Ending Mozambique's war

Fifteen years after winning independence in 1975, Mozambique was wracked by insurgency, devastated by drought, and battered by conflicts with its neighbors. A less auspicious beginning for a new nation could hardly have been imagines. But the signing of the 1992 peace agreement has led to a new beginning. And a team of mediators, operating outside the framework of traditional diplomacy, helped the parties along the path to peace and reconciliation.

This first-hand account of the Mozambique mediations offers intriguing details that illustrate the complexity of the multi-track mediation process. Hume, a participant/observer in the Rome-based peace talks, relates the stages of the process to the principles of conflict management, negotiation, and mediation in a clear and graceful style.

He delineates the separate roles played by the parties themselves (the government and RENAMO), the outside governments that intervened, and the mediators, with a special focus on the unique element in this peace process: the involvement of a private voluntary organization, the Community of Sant'Egidio.