Search

Recent years have seen the acceleration of data- and evidence-based approaches in support of peace processes, creating a renewed confidence that conflicts can be predicted, known, and resolved, based on objective information about the world. However, new technologies employed by conflict parties, stakeholders, and those who aim to make or build peace have also made peace processes less ascertainable, intelligible, and predictable. Technology can thus create both more certainty and uncertainty in (and about) peace processes. This forum article presents a first collaborative attempt to explore how the use of technology by conflict parties and peacebuilding actors influences these dynamics. We examine various fields of engagement, ranging from conflict prevention to peace mediation, peacekeeping, and longer-term peacebuilding. Our discussion engages with a variety of related activities, including predictive analysis and foresight, conflict analysis, cease-fire monitoring, early warning and early action, and problem-solving and trust-building dialogues. We suggest approaching un-certainty as a spectrum between uncertainty and certainty that can be studied across epistemic, ontological, and normative dimensions, thus inviting further academic research and policy reflection. The article is coauthored by scholars and current or former practitioners and underlines the necessity, benefits, and feasibility of research–practice exchanges on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many conflicts, international ceasefire monitors are deployed to mitigate future violence. Increasingly, such monitors use satellite imagery, uncrewed aerial vehicles, and other camera-equipped assets to supplement, and sometimes substitute, human monitoring efforts to document ceasefire violations. To date, we know little about when and how such technology contributes to ceasefire compliance, with scholars offering diverging assessments of the effects. Integrating scholarship on the use of remote sensing in ceasefire monitoring with theories on the causal processes underlying ceasefire monitoring, this analytical essay offers a framework to assess the contribution of remote sensing to ceasefire compliance and illustrates the empirical application of this framework by examining the most technologically advanced ceasefire monitoring mission yet deployed, the Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. Focusing on the period prior to the Russian invasion of 2022, our research finds that while the mission's observational power was expanded, remote sensing technologies ultimately had little effect on modifying conflict party behavior or compliance. While in this case remote sensing technology minimally increased compliance, the study contributes to debates on the use of technology as a conflict management tool, and provides an assessment framework for scholars and for policymakers considering adopting technology in other monitoring contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the Civil Conflict CeaseFire (CF) dataset. The CF data covers all ceasefires in civil conflict between 1989 and 2020, including multilateral, bilateral and unilateral arrangements, ranging from verbal arrangements to detailed written agreements. In total, the CF data includes 2202 ceasefires across 66 countries and 109 civil conflicts. The data feature information on the actors involved in the ceasefire, and the class, purpose, coverage, and end date of the ceasefire. The CF data provide an empirical basis to assess the conditions that give rise to ceasefires, how ceasefires affect the dynamics of conflict, and the role of a ceasefire in the peace process. This article presents the rationale underlying the data collection, the coding rules and procedures, and how this data can be used for analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ceasefires are often associated with inhibiting conflict ripeness because they remove the immediate costs of conflict and the pressure on conflicting parties to negotiate. Yet, in many intrastate conflicts, ceasefires have proven instrumental in reviving or enabling peace talks. This article provides an analytical framework to systematically assess the impact of ceasefires on conflict ripeness and identify key factors that condition their effects. Enriching ripeness theory with insights from the related bargaining theory of war and ceasefire research, this article identifies three key milestones in the transition from war to negotiated settlement—ripeness for negotiations, for concessions and for settlement—and the conditions that help conflicting parties reach these milestones. It demonstrates how and why ceasefires have the potential to foster ripeness at all three stages, whereas ceasefire violations threaten to undermine the ripening process, particularly after the onset of negotiations. The analysis suggests that temporal limits to ceasefires in the first two ripeness stages increase the probability that ceasefires contribute to ripening, while in the third stage, it is better that parties agree on an indefinite ceasefire or link it to the progress of negotiations in order to enable movement towards settlement. External enforcement of a ceasefire can pose a significant impediment to conflict ripeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]