Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria

Since 2012, ceasefires have been used in Syria to halt violence and facilitate peace agreements. However, in her new book, Marika Sosnowski argues that a ceasefire is rarely ever just a “cease fire”. Instead, she demonstrates that ceasefires are not only military tactics but are also tools of wartime order and statebuilding.

Drawing from the PA-X dataset, rare primary documents and first-hand interviews with over eighty Syrians and other experts, in this talk, Marika draws from the book’s findings to present an innovative typology of ceasefires as a way to think through a range of heretofore underexamined impacts ceasefires can have on areas like rebel/local governance, citizenship and property rights, humanitarian access and economic networks. The categories of the typology will be illustrated with examples of ceasefires from arguably the most critical conflict of our time, the Syrian civil war.

Read more about the book Redefining Ceasefires: Wartime Order and Statebuilding in Syria

About the Author

Marika Sosnowski is an Australian-qualified lawyer, a Research Associate at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Melbourne Law School. Her research is firmly interdisciplinary straddling international law, socio-legal studies and politics. Her primary interests are in the fields of governance and legal systems with a geographical focus on Syria.

About PeaceRep

PeaceRep is a research consortium based at The University of Edinburgh Law School. Our research is re-thinking peace and transition processes in the light of changing conflict dynamics, changing demands of inclusion, and changes in patterns of global intervention in conflict and peace/mediation/transition management processes.

Learn more about PeaceRep 

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Image: “Boys playing tug of war” (2020) by Shadi Abousada

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