A Human Rights Approach to Conflict Resolution

The role of human rights abuses in the causes, dynamics, and consequences of conflict illustrate the importance of a human rights approach to conflict resolution:¹ if human rights are part of the problem, they must be part of the solution. This essay aims to show how a human rights perspective can improve the odds of transforming violent conflicts into sustainable peace by enhancing the design and implementation of peace processes and conflict resolution practices. In doing so, we will clarify the main characteristics of a human rights approach to conflict resolution and identify a set of human rights standards to guide its implementation.

We will then briefly analyze the Colombian and the Israeli-Palestinian peace processes, each through the lens of the human rights approach. These two cases illustrate opposite ends of the spectrum when considering the inclusion of human rights in conflict resolution. At one end, the Colombian peace process illustrates how negotiations and a final agreement can recognize peace as a human right, highlighting the need to transform the structural conditions of injustice and human rights violations that give rise to armed conflict. At the other end, in the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, human rights are virtually absent despite the fact that systematic abuses are among the main underlying causes and consequences of the conflict. In the conclusion, we address one of the main criticisms and challenges of a human rights–based approach to conflict resolution.

Human Rights and Conflict Resolution²

Human rights and conflict resolution have been traditionally studied as two separate fields, emphasizing their different approaches toward the immediate goal of achieving a peace agreement and the more long-term objective of building peaceful processes of political, economic, and social change.³ On one hand, conflict resolvers often fear that key stakeholders might hesitate to participate in negotiations that require them to acknowledge moral or criminal responsibility for their actions.⁴ Human rights promoters, on the other hand, are skeptical of conflict resolution practices that give priority to solving immediate security concerns and halting ongoing violence over more comprehensive processes aimed at addressing structural violence through a focus on social justice, political equality, and accountability for past wrongdoings.

Numerous scholars, including Eileen Babbitt and Michelle Parlevliet, have analyzed these differences. Their work illustrates how the main tensions between human rights and conflict resolution can be understood by examining the different ways in which each field adopts diverse methodologies and strategies to reach its goals.⁵ For instance, conflict resolution actors prioritize a “well-designed process of engagement and problem-solving,”⁶ aiming to facilitate impartial mechanisms for dialogue among participants and to show no bias in how various parties are treated. Human rights practitioners, on the other hand, focus on upholding international human rights law, emphasizing how “rights standards are meant to protect the weak from abuse of power by the strong and violations are seldom equally or proportionally distributed between opposing factors.”⁷ Less concerned about power imbalances and normative considerations, conflict resolvers prefer to concentrate on the prospects for reaching a peace agreement and, hence, their preference for impartiality and discretion in dealing with all sides of the conflict.⁶ For their part, human rights activists focus on denouncing abuses and calling for accountability. They observe the moral content of the negotiated settlement, report and monitor past and ongoing human rights violations, and use strategies such as “naming and shaming” and media publicity to gain public support.⁸

These differences between the human rights and conflict resolution camps are real but not necessarily inherently problematic. Instead of treating the two approaches as presenting a fixed either-or dichotomy, it is more productive and useful to regard them as evolving and changeable social practices that interact with and constitute each other. In the following sections we will show how a human rights approach can help reconstitute and make more effective traditional conflict resolution practices.

A Human Rights–Based Approach to Conflict Resolution

A human rights perspective can be applied to a diversity of fields and used as a framework for different policy processes and programs. The human rights approach to development, for example, has been widely discussed and implemented by the United Nations and its agencies. Regardless of their field of application, human rights–based approaches share four main characteristics. First, the primary goal of all of these approaches is the realization of human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international treaties. For example, the human rights–based approach to development redefines development as the realization of human rights.⁹

Second, a human rights perspective highlights the entitlements of rights holders and the obligations of duty bearers.¹⁰ The duty bearer in the international human rights regime is principally the state, but there have been calls and attempts to expand this category to include nonstate actors.¹¹ A human rights–based approach aims to develop the capacities of rights holders to claim their rights and of duty bearers to meet their obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill these rights.

Third, human rights principles guide all phases of the processes and programs in which practitioners and other actors are involved. These principles include the universality, inalienability, indivisibility, interdependence, and interrelatedness of human rights; equality and nondiscrimination; participation and inclusion; and accountability and the rule of law.¹² Fourth, a human rights approach emphasizes power asymmetry and inequality.¹³ Human rights norms were created precisely to protect weak and vulnerable individuals and groups from the abuse of the state or other potentially exploitative actors.

When applied to conflict resolution, a human rights perspective provides a set of standards, principles, and values that offers guidance in the design and implementation of conflict resolution strategies and processes. For the purpose of this essay, a human rights approach is a conceptual framework for conflict resolution processes that is normatively based on international human rights standards and operationally directed toward promoting and protecting human rights. The rest of the section examines four features that are critical when engaging in conflict resolution from a human rights approach: a normative legal framework; structural conditions for peace; participation and inclusion; and accountability and redress.

A Normative Legal Framework

Conflict resolution processes are strengthened when they invoke both the normative and legal basis of international human rights. Ideas such as the universality and inalienability of human rights, as well as an emphasis on nondiscrimination, inclusion, and equality, resonate widely. As such, human rights norms can provide a useful and acceptable set of principles and patterns of behavior that actors are encouraged to follow during the different phases of conflict. Adhering to these human rights and humanitarian law standards can limit the spread of violence, shape how the resolution of the conflict is conducted, and minimize the dehumanization of the enemy. By so doing, they limit the scale of victimhood and grievances. Human rights norms can also play an important role in guaranteeing prenegotiation agreements and de-escalating hostilities by providing reassurances and guarantees to disputing parties.

Human rights standards bestow legitimacy on conflict resolution processes by providing a common framework for working out the validity of competing claims and evaluating the grievances and fears of the parties.¹⁴ In fact, in some cases armed groups appear to be willing to accept human rights as a framework, as was the case in El Salvador, Guatemala, and the Philippines.¹⁵ A human rights approach also contributes to generating confidence in peace processes, as local actors often feel more protected under this framework, and international actors are more willing to offer their support when human rights are used as a guiding principle. Integrating human rights in a peace agreement can reduce fear of future domination and abuses of power, as human rights put limits on how those in power can exercise their authority. And they can play an integrating role by encouraging cross-community forums and coalitions based on shared values.

Structural Conditions for Peace

The goal of the human rights approach is to promote a positive and sustainable peace,¹⁶ and thus to address not only the proximate causes of conflict but also its underlying and structural causes. To this end, human rights promotes the mutual reinforcement of civil and political rights on the one hand, and of economic, social, and cultural rights on the other—all of which are best realized when implemented together. Such a holistic approach, including multiple human rights demands, is best illustrated by looking at land-related issues. The most common land-related human rights abuses include violent disputes over the ownership/occupation of territory, forced evictions and removals, and the loss of access to livelihoods and natural resources. Internally displaced people and refugees have often experienced a combination of these situations, and in response international organizations such as UN-Habitat have been promoting “conflict-sensitive land tools” to increase the accountability and capacity of the state to fulfill its human rights obligations. These include such tools as documenting housing and land that has been forcibly abandoned, providing land documents to displaced people, and issuing early warnings of evictions and human rights violations, among other strategies.¹⁷ These tools can be part of transitional justice measures as they seek some kind of justice for the victims of land-related abuses, and their aim is to make governments more accountable. Almost every major peace agreement from 2005 to 2014 contained land-specific provisions, highlighting the growing understanding that a human rights perspective is necessary for lasting peace.¹⁸

Participation and Inclusion

UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka briefs the UN Security Council during the High Level Review on the 15th anniversary of resolution 1325. Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown via Flickr

The traditional conflict resolution model carried out by government elites and high-ranking military officials has more recently been challenged with calls for a more plural and participatory process both during and after an agreement has been reached. Different bodies of research have shown how including civil society and women's groups in peace initiatives can mitigate the risks of conflict and instability and increase the effectiveness of peacebuilding.¹⁹ Participation and inclusion, however, remains an elusive goal. For example, women accounted for only 2 percent of mediators and 5 percent of witnesses and signatories in peace processes that took place between 1990 and 2017. For the same period, only 5 percent of peace agreements contained references to gender-related violence, despite its well-documented prevalence in armed conflict.²⁰

A human rights–based approach can enhance calls for inclusion not only through the use of legal instruments but also through the work of extensive advocacy networks at the international and local levels. From participating in nonviolent resistance to transforming social relations through negotiation and reconciliation (including violence de-escalation and the creation of structural capacity for peace), human rights actors are usually engaged in an extensive scope of activities for peacebuilding. These actors also often play a key role in educating marginalized groups about their rights, diffusing a culture of peace and equality, and strengthening human rights principles from the bottom up.²¹

Accountability and Redress

The “justice versus peace” dilemma often emerges in debates between those advocating for potential amnesty provisions and human rights advocates and victims demanding accountability for egregious human rights violations.²² Virtually all recently negotiated peace processes, such as those in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda, and Libya, have confronted this dilemma. How these problems are resolved (or not) is quite different depending on each context, and often shapes the prospects for peace.²³ Criminal justice remains a critical component to achieve full accountability, but it is not the only method. It needs to be simultaneously accompanied by other measures seeking truth, reconciliation, reparation, and nonrepetition.

Human Rights in Colombia's Peace Process

The peace talks between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia–People's Army (FARC–EP) concluded with the signing of a peace agreement on November 24, 2016, after five years of negotiations. In many respects, this process can serve as a general framework for incorporating human rights into peace negotiations. Three features in particular stand out. First, from the beginning of the peace process, the main negotiators used a human rights framework as guidance in the design and implementation of the agreements.²⁴ Second, the process was based on a series of principles consistent with notions of accountability, participation, and inclusion. Third, there was a focus on social justice in the post-conflict society's power relations, as demonstrated by the importance placed on including victims in the peace process, the call for the participation of the affected communities in the implementation process, and the specific measures taken to protect vulnerable populations.²⁵

Colombian president, Manuel Santos, and FARC-EP leader, Timoleón Jiménez, sign a ceasefire accord in Havana, Cuba in 2016. Photo Credit: PresidenciaRD via Flickr

The four components of a human rights–based approach to conflict resolution described above each played a significant role in Colombia's peace process. For example, human rights norms were explicitly included in the final peace accord and in the various partial agreements that were signed throughout the process. Notably, the premise that peace has been universally recognized as a human right served as the foundation for the development of the negotiations and the drafting of the agreement. The agreement also received varying degrees of support from domestic human rights groups and international and regional organizations, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which significantly accelerated the speed of the negotiations and leant greater legitimacy to the human rights agenda. The International Criminal Court, while conducting a preliminary investigation in Colombia, also played a key role in moving the peace process forward by signaling its support for the agreement between the government and the FARC.²⁶

Structural conditions leading to violent conflict were also addressed in the final agreement. For example, Columbia's agricultural agreement states that the principles guiding the negotiations were “welfare and good living” and an attempt to eradicate poverty in order to allow rural communities to fully exercise their human rights.²⁷ The agreement's land distribution program is also quite comprehensive and innovative, as it includes, for example, the involvement of affected communities, the inclusion of gender considerations in the legal foundations of the restitutions, and legal protections for Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities that are due restitutions.²⁸ Indeed, the Colombian peace process has become an important reference point for the principles of participation and inclusion, having created mechanisms for the involvement of civil society, human rights victims, and women in the negotiations.²⁹

Accountability proved to be one of the trickiest aspects of linking human rights to conflict resolution in Colombia's peace agreement. While not perfect, the deal recognizes the need to satisfy victims’ rights through the establishment of an integrated system of “truth, justice, reparation, and non-repetition,”³⁰including the creation of a Special Jurisdiction for Peace. The accountability agreements explicitly exclude amnesty for those who committed serious violations of human rights and/or serious infractions of international human rights law. However, subject to two main conditions, those perpetrators are eligible for an alternative sentence and some restrictions on their liberty of movement, but no prison term. First, they must confess their crimes and acknowledge responsibility for them. Second, they must devise an individual or collective reparation project covering a period of five to eight years, which needs to be approved by a special tribunal. Those accused who refuse to submit to those conditions face terms of imprisonment of up to twenty years.³¹ The agreement also develops a set of restorative justice measures aiming to protect victims’ rights, including the establishment of a truth commission. The Colombian case is particularly instructive when dealing with transitional justice dilemmas, showing that multiple and alternative forms of accountability and reparation measures can be acceptable from a human rights perspective while still leading to the signing of a peace agreement.

Human Rights and the Oslo Accords

Unlike the peace process in Colombia, human rights considerations were virtually absent in the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, despite the significant role of human rights violations in the causes, dynamics, and consequences of the conflict.³² The Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (DOP), as the Oslo Accords are officially titled, was signed on September 13, 1993, and did not reference the concept of human rights. Nor did it explicitly address the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people, an issue that was also excluded from the agenda of the permanent status negotiations. Instead, the agreement only refers to the recognition of the rather ambiguous “mutual legitimate and political rights” of the two sides.³³

Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat at the White House with Bill Clinton in 1993. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Following the DOP, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed a series of interim agreements between 1993 and 1999, but these rarely contained any explicit reference to human rights. The articles that deal with policing, for example, lack any reference to human rights protection,³⁴ and those that address economic issues refer to them not as “rights” (and without reference to the principle of equality) but as mechanisms for development and economic cooperation.³⁵ Further, the agreements do not establish institutions to protect and enforce human rights in the future, and they do not provide any holistic mechanisms to deal with past human rights violations and issues of justice and accountability. The language of some of these agreements, the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the Wye River Memorandum in particular, in fact suggests that international human rights norms are to be subject to the peace agreements, and not vice-versa. For example, Article XI of the Interim Agreement, annex 1, states, “Subject to the provisions of this Agreement, the Palestinian Police and the Israeli military forces shall exercise their powers and responsibilities pursuant to this Agreement with due regard to internationally-accepted norms of human rights and the rule of law, and shall be guided by the need to protect the public, respect human dignity and avoid harassment”³⁶ (italics added). As Christine Bell has written, “In both their text and implementation, the Israeli/Palestinian peace agreements demonstrate an almost complete divorce between the concept of peace and the concept of justice.”³⁷ The agreements do not address the structural and underlying causes of the conflict, and thus seek to achieve a negative peace rather than sustainable and positive one. Finally, the negotiation process that led to the agreements was not inclusive and representative, as it largely excluded civil society organizations as well as representatives of women and victims of the conflict.

A number of factors contributed to the absence of human rights principles in these peace agreements. First, they reflect the relative power of Israel and its interest in focusing on security and order rather than human rights and justice. Second, they reflect the dominant perceptions regarding the nature of the conflict. It is largely portrayed as a territorial conflict whose solution is a geographic separation between the two sides, despite being more akin to an intergroup conflict within a territory. As a result, the peace process adopted the traditional interstate peacekeeping tools. This meant that human rights were left off the agenda, since the interstate approach dictates that human rights are a domestic issue that should not be addressed in the negotiations between states. Third, the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization, at least during the Oslo peace process, tended to focus more on the right of self-determination and less on other basic human rights. This was in part because a focus on human rights could have limited the newly established Palestinian Authority's ability to control opposition groups that challenged its legitimacy and policies. Fourth, the international community, including the mediators, did not pressure the parties to adopt human rights principles.³⁸ Amnesty International concluded in a report that “the world desire for peace in the Middle East has led to an international readiness to subordinate human rights concerns to the pursuit of peace and an unwillingness by many countries to raise human rights violations committed whether by Israel or by the Palestinian Authority.”³⁹ The Israeli-Palestinian experience shows that excluding human rights from a peace process can contribute to a failure to achieve even a negative peace.

Conclusion

Finally, we would like to briefly address one of the main criticisms and challenges of the human rights approach to conflict resolution: the rigid universality of human rights. Conflict resolution practitioners often reject the human rights perspective as a one-size-fits-all approach imposed by international actors without consideration of local contexts. This criticism overlooks the inherent variations in the level of interpretation and implementation of human rights. As Jack Donnelly aptly puts it, “Universal human rights not only may but should be implemented in different ways at different times and in different places, reflecting the free choices of free peoples to incorporate an essential particularity into universal human rights.”⁴⁰ Far from being sidelined, the adaptation of human rights norms and principles into the local context is an integral part of the human rights approach to conflict resolution presented in this essay.

While the inclusion of human rights in peace agreements can signal the beginning of a new process of institutionalization and socialization for human rights norms and principles, it is important to remember that this is only one stage in the process of building a sustainable and positive peace.

Colombia's greatest challenge today is the continued implementation of the peace accords in accordance with the human rights standards established in the final agreement. Designing and building effective institutions to protect human rights is not a single event but a process that takes place over a long period of time. The lack of coherent and strong formal and informal institutions with sufficient capacity to protect human rights could jeopardize the transition period from conflict to peace. Therefore, a human rights–based approach emphasizes the importance of enhancing the capacity of the duty bearers as well as of the role of the rights holders, as they serve as critical actors in the design, implementation, and monitoring of these policies.

The way we conceptualize the relationship between human rights and conflict resolution is of utmost importance. It significantly influences the practices of human rights activists and conflict resolution practitioners on the ground. Depending on how the relationship between human rights and conflict resolution is understood, it can make some practitioners more relevant than others, some policies more reasonable than others, and some parties involved in a conflict more powerful and legitimate than others. In other words, ideas about the relationship between human rights and conflict resolution are not politically neutral. They regulate and constitute both the process of conflict resolution and the kind of peace that is achieved.

—Claudia Fuentes-Julio and Raslan Ibrahim

Claudia Fuentes-Julio is assistant professor at the International Relations Institute at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. Her work has been published in several edited books and journals in the areas of human rights, foreign policy, and Latin-American politics. She recently co-edited with Paula Drummond the volume Human Rights and Conflict Resolution: Bridging the Theoretical and Practical Divide (2018).

Raslan Ibrahim is assistant professor of political science and international relations at the State University of New York at Geneseo. His research interests include international relations theory, human rights, sovereignty, and international politics of the Middle East.