Canadian Consortium on Human Security
February 2008 I Vol 6, Issue 2
Message from the Editor: Dilemmas of Negotiating with Nonstate Armed Groups
Dear Reader,
The February 2008 issue of the Human Security Bulletin considers dilemmas of negotiating with nonstate armed groups.
The human security approach’s unique strength in understanding political violence is its focus on the role of nonstate groups in armed conflict. When nonstate armed groups are key players in the ongoing ‘war on terror’ as well as in major intrastate conflicts it becomes ever more important to develop a clear understanding of the complexity of their motivations and objectives.
Not only do non-state armed groups directly impact the lives of local inhabitants in conflict zones, they also come into direct contact with state parties and international actors, thereby raising numerous ethical and practical questions for scholars and practitioners of human security. Moreover, when peace processes and mediation efforts falter, it becomes necessary to take stock of past successes, record best practices, and reformulate our approaches to engaging and negotiating with these armed nonstate actors.
It is important to clarify that the interactions implied in negotiation are different from those involved in simple engagement. A policy briefing by Conciliation Resources (CR) makes this distinction by defining engagement as “initiatives by either the warring parties or intermediaries to explore, enable or sustain opportunities for contact with or between the parties”. In fact, CR’s work on engaging with armed groups is a key contribution to the evolving research on this subject. Additional news, reports and analysis on the topic can be found in our Resources section.
The contributors to this issue have written from a human security standpoint on several interconnected aspects of negotiating with nonstate armed groups. David Eaves, a negotiation consultant, shares his unique perspective by discussing the technique of “choice analysis” as it applies to negotiating with members of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. With the permission of the Swiss Government, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers’ Lucia Withers has provided an excerpt from her contribution to the Swiss Human Rights Book discussing the dilemmas of negotiating with those nonstate armed groups that include child soldiers among their ranks. Ram Manikkalingam, an advisor to the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, and Pablo Policzer, co-founder of the Armed Groups project, argue that the organizational dispersal of Al-Qaeda requires an engagement strategy that begins at the group’s periphery rather than at its centre. A noted expert and professor of international law at the University of Geneva, Marco Sassoli, outlines opportunities and incentives for the engagement of nonstate armed groups with the existing body of international humanitarian law. Finally, Antonia Potter, a consultant with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, describes the obstacles to a more prominent role for women in mediation processes with nonstate armed groups.
A number of relevant web resources have been included in our Human Security Events and Publications section. Among these are the Armed Groups Project at the University of Calgary and the Transnational and Non-State Armed Groups Project, an exciting interdisciplinary initiative of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University and the Graduate Institute on International Studies in Geneva.
We also feature the profiles of three CCHS Human Security Fellows. The importance of fieldwork in understanding issues of human security is reflected in the dedication of each of these Fellows in pursuing their research in remote locations or in zones of conflict. Shane Barter is examining village level responses to conflict in rural Southeast Asia, Robert Barrett is investigating the dynamics of group violence in central Nigeria, and Charmaine Stanley is looking at the effect of information and communications technology on the Israel–Palestine conflict.
This issue has benefited from the suggestions of Pablo Policzer to whom we are grateful for input. We also thank the contributors for sharing their valuable research, opinions and analysis with us through their editorials.
Coming up in March, CCHS will host, in conjunction with DFAIT, an international workshop on Human Security and Cities. We will also publish two issues of the Bulletin. The first will consider the human security implications of the increasing trend toward the privatization of security. In this issue, editorials will address issues ranging from humanitarian actors turning to private security contractors for the provision of security to the implications of security privatization in the counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan. The second issue will present field research notes from our current CCHS Human Security Fellows.
We welcome your feedback and hope you enjoy this issue.
Mrinalini Menon
Managing Editor
Human Security Bulletin
