Accomodating cultural diversity: Key to successful peace accords

By the University of Birmingham, the Royal United Services Institute, the University of Geneva

Our podcast and associated activities reflect on the role of cultural reforms in peace agreements and open a broad conversation on how cultural institutions can be reformed to nurture sustainable peace after civil wars. In the podcast, we present our recent work, which explores how all intra-state peace accords concluded worldwide in 1989-2017 reformed cultural institutions. We found that cultural reforms which accommodate cultural diversity in intra-state peace accords makes them more successful and resilient. We explain why this may be the case through examples from conflict-affected societies such as Northern Ireland.