Definitive Ceasefires

Definitive Ceasefires

​Nicole Carle: Hello and welcome to this video on definitive ceasefires. My name is Nicole Carl and I'm a counsel at the Public International Law and Policy Group, or PILPG. Today I'm so pleased to welcome Dr. Paul Williams, President and Co-founder of PILPG, as well as Dr. Gregory Noone, Executive Director of PILPG, who both agreed to discuss definitive ceasefires with me today. So welcome both. 

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

Dr. Greg Noone: Pleasure to be here, Nicole. 

Definition

Nicole Carle: Kicking us off, Paul, I'm going to start with you. What is a definitive ceasefire? 

Nicole, a definitive ceasefire is an agreement among the parties to permanently stop the conflict. And it usually is woven into a peace agreement or peace agreement writ large.

It's tied to security sector reform, DDR, power sharing, the other elements, but basically you move from a cessation of hostilities to a preliminary ceasefire, and then during the negotiations and the peace process, you come to agreement upon a permanent ceasefire where the parties begin to lay down their weapons, separate their forces, contone their forces, and demobilize them.

Dr. Greg Noone: And as we previously discussed, Nicole, over the course of the negotiations, several incremental ceasefire agreements may occur and be implemented in sequence with each ceasefire addressing specific objectives and establishing the basis for the next steps. So, the definitive ceasefire is intended to be the final step in the formal negotiation process.

Nicole Carle: Greg, can you stay on that and say a bit more about how these definitive ceasefire agreements differ from perhaps more preliminary ones? 

Dr. Greg Noone: The central component of a definitive ceasefire is the final status of forces agreement. This sets out the terms under which the state security structures will be adapted, which forces will be demobilized, or which force will be integrated into the state military or security forces. So, often this includes the details of disarmament, demobilization, reintegration, commonly referred to as DDR, and some details on the future security sector reform, another abbreviation we often use, SSR.

On occasions, it can also create bodies to handle future negotiations on the adaption of the security sector. Though each definitive ceasefire will be different, it will always respond to unique contextual factors in which it's negotiated, but it often includes common elements. For example, many definitive ceasefires include some agreement on the size and the composition of the army, the nature of the revised command structure, what the chain of command is going to look like, the method of integrating the non-state forces fighters into the military, and an agreement on the rank and the compensation of former insurgents in joining the new armed forces.

Nicole Carle: Paul, anything you want to add? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah, I would just add that when dealing with a permanent ceasefire, the role of third parties is crucial oftentimes because of the lack of trust, because of the nature of an armed conflict of violence, oftentimes you need third party monitors or peacekeeping forces or technical experts that have the expertise in security sector reform or demilitarization, demobilization, and reintegration.

It's also hugely expensive. It's hugely expensive to fight a war. It's also hugely expensive to end a war, and third parties can play a crucial role in funding the implementation of a permanent ceasefire. Thank you very much. 

How a Definitive Ceasefire Fits Into Peace Process

Nicole Carle: Thank you. I now want to move into the peace process at large and ask, where does a definitive ceasefire fit into it?

Paul, I'll stay with you again. 

Dr. Paul Williams:So, Nicole, you'll find that the elements of a permanent ceasefire will be negotiated throughout the course of the peace process or the peace negotiations, because they are so entwined with the other elements of the peace agreement. And as Greg has noted, security sector reform, the non-state armed actors who are demilitarized and demobilized, can they join the national army or the police force or the security or the intelligence forces? And if so, at what rank? And so while you're negotiating, okay, let's stop the fighting. 

You're also in parallel, are negotiating the future of the non-state armed actors. And, they're going to be less inclined to stop the fighting and agree to a permanent ceasefire if there's nothing on the table for them in terms of either their future within the security structure of the state or economic opportunities and funding for those economic opportunities.

So, you can't start with it. Because to wait a second, the whole idea of a peace process is to end the war. I mean, if we agree to end the war now, before we do power sharing and revenue sharing, we're not going to get what we want. So, we want to hold out. But if you do all of these power sharing and security sector reform and revenue sharing and state structure, and you say, okay, now we're going to talk about ending the conflict permanently, you may not have aligned those other elements of the peace process with what you're going to need in order to get the parties to consent to a permanent end of the conflict. 

So it's almost a little bit, a couple paragraphs of the chapter that deals with the permanent ceasefire are negotiated every day in parallel to the other aspects.

And this is one of the things that it's important for mediators and parties to understand is, oftentimes, they will stovepipe a peace agreement. They'll take a technical committee on security sector reform, technical committee on natural resources, technical committee on permanent ceasefire, and then they'll get broad political agreement among the chairs of the various delegations.

And then you have a peace process, which is basically a bundle of sticks as opposed to a cohesive and functional entity. And so, the nature of a permanent ceasefire is unfortunately all too often neglected because folks are assuming there's going to be cessation, a permanent ceasefire, and they focus on power sharing and resource sharing and things like that, but it has to be brought along throughout the entire process of the negotiation.

Dr. Greg Noone: Yeah, and if I could just add, as Paul was saying, these non-state actors, they're only likely to agree to negotiate an arrangement that potentially involves their demobilization if they're satisfied that they're going to achieve some of their political aims, but also their economic security.

So, as a result, the negotiation of a definitive ceasefire usually takes place towards the end of the negotiation process. It is only signed once all the rest of the political terms have been agreed upon. So, while a definitive ceasefire’s not likely to be negotiated until the end of the negotiations, as Paul mentioned, the terms are often negotiated and discussed along the way. And I really like that analogy of the bundle of sticks if you've stovepiped these ideas into different working groups, and instead of having that cohesive understanding of what the big picture is going to be. 

How To Get To a Definitive Ceasefire Agreement

Nicole Carle: So say you're at the appropriate time and you have this understanding, can you now go into the process of getting to this type of agreement? Paul, you can start. 

Dr. Paul Williams: Nicole, the process for negotiating a permanent ceasefire is quite different from the other elements of a peace agreement. If you're dealing with the protection of human rights, you sit down in the Peace Palace in Geneva, or the Chateau in Rambouillet, or the AU building in Addis Ababa, and you negotiate the human rights provision.

If you're doing state structure, you're often modifying a current state structure, because, you know, the current state structure was presumably one of the drivers of conflict, so you sit down with that blueprint and you modify it. But, you don't have preliminary agreements on human rights, preliminary agreements on state structure, preliminary agreements on revenue sharing, but in the case of a ceasefire, you'll have multiple cessation of hostility agreements.

You'll have one or more preliminary ceasefires and those will lead up to the permanent ceasefire. Now, they may create a very toxic environment and an environment with a lack of trust because of the violations of the earlier agreements, and so, that may make it even, you know, doubly complicated to negotiate a permanent ceasefire.

But at the same time, ideally, you've developed some patterns of behavior. So the parties, through the cessation of hostilities agreements, through the preliminary ceasefires, have had a chance to see what works and what doesn't work. Both on their side you know, what is it that they can actually commit their troops to do, command and control among non-state armed actors can oftentimes be quite loose and quite frankly among state actors, it can be quite loose and nowadays every state actor seems to have a state affiliated paramilitary, and the command and control over that can also be fairly loose. 

So, the parties have not only developed an understanding of what they can commit to and still maintain the control over their forces, but also what the other party can effectively commit to, and the degree to which the international community is in fact willing to provide monitoring and verification peacekeeping assistance.

We have some instances where the parties will draft these amazing cessation of hostilities or preliminary ceasefires and the international community is going to come in and flood with international troops and provide security. And the international community says, no, we're not, we don't have the resources. We don't have the inclination. We don't have the geographic proximity of the forces that you would like to be deployed. And you don't actually get what you need from the international community. So, there's a number of learning loops that the parties go through before they get to a permanent ceasefire.

So, that's the good news. The good news is, been there, done that. We've had, a dozen times, we've sat down at the table and discussed these issues. So, they have a much better understanding. Whereas natural resources, incredibly complicated in terms of the ownership management, revenue sharing of natural resources, and they're one and done in the negotiations.

Now, the bad news is most of these prior agreements were violated likely in many different ways. So there's the lack of trust and deep suspicion when they go into the peace process. And so, you're going to want to look for wins, and this is why it's important to start day one and all the way through the last day of the negotiations, because you're going to want to look for wins or concessions or agreement or confidence building in the other chapters of the peace agreement that then can hopefully flow over into the cessation or the permanent ceasefire. 

And then just one other comment before turning the microphone over to Greg is oftentimes there's a notion that permanent ceasefires should be negotiated by the guys with guns, guys, and military guys. Whereas in other parts of the process, it's more inclusive, there's civil society, there's technical expertise from outside the direct communities affected, etcetera. But, I've been in so many negotiations where they say there's the group of people in uniforms that are negotiating the permanent ceasefire. 

The victims need to be present in these negotiations as well, you know, where you can tone who you can tone reintegration in society. Not everybody wants non-state armed actors coming back to the village and opening up a Seven-Eleven, they may want them prosecuted for atrocity crimes or integrated into the army and sent someplace else. So, there's oftentimes an inequitable allocation of power and authority to the military actors to determine their own fate, and it shouldn't be up to the military actors who have carried out, in many instances, initiated the conflict to then determine how they're structured, you need to have a civilian presence in that dimension of the negotiation as well. 

Dr. Greg Noone: Yeah, and Nicole, if I can just add that importantly, the training workshops, technical advice is often needed to help the party sustain the existing ceasefire while negotiating the final definitive agreement.

Ideally, the final status of forces formalizes the structures and processes initiated in the period of the interim security management. Without this phase, there's a risk the parties have the final status of forces thrust upon them before they're ready. So, leading to a collapse of the security and potentially the agreement itself.

So, the terms of a definitive ceasefire can also be highly technical and so difficult to implement. Even with the goodwill of the parties, this can create challenges when attempting to implement the agreement. So, my final thought is that a definitive ceasefire is therefore the final stage of the ceasefire process, and this involves the final status of forces agreement that sets out the new security structure. 

Nicole Carle: Well, this was a really fruitful discussion on definitive ceasefires. I want to thank you both for joining and for those watching in later videos, we will move on to discuss ceasefire implementation. So, thank you for your attention.

Dr. Paul Williams: Thank you, Nicole.