Peace talks are a key part of the peace process, but they’re not always successful. Some wars linger long after high-level talks have ended, and people around the world continue to suffer.
Educators and scholars have over the years devoted considerable effort to understanding how peace negotiations can be made to work, with an eye toward making them more effective and sustainable. One important approach has been the development of comprehensive peace processes that help ensure that all the different aspects of peacemaking are adequately addressed in any given conflict.
The international community also has developed a broad framework for facilitating peace negotiations, including the United Nations and other regional organizations. These structures can be a powerful incentive for parties in conflict to agree to talks, although there are often barriers to persuading those parties to participate.
For example, some leaders view talks as a sign of weakness, and they’re concerned that their enemy will react accordingly. This can make it difficult to get them to negotiate, even when the stakes are high.
Interested parties can try to motivate those in conflict to participate in negotiations by encouraging them, for example, to use their wealth to help rebuild after a war or through other incentives. They can also encourage them to jump-start negotiations with secret back-channel talks, although this form of clandestine diplomacy has a mixed record. One example is President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which he used to try to persuade the Allied powers to talk with Germany after World War I.