Bringing Parties Back to the Table

Bringing Parties Back to the Table

Nicole Carle: Hello, and welcome to this module on strategies to bring parties back to the table. This session is intended to overview key aspects of preparing a delegation for negotiations. My name is Nicole Carle. I'm a counselor for the Public International Law and Policy Group, and today I am pleased to welcome Matt Simpson, Senior Peace Fellow at PILPG, and also a former Chief Legal Advisor for the Darfuri Delegation to the Doha Negotiations, and Dr. Paul Williams, Founder and President of PILPG. Welcome both. 

Matt Simpson: Thanks so much, Nicole. 

Dr. Paul Williams: Thanks, Nicole. It's great to be here. 

Negotiation Breakdown

Nicole Carle: To start us off, Matt, I'll turn to you first. In conflict settings, negotiations may break down and mediators and other third parties may need to seek ways to bring parties back into the negotiation room. I imagine that this is challenging in most conflict contexts. Do you have anything to share on this?

Matt Simpson: Yeah, absolutely. And I completely agree. Any time talks break down and you're trying to bring people back to the table, it can be a real challenge. The first thing to do is to try and isolate to the extent that you can. Why did the talks break down? Why did they not continue? Was there something structural going on in the larger global community? Was there something specific within the conflict militarily or otherwise? Was there something in the international community's support or commitment? Or other reasons, whether it be a global pandemic or otherwise?

So, depending on why and when the talks broke apart, bringing people back to the table can be an incredibly difficult thing to do. Assuming the talks broke down because the negotiations weren't going well or weren't going to reach a conclusion, one of the things that you're going to have to do is try and help both parties understand why returning to the table is better for them than the alternatives that they're currently participating in. Whether that's a return to violence and military action that they're embarking upon right now, whether it's perhaps shadow negotiations outside of the context of the larger, more formal talks, or some other status quo that doesn't involve the two parties actively negotiating and with the goal of achieving a solution to the conflict. 

So, you really have to struggle to find that common reason. It doesn't have to be the same reason for both parties. For instance, if one party is much more militarily strong than the other, sometimes they'll need a different incentive than those that are weaker. And you just need to help work with each of the parties to make sure that they understand why they would want to come back to the table.

Value in Building Inter-Party Relationships Prior to the Formal Negotiations 

Nicole Carle: Of course, and there is often a long history of distrust between parties to negotiations, and when these negotiations break down for whatever reason, parties may be reluctant to return. Paul, can I go to you now and ask, is there any value in building inter party relations prior to the formal negotiations to attempt to avoid this breakdown that Matt's describing in the first place?

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah, Nicole, I think what I've seen mediators do in the past is have the parties do many pre negotiations. So, they'll have conversations with the parties where they'll agree upon a declaration of intent, a one page joint communique declaration of intent where the parties agree to begin negotiations, negotiate in good faith, a lot of feel good language. But, the parties negotiate on this feel good language where everybody wins in this declaration of intent to negotiate or a joint communique, and they can begin to develop a pattern of interaction with the other party, and they can begin to build trust on issues that don't matter. Basically, we're going to go negotiate. 

They can then move into a pre negotiation on the rules of procedure, and these do matter and they are important, but nobody externally is closely watching you're not talking about, you know, self determination, dependence, power sharing, natural resources, things like that. You're talking about the order of speaking and the venue and who can do press conferences and things along those lines. So, it's a real negotiation, and it's important, but it's not subjected to a lot of the external pressures that Matt was negotiating. So, you can begin to build up some momentum there and then you can look to negotiate a one or two page statement of principles.

Now, we always caution our clients to be very focused on those principles because they can create a framework which can constrain what you might want to negotiate once the negotiations are up and running, but oftentimes they feel good principles. They're human rights principles, things along those lines. So you can build that pre negotiation momentum again by negotiating in phases. 

Pre-Negotiation Talks

Nicole Carle: Thanks, Paul. And Matt, I'm going to go back to you now, maybe we can draw on your Darfur experiences. Can you tell us about pre negotiation talks and how they may help to encourage parties back into the formal negotiation room, should they have broken down?

Matt Simpson: Sure, so trying to have pre negotiation talks, first of all, there are many talks within themselves. And that's important for everybody to remember, is that you are asking the parties to come back together in one form or another, obviously not necessarily the full delegation and not with the broad scope, and it's important to communicate that to the people that you're trying to engage. And so, pre negotiation talks really the point of which are to help verify each party's commitment to the negotiations. You want to try and build some confidence between the two parties. And then, it's the really boring stuff like determining the logistics of the process. Who's going to be there? How long are we going to aim for? What topics are we going to cover? Who's going to mediate? I think in particular, those logistics don't necessarily get enough attention, and they can be deemed to be really operational and boring, but ultimately are critically important to making sure the process runs as smoothly as possible.

And it gives either the leaders or whoever has chosen to participate in those pre negotiation talks an opportunity to sit face to face and open a dialogue with the opposing party, which hopefully starts to build a little bit of momentum into the larger negotiations and gives them the confidence that they should indeed bring their larger delegations back to the table and engaging in formal negotiations.

And for instance, in Darfur, we saw that happen where the United Nations and African Union held pre negotiation talks with certain rebel groups that had not participated in the negotiations that led to the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement. And so the Darfur Peace Agreement was signed in 2011 with only one of the lead rebel groups that had participated in the talks actually signing the document.

And recognizing this, and ultimately recognizing when that document was not capable of implementation, the UN and the African Union met extensively with several of the other rebel groups who had decided not to sign the peace agreement and some that even had chosen not to participate in the peace process itself, to try and get their commitment to participate. And that effort was really important to show those parties, those rebel groups, why they should participate. What was the goal of those talks? What would they look like? How would they be different from some of the failed or troubled negotiations that had happened before? And really allowed those rebel groups to come together in a meaningful way to try and lay the groundwork for their engagement in successful negotiations. 

Confidence-Building Measures 

Nicole Carle: Now, you mentioned how these pre negotiation talks can help build confidence and trust between the parties. Can you say more on other confidence building measures and how pre negotiation talks can be used to initiate them?

Matt Simpson: Certainly, confidence building measures come in any number of different forms. First of all, having two parties sitting in the same room, recognizing the humanity of the people that sit across from you that they are human beings as well and that they are not the villains and the demons that the press and others might have made them out to be. That's a really important piece. 

Anytime you can sit two people in the room across from each other and have them recognize each other as human beings, I think it breaks down many of the barriers to a successful peace process. It also allows you to find what we would call the low hanging fruit or areas of commonality that exist that nobody's willing to admit to.

These talks are usually quite confidential. You're not necessarily coming out and publishing a statement saying this is what we've agreed to, or this is what we're talking about. They're treated, the rhythm and the communication strategy around pre negotiation talks are very different. They can be individual, too. Sometimes it's not sitting both people across the room from each other, but having one on one sessions with different parties, and showing that the mediation, which often struggles with credibility that the mediation is indeed unbiased and looking to help effect and play as active and valuable a role as they can in resolution to the peace process.

Those are all different ways that confidence building can happen through these pre negotiation talks. 

Publicity and Privacy of Pre-Negotiation Talks

Nicole Carle: Thanks for walking through those. And Paul, I have a question for you now on these. Can pre negotiation talks, such as the ones that Matt has been describing, ever be public endeavors, or are they always kept private?

Dr. Paul Williams: Sometimes they can be public. Most negotiation occurs privately within press conferences or some mechanisms for transparency. But, making the outcomes public I think is really helpful and really important because you're not only building trust among the negotiating parties, but you're building trust between their constituencies and them, and between the constituencies of the different parties. 

And the constituencies need to be brought along. The mediator needs to help bring the constituencies along as they bring the delegations along as well. So, if you're just bringing the delegations closer and closer together, but you're not doing it in a public manner or sharing the information or sharing the outcomes, the constituencies are still going to be polar opposites, and then when you announce an agreement, the constituencies are going to say, wait a second, we've been sold out by our negotiators, we didn't get everything we wanted to get. And so, having this notion of indicating successes and building trust, you want to have a knock on effect between the constituencies so they build that same level of trust 

Matt Simpson: And just quickly to add to that, Nicole, I think that's a really important point about identifying the concessions because parties are so often entrenched in their specific positions, and sometimes it's actually quite difficult to try and identify why and how you could possibly negotiate when you're dealing with war crimes or other crimes against humanity or really just horrific conflict situations.

It's hard to identify how and where you could possibly concede even an inch. And so, showing the global community, showing your consent, your constituencies, that concessions are being made, I think, is a really important piece to say, look, we can continue to fight aggressively and zealously for our people in our position, but that doesn't mean that we can't be conciliatory at times and find common ground, because ultimately that's what it's going to take to find a positive resolution to the to the process.

Identifying Common Ground

Nicole Carle: Yes, thanks for adding that because we've been talking a lot about building trust and building confidence and these concessions are important for both parties or however many parties are present to a negotiation. Can we stay on this theme and talk about the role of identifying other common ground that can be found as a means of bringing parties back from active conflict to the negotiating table?

Dr. Paul Williams: I can jump in there on that, Nicole. In most instances, the parties have outlined their hardline goals, their hardline objectives and their positions. But as we've talked about before, if the mediator can identify the underlying interests;why parties have those positions, they may find that there's actually some commonalities among their interests. They just interpret their interests a certain way to come up with position A and the other party position Z. 

But, a comprehensive understanding of the interests of the parties can allow the mediator to help put something on the table, that's a P or a Q or an R that's somewhere in the middle that the parties could agree to. And so, it's really helpful for the mediator to be doing negotiation simulations, red teaming of both of the parties, and thinking through not only how do they just split the difference between the positions, but how do they craft a provision or an outcome that meets those common interests that they may have?

And some of the obvious ones are, international economic assistance. No matter what party you are, if you're in a zone of conflict, international economic assistance; when Matt and I were doing the Doha negotiations, there was a common interest in the billion dollars that Qatar was going to be providing for the reconstruction of Darfur.

Both parties were quite keen on that as well as coming off of sanctions lists and improving trade relationships, things along those lines, both parties will have a common interest. So, if you want to bring parties back to a table or keep them at the table, the mediator can have quite an impact by moving on those common interests. But you need to know what they are, you need to think through them so that you can implement that. 

Adapting to Changing Situations 

Nicole Carle: Thanks, Paul. My last question changes gears a little bit, but I want to ask, in conflict settings, the situation can change unexpectedly, if not rapidly; how can changes in the dynamics of the conflict bring parties back to the negotiation table? Matt, I'll turn to you first and Paul for any thoughts. 

Matt Simpson: Sure, certainly changes in dynamics happen all the time. It is just a part of what you need to be prepared to deal with. We are not negotiating in a vacuum. You can't isolate issues and negotiate them in a vacuum and pretend that the real world isn't happening around you.

And so, sometimes these changes in the situation can cause talks to fall apart, and sometimes, it can also allow things to change perhaps in a positive direction and bring people back to the table. Domestic, political, and military power sometimes shifts while peace negotiations are going on, hopefully a ceasefire is in place, but even when they are, it's not necessarily mean the end or a true cease of conflict and hostilities.

There's a lot of fighting that can happen and a shift in that power might motivate one party or the other to come back to the table. There may be domestic elections or other variables domestically that have changed, that haven't gone well, from one party or another. And that really can shift the balance of power and perhaps motivate people to come back to the table.

Catastrophic events can also really have an impact on parties' willingness to negotiate. Again, it can result or cause the breaking apart of a peace negotiation, but it can also bring people back to the table.

One example is the tsunami in Aceh in 2004. That shined a great deal of international scrutiny on that region, and humanitarian assistance that was needed to assist the survivors of the tsunami required a lot of international involvement and a lot of international attention to the region. And so that had a positive impact on bringing people back to the table and encouraging rebels and others to play nice and to participate more actively in the peace negotiations. 

A final example is international political influences. The Darfur peace talks themselves saw many different international political influences have a dramatic effect on the talks themselves.

One negative, unfortunately, was the Arab Spring when many of the rebels decided that it was preferential for them to break from the talks. But then when Gaddafi in particular had fallen and some of the other conflicts in the region had settled down a little bit, The cooling of tensions in those regions allowed the Darfuris to refocus and come back to the table.

And so, the influence of the Arab Spring, both the start and then, I won't say the end, but the cooling off of some of the activity, especially in neighboring countries, brought the Darfuris back to the table. And then, political government, the changes in political governments and dynamics.

When we look at the impact of the leaders at the United Nations, at the African Union, the American presidency and related supporting governments, when we look at the turnover or changes in those, sometimes that turnover has energized participants in conflicts to come back to the table.

And so, I think that a really key piece is to keep an eye on those international political influences. It can be a more positive change in the direction of bringing folks back to the table.

Nicole Carle: Absolutely. Paul, anything to add on this or specifically how actions by other international or foreign actors might also influence parties to come back to the table?

Dr. Paul Williams: I would only mention one additional observation, and that is that sometimes the international community will engage in a humanitarian intervention or the use of force, and that will prompt a party back to the table. 

The Dayton Peace Accords were the result of the NATO air campaign over the summer of 95. The Kosovo negotiations or the creation of resolution 1244 was because of humanitarian intervention. You've had other instances where the international community has come together to use force to stop an aggressor, and then to push that aggressor into the negotiations, coupled with arms embargoes, economic sanctions, other actions by the international community to either help one party defends itself or limit the ability of an aggressor party to carry out its its aggression.

Conclusion

Nicole Carle: Okay. And with that, it brings us to the end of today's discussion on bringing parties back to the table. Thank you both for joining. And in other videos, we will discuss more aspects of the negotiation process. Thanks again.