A peace agreement is a contract between parties to a conflict that regulates the cessation of hostilities for a specified timeframe in a given area. Although there are a number of different types of peace agreements, they all share three common features: they are meant to achieve or maintain a cessation of hostilities; they are negotiated; and they are akin to contracts with expected tradeoffs and obligations.
The choice of peace agreement type and how it is structured determines the scope of the commitments and the likelihood that they will be durable. There are six practical categories of peace agreements: cease-fire agreements, bounded agreements, framework agreements, multiparty agreements, and negotiated peace treaties.
As a result, there is a need for a clear taxonomy of peace agreements to inform practitioners on how best to pursue them and which ones are likely to be sustainable in the long term. This taxonomy outlines how peace agreements differ from each other and offers some guidance on their characteristics.
As illustrated by the protracted violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, it is crucial that any peace agreement is able to address the root causes of the conflict and not just the surface level issues. Specifically, it is vital that justice be addressed as part of the structure of any agreement and that mechanisms are in place to help ensure that transgressions against justice are punished. The section on addressing injustice lays out a framework for this and some strategies for doing so in the context of a peace agreement.
