Negotiating Disarmament

The report argues that disarmament is often an elite bargain where symbolic gestures are more critical for peace than the technical collection of all weapons. It highlights that exclusionary processes often marginalize women and other armed groups, and that external actors can either facilitate peace or hinder it by imposing generic templates that ignore local contexts.

• Disarmament is frequently negotiated as a symbolic rather than a technical process, where the message of renouncing violence is more important than the actual number of weapons collected.
• Peace agreements often result from elite bargains that allow non-state actors to retain some or all of their weapons to maintain control over local populations.
• Women and women's organizations are routinely excluded from disarmament negotiations due to the masculinized nature of talks on weapons and the desire of conflict parties to limit the number of participants.
• Governments may reject international assistance or UN peacekeeping forces for disarmament to avoid the negative symbolism of appearing as a failed state or breaching sovereignty.
• External actors can hinder peace processes by pushing 'standard language' or generic DDR templates that lack local 'buy in' and fail to account for specific regional conditions, as seen in South Sudan.
• The terminology used to describe disarmament is highly sensitive; terms like 'disarmament' are often rejected in favor of phrases like 'normalization' or 'abandonment of arms' to avoid the connotation of surrender.
• In some cases, disarmament provisions are used by dominant parties to coercively disarm other smaller armed groups to consolidate their own territorial and political control.
• Inclusive processes that involve a broader coalition of conflict-affected parties, including women and civil society, tend to lead to more sustainable peace agreements.

APA

Marsh, N., & Palik, J. (2021). Negotiating Disarmament. Peace Research Institute Oslo. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/6ae17a66-be73-4137-a406-b56fcf96fc1b/Marsh%20and%20Palik%20-%20Negotiating%20Disarmament%20Lessons%20learnt%20from%20Colombia%20Nepal%20the%20Philippines%20South%20Sudan%20Sri%20Lanka%20PRIO%20Paper%202021.pdf?inline=true

Chicago

Marsh, Nicholas, and Júlia Palik. Negotiating Disarmament. Peace Research Institute Oslo, 2021. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/6ae17a66-be73-4137-a406-b56fcf96fc1b/Marsh%20and%20Palik%20-%20Negotiating%20Disarmament%20Lessons%20learnt%20from%20Colombia%20Nepal%20the%20Philippines%20South%20Sudan%20Sri%20Lanka%20PRIO%20Paper%202021.pdf?inline=true.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Marsh |first1=Nicholas |last2=Palik |first2=Júlia |title=Negotiating Disarmament |publisher=Peace Research Institute Oslo |date=2021 |url=https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/6ae17a66-be73-4137-a406-b56fcf96fc1b/Marsh%20and%20Palik%20-%20Negotiating%20Disarmament%20Lessons%20learnt%20from%20Colombia%20Nepal%20the%20Philippines%20South%20Sudan%20Sri%20Lanka%20PRIO%20Paper%202021.pdf?inline=true |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{marsh2021negotiating, author = {Marsh, Nicholas and Palik, Júlia}, title = {{Negotiating Disarmament}}, institution = {Peace Research Institute Oslo}, year = {2021}, url = {https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/6ae17a66-be73-4137-a406-b56fcf96fc1b/Marsh%20and%20Palik%20-%20Negotiating%20Disarmament%20Lessons%20learnt%20from%20Colombia%20Nepal%20the%20Philippines%20South%20Sudan%20Sri%20Lanka%20PRIO%20Paper%202021.pdf?inline=true}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }