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Many a time, in a protracted, intractable, and violent conflict, it is more useful to initiate measures to mitigate the conflict – short-term violence reduction – than to attempt to resolve or transform the conflict. One of the most important methods of conflict mitigation is through what is called institutionalising conflict, that is, bringing conflict under a set of rules. A concrete example of this is through the establishment of Zones of Peace (ZoPs).
ZoPs are usually territorially defined or personal (although there are instances in which the concept
is more abstract, such as a whole community of people) in which, by agreement, certain acts are prohibited or some acts encouraged. It is important to mention here that while ZoPs are visualised in
many different contexts such as inter-state border zones (such as the one between Peru and Ecuador),
maritime trade zones, and nuclear free zones, those highlighted in this paper are those that are created
within states in areas where there has been an ongoing armed violent conflict. This excludes the
intra-state contexts of urban intermittent violence (such as gang-violence and riots). In this context of intra-state violent conflict, it is possible to create a typology of ZoPs in various dimensions such as by whom they have been initiated, degree of formalisation of the zone, the geographical extent of zone, and other criteria. We believe that another useful unit of classification is to examine zones of peace in a temporal context. This means we examine the creation, implementation, and sustainability of these zones in reference to their relationship to the level of peace or conflict in the surrounding society. By “peace” we mean formal peace processes and agreements between warring parties agreeing usually in an incremental way to end the violence and bring peace. And while this classification does not cover all instances of peace zones, it does provide a broad overview through which most instances can be categorised to some extent.
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