UNU Update: Seminar to focus on study of international peace processes

U.N. Studies Keeping Peace

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Give an ex-soldier a job if you want a hard-won peace to last, a U.N. study is warning.

Reintegrating fighters on both sides of a conflict back into society can help reduce the chances that they'll try to destabilize the newly won accord, according to the report prepared by the United Nations (news - web sites) University and the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland.

Another way to ensure against ``spoilers'' to a peace agreement? Make sure all the groups with the power to make it fail are included in peace negotiations, according the study ``Coming Out of Violence,'' which was being released Tuesday.

The five-year study analyzed peace efforts in five conflicts: South Africa, the Basque conflict in Spain, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and the Israel-Palestinian dispute.

Author John Darby said two of the five case studies have no active peace processes to speak of: the battle between the Spanish government and the Basque independence group ETA, and the rebellion waged by Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka.

But Darby said their experiences were equally important to analyze as the more advanced peace processes in Northern Ireland, the Middle East and South Africa.

The conflicts were chosen primarily because they followed a trend away from U.N. mediation that began with South Africa's efforts to come to terms with apartheid, he said.

Of the 38 formal peace agreements signed between 1988 and 1998, the United Nations was directly involved in only 16. Of the 15 agreements reached since the start of 1996, all but two were agreed without U.N. assistance, the study said.

Darby said there was no clear reason for the United Nations' smaller role. However, he suggested that the United Nations just may not have been able to play a meaningful role in mediating peace during the 1990s – the height of its financial woes.

More significantly, it appears that sides in the conflicts ``looked towards each other for guidance as to how to carry it through,'' after seeing South Africa's success, he said in an interview.

The report also said symbolic gestures are important to forge peace and trust between enemies.

The report cited the decision by Nelson Mandela to don the Springbok jersey of South Africa's rugby team – a symbol of white South Africa - at a World Cup final as an example of how Mandela used small but powerful symbols to bring blacks and white together.

``He had an unerring eye for the uniting gesture which would heal the wounds of conflict,'' the study said.