Languageofpeace.org is a Legal Language Search Tool for Peace Agreements. Designed with the needs of mediators, drafters & researchers in mind: Access 75,000+ provisions from 1,000+ peace agreements, Search by issues. This database contains all* peace agreements since the UN’s establishment in 1945. The provisions of these agreements have been categorized & tagged according to the issues addressed: e.g. ceasefire arrangements, human rights & diplomatic relations.
The project was created through the Legal Tools for Peace-Making Project, carried out by a research team at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (University of Cambridge), in collaboration with the Peacemaker.un.org team at the UN Mediation Support Unit and designed and developed by PASTPRESENTFUTURE. The creation of the database was made possible through funding from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Humanity United, the Isaac Newton Trust, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council.
The project welcomes comments on how the database could be further improved: if you have any suggestions, please let us know by sending an email to Mark Retter (content) or Michael Fromm (webmaster).
At any given time, there are several ongoing internationalized peace negotiations taking place around the world. These cover diverse issue areas, some of which arise in every settlement. Before the development of Language of Peace, there was no accessible and consolidated collection of peace agreements, which meant that settlement options were often researched and designed afresh in new peace negotiations. The Language of Peace database aims to eliminate the time-consuming, expensive, and redundant work that burdens settlement processes, by providing a collection of peace agreements concluded since World War II. The provisions of each agreement are categorized according to the issues they address, ranging from ceasefire arrangements through human rights to diplomatic relations, to name just a few. Designed with the needs of mediators, negotiators and researchers in mind, Language of Peace is an innovative tool which provides instant access to this rich collection of agreements, allowing its users to browse, search, compile and export the provisions of peace agreements relevant to their inquiry. Language of Peace complements and builds on the UN Peacemaker database, which hosts full text documents of such agreements.
Language of Peace was created through the Legal Tools for Peace-Making Project, carried out by a research team at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (University of Cambridge), in collaboration with the United Nations Mediation Support Unit. The Project aims to give coherence to the burgeoning practice of internationalized peace-making, offering practice-relevant guidance for mediators, while gaining important conceptual insights into the nature of this rapidly developing area of law. On the basis of legal research into settlement practice around the world, the project offers a legal toolkit in relation to the general and specific problems that typically arise in peace negotiations. A major part of this toolkit is the Language of Peace database, which will be accompanied by case studies on each of the 26 main issue areas identified in the database. These case studies analyze the practice of peace agreements in relation to each issue area against the background of general international law, with a view to highlighting settlement options for use in ongoing or future peace negotiations, and identifying advances of (or deviations from) universal legal standards.
The creation of the database was made possible through funding from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Humanity United, the Isaac Newton Trust, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The database design was developed by pastpresentfuture.
The project welcomes comments on how the database could be further improved: if you have any suggestions, please let us know by sending an email to legaltoolsproject@lcil.cam.ac.uk (content) or peacemaker@un.org (webmaster).
The Language of Peace Mediation Support Search Tool is a collaboration between the UNDPA, University of Cambridge and was designed & developed by PASTPRESENTFUTURE.