Much of the political violence in today's world takes the form of civil war - clashes within states between identity groups who become arch enemies.

Tragic examples in recent decades include the kind of internal wars that devastated Bosnia and Rwanda; that continue to rage in Iraq; and that threaten to flare up in many other countries in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia.

As the world collectively struggles to address such conflicts, it has become clear that conflict resolution approaches aimed at simply stopping physical violence and loss of life are not enough. More systemic approaches are critically needed, not only to prevent violence but also to sustain peace agreements once they have been reached. To address today's wars, we have to create what Johann Galtung, writing 30 years ago, called “positive peace” (Galtung, 1969). This means confronting “structural” and “cultural” violence: the social, political, and economic conditions and the attitudes within a given society that often lead to the use of physical violence. The integration of human rights principles into conflict resolution processes is a critical way to build pathways toward such positive peace.

The reasons for such an integration flow from the two theories that offer the most compelling explanations for what causes and sustains intra-state violence. The first theory, discussed by political scientists such as Ted Gurr, sees conflict as emerging when a group has a salient cultural identity and shares important collective grievances. Gurr argues that the mobilization to take political action stems from “a cultural group's shared grievances about unequal treatment and its desire to protect a valued identity” (Gurr, 1996: 63).

However, domestic political environments shape conflict as well. For example, conflict is much less likely to erupt in a democratic state that allows expression of grievances than in one whose government suppresses or ignores the claims of national groups. The risk of violent conflict is especially high in states making the transition to democracy, since coercive restraints on expression of identity are relaxed but the institutionalized means for their expression have not yet been consolidated (p.

An alternative theory, developed by Paul Collier, focuses entirely on economic ele­ments and attaches little importance to objec­tive ethnic grievances (Collier, 2000). Instead, Collier argues that although power differences and majority/minority relations within society may sustain conflict once it has begun, the issues of power that drive conflict are fun­damentally about control of resources, espe­cially primary exports. Furthermore, Collier states that objective grievances are usually not even a by-product of conflict, but are often generated by rebels to legitimize conflicts fueled by a desire to control resources. Thus, in his view, relations between minority and majority groups and power differentials play no significant role in causing conflict. In Collier's view, the potential sources of conflict (a desire for power and perceived identity­based grievances) are found in all societies, but the existence of war is predicated upon what he calls the feasibility of predation: the ability to use force to extort goods or money from their primary owners (Collier, 2000: 4). Thus, in determining whether overt conflict will erupt, issues such as political inequality and power imbalances are less important than the ability of rebel groups to “do well by war” and gain additional economic power through violent means.

Each of these theories places a different emphasis on the societal elements that may lead identity groups to an overt use of vio­lence. Although the emphases are different, group identity and perceptions of discrim­ination are central in both: instrumental in Collier's theory, and motivational in Gurr's. This is where the human rights agenda comes in, with two significant elements to enhance conflict resolution practice.

The second element of human rights practice is an outgrowth of the first: to affect the balance of power between governments and individuals, and more recently between governments and minority groups. Human rights norms cannot only constrain the power of states, but can also provide a source of leverage to identity groups who feel oppressed or victimized by discrimination.

From the perspective of those engaged in international conflict resolution, human rights become most salient when peace agreements are being negotiated. In practice, there is at least an implicit consensus among Track 1 mediators that human rights provisions should be included in the text of any peace agreement. Beyond that, the consensus unravels as to how, or even whether, to deal with human rights. This is particularly true of third-party processes such as mediation and facilitation, where impartiality is thought to be a key element of conflict resolution effectiveness.¹ This discussion will therefore focus on integrating human rights concerns into the work of third parties.

In order to explore the possibility of inte­grating human rights into third-party practice, we must delve into the potential role of law and norms in addressing intra-state conflicts - not from the perspective of an international lawyer but from the perspective of a conflict resolution practitioner. Just as is the case in US domestic mediation practice, my argument here is that international mediation and facilitation should more explicitly define themselves as operating in the “shadow of the law.” This term was first coined by Robert Mnookin and Lewis Kornhauser in their 1979 study of US divorce mediation (Mnookin and Kornhauser, 1979: 950). Their argument is that the responsibility for constructing the agreement rests with the parties, but within the guidelines of existing legal norms and practice. It is therefore common in U.S. domestic mediation for the mediator to be quite familiar with the legal parameters of a particular case and to encourage the parties to take them into account in framing the terms of an agreement.

There are, however, many challenges to doing so in the international context. Before exploring these, it is important to note the similarities on which the conflict resolution and human rights fields rest.