Thursday, April 3 and Friday, April 4, 2025
The Buffett Institute's international diplomacy series culminated in our spring quarter symposium, Negotiating Peace in a Multipolar World: Lessons Learned, organized with Fundación Acordemos. This two-day event brought together diplomats, negotiators and academics to discuss the high-profile peace processes of recent decades. Our aim was to draw lessons for future negotiations in a world confronting a crisis of multilateralism.
Although peace negotiations are often greeted with relief, they also represent a fork in the road. A badly-crafted agreement may be worse than no agreement at all. Rushed peace deals store up trouble for the future, fueling more intense and widening conflicts.
This symposium examined the successes and failures of past processes, analyzed key principles and strategies, and discussed the roles of various actors in achieving lasting and implementable peace agreements.
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Ravi Agrawal
Ravi Agrawal is the Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Policy (FP). He is also the host of FP Live, the magazine's video channel and podcast, where he regularly interviews world leaders and policymakers. Before joining FP in 2018, Agrawal worked at CNN for more than a decade in roles spanning three continents, including as the network’s New Delhi bureau chief and correspondent. He has shared a Peabody Award and three Emmy nominations for his work as a TV producer, and his writing for FP was part of a series nominated for a 2020 National Magazine Award for columns and commentary.
Betty Bigombe
Betty Bigombe serves as Uganda's Special Envoy to the peace process in South Sudan and Uganda's ambassador to the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Bigombe led the peace and humanitarian efforts in northern Uganda, first in the 1990s as Minister of State for Northern Uganda and later as a chief mediator to the conflict in the mid-2000s. She has served in several development positions, including the State Minister for Water Resources in the Uganda Cabinet from 2011–2014 and the Senior Director for Fragility, Conflict & Violence at the World Bank from 2014–2017.
Kate Fearon
Kate Fearon is a founding member of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition and participated in negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement. Later, as Deputy Head of the Political Department in the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Fearon contributed to the implementation of the Dayton Accords that ended the war in Bosnia. She has also worked for the European Union Common Security & Defence Policy (CSDP) missions in Kosovo and Georgia, and, from CSDP's Brussels HQ, she supported its missions in Ukraine, Ramallah, Rafah, Somalia, Niger, Iraq and Libya. In addition, she has worked on rule of law issues in Afghanistan and Sudan. She is currently the Director of the Organization for Security & Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)'s Conflict Prevention Centre.
Claire Hajaj
Claire Hajaj is a specialist in conflict and post-conflict dynamics and the Executive Director of Inter Mediate. For more than 20 years, she has contributed to humanitarian, political and security strategies to mitigate conflicts in some of the world’s most complex settings. Prior to joining Inter Mediate, she worked for the United Nations in Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan. Her experience ranges from negotiating community-level access for vaccinators in extremist regions to supporting the UN Special Representative in Iraq. Since joining Inter Mediate, she has led the organization’s support on conflicts from Haiti to Gaza, including a landmark stabilization strategy for Lebanon to respond to the Syria crisis.
Christopher R. Hill
Christopher R. Hill is a career US diplomat. He is a five-time ambassador, whose last post was as ambassador to Serbia from 2022–2025, and served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian/Pacific Affairs from 2005–2009, during which he led the US delegation to negotiations on the North Korean nuclear issue. He is the former George W. Ball Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and Chief Advisor to the Chancellor for Global Engagement and Professor of the Practice in Diplomacy at the University of Denver. Prior to this position, he was the Dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver from 2010 through 2017. Ambassador Hill was a key part of the negotiating team in the 1995 Dayton Accords that ended the war in Bosnia.
Sergio Jaramillo
Sergio Jaramillo is a Colombian diplomat, philosopher and politician serving as President of Fundación Acordemos. He previously served as High Commissioner for Peace from 2012–2016 and National Security Advisor from 2010–2012 to the President of Colombia. In these roles, he led the secret negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, culminating in the General Agreement of 2012, and co-led public negotiations resulting in the Final Agreement in November 2016. As Peace Commissioner, he oversaw the disarmament of the FARC in 2017.
Pavlo Klimkin
Pavlo Klimkin is Ukraine's former Minister of Foreign Affairs and co-founder of the Centre for National Resilience & Development. He worked as a researcher in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences before joining the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in 1993, where his main profiles were arms control and security, nuclear safety, energy security, the EU and NATO. He was head of the negotiating team for the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and the EU visa-free regime for Ukraine. He has been posted to Germany and the UK, including as Ambassador to Germany.We thank the Kyiv-Mohyla Foundation of America for their kind partnership in bringing Minister Klimkin to Northwestern.
Pontus Ohrstedt
Pontus Ohrstedt is the Director of Support to Peace Processes at Folke Bernadotte Academy, the Swedish government agency for peace, security and development. He also serves as Sweden’s advisor for the peace dialogues between the Colombian government and the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN). Before joining the Swedish civil service, he worked for the UN for two decades, most recently in Colombia as the Team Leader for the Resident Coordinators Office in Colombia and the Head of the UN Development Programme Crisis Prevention and Recovery Unit in Sudan.
Carlos Prieto
Carlos Prieto is the Executive Director of Fundación Acordemos. From 2014–2018, he was part of the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, advising on the peace dialogues between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN), focusing on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes, and security measures. He has also worked as a consultant on security, negotiation and peace-building issues for the Colombian Truth Commission, control agencies, and various national and international organizations.
Shoaib Rahim
Shoaib Rahim is the former Senior Advisor to Afghanistan's State Ministry for Peace and was closely involved in the peace negotiations between the government and the Taliban. He has served in many public sector roles such as the Acting Mayor of Kabul and Senior Advisor to the Minister of Defense. Currently residing in Toronto, Shoaib is an Associate Professor of Practice at the American University of Afghanistan.
William B. Taylor
William B. Taylor is a Distinguished Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and the former Vice President for Europe & Russia at the US Institute of Peace (USIP). He served as the US ambassador to Ukraine from 2006–2009 and as chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Kyiv in 2019. During the Arab Spring, he oversaw US assistance and support to Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria. He also served in Jerusalem as the US government's representative to the Mideast Quartet in addition to serving in Kabul in 2002 and in Baghdad in 2004.
Tor Wennesland
Tor Wennesland served as the UN's Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and the UN Secretary-General's Personal Representative to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority from 2020–2025. He is a career diplomat who joined the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1983. Until his appointment as UN Special Coordinator, Wennesland was Norway’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Peace Process. In 1994, he served as an adviser on the Middle East Desk in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the process that led to the Oslo II Agreement.
Abiodun Williams
Abiodun Williams is Professor of the Practice of International Politics at Tufts University. He was Director of Strategic Planning for UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon and served in UN peacekeeping missions in North Macedonia, Haiti and Bosnia. He was Senior Vice-President of the Center for Conflict Management at USIP. He led USIP's work on prevention in major conflict zones, including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Libya. He is past Chair of the Academic Council on the UN System and a former member of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters.Schedule of Events
Thursday, April 3
5:00–6:30 p.m. Plenary Session | Negotiating Peace: Looking Back to Look Forward
- Christopher R. Hill, five-time US ambassador, whose last post was as ambassador to Serbia from 2022–2025
- Kate Fearon, founding member of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition who participated in negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement
- Sergio Jaramillo, President of Fundación Acordemos and Colombia's former High Commissioner for Peace of Colombia
- Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine's former Minister of Foreign Affairs and co-founder of the Centre for National Resilience & Development
- Moderated by Ravi Agrawal, Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Policy
Friday, April 4
8:00 a.m. | Breakfast
8:30 a.m. | Opening Remarks
- Deborah Cohen, Director of the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and Richard W. Leopold Professor of History
8:45 a.m. | Conditions of Possibility
- Betty Bigombe, Uganda's Special Envoy to the peace process in South Sudan and ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
- Christopher R. Hill, five-time US ambassador, whose last post was as ambassador to Serbia from 2022–2025
- Tor Wennesland, the UN's former Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process
- Moderated by Ian C. Kelly, Ambassador (ret.) in Residence at Northwestern University
10:15 a.m. | Coffee & Tea Break
10:30 a.m. | Designing the Process
- Barney Afako, lawyer and member of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan
- Claire Hajaj, Executive Director of Inter Mediate
- Sergio Jaramillo, President of Fundación Acordemos and Colombia's former High Commissioner for Peace of Colombia
- Moderated by Dan Krcmaric, Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University
12:00 p.m. | Lunch
1:30 p.m. | Actors in Multilateral Peacemaking
- William B. Taylor, Distinguished Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, former Vice President for Europe & Russia at the US Institute of Peace (USIP) and former US ambassador to Ukraine
- Shoaib Rahim, former Senior Advisor to Afghanistan's State Ministry for Peace
- Tor Wennesland, the UN's former Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process
- Moderated by Danielle Gilbert, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University
3:00 p.m. | Coffee & Tea Break
3:15 p.m. | Challenges of Implementation
- Barney Afako, lawyer and member of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan
- Kate Fearon, founding member of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition who participated in negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement
- Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine's former Minister of Foreign Affairs and co-founder of the Centre for National Resilience & Development
- Abiodun Williams, Professor of the Practice of International Politics at Tufts University and former Senior Vice-President of the Center for Conflict Management at USIP
- Moderated by Pontus Ohrstedt, Director of Support to Peace Processes at Folke Bernadotte Academy, the Swedish government agency for peace, security and development
5:00 p.m. | Reception
- Please join us for drinks, hors d'oeuvres and discussion with panelists and attendees after the program's conclusion.
6:00 p.m. | Close
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