Coordinating intermediary peace efforts

Multiple peace-making efforts by intermediaries can be a blessing or a curse, particularly in ethnic, religious, or other types of communal conflicts. The author outlines four general ways in which multiple interventions can hamper peacemaking, as well as the different types of intermediaries and de-escalating activities that can help efforts to achieve conflict resolution. Multiple intermediaries can work effectively either in sequence or contemporaneously; coordination of such activities is vital. Based on the analysis presented here, the author offers four different strategies to maximize the benefits of multiple intermediaries in peacemaking.He was the founding director of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflict at Syracuse, has written extensively on international conflict resolution, and is completing the book,Toward Constructive Struggle.