in Ukraine remains to be seen, but several non-Western powers, including Turkey, are seen as pivotal in ensuring a successful process.

The era of liberal dominance in peace and transition management is unequivocally over. A new tapestry of international interveners mean that peace and transition processes have fractured forms of intervention that reflect a fracturing of the global order. These changes raise important questions about how approaches to peace and the nature of the global order are changing in the present, and how they might look in the future.

• How are we seeing the tapestry of international actors involved in peacemaking and peacebuilding change?
• Are new actors proposing new models of peacemaking and peacebuilding? How do these models fit with the prevailing liberal one?
• How is the fractured nature of interventions in peace processes changing the prospects for peace and the peace settlements that emerge?
• What motivates non-Western interveners in their peacemaking activities?
• What differences can we see between regional and global interveners?
• How are local actors navigating this new landscape, and how is this shaping conflict outcomes and post-conflict governance?
• What influence do these developments have on the global international institutions and liberal norms that have underpinned the post-Cold War order?

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This panel event will be followed by a drinks reception.

If you have any queries about this event, please send an email to info@peacerep.org.