Civilian Support to Ceasefires

Civilian Support to Ceasefires

Nicole Carle: Hello and welcome to this video on civilians and civil society support to ceasefires. 

My name is Nicole Carle and I'm a counsel at the Public International Law and Policy Group. Today, I'm pleased to welcome Dr. Yvonne Dutton, a Senior Legal Advisor at the Public International Law and Policy Group, who has agreed to discuss how civilians can support ceasefires. Welcome, Yvonne. 

Dr. Yvonne Dutton: Thank you. 

Change in Civilian Involvement Over Time

Nicole Carle: Now, my first question for you is, how has civilian involvement in ceasefire implementation changed over time? 

Dr. Yvonne Dutton: Well, traditionally, civilians and civil society were excluded from the ceasefire implementation process. Ceasefire implementation was considered a military process, which did not require civilian involvement. This meant that the civilians who often suffered the most from conflict were denied an opportunity to directly contribute to the ceasefire implementation process. 

This is now changing. It is increasingly understood that broadening civilian participation in the ceasefire implementation process can bring many benefits, such as increasing legitimacy and local ownership of the peace transition process, improving the flow of information and access to local expertise, empowering citizens to mobilize politically and, of course, creating a more inclusive peace process.

How Civilians Are Involved in Ceasefire Implementation

Nicole Carle: Staying on their role, can you go into more detail on how civilians are involved in the ceasefire implementation? 

Dr. Yvonne Dutton: Again, civilian involvement has been rare in ceasefire management, and the Joint Military Ceasefire Commission that oversees the ceasefire tends to be composed solely from military actors, and is mainly focused on building connections and capacity within and across the conflict parties.

Civilians often perform an important advocacy role, though, undertaking activities that attempt to push the parties to implement and develop the ceasefire. This would include things like public lobbying efforts, such as street protests and media and education campaigns that would help mobilize the population for the ceasefire implementation processes and then urge the conflict parties to develop and implement agreements that bring a temporary or permanent end to violence.

For example, massive street protests organized by civil society led democratic movement in Nepal in 2005, created a major impetus for the 2005 unilateral ceasefire by Maoist rebels and their rapprochement with political parties against the monarchy led government, which ultimately led to a peace agreement.

Now, civil society also plays an important function raising attention and awareness to the security needs of citizens and local groups. Broadening participation in the ceasefire implementation process increases the chances that the interests of local actors are taken into account in the ceasefire process and any subsequent negotiations on the final peace agreements.

Civilians and civil society also play an important role opening and sustaining communication channels between conflict parties before or during the ceasefire implementation process to build the party's confidence basically in the process. For example, the Interreligious Council of Sierra Leone regularly engaged with the rebels for a united front, RUF, and the government of Sierra Leone from early 1999 to promote confidence building measures such as hostage releases and to remove barriers to peace negotiation. These activities helped pave the way for the implementation of the Lomé ceasefire in May 1999 and the Lomé Peace Accord, which occurred or was assigned two months later.

But perhaps most importantly, civilians now often play a role that is vital to supporting the verification and monitoring mission. Between 1990 and 2018, more than 35 percent of all ceasefire monitoring missions involved support from civil society. And that number is increasing over time. Local actors and civil society organizations take on functions as both lead monitors, and as a compliment to other actors, for example, in the Philippines and Colombia, there have been strong traditions of civilian involvement in ceasefire implementation, which provide examples of, you know, best practices, good practice.

Why Civilians Are Involved in Ceasefire Monitoring

Nicole Carle: You've touched on this a bit now, but can you go into more detail on why we should involve civilians and civil society groups in ceasefire monitoring

Dr. Yvonne Dutton: There are many advantages to involving civil society in these monitoring missions. 

First, the direct involvement of conflict affected communities often offers a ready supply of willing actors with priceless local expertise, civilian protection, and human rights monitoring mechanisms and processes typically predate ceasefire mechanisms and can provide a pool from which to draw seasoned monitors. 

Second, civil society monitors can often draw on their networks, prior experience, and contextual knowledge to gain access to contested areas and facilitate intra and inter party communication. Prior relationships with armed actors, cultural knowledge, and an ability to deploy quickly helps to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of monitoring missions.

And knowledge of the local conflict dynamics and proximity to the population can help civilian monitors to identify and respond to risks of spoiling more effectively. Civil society can also utilize existing networks to collect and disseminate information about compliance. This helps to deter conflict parties from cheating on ceasefires by increasing the reputational cost of non-compliance, especially when parties rely on popular support for their financial and political survival.

Third, in many cases, civilians are drawn from or associated with trusted neutral civil society organizations. However, there can also be benefits of involving civilian groups that are aligned with one of the conflict parties as a means of broadening participation. Civilian groups connected to one of the conflict parties tend to be more acceptable to that actor.

This makes it more challenging for that conflict party to dismiss monitoring reports produced by their associates. The challenge here is then to convince also the parties to accept the involvement of a civilian group that they expect to be biased against them. Finally, involving civilians in the monitoring process can make ceasefires more inclusive and participatory.

For example, increasing opportunities for women to be involved in the process. It can also help to improve relations between local populations and international missions, increasing information, and help to overcome problems that might arise in the reporting of violations to predominantly male missions.

In the Philippines, for example, the Banteay ceasefire group includes all women monitoring teams. Such processes can also expose conflict parties to the benefits of civilian involvement and civilian expertise in security affairs. Now, the extent to which it is possible for civilian society to bring these positive effects to bear depends a lot on the conflict context, and the willingness of the conflict parties to engage with civil society, instead of, or alongside international actors. 

This also includes the civil society space itself, particularly whether it has experience mobilizing around shared political goals, has a good reputation among political actors and citizens, and has relevant technical knowledge related to monitoring. These are important because they would influence civil society monitors ability to draw on various networks and resources.

Challenges

Nicole Carle: Now, I imagine that there must be some challenges associated with involving civil society in this monitoring process. Can you shed light on some recent examples? 

Dr. Yvonne Dutton: Yes, involving civilians and civil society in the ceasefire process can be very dangerous for civilian groups and can come with great personal risk to those involved. It can generate concern from the military and some armed groups who are reluctant to legitimize civilian involvement in security matters. Given that conflict parties might often oppose monitoring work, these activities can be inherently quite risky. Civilian monitors are often vulnerable targets and often lack the protection that would be afforded to other monitoring actors.

Civilians and civil society also have less capacity to push the parties towards compliance. If conflict parties lack the political will to implement a ceasefire, civilian monitors often lack concrete ways to follow up on ceasefire violations, in particular, if there is not a clear connection to the ceasefire management body.

Civilian monitors can also suffer from a lack of diversity and the low skill and training of monitors, which could then obviously undermine the monitoring process. A prominent role for civilian monitors can also signal a lack of international commitment to the process that can therefore have downstream effects on compliance.

Nicole Carle: These are important to highlight, so I appreciate you going through them. Anything else to share or add on civilian involvement in these processes?

Dr. Yvonne Dutton: Well again, I mentioned this briefly, the movement towards civilian and civil society monitoring is actually growing. Ceasefire implementation in general and ceasefire monitoring in particular can really benefit from a greater involvement of civil society.

And so, it's therefore essential to understand civil society monitors distinct strengths in ceasefire monitoring and to also consider, as we just discussed, how to best address their limitations.

Nicole Carle: Okay, then. Well, that brings us to the end of our discussion on civilians and civil society to support ceasefires and the end of our module on ceasefires themselves.

Thank you so much for joining.