Understanding Geneva s Role in Peace Diplomacy Key-note speech given to the global meeting of TEDx organisers convened by TED Global in Geneva, 7 December 2015. Dr. Achim Wennmann, Researcher at Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies; and Executive Coordinator of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. Good morning. Welcome to the Graduate Institute and welcome to Geneva. Compared to many global capitals, Geneva is a relatively small city. The whole urban region counts just about 500,000 people. But it is intensely cosmopolitan with 190 nationalities, and over 30 percent of its population comes from abroad. Geneva is home to 35 international organisations, 400 NGOs, and many private foundations and major companies. Thousands of people are working towards mutual understanding and in one way or the other focus on preventing or resolving violent conflicts. So when Bruno from TED asked me to talk about Geneva's role in peace diplomacy, I obviously said yes. And then I started wondering: where to start? Do I start from Geneva? Or from the outside from the many places of conflict and violence? I have worked here for the last 15 years, doing research and running a network of peacebuilding professionals, and over time I have realised that the best way to understand the role of Geneva is to look at it from the outside-in, trying first to understand the key characteristics of violent conflict in different times and places. So, to unpack the role of Geneva in peace diplomacy, I would like to take you on four short journeys: The first is from Solferino to Geneva to set out the origins of Geneva s international role; The second is from New York to Geneva to highlight its history in multilateral peace diplomacy; Then I would like to take you from Aceh to Geneva to underline Geneva s role after the Cold War; and From Rio de Janeiro to Geneva to think about the future landscape of violent conflict. From Solferino to Geneva To get started, let s put our clocks back to 24 June 1859. This is when a Geneva businessman travelled close to the village of Solferino in the present day Lombardy region of Italy. He was urgently seeking a meeting with Napoleon to obtain a land concession in Algeria. Coincidentally, in the same region French and Austrian troops had just ended one of the bloodiest battles of the 19 th century. Our businessman witnessed the agony of thousands of
soldiers left to die without medical care. So traumatised by his experience, he graphically depicted this pain and suffering in a book. Some of you may have guessed by now who this businessman was. It was Henri Dunant who is known today as the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross. His book is called A Memory of Solferino, which still stands today as a powerful reminder of the horrors of war. In this book, Dunant asked two questions one about the possibility to form relief societies, and another about the possibility to create an international convention to protect the wounded. These two questions were the seeds of the international role of Geneva. Five years after Solferino, the Geneva Conventions were signed and became the founding act of the ICRC. After 150 years, this historic legacy lives on today. Geneva stands for a focus on the individual in international affairs. It is the capital of humanitarian action, human rights, disarmament, and people-centred security. Of course, this Geneva attribute has not had an easy history in a world where international affairs are marked by states. In 1920, Geneva became home to the League of Nations. It was the first international organisation to maintain world peace through collective security and disarmament. It stood for the use of negotiation and arbitration to settle disputes between states. Yet, the League could not uphold these goals in the face of escalating conflict dynamics. Benito Mussolini infamously said that the League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out. Many states withdrew from the League and an experiment of multilateral peace diplomacy faltered, until it was reinvented in 1945 with the creation of the United Nations in New York. This is where we will start our second journey from the outside-in to understand Geneva s role in peace diplomacy. From New York to Geneva New York became and still is the bastion of state-centred international affairs. Peace diplomacy New-York-style is primarily about the United Nations Security Council. This is where the P5 China, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom and France enjoy the special privileges of veto power. Peace diplomacy in New York means the investment of diplomatic capital to get certain conflict situations onto or off the Security Council agenda. Geneva has sometimes become an extension of these New York dynamics and a natural stop in larger processes of Great Power politics.
The famous Regan-Gorbatchev summit of 1985 was the first time the US and the Soviet Union held talks on diplomatic relations and the armed race. Local anecdote has it that the US and Soviet Ambassadors posted to Geneva spent years together wrangling over disarmament issues shouting at each other in negotiations but after the meetings made plans for the weekend together with their families. In a sense, they represent the essence of peace diplomacy: ensuring that your counties negotiation position does not stand in the way of positive personal relations with other delegates. It is also the combination of thick skin with emotional intelligence to shape a lengthy and undefined process. Today, Great Power politics still pass through Geneva, with conferences on Syria, Libya, Yemen or Iran being recent examples. The legacy of state-centred politics is important to understand Geneva s role in peace diplomacy. There are few better places to connect with governments on peace and conflict issues away from the policy environment of New York. Geneva counts over 174 countries that are represented by 250 diplomatic missions to various international organisations. With the end of the Cold War, the world outside Geneva changed again and we continue our journey from the outside-in and start from Aceh a province of Indonesia that saw a brutal civil war. From Aceh to Geneva Aceh stands of course for the over 30 civil wars that marked the post-cold War period. Around that time, I did the research for my PhD on the financing of rebel groups. As you can imagine, finding interview partners for this sort of topic can be a bit tricky. But, being based in Geneva, it did not turn out to be all that difficult. Via various connections, I managed to contact active and former rebel group members. On top, while speaking to them in different parts of the world, they did seem to know Geneva quite well, because at one point they had come here for informal conversations. For me, these were my first encounters with Geneva s discrete world of peace mediation. By the early 2000s, the optics on peace and conflict had changed from a preoccupation with inter-state wars, to a preoccupation with civil wars. Peace diplomacy had shifted to the realm of non-governmental organisations, because many governments and international organisations were ill-suited for discrete mediation roles with non-state armed groups. In the post-cold War period, Geneva was a stop within larger processes to end civil wars. Unless you have your fingers in the pie, you don't really see how much is really going on. It is a discrete world and confidentiality and face-to-face interactions are still the crucial tools of the trade to create trust between conflict parties.
This legacy helps us understand yet another facet of Geneva s role in peace diplomacy. Geneva stands for the use of dialogue and negotiation to prevent or resolve violent conflict. It is possibly the only place with first or second degree channels of communication to any armed actor anywhere in the world. This legacy builds on Switzerland s history of neutrality and good offices and mediation roles, and Geneva s humanitarian tradition. It means constantly creating spaces for dialogue in the world s most violent places. After 9/11, these spaces have become under pressure especially with conflict parties labelled terrorists, criminals, or warlords. These pressures have also raised the strategic value of Geneva s connectedness and opened a battle for peace professionals to protect the spaces for dialogue and negotiation. So we have gone from the Battle of Solferino, to a state-centric world, superpower politics, and civil wars. Each era has shaped its legacy for Geneva as a centre for peace diplomacy. The world of violent conflict is never stagnant and as we speak, we are facing yet again a new landscape of violent conflict. This is where I will take you onto the last journey, from Rio de Janeiro to Geneva. From Rio de Janeiro to Geneva Rio stands for the many non-conventional conflict settings where as many people die as in traditional war zones - Acapulco, Johannesburg, San Salvador, or Marseille could be other examples. This is the world of chronic of criminal violence that kills at least five times more people than terrorism kills globally each year, but does not get much media attention. Geneva has played an important role in shaping global understanding about these new conflict dynamics. It has done so through evidenced-based research building on its tradition of people-centred security. For instance, over the last decade the Small Arms Survey demonstrated that the human cost of small arms is much bigger than the one of big arms. The United Nations Refugee Agency accounts for trends in forced displacement showing that there are currently 60 million people affected. This would be the world's 24 th biggest country if all these people would concentrate in one territory. The World Health Organization and the Geneva Declaration of Armed Violence and Development estimate that about 500,000 people die violently every year. This means a city like Geneva wiped out every year; or one dead body every minute so at least 12 dead since I have started talking. I think these figures demonstrate that our optic is different if we look at violent conflict through a state-centric lens, or through a people-centered lens. They also show that peace diplomacy is a serious business that can translate into saved lives or dead bodies.
These figures also say something about Geneva: There are few better places to access expertise and know-how relevant for peace diplomacy. This feature underlines Geneva s role as knowledge and practice laboratory. This role will become ever more important as future landscapes of violent conflict change rapidly and require new responses. Let me bring in a personal example here. Over the last two years I have facilitated research toward a White Paper on Peacebuilding. During this work we have identified several new trends. Here are two. Unofficial peace diplomats: There are now around the world thousands of individuals from all walks of life that are engaged peace diplomacy at their own personal risk. There are many stories of peace leadership from cities, businesses, or women. But too frequently, their voices are not heard in major policy capitals. Mini-lateralism: This approach describes alliances across sectors and institutions in specific contexts to tackle violent conflict peacefully despite a volatile environment. Hundreds of armed violence reduction initiatives in Latin America are a case in point; at least 35 local ceasefires in Syria prior to the recent bombing campaigns are another. These trends reflect a strategic landscape where power has become more diffuse. There is a a growing number of actors that play an ever more important role in peace diplomacy, be they state, non-state, regional or sub-national actors, or organisations with no geographic definition. Within this new strategic landscape, Geneva has a role to play. As a connecting hub to all actors relevant for conflict and peace. As a convening place to prevent or resolve violent conflict through dialogue and negotiation. As a knowledge lab for evidenced-based research and practice. And I would add that Geneva is playing a crucial role as a docking station for everyone who is looking for non-violent solutions to violent conflict. In a statement last month, the President of the ICRC, Peter Maurer, said that we have entered a new era, and it is not a peaceful one. Unfortunately, he is right. But I strongly believe that what is happening in Geneva in this connecting hub, convening place, knowledge lab and docking station should inspire people that it is possible to resolve violent conflict through dialogue and negotiation. Thank you very much.