Latest / The Mediation Mindset
When Peace Becomes Performance: Why the Washington Accords Failed. Lessons for Mediators
In this episode, we examine the collapse of the 2025 Washington Accords between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda through a mediation practitioner’s lens.
Despite high-level diplomacy and international guarantees, renewed violence in eastern Congo marked by the M23 takeover of Uvira reveals why elite, state-centric peace deals often fail on the ground.
We unpack the core mediation failures: exclusion of key armed actors, flawed sequencing of security commitments, weak verification and enforcement, and incentive structures that reward violence over compliance.
Drawing on…
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