Building sustainable peace agreements in West Africa

In West Africa, peace agreements have generally proven fragile and volatile (on average, they do not last more than five years). This cycle of ever-changing conflict and violence hinders development significantly. Research is underway to understand conflict, its source, and most of all, its consequences for the state, for citizens and for their property. However, little is known about the conditions and determinants to sustain peace agreements, or about the impact of inclusive approaches on their sustainability. This project seeks to help fill these knowledge gaps. By combining quantitative and qualitative approaches (namely the MAPP-Method for Impact Assessment of Programmes and Projects), the Centre ivoirien de recherches économiques et sociales (CIRES-Ivorian center of economics and social sciences), will collaborate with researcher teams in Liberia and Sierra Leone to identify the determinants of peace agreement sustainability in relation to conflict management practices in Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The research will help determine the breakdown threshold and resilience of peace agreements in the three countries. It will also explain the impact of inclusive approaches on the sustainability of these peace agreements. The research results will inform the efforts of institutions involved in mediation and conflict management in West Africa. This project is part of an initiative by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and IDRC's Governance, Security, and Justice program which aims to build a database of evidence on the most effective strategies for sustainable and inclusive peacebuilding and state rebuilding processes in sub-Saharan Africa.