Preliminary Ceasefires

Preliminary Ceasefires

​Nicole Carle: Hello and welcome to this video on preliminary ceasefires. My name is Nicole Carle and I'm a counsel at the Public and International Law and Policy Group. Today, I'm so pleased to welcome Dr. Paul Williams, President and Co-founder of the Public International Law and Policy Group, and Dr. Greg Noone, our Executive Director, who are both here to discuss preliminary ceasefires. Welcome both. 

Dr. Greg Noone: Great. Thanks, Nicole. It's great to be here. 

Dr. Paul Williams: Happy to be here, Nicole.

Definition 

Nicole C: Paul, I'm going to start with you. Can you walk us through what a preliminary ceasefire agreement is? 

Dr. Paul Williams: So, Nicole, a preliminary ceasefire agreement is essentially a temporary agreement in which the conflicting parties commit to halt their activities and violence in a verifiable manner for a period of time in order to accomplish an objective, such as moving into a peace negotiation or creating a more regularized flow of humanitarian assistance.

It's not a cessation of hostilities that's exceedingly temporary, and it's also not a permanent or definitive ceasefire. It's something in the middle. 

Nicole Carle: Can you stay on that and go into more detail on how preliminary ceasefires specifically differ from these other ceasefire agreements?

Dr. Paul Williams: As you've discussed with others, the cessation of hostilities essentially is, a one page document to stop the hostilities for a brief period of time to allow an exchange of prisoners or to allow the delivery of some humanitarian assistance.

Now, on the other hand, you have a more permanent ceasefire or definitive ceasefire that will result from a peace agreement, include security sector reform, DDR, and other mechanisms. The preliminary ceasefire is designed to create the space and the time for the parties to move into a peace negotiation, and then to exist for as long as it takes for that peace negotiation to result in a successful conclusion of the conflict. A preliminary ceasefire will include a number of provisions, oftentimes relating to the separation of forces from a boundary line or a point of contact, it'll have limitations on the use of weapons, it'll have limitations on the movement of forces, but it won't go so far as to provide for the disarmament or the demobilization or even the catonement. It's settle in place, don't shoot, don't move, don't rearm, hold the territory until the peace process can play out.

Nicole Carle: Greg, do you have anything to add? 

Dr. Greg Noone: Yeah, that's right, and a key part of preliminary ceasefires is that the key provisions are in some way verifiable. So, as a result, the agreement should clearly specify prohibited and permitted acts so that the parties are clear on what actions constitute a violation of the agreement and clearly specify objectives and the parties roles and their respective commitments.

Verification of Provisions

Nicole Carle: Thanks both. Let's move into process a little bit. Can you go into detail on how parties go about verifying the provisions? 

Dr. Greg Noone: Sure, to verify and monitor these provisions, preliminary ceasefires will include one of several possible monitoring and verification approaches, and it requires the establishment of a specific ceasefire management and verification organizations, as well as developing their capabilities.

In the next module, we'll discuss some of the different forms of ceasefire monitoring management and support in depth, but recall that there's a logic to the ceasefire process in which several incremental ceasefires are often agreed upon in a sequence that addresses specific objectives and establishes the grounds for the next agreement.

Nicole C: Pauk, is there anything you want to add to that? 

Dr. Paul Williams:Yeah, I would just amplify what Greg had indicated and to emphasize the fact that these preliminary ceasefires are oftentimes very fragile. So, as Greg noted, you'll have to negotiate and agree upon a number of them to deal with different issues that arise. 

They can only carry so much water, so to speak. It's cease firing, remaining in place, things along those lines. It does not address the underlying political issues, power sharing, revenue sharing, state structure, none of that's addressed in a ceasefire. Oftentimes, parties are inclined to bring those issues into a preliminary ceasefire, but it's not the time and the place; it has a very specific objective, and it's important for mediators and for the parties negotiating to limit their negotiations with respect to getting a ceasefire. There's also an acknowledgement that folks don't, you know, on Monday fight and on Tuesday, ok, we signed a ceasefire. Okay. Let's stop moving. Let's stop shooting. 

There's frequently violations, sometimes quite intense violations. And therefore it's necessary to have a verification mechanism to have a quick instantaneous dispute resolution mechanism, and to, in a sense, have the parties embrace a degree of leeway, you know, as long as there's a reduction in violence, it's moving towards zero and the momentum is in the right direction. That's sufficient. 

Oftentimes, a shot will be fired, the ceasefire has been broken, and it collapses. So you can't have a permanent agreement that's violated multiple times because then it's not worth the paper it’s written on. The ceasefires tend to take a little while to get traction.

One of the important things that we've seen in these ceasefires, these preliminary ceasefires, is you develop a pattern for negotiation, a pattern for compromise. You oftentimes will find a venue to host these, and then that can tee up and essentially be a preliminary process that can lead into some best practices and lessons learned for the more permanent ceasefire or the peace negotiation process itself.

How Preliminary Ceasefires Fit Into Peace Process

Nicole Carle: Right now, you mentioned some ceasefire agreements take time to get traction and there's a time and place for certain conversations in the negotiation process. Can you talk a little bit more about how preliminary ceasefires specifically fit into this broader peace process? 

Dr. Paul Williams: So a preliminary ceasefire by its nature is a prelude to both a permanent ceasefire as well as a conversation, a negotiation, a peace process where the parties will seek to resolve the drivers of conflict, come to political compromise, as well as engage in security sector reform and DDR, demobilization, demilitarization and reintegration.

The ceasefire is not intended to end conflict. It's just intended to create time and space for the parties to then actually negotiate an end to the conflict. So again, it's important that the mediators and the parties have a low level of expectations for what the ceasefire will deliver. It simply delivers an opportunity for the parties to then focus on the negotiations.

It can create a positive environment for those negotiations, and maybe we'll have an opportunity to discuss a little bit later about do you always do a ceasefire before negotiations, or can you go into negotiations while you're still in hot conflict and then have a permanent ceasefire at the end of those negotiations?

And then there's arguments for both sides but, generally speaking, having a preliminary ceasefire saves lives, reduces violence, allows humanitarian aid to flow, allows the parties to develop some confidence building measures, and creates ways for them to begin to see the benefits of peace.

You know, they've experienced the cost of war, but a ceasefire, a preliminary ceasefire, will help them see the benefits of peace. It also allows them to develop mechanisms for monitoring and verification. Oftentimes, these are very thin, they're very light, but you'll need monitoring and verification of just about everything that the parties agreed to in a full on peace agreement, and the ceasefire, a preliminary ceasefire is an opportunity to begin to bring in international experts, international monitors, see who's interested, begin to start the funding streams for those mechanisms that will be important. It also builds confidence among the parties. The parties are going to need a lot of confidence.

The party is going to need a lot of confidence in the peace building process, and in the implementation process. And this is one way for the parties to build confidence or to actually assess whether the other party is genuinely interested in a peace process. So, doing a permanent ceasefire gives you a look into the window, so to speak of the larger peace process. They also provide an opportunity for the parties to establish more normalized channels of communication and connections. In a hot conflict, the objective of each party is to kill the members of the other party to take territory, and this allows that opportunity to communicate, develop patterns of communication, and to a degree, build some trust. 

You don't want to be naive about it, but you want to build a little bit of trust among the parties. And then also, it includes an opportunity for the mediators to assess their role, to get to know the parties, to see which mediation tactics and strategies are most effective, as well as to get a sense of how to get the parties to yes.

Nicole Carle: Thanks, Paul, for going through all of those. I have another question now. I'm going to turn to Greg to ask, is this preliminary ceasefire that we've been discussing essential for the rest of the peace process? 

Dr. Greg Noone: Well, in most peace processes, a preliminary ceasefire is a vital part of the peace process. But it's not always the case. On some occasions, the conflict parties prefer to negotiate the issues in the absence of the ceasefire.

In essence, fighting while talking. This tends to be preferable when one or more parties consider that their military leverage is crucial in keeping the pressure on their opponent at the negotiating table. So for example, a non-state group can favor fighting while talking when they fear that breaking the violence might relieve the hard earned pressure on the state. This was the case in El Salvador where the rebel group, the FMLN, were unwilling for most of the process to consent to a ceasefire for fear it might create a more favorable military situation for the government.

So in this case, only once an agreement was close at hand did a ceasefire actually occur. In other cases, the continuation of conflict violence benefits the state by keeping the pressure on the non-state group and avoiding the political backlash that might arise from conceding to a ceasefire.

So in Columbia, for example, it was the government that was resistant to a ceasefire due to the FARC's past manipulation of ceasefire agreements and frankly, very low public support for any such ceasefire agreements. So, the fighting while talking approach is also particularly likely in cases where previous talks have failed or ceasefires were misused for military purposes, which can unfortunately be a very common thing.

And so, this approach reduces the likelihood that either party can use a preliminary ceasefire for military gains if you continue the fight while you're trying to make movement on the other issues that you're trying to secure and negotiate.

Nicole Carle: Interesting perspective, Greg. Paul, anything to add here?

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah, I would agree with Greg on that in that more times than we would think, parties enter into a peace process without first agreeing on a preliminary ceasefire. One of the reasons is that quite frankly, it's common for ceasefires to be utilized basically to, to rest and rearm.

One or more of the parties may not actually intend to utilize the ceasefire as a period of peace, to build public support, to evolve the narrative, to accommodate the population to a point in which they can make concessions to the enemy. But rather, they just want to use a ceasefire to replenish their forces, buy more weapons, and wait out the winter season or the rainy season, depending on where the conflict might be taking place.

So, there's a lot of skepticism about entering into a ceasefire. Also, for non-state armed actors in particular, they have spent much of their time, energy, political capital, money, building up their militias, their non-state armed actors, getting them to the front, getting them engaged in the conflict.

And if there's a ceasefire, even though it's preliminary, they may just go home. The state forces are obligated to be there. We'll stay on the front line, whether they're shooting or whether they're not, but you can have a situation where a militia, a non-state armed actor, can fairly rapidly disintegrate if there isn't a direct threat to their village, to their community, to their region, or if there's nothing to do and it's planting season, they may head back home to plant. 

So, there are a lot of strategic reasons, and it's important as the three of us have this conversation that we don't lead any of our listeners to to be naive about, oh, yeah, you always got to start something with a preliminary ceasefire.

Oftentimes, these are very nefarious actors on one or more of the sides of the conflict. So, as Greg mentioned, the famous phrase that Colombia has always used was ‘let's fight as if we're not talking and let's talk as if we're not fighting’. So they essentially tried to have it both ways, make gains in the peace negotiations room as if everything was fine, and then also still try to take territory or to take down the FARC on the battlefield as if they weren't actually also talking with the FARC and the government at the same time.

So it's really complicated, but the question of a preliminary ceasefire comes up in every single negotiation, and so knowing its multidimensional nature is quite important.

Nicole Carle: Thanks for going into that. So maybe a preliminary ceasefire isn't necessary or doesn't always happen, but when it does, does it always result in a peace agreement? Greg? 

Dr. Greg Noone: No, a preliminary ceasefire is a significant signal that the parties are willing to move towards peace, but it doesn't always result in immediate progress.

Firstly, even in the presence of a functioning preliminary ceasefire, a process often takes a very long time. In the Philippines, for example, a preliminary ceasefire was put in place for years while the government and the MILF, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, negotiated first a framework agreement and then later a comprehensive peace accord.

It's also possible that conflict parties use the preliminary ceasefire agreement to feign peaceful intent, as Paul was just talking about, but to later renege on that in order to gain a military advantage. So, this idea that they're using this break, as Paul said, to reorganize, rearm, redeploy their forces, and ultimately attack their opponent when it's vulnerable. These could be the true intentions of the conflict parties and agreeing to a ceasefire. And so, it can be problematic, and as Paul mentioned, these are nefarious actors, these are individuals that have resorted to violence. And as we talked about in other videos, building that trust in order to sit down at the table and talk is a pretty big deal.

And this can be used as one of those building blocks to start trusting each other, but oftentimes is abused. So, unlike a more limited cessation of hostilities or a preliminary ceasefire can include methods of verification and monitoring that make this type more challenging and for people to violate and for people to break, but if the parties are pushed into a preliminary ceasefire, they might agree without having an attention to abide, regardless of any monitoring or verification. But, they might agree to it again for nefarious reasons.

Nicole Carle: Any last thoughts on this? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah, I would just add onto Greg's point that you have to be careful about a premature push into a ceasefire, or a premature declaration by third parties that there's going to be a ceasefire. In the Doha peace negotiations, Qatar and the African Union were very focused on declaring victory, and they didn't put the time and energy and the technical expertise that was necessary to craft a functional and an implementable preliminary ceasefire. You know, although it's fairly brief, it still has to be done in a proper manner and oftentimes mediators looking for a quick victory will try to get the parties to just sign a ceasefire and will work out the details down the road. No, the third parties need to take a more sophisticated and detailed approach.

And oftentimes, you'll find that the Americans and the British in particular are quite good at this; imposing economic sanctions on the key actors, imposing an arms embargo, pressuring third parties which are funding or providing support to the armed actors to restrict their support. And then, if you're going to have verification and monitoring, you need people to verify and monitor. You need states or international organizations to back that up, and you need to pay for it. So there's a complex ecosystem within even a preliminary ceasefire is crafted and begins to take effect.

And it's important that all of those things are lined up in order to have an effective ceasefire that can then lead into a peace process. It simply isn't words on paper, these words actually mean things and it’s important for mediators to embrace the fact that words matter because this is literally a life and death situation for the armed actors that are on the front line, and what the document says what responsibilities it lays out, what rights it lays out are crucial to whether these individuals will survive through the day, so to speak. 

Nicole Carle: And with that, it brings us to the end of our discussion on preliminary ceasefires. Thank you both so much for joining us, and for those watching, in our next video, we will move to discuss definitive ceasefires or more permanent agreements. Thank you.

Dr. Paul Williams: Thank you, Nicole.