Negotiating Peace - Paperback

by Sven M. G. Koopmans (Author)

This book is the first and only practical guide to negotiating peace. In this ground-breaking book Sven Koopmans, who is both a peace negotiator and a scholar, discusses the practice, politics, and law of international mediation. With both depth and a light touch he explores successful as well as failed attempts to settle the wars of the world, building on decades of historical, political, and legal scholarship.

Who can mediate between warring parties? How to build confidence between enemies? Who should take part in negotiations? How can a single diplomat manage the major powers? What issues to discuss first, what last? When to set a deadline? How to maintain confidentiality? How to draft an agreement, and what should be in it? How to ensure implementation? The book discusses the practical difficulties and dilemmas of negotiating agreements, as well as existing solutions and possible future approaches. It uses examples from around the world, with an emphasis on the conflicts of the last twenty-five years, but also of the previous two-and-a-half-thousand. Rather than looking only at either legal, political or organizational issues, Negotiating Peace discusses these interrelated dimensions in the way they are confronted in practice: as an integral whole. With one leading question: what can be done?

Author Biography

Sven M.G. Koopmans

Dr Sven M. G. Koopmans is a mediation practitioner, diplomat, international lawyer, academic, and politician. In 2021 the Foreign Ministers of the European Union appointed him EU Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process. He is a former member of the United Nations' Mediation Standby Team, former Senior Mediation Expert to the UN Envoy for Syria and former Advisor to the European Union Special Representative for Sudan and South Sudan. He advised both the African Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on settling border disputes. He has been part of numerous negotiation, mediation, and/or constitutional processes, including for Burundi, the Arab/Israeli and Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Central African Republic, Cyprus, Darfur, Guyana/Venezuela, Kosovo, Mali, Sudan/South Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine. He was a Member of Parliament in the Netherlands from 2017 to 2021. He studied law, history, and politics at Leiden University and Oxford Unversity.