Lawyering Peace

Williams explains how to build better and more durable peace agreements through a rigorous examination of how parties in conflict have resolved key problems and issues at the heart of peace negotiations. Based on 25 years of experience, this is an invaluable guide for future negotiators and students of conflict resolution.

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In all but the rarest circumstances, the world's deadly conflicts are ended not through outright victory, but through a series of negotiations. Not all of these negotiations, however, yield a durable peace. To successfully mitigate conflict drivers, the parties in conflict must address a number of puzzles, such as whether and how to share and/or re-establish a state's monopoly of force, reallocate the ownership and management of natural resources, modify the state structure, or provide for a path toward external self-determination. Successfully resolving these puzzles requires the parties to navigate a number of conundrums and make choices and design mechanisms that are appropriate to the particular context of the conflict, and which are most likely to lead to a durable peace. Lawyering Peace aims to help future negotiators build better and more durable peace agreements through a rigorous examination of how other parties have resolved these puzzles and associated conundrums.