Today, an international team of mediation experts based in the University of Cambridge and other major institutions launched a pathbreaking resource in support of a peace settlement for Ukraine. The Ukraine Peace Settlement Project web-resource is geared towards helping the sides in the conflict, and the present and future facilitators in negotiations, to understand how a settlement might take shape. The experts offer options on how to tackle the most difficult issues in the talks, like neutrality for Ukraine, security guarantees, the status of areas in Donbas and of Crimea, arms limitation, language rights and other specialisms.
The team is headed by Professor Marc Weller of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law and the Department of Politics and International Studies in the University of Cambridge.
Professor Weller is a former Senior United Nations Mediation Expert who has advised on well over a dozen major international peace processes. He is a co-editor of Peace Settlements in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2021), along with Dr Mark Retter, who is the Senior Manager of the initiative.
The project is conducted in partnership with the Harvard Negotiation Project (Professor William Ury) and Opinio Juris, the leading web publication in the area of international law (Professor Kevin Jon Heller). In addition, it can draw on a wide range of international experts and the Language of Peace project, conducted jointly by the project team and the United Nations.
The web-site chronicles the negotiations and offers detailed options papers and settlement ideas. In addition, the site features a model draft agreement on Ukraine that will be updated over time, to take account of the latest developments.
The initiative is based in the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law in the University of Cambridge.
The launch of this initiative was warmly welcomed by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Professor Stephen J. Toope, who noted:
"The Ukraine Peace Settlement Project shows that our scholars’ expertise can have an impact that extends far beyond the academic realm. Although all concerned acknowledge that an agreement is difficult to envision at this time, it is crucially important for background work to commence."