Peace process
ensemble of negotiations, agreements and actions to resolve an armed conflict
A peace process is the set of sociopolitical negotiations, agreements and actions that aim to solve a specific armed conflict.
Origin of the term
U.S. diplomat Harold H. Saunders of the Sustained Dialogue Institute coined the term "peace process" during U.S. shuttle diplomacy following the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, describing it as "a mixture of politics, diplomacy, changing relationships, negotiation, mediation, and dialogue in both official and unofficial arenas."
Definitions
Prior to an armed conflict occurring, peace processes can include the prevention of an intrastate or inter-state dispute from escalating into military conflict. The United Nations Department of Peace Operations (UNDPO) terms the prevention of disputes from escalating into armed conflicts as conflict prevention. In 2007, the United Nations Secretary-General's Policy Committee classed both initial prevention of an armed conflict and prevention of the repeat of a solved conflict as peacebuilding.
Izumi Wakugawa, advisor to the Japan-based International Peace Cooperation Program, categorises these processes into two stages: the ceasing of armed conflict and the processes of sociological reorganisation.
Ceasing of armed conflict
Non-military processes for stopping an armed conflict stage are generally classed as peacemaking. Military methods by globally organised military forces of stopping a local armed conflict are typically classed as peace enforcement.
Reorganisation
The prevention of the repeat of a solved conflict (as well as the preventing of an armed conflict from occurring at all) is usually classed as peacebuilding. UNDPO defines peacebuilding to include "measures [that] address core issues that effect the functioning of society and the State". The use of neutral military forces to sustain ceasefires during this phase, typically by United Nations peacekeeping forces, can be referred to as peacekeeping.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Peace process” is ensemble of negotiations, agreements and actions to resolve an armed conflict. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Peace, process and ensemble, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “ensemble of negotiations, agreements and actions to resolve an armed conflict” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1456892. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1973 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peace process” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.