Does it really matter what's written on page 36, protocol V, section III, point 5 of a UN-endorsed peace treaty? In this book Dr. Miranda Ruwart Melcher shows that seemingly small details - such as who wears suits, who has toothbrushes, and how specific words are translated between French and English - can and have delayed peace or contributed to restarting wars.

As detailed in a review in International Peacekeeping (Nov, 2024), “the themes that Melcher centres in this book are acutely relevant to the conflict landscape of today” and “fundamentally challenges anyone engaging in contemporary peace process research or practice.”

Listen to Miranda discuss the book on the New Books Network podcast and about her work more broadly and this book specifically on the Just Access podcast.

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Endorsements

“This book focuses on the fundamental questions of how to make peace and make sure that it holds. Miranda Ruwart Melcher patiently dissects two peace processes to glean important lessons on the need for specificity in peace process provisions rather than deterring difficult decisions to a later stage. This book represents a great addition to the Peace and Conflict studies literature. It is highly recommended.”

— Professor Roger Mac Ginty, Durham University

“Securing Peace in Angola and Mozambique draws our attention to security sector reform as a crucial part of the peace process. The book systematically examines the behind-the-scenes dynamics of how peace treaties come into being, arguing for contextual sensitive and specificity in treaty negotiations, terms, and implementation. This analysis contributes to the processual turn in the study of civil war and has important implications for our understanding of war-to-peace transition in general and military integration in particular.”

— Professor Anastasia Shesterinina, University of York

“This decade has seen new civil wars in Africa. Securing Peace in Angola and Mozambique is timely - re-examining two nasty conflicts that ended some 20 and 30 years ago. Miranda Melcher’s well written book focuses on the importance of negotiation and peace treaties and assess why some treaties stick, and others fail. An important resource for practitioners and scholars, examining the stumbling blocks in negotiating peace treaties and why some civil wars last longer than others.”

— Dr. Alex Vines OBE, Chatham House 

Miranda’s research uses unique primary source data, including interviews with negotiation participants, as well as UN archival materials opened only in 2019. Her book chronologically compares the two country case studies, investigating both the successful and failed treaties of these conflicts in detail, examining their negotiating contexts, treaty terms, and implementation processes. One of her core arguments is that the entire treaty process is fundamentally interconnected: those who negotiate even the initial drafts of the treaty can have significant impacts on whether or not it can be implemented successfully.

The overarching argument of her research is that for negotiations to produce treaties that can then be successfully implemented, the negotiations and treaty terms must be specific. This includes not only including details that may be contentious to negotiate, such as the number of soldiers each side will contribute to the combined military and the rules for rank designations, to name only two that arose consistently in these two case studies as difficult to agree on. This is counter to a strand of the mediation literature that advocates for leaving large issues out (strategic ambiguity), but congruent with military integration findings regarding the need to clearly address this topic in treaties for higher likelihoods of success.

Additionally, Miranda’s book highlights the importance of dignity of participants and the inclusion of military experts during negotiations to enable high-quality treaty terms. Aspects of dignity and respect were common themes throughout the interviews conducted for this dissertation, with participants in negotiations consistently mentioning the impact of noticeable disparities in language, dress, bureaucratic experience, exposure to foreign travel, and more on the attitude of negotiators on all sides before terms even began to be discussed.

In essence, Miranda’s research demonstrates the critical importance of specificity in peace treaties in understanding implementation outcomes for military integration. This is an area that is rarely the primary focus of research undertaken about successful conditions of peace, making treaty specificity an undervalued factor in implementation success or failure. 

 
 

Talks & Related Publications

  • Miranda co-presented with Professor Jenny Benham at a joint seminar between the Cardiff University departments of history, law, archaeology, English, and philosophy, comparing their work on modern and medieval peace processes and treaties respectively.

  • Miranda presented to the University College Dublin’s School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe), focusing on her findings around treaty negotiations and military integration (September, 2024).

  • Miranda presented to BISA’s working group on Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding and Human Rights, chaired by Dr. David Curran, focusing on her research’s findings on the development of UN peacekeeping (September, 2024).

  • Miranda presented to PeaceRep at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on ways her findings can contribute to current and ongoing peace processes (May, 2024).

  • Miranda presented on the importance of studying civil wars and how they end, and her main findings on writing peace treaties to the Sociology department at the University of York (May, 2024)

  • Miranda presented on her book and the extent to which civil war peace treaties might be relevant within the canon of international law to Queen’s University Belfast’s International and European Law research group (March, 2024).

  • As a fellow for the Civil War Paths research centre at the University of Sheffield, Miranda explained how her research fits into the wider security sector reform and Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) sphere, in “Rethinking DDR: the possibilities of post-conflict military integration” (January, 2023).

  • For the Yale International Alliance, Miranda discussed “Civil Wars - Beyond the Headlines” (February, 2022).

  • In the US Army War College’s blog Warroom, Miranda wrote about “How peace treaties can trump UN mandates for peacekeepers” (July, 2020).

  • In a blog post for King’s College London’s Defense-in-Depth blog, Miranda wrote about “Military Involvement in Post-Conflict Peace Negotiations” (October, 2019).

  • In a podcast episode for Women in Foreign Policy inaugural season, Miranda shared her recommendations on “Effective Networking” (February, 2019).

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