Institute for Integrated Transitions - IFIT

12/06/2025

The path to depolarization

27/05/2025

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20/05/2025

Can peace talks and political negotiations afford to take years, only to end without settlements? Isn’t it time to put a much higher premium on pace?

Watch our new animated video and learn how IFIT’s “fast-track negotiation” model aims to fundamentally reshape how peace talks and political negotiations are conceived and implemented.

🔗 Learn more about IFIT’s Initiative on Fast-Track Negotiation: https://ifit-transitions.org/initiative-on-fast-track-negotiation/

🔗 Read IFIT’s 2025 White Paper on “Fast-Track Negotiation”:
https://ifit-transitions.org/publications/fast-track-negotiation-a-white-paper/

07/05/2025

The prevailing slow paradigm of negotiation rarely leads to a settlement.

In today’s fragmented conflict and crisis landscape, we cannot afford to negotiate as though time is on our side. It’s not.

Increasing negotiation speed and pragmatism can lead to more agreements, thus helping restore negotiation’s crucial role in preventing and resolving large-scale violence.

🔗 Read IFIT’s 2025 White Paper on “Fast-Track Negotiation”:
https://ifit-transitions.org/publications/fast-track-negotiation-a-white-paper/

30/04/2025

Ten years ago, IFIT’s founder and executive director Mark Freeman identified a troubling paradox: international law, intended to facilitate the promotion of and , was in practice operating more as an impediment than an aid to negotiated political settlements and peace deals in situations of threatened or actual internal armed conflict.

Freeman set out to solve the problem through the development of a purpose-built treaty making the threshold choice of negotiation more attractive and less risky (at the front end); the negotiation process more flexible and organised (in the middle); and negotiated outcomes more stable and sustainable (at the end).

He presented a first detailed version of the idea in his 2019 book "Negotiating Transitional Justice" (Cambridge University Press, coauthored with Iván Orozco). The following year he produced a comprehensive "indicative draft" of the proposed treaty. And on 11 November 2020 (Armistice Day), the treaty idea was taken up by IFIT through the launch of the Peace Treaty Initiative and a multiyear global consultation and engagement process with the support of IFIT's Law and Peace Practice Group and a specially constituted Expert Advisory Group.

Today, IFIT is proud to be working with Dr. Abraham Korir SingOei, CBS, Principal Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and the Republic of , to make the treaty a reality. We will have much more to share soon.

👉 Read more about the Peace Treaty Initiative:
https://ifit-transitions.org/peace-treaty-initiative/

📖 Find the book on "Negotiating Transitional Justice" here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/negotiating-transitional-justice/914B7BD19B642DF77CDC2CC46835B01F

29/04/2025

"Together, we can achieve the kind of progress that remains out of reach when we act alone - because depolarization demands not just intention, but collaboration."

These powerful closing words from Hilary Pennington captured the spirit of the “Depolarization: Seize the Moment” event held earlier this month in the context of the 2025 Skoll World Forum.

Hosted by the Ford Foundation, The Skoll Foundation, and IFIT, the event brought together 150+ social entrepreneurs, experts and philanthropists committed to bridging divides and building common ground.

Thank you to all the participants who made this dialogue so meaningful.

👉 Learn more about the Global Initiative on Polarization: https://ifit-transitions.org/the-global-initiative-on-polarization/

17/04/2025

In this video, Project Lead María José Daza, introduces IFIT’s Regional Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Since 2022, the programme has consolidated a unique multi-disciplinary and multi-country network of 90+ leading experts dedicated to testing solutions, sharing lessons, and fostering strategic collaborations to reduce violence, strengthen democracy and the rule of law, and mitigate polarisation across the region.

Some examples of the group’s work are discussed in IFITe Cuenta: a Spanish-language podcast that explores key regional issues of democracy and security.

👉 Learn more:
https://ifit-transitions.org/regional-programme-for-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/

15/04/2025

IFIT’s 14-member Inclusive Narratives Practice Group (INPG) recently met in Antigua, Guatemala for its annual retreat.

Challenging the tendency of peacebuilders to promote a new, unifying narrative from the outside, the INPG has spent years developing tools and providing advice on practical ways of changing conflict narratives from within and amplifying less prominent stories to encourage peaceful engagement.

At the recent retreat, the group spent time examining the early findings of three seed projects being led by group members: one on IFIT's application of narrative peacebuilding approaches in Colombia and Venezuela, one on divisive narratives in Kenya (being implemented in partnership with Kenya’s Directorate of National Cohesion and Values), and one on the role of narratives in collective trauma and resilience.

The group also agreed on plans to refine and expand its own narrative peacebuilding approach through new short papers and other activities over the course of this year.

👉 Visit the INPG Narrative Peacebuilding Hub: https://ifit-transitions.org/narrative-peacebuilding-hub/

10/04/2025

IFIT is pleased to announce the publication of "Promoting Successful and Sustainable Community Dialogue Outcomes: A Practitioner’s Toolkit for Zimbabwe".

The toolkit—developed as part of IFIT’s dialogue-oriented work in Zimbabwe—is designed to support practitioners in promoting successful and sustainable outcomes for community dialogues across the country. It builds on findings from 13 cases of community dialogue conducted between 2018 and 2023, all of which are examined in IFIT’s groundbreaking report "Promoting Bottom-Up Dialogue: A Study of Community-Level Dialogue Experiences in Zimbabwe".

We express our gratitude to the Institute for Local Governance (ILG), Youth Empowerment and Transformation Trust (YETT), Community Youth in Development Trust (CYDT), Youth in Peace Building Initiative Trust (YIPIT), and Zimbabwe Women Against Corruption Trust (ZWACT) for their valuable contributions to this work.

🔗 The toolkit: https://ifit-transitions.org/country-publication/promoting-successful-and-sustainable-community-dialogue-outcomes-a-practitioners-toolkit-for-zimbabwe/

🔗 The full report:
https://ifit-transitions.org/country-publication/promoting-bottom-up-dialogue-a-study-of-community-level-dialogue-experiences-in-zimbabwe/

08/04/2025

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of IFIT’s 18-member Law and Peace Practice Group (LPPG), the group met in Casablanca, Morocco for a special annual retreat to develop the outline of a new framework for its longtime work on tackling transitional justice (TJ) questions in the context of Track 1 and 2 negotiations.

Four developments informed the discussion.
1) Fewer and fewer negotiations are producing comprehensive agreements, and thus there are fewer and fewer inclusive transitions out of armed conflict or authoritarian rule and fewer and fewer negotiated TJ policies to implement.
2) Growing and more resistant forms of armed groups, warfare, weapons and autocracy are testing old assumptions about the possibilities for meaningful TJ.
3) More and more research has been calling into question the transformative potential and performance of TJ initiatives.
4) There is a growing body of work on new challenges that negotiations and TJ have yet to fully absorb, including on intractable narratives, severe polarisation and the rise of AI.

Later this year, the group will issue a special publication that draws on the Casablanca retreat discussions and the group’s ten years of research and advisory work. IFIT is grateful, inter alia, to the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs for its support of and involvement in this work.