Peacemaking, Power-sharing and International Law: Imperfect Peace

This monograph provides a contemporary analysis of the frictions between peacemaking and international human rights law based on the cases of post-conflict power-sharing in Lebanon and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In this context it evaluates the long-standing debate in the United Nations and human rights bodies about the ‘imperfect peace’.

Written from a practitioner-scholarly viewpoint and drawing from new authentic sources, the book describes the mechanisms used in peace agreements and post-conflict constitutions for managing ethnic or religious diversity, explains their legal limits under international human rights law, and provides a conceptual framework for analysing the nexus between law and peacemaking.

The book argues that the relationship between the content of peace agreements and post-conflict constitutions, their negotiation process and the element of time need to be untangled to better understand legal limits of statebuilding in the aftermath of armed conflict. It reaches out equally to scholars in human rights law and peace and conflict studies, advisers in peace processes, constitution-makers, and peace mediators.