Inclusion of Whom, and for What Purpose? Strategies of Inclusion in Peacemaking

This chapter explores how the emerging discourse on, and practice of, inclusion in peace mediation has dealt with questions of identity, representation, and difference. In particular it seeks to understand how the object of inclusion (who?) has been framed by policy makers and practitioners, for what reasons, and with what effects. The chapter finds that the object of inclusion varies along a spectrum that can be differentiated into three main categories: Closed references, which refer to an actor group that can readily be identified according to relatively hard criteria, open references, which are rather ambiguous in their meaning and thus provide room for interpretation, and relational references, which are situated in a specific social and political context and are made salient through their relationship to other actor groups. These varying ways of framing inclusion correspond with different, and sometimes conflicting, peacemaking strategies.