CBC Ideas Week: War and Peace

What does it take to create peace? What ideas and values can knit a society back together – or at least make it possible for enemies to lay down their arms and live side by side? Past peace deals offer badly-needed models for our own time, but the process of making peace is often imperfect. And at worst, peace agreements can cement injustice and make future conflict all but inevitable.

This series, moderated by Ideas host Nahlah Ayed, explores four pivotal attempts to make peace over the last three decades, and asks what we can learn from the best - and worst - thinking of the past. The series culminates in an exploration of what it takes to make peace in the fraught context of the 21st century.

The Dayton Accords

In 1995, rival Bosnian factions met in Dayton, Ohio to negotiate a ceasefire to a brutal war and decide on a new border. Today, the agreement is still holding – but only just. Nationalist fervor, genocide denial and the ghosts of the past still threaten a fragile peace, and the Dayton Accords are remembered as “a synonym for inertia, neglect and despair.” Nahlah Ayed and guests consider the legacy of Dayton, the unresolved questions that remain today, and the decision to pursue peace before justice.