This memo summarises research on local agreements and community level mediation undertaken by the Conflict Research Programme (CRP) in five sites – DRC, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria in collaboration with the Political Settlements Research Programme (PSRP) and the Center for Security Studies in Zurich, Switzerland. The overall conclusion is that local talks and community-level mediation can contribute to a peace logic. They are more likely to contribute to do so if they involve local civilians and regional or international multilateral neutral actors, are related to the national, regional, and international level, and are based on a detailed knowledge of context. An effort to expand this type of process on a broader scale may be the best opportunity for addressing the social condition that characterises contemporary intractable conflicts.

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