Priscilla .B Hayner - The Peacemaker’s Paradox: Pursuing Justice in the Shadow of Conflict

PART I
Peace and Justice in Perspective

PART II
Case Studies

Little has been published that records the inside story of peace negotiations, and thus this book depended on interviews with those closest to these processes. I am most grateful to all those who have shared these experiences with me: mediators, former warring parties, and other close participants and observers.

Many local experts were particularly generous in sharing their wisdom, experience, and perspectives. Several helped guide and advise me in my research travels, in some cases accompanying me to regions that were difficult to access. My many thanks to Michael Otim in Uganda; Mohamed Htewish in Tripoli and Mahamud Tawel in Misrata, Libya; Isaac Lappia in Sierra Leone; Aaron Weah in Liberia; and Maria Camila Moreno and the staff at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) in Bogota, who kindly assisted during my first research visit to Colombia in 2012.

I undertook my first exploration of this topic, in Liberia and Sierra Leone, while on a short sabbatical from ICTJ in 2006. I collaborated in this early research in Sierra Leone with Kristina Thorne and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), and in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Laura Davis and ICTJ; my thanks to both for this partnership, and to these organizations for their early interest in this subject.

Colleagues in Geneva, where I was based for part of the time that I was doing this work, were immensely helpful. I am very thankful to Robert Archer, an early editor and friend who helped me give shape to a complex array of issues that at times seemed impossible to untangle. Terrific colleagues at HD, where I served as senior advisor, opened up the often-closed world of mediation as we collaborated on a number of tough mediation cases, where questions of justice inevitably arose.

When I turned to the impact of international courts working in contexts of war, I greatly benefited from insiders taking the time to talk through policies and difficult dilemmas, including at the International Criminal Court and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. My specific research on the interests of justice and prosecutorial discretion began during a mid-career executive masters on the international law of armed conflict that I undertook at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (based at the University of Geneva and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies). My thanks and appreciation to many good colleagues there, including Andrew Clapham and Nicolas Michel.

Policy discussions and debates on these overall peace-justice dilemmas have advanced each year at the regular Amsterdam Dialogue meeting hosted by the Dialogue Advisory Group and at the annual Oslo Forum organized by HD and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. These meetings bring together some of the best minds on these issues and were always valuable in helping move forward my sometimes-muddled thinking.

My work on this book was in its final stages during the two years that I took part in the periphery of the Colombian peace talks. It was an honor to be part of the extraordinarily complex and difficult brainstorming of the New York Group that took place regularly over this period, where we tried to find solutions that might assist the Havana talks. The depth and breadth of the issues that we debated was a constant reminder of how difficult this subject is, and will remain. There is no easy shortcut: that became clear. My thanks and appreciation to the members of this group who brought rich expertise to these meetings, which inevitably fed into my own broader thinking on the subject. In particular, my thanks to Dag Nylander and Idun Tvedt of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, who first identified the need and opportunity for such a brainstorming group and with whom I worked closely in facilitating these meetings. I would also like to thank the following scholars for their comments on an earlier form of the manuscript: George A. Lopez, Notre Dame; Kenneth A. Rodman, Colby College; Michael Stohl, University of California-Santa Barbara; and Jennifer A. Yoder, Colby College.