End of an Era of Intervention? Lessons for a New Generation of Peace Missions

Entitled ‘End of an Era of Intervention? Lessons for a New Generation of Peace Missions’, the Tswalu Dialogue was held in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the British Peace Support Team and the African Center for Strategic Studies on 17–19 October 2014 at the Tswalu Kalahari Reserve.

This year’s event reflected on key international interventions of the past decade, both in Africa and outside the continent. Although there was a strong emphasis on African experiences, other well-known (Afghanistan) and less well-known (Solomon Islands) interventions were also analysed in detail. Critically, all of these experiences were considered in the light of one of the most successful national case-studies in peace-building and counterinsurgency in recent times – Colombia. Some of the key lessons to emerge from the Colombian example reinforce the findings of previous research and Tswalu Dialogues, though many new insights and dynamics came to the fore during this convening.

Participants in the Dialogue included Colombia’s Minister of Defence, three former African presidents and one former prime minister, along with senior officials, security experts and academics.