Ceasefires - Stopping the Violence and Negotiating Peace

Almost all peace processes involve ceasefires. These ceasefire arrangements vary greatly in terms of their timing, content, and connection to the political negotiation process. In Colombia, the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) conducted political negotiations in the absence of a bilateral ceasefire, formally agreeing to stop the violence only once they reached an agreement on the main conflict issues. In the Philippines, a ceasefire was put in place very early in the negotiations between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), contributing to a drawn-outbut successful political negotiation process. Burundi saw initial attempts to install a comprehensive ceasefire between the government and the Conseil National Pour la Défense de la Démocratie—Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie (CNDD-FDD) fail, yet once an earlierpeace agreement began to bear fruit, efforts to stop the violence and resolve the contested issues progressed more smoothly. In Syria, a range of different strategies was tried, but at the time of writing, all ceasefires and political negotiations have failed to stop the war. Why do conflict parties adopt different ceasefire sequencing strategies? What factors condition this choice? And what explains the different uses and effects of ceasefires across these cases?