Lawyering Peace
Cambridge university press, December 2021
Summary
In all but the rarest circumstances, the world’s deadly conflicts are ended not through outright victory, but through a series of negotiations. To successfully mitigate conflict drivers and ensure the negotiations lead to a durable peace, the negotiating parties must address a number of puzzles, including those of security arrangements, power-sharing, natural resources, self-determination, and governance. 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. Through a rigorous, yet accessible, treatment of over 20 peace processes, Lawyering Peace aims to help future negotiators build better and more durable peace agreements. This book is designed to help parties, practitioners, and academics work their way through the multitude of decision points they face in a negotiation, and then to draft legal text that encapsulates that agreement in a way which will promote the durability of the agreement or constitution.
Advance Praise for Lawyering Peace
“From one of the most accomplished and prolific minds in post-conflict constitution drafting, peace negotiations, and transitional justice comes a rigorous, yet deeply accessible, inside look at the dozens of challenges parties to a peace negotiation face when putting pen to paper.”
- Alush Gashi, Signatory of the Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Kosova
“For 25 years, Dr. Williams has been a leading voice in the field of public international law for the need for thoughtful, well-crafted peace agreements. In Lawyering Peace, he brings his decades of experience and knowledge to bear, creating a concise, approachable, and deeply illuminating guide for how to tackle the key puzzles standing in the way of a durable peace.”
-Jamal Benomar, former United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen
“‘No corner of the globe is exempt from the scourge of conflict,’ writes Dr. Williams in the introduction to Lawyering Peace. In this comprehensive volume, he uses an engaging and instructive comparative analysis to examine the myriad ways in which parties to peace negotiations from all corners of the globe have attempted to achieve a durable peace. While there’s no secret formula to drafting a perfect peace agreement, this book equips its readers with the tools and case studies needed to reach their own conclusions and, hopefully, lawyer a more durable peace.”
- Vartan Oskanian, former Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs and negotiator of the Key West peace talks
“I first met Dr. Williams during the Darfur negotiations in Doha. In Lawyering Peace, he has distilled every lesson learned from his role in peace negotiations spanning decades, conflicts, and continents with the goal of helping parties, practitioners, and academics work their way through dozens of decision points they face in the context of peace negotiations.”
- Ahmed Tugod Lissan, Representative and Chief Negotiator of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)
“Peace mediators know that the ‘devil is in the details' and this is where the lawyers must do their magic. In Lawyering Peace, Paul Williams taps his 25 years of working at the coalface to reveal how the key puzzles to achieving lasting peace have been resolved across the globe, providing an invaluable guide for future negotiators.”
- Ambassador Carey Cavanaugh, Ambassador/Special Negotiator responsible for conflicts in Eurasia, including the Nagorno-Karabakh Key West negotiations
“How do we craft better peace agreements? It’s a daunting question, but Dr. Williams comes prepared in Lawyering Peace with stories and insights from 25 years of doing just that. Each chapter of Lawyering Peace evidences shrewd analysis, profound understanding, and clear guidance and other conclusions on the process of negotiating (and lawyering) peace agreements. With an unerring emphasis on the potential challenges and tangible effects of peace negotiations processes this study instantly serves as essential reading for scholars, policy analysts and experts, and government officials addressing vital issues in resolution of conflict and post-conflict situations.”
- Ambassador Zorica Marić Djordjević, former Ambassador of Montenegro to the UN and Human Rights Council and Senior Peace Fellow at the Public International Law & Policy Group
Lawyering peace
video series