The forgotten track: Role and impact of protest movements during peace processes

The last decade has seen a growing policy and academic interest in the meaningful inclusion of civil society in negotiated settlements through multi-track approaches to peace processes. However, existing studies tend to focus either on strategies for broadening participation at the Track I negotiation table, or on Track II consultation formats to get citizens’ buy-in for the resulting agreement (Cuhadar and Paffenholz 2020). They fail to account for bottom-up mobilisation by grassroots social movements that emerge during armed conflict and mobilize nonviolently – against or alongside warring parties – in pursuit of pro-peace or pro-change agendas. While civic movements often play an instrumental role in pressuring conflict parties to negotiate a peaceful political transition (Dudouet 2017), and their exclusion can provoke mass protests (Zahar and McCandless 2020), we know very little about the role and impact of civil resistance campaigns during formal peace processes. Civil resistance strategies include a broad range of tactics such as street protests, strikes and boycotts. During peace processes, they may be used by social movements to express grievances, exert pressure on the conflict parties to end violence and start or resume negotiations, to influence issues and positions on the negotiation agenda, or raise awareness regarding (lack of) implementation. However, mediators and other support actors involved in peace processes never consider protest movements as part of their multi-track approaches to peace. As expressed in the UN Guidance on Effective Mediation, “it may be difficult to engage interest groups that are not easily defined or lack clear leadership, for example social movements and youth groups.” (UN 2012). Drawing on cross-disciplinary insights from social movement and civil resistance scholarship, this paper aims to contribute to the concept and practice of multitrack peace processes by analyzing the strategies employed by Track III peaceful protest movements during peace processes; their relations with the primary conflict parties (government and armed opposition groups) and third-party mediators; and their impact on Track I negotiations. The empirical data will be drawn from a qualitative comparative design focusing on three contrasting case studies: the Women Mass Action for Peace campaign in Liberia (2003); the SIRA student pro-independence movement in Aceh/Indonesia (2000-2005); and the Madhesi minority rights movement in Nepal (2006-2015).