United States Institute of Peace

This trend toward increased supply and demand for mediation from a more diverse set of countries extends beyond the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Turkey played a key part in the largest exchange of prisoners between Russia and the West since the Cold War. Qatar and Egypt have been central to efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in recent months. Oman and Qatar have played key roles in talks between the United States and Iran. China has sought to reconcile opposing Palestinian factions and helped broker rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Saudi Arabia has hosted several rounds of talks to address Sudan’s conflict, and South Africa hosted talks producing a deal to cease hostilities in Ethiopia.

While mediation is not a new tool in the policy toolkit of these countries — sometimes grouped as BRICS + states, “emerging powers,” or “the hedging middle” — the frequency and scope of their mediation work is increasing. This is part of a larger shift in the center of gravity for international peacemaking away from the United Nations and the handful of “traditional” mediation countries — such as the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway and Finland — that dominated the international mediation landscape in the decades since World War II, toward a more diverse set of peace brokers, sometimes acting alone, sometimes in partnership with “traditional” mediators.

In a quest to better understand this shift, USIP traveled over the past year to South Africa, Oman, Qatar and India (and soon to Turkey) to hear from those on the front lines of these mediation initiatives. As part of USIP’s annual PeaceCon, the Institute brought together experts from these countries to share their insights into the priorities, practices and styles of these “emerging powers in mediation.”

Why Is the Roster of Mediation Actors Expanding?

One simple explanation for this more diverse set of mediating powers is that as the number of conflicts increases, “traditional” mediator capacity has been overwhelmed. There are now more state-based conflicts than at any time since the Uppsala Conflict Data Program began recording in 1946. At the same time, conflicts are becoming more complex with increased state-to-state conflict and internationalized civil wars. As in Sudan, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, some countries are providing support to belligerents, some countries are working on mediation, and some countries appear to be doing both at the same time.

Underlying all of these trends are shifting global power dynamics. Global powers are now in the category of those relying on mediation as well as those providing it, more countries are jockeying for power through fomenting conflict and/or high-profile resolution roles, conflicts with broader global repercussions are pulling in more voices for peace, and countries are testing or disregarding the current “rules-based order” in search of better ways serve their own national interests.

• United Nations struggles with deadlock:  As geopolitical tensions rise, a more divided U.N. Security Council has limited the U.N.’s ability to play a leading mediation or overarching coordination role. As a result, it has been increasingly difficult for the U.N. Security Council to agree on mediators to lead important peace processes, as evidenced by the Libya case.
• Emerging mediation powers navigate shifting power dynamics: States are increasingly seeking out peace-facilitation roles as an extension of their foreign policy, both for political status as well as national and regional security. By proactively offering to serve as a trusted broker between competing powers, these states can avoid becoming the grass trampled between fighting elephants, to paraphrase an African expression. The large number of countries positioning themselves as brokers between Russia and Ukraine reflects the global impact of the conflict as well as states’ desire to situate themselves as global leaders and to shape the outcome of the conflict, all while seeking to avoid backlash for being perceived as favoring one side.
• Warring parties as well as “traditional” mediators seek diversity: The shift is not only on the supply side, but on the demand side as well. Increasingly, “traditional” mediators are seeking out trusted third parties to broker a deal or backchannel communications with an adversary, as when the United States leans on Gulf states to communicate messages to Iran. Other times, the third party is looked to for reasons of geography, as when Turkey’s Esenboğa airport became the exchange point in the Russia-Western nation prisoner exchange. Even when the United States, Switzerland, Norway and others play lead mediation roles, they are increasingly opting to partner with regional states and organizations as a way to “burden share,” such as U.S. collaboration with the African Union and South Africa on Ethiopia talks and with Angola on efforts to reduce tensions between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo after a U.S. mediation surge in late 2023. Warring parties also are looking to a wider set of mediators with certain regional or religious identities or credentials. For example, Turkey’s multi-faceted identity, geography, and geopolitics have led countries from East Africa to Eastern Europe to the Middle East to turn to it for mediation.

Implications of the Shift

USIP’s PeaceCon panel highlighted the realities of the evolving peacemaking landscape and mediation countries’ perspectives, seeking to portray the opportunities and challenges of the emerging scene without passing judgement on its rising stars.

• Issue-specific brokering rather than overarching peace processes: In the absence of a decisive U.N. political role, mediators have tended to focus on issue-specific deals to address particular impacts of crises rather than the underlying drivers of conflict through holistic agreements. For example, to date, rather than a U.N.-orchestrated overarching political process for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, issue-specific deals have been brokered by Turkey and the U.N.’s humanitarian arm on the Black Sea Grain initiative, Qatar on Russia’s return of Ukrainian children and the UAE on exchanges of prisoners of war.
• More mediators mean more potential for chaos, but also more sources of leverage: The more parties there are to a mediation, especially without an overarching mandate or organization, the more likely mediators are to jockey among themselves for prime position, pursue competing visions of a desired outcome and hold conflicting views of how to achieve it. Further, different mediation options can lead warring parties to “forum shop” in search of a venue they perceive as more favorable to their interests or to buy time to gain advantage on the battlefield. On the other hand, a more diverse set of mediators brings a wider array of relationships, perspectives, and approaches to the practice. More actors supporting a mediation effort means more diverse sources of leverage to cajole and intimidate belligerents into compromise as well as a larger set of resources to guarantee the outcome of an agreement and rebuild afterwards.
• “Hands-off” facilitation means less prescriptive mediation, and maybe less enforcement of outcomes: There are clear difference in styles between the more “hands on” or “normative” mediation of the U.N. and Western actors, who have often sought to address the structural drivers of other countries’ conflicts through mediation, with the more “hands off” facilitation of states responding to the requests of conflicted parties without a prescribed stake in specific outcomes. This style of facilitation also places less emphasis on the mediator enforcing or guaranteeing the outcome of a negotiated agreement, which means that stand-alone models of monitoring, verification and guarantorship may need to be explicitly negotiated.
• Inclusivity prized, but with different definitions: When Western mediators refer to an inclusive peace process, they generally mean integrating civil society, women and other elements of society into what are otherwise often elite-driven discussions. Others see inclusion as welcoming all groups to the table, including some classified as “terrorist groups” or otherwise denounced by the international community.

Peacemaking in this New Era

How can peacemakers and policymakers seize the opportunities and deal with the challenges of this new mediation landscape?

• Mediators must coordinate among themselves: In the absence of overarching U.N. coordination, mediators will need to coordinate, sequence and align mediation efforts among themselves, perhaps each addressing a discrete issue set, while also laying out an overarching organizational structure, sequence and timeline for the mediation.
• Mediators can set the rules for who can join them: When divisions at the U.N. stymie new or expanded arms embargos to keep external actors from arming belligerents in internationalized civil wars, mediators can band together — as they did with mixed results on Libya in 2019 — to determine that only once actors stop providing arms to warring parties can they be considered part of a public mediation group for the conflict.
• Use new technology to test pathways to peace: Given the increased complexity of conflict and number of actors, harness data modeling, AI, and computer-based simulation tools to analyze actors’ motivations, means and desired end states and test mediation approaches. For example, in Yemen and Libya, the U.N. has applied AI tools typically used for private sector market analysis to better understand what groups in conflict zones were most concerned about in real time and quickly gauge reactions to potential solutions.

While mediation has long been a fraught and imperfect practice, its role in saving lives, ending conflict and reinforcing international rules and norms, call for greater investment in the understanding and practice of peacemaking. In an era often gravely defined by increasing conflict, the appetite for peacemaking by a more diverse set of actors should be welcomed. Amid limited recent mediation successes, those supporting negotiations must reassess and adjust approaches, tools and practices in ways that take into account the new realities of fewer coordinating structures, different styles, competing interests and perhaps even different definitions of peace.