International mediation and Australian foreign policy: building institutional capacity to respond to overseas conflict

ABSTRACT

In October 2012, Australia's parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade recommended that a mediation support unit should be created within the Australian Agency for International Development, a department now amalgamated with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The question is: Does Australia possess the motivation and capacity to implement active and effective international mediation by building the capacity of intermediaries to deploy various peacemaking methods to hasten de-escalation at different stages of a conflict? If not, is a mediation support unit an appropriate initiative to address this capability gap? This article draws on quantitative conflict data sets and an expert panel to conclude that Australia's track record demonstrates significant capacity to undertake international mediation, but that the mediation personnel and processes available to government are insufficiently resourced and coordinated to readily provide policymakers with accessible tools to undertake the diverse range of mediation strategies advocated by conflict scholars. While a mediation support unit would address some of these issues, at present it conflicts with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's institutional philosophy based on diffused expertise.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• contingency approach
• mediation
• peacemaking
• conflict
• conflict resolution

ORCID

Aran Martin http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2413-6300

Notes

1. Track I peacemakers are described as ‘foreign service professionals who primarily implement the policies of their governments; they are representatives of the state'. Track II peacemakers are ‘citizens from a variety of sectors who consult with parties on all sides of a dispute; they are nonstate actors' (Nan, Druckman, and El Horr 2009, 65). Track III peacemaking is defined as processes which engage grass-roots (local community) actors (Swisspeace/CSS 2009, 4).

2. The participants were Commander Guy Blackburn of the Royal Australian Navy; Professor John Braithwaite of the Australian National University; David Chick, Director of the Peace and Conflict Division at DFAT; Dr Sara Davies of Queensland University of Technology; Dr Jeremy Farrall of the Australian National University; Alistair Gee, Executive Director of Act for Peace; Professor Jonathan Goodhand of the University of Melbourne and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; Dr Patrick Hagan of the AFP IDG; Professor John Langmore of the Melbourne School of Government; Leanne McDonald of the Melbourne School of Government; Dr Aran Martin of the University of Melbourne; Associate Professor Jochen Prantl of the Australian National University; Tyson Sara, Assistant Secretary of Defence for Strategic Policy at the Department of Defence; Lisa Sharland, an investigator at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute; Nathan Shea of the University of Melbourne; Harinder Sidhu, First Assistant Secretary of the Multilateral Policy Division at DFAT; Sarah Storey, an advisor in the Office of the Minister for Foreign Affairs; and Professor Ramesh Thakur of the Australian National University.

3. Available on request from the authors.

4. Armed Violence Reduction Monitor (AVRM) statistics do not account for Australian Official Development Assistance (ODA) contributions to multilateral organisations dealing with conflict resolution; governance and capacity-building projects in conflict-affected countries; or overseas law and justice initiatives which play peacebuilding roles (DFAT 2015a).

5. DFAT sends staff members to assist with applications, but there remain inconsistencies in this accessibility, as in the case discussed.

6. The examples include AUD$320 million for the Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development program and support of local peacemakers in Mindanao (DFAT 2015b; Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development 2015).

7. On interested versus neutral mediators, see Gent and Shannon (2011) and Watkins and Winters (1997).

Additional information

Funding

Funding was provided by a Melbourne School of Government Incubator Grant.