Cluster "Tough Choices: Dilemmas and Decision in Peacemaking"

Project lead:

• Dr Anne Isabel Holper (Co-Leader of the Center for Peace Mediation & Academic Director of the certificate program ViAPACS)
• Dr Christian Hochmuth (Institute for Conflict Management, European University Viadrina)
• Dr Simon Mason (Head of the Mediation Support Team at Center for Security Studies, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich)

Research team:

• Prof. Dr Lars Kirchhof (European University Viadrina)

Cooperation partners:

• Prof. Dr Jürgen Neyer (Professorship for European and International Politics, EUV)
• Jeremy Brickhill (ETH Zurich)
• Belinda McNube (ETH Zurich)
• Nosikelelo Ndlovu (ETH Zurich)

Funding institution:

Ministry of Science, Research and Culture of the State of Brandenburg (seed money)

Project duration:

January 2018 - December 2019

Publications:

• Kirchhoff, Lars/ Kraus, Anne Isabel: (Dys-)Functions and Potentials of Norms as a Guidance Systemfor Peace Mediators. In: Hellmüller/Pring/Richmond (Ed.): Special Issue of Swiss Political ScienceReview on "Norms in International Peace Mediation", i.E.
• Kirchhoff, Lars/ Kraus, Anne Isabel: Rethinking the Professionalisation of Peace Mediation. In:Turner/Waehlisch (Ed.): Rethinking Peace Mediation. Critical Perspectives on International Peace-making. Bristol: The Bristol University Press, 2021, ISBN 978-1529208191. i.E.
• Holper, Anne Isabel/ Kirchhoff, Lars/ Würkert: Norms: Overburdening or orientation of peace mediation? In: Journal of Peace and Conflict Research i.E.
• Kirchhoff, Lars/ Kraus, Anne Isabel (Ed.): Friedensmediation - Spannungsfeld aus Methodik, Machtund Politik. Interdisciplinary studies on Mediation and Conflict Management. Baden-Baden: NomosVerlag, n.d.
• Kraus, Anne Isabel /Kyselova, Tatiana : Inclusion Dilemmas in Peacebuilding and Dialogues In: Peaceand Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. i.E.
• Hellmüller, Sara: Beyond Buzzwords: Civil Society Inclusion in Mediation, in: Ho-Won, Jeong (ed.):Conflict Management and Transformation: Theory and Practice, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield 2019,pp. 47-63.
• Kraus, Anne Isabel/ Frazer, Owen/ Kirchhoff, Lars/ Kyselova, Tatiana/ Mason, Simon A./ PalmianoFederer, Julia: Dilemmas and Trade-Offs in Peacemaking: A Framework for Navigating Difficult Deci-sions, in: Politics and Governance, Vol. 7 No 4 (2019)www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/2234
• IMSD/ Federal Foreign Office: The normative framework and the international legal basis of peacemediation. Peace Mediation and Mediation Support Fact Sheet. 2019.
• Kraus, Anne Isabel/ Kyselova, Tatiana: "Doing Action Research on Dialogues in Ukraine", in:Zeitschrift für Beratungs- und Managementwissenschaften, 2018, pp. 64-71

What sacrifices are we ready to make in the name of peace? For instance, should peacemakers support local ceasefires in Syria to save thousands of lives in the short term, even if this might shift the battlefield to new places, producing many more victims in the long run? Should they bring radical religious leaders together who may agree to peace, but at the cost of gender equality? Should peacemakers engage with “terrorists” because they have the power to stop the violence, even if this indirectly endorses their violent tactics? Torn between two imperatives, which seem to be mutually exclusive, peacemakers often face tough choices between multiple options that – even with the best of intentions – all risk doing harm. Yet, despite the enormous responsibilities carried by mediators and the harm potentially caused by their decisions, the dilemmas they face receive scant attention in the academic and policy literature.

This interdisciplinary research project aims to improve the way practitioners make decisions in such dilemma situations by developing a ´Tough Choices Framework` for analyzing and guiding those decisions.

The “B/Orders in Motion” heuristic is crucial for conceptualizing the blurred and dynamically shifting, but often highly contested boundaries of what is not acceptable (´red lines`) when making trade-offs in order to solve a dilemma.

The participating institutions – the Center for Peace Mediation (CPM) at European University Viadrina, the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, the National University of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine and swisspeace – are currently carrying out empirical case studies in contexts as diverse as Columbia, Zimbabwe and Ukraine.

The joint research foci are: 1) the dilemmas themselves; 2) the way peacemakers attempt to deal with these dilemmas; 3) the normative, technical and political reference systems that peacemakers rely on when making dilemma decisions; and 4) the decisions made and their effects as seen from the perspectives of parties, other affected actors and peacemakers.

The ´Tough Choices Framework` is developed in close cooperation with practitioners, policy makers and other scholars based on a tailor-made Action Research Approach. The entire research process, from the initial testing of assumptions to the dissemination of outputs, is designed as a continuous feedback spiral with these actors, institutionalized in a Sounding Board. This approach grounds the research on experiential knowledge, ensures the relevance, validity and usability of outputs and enables it to close the gap between the rich experiential and theoretical knowledge and poor decision-making in the field.