The act of peacemaking may be viewed as the promise of ‘a new beginning’. The promise is latent within the complex and evolving legality that binds the self-constituting process, and the often layered human rights transformation at its substantive epicentre. Therein, as illuminated and crystallised by Christine Bell, lies the ‘radical progressive potential of peace processes’.* Like the progression of the process itself, it is made possible, at least partially, by legal and political imagination. The challenge is to seize this creativity to ensure children are part of this ‘new beginning’. Or in the words of George Bernard Shaw, it is about ‘dream[ing] things that never were and […] say[ing] ‘why not?” The aim of these six principles, informed from a critical and constructive probe of peace processes from a juristic, human rights and child-rights perspective, is to support this act of legal and political imagination. 

The principles and related working paper are available here. *See ‘Lex Pacificatoria: Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ in On the Law of Peace at 300.

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