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 Good Friday Agreement

Over three sleepless nights in 1998 – after years of failed negotiations – unionists and nationalists hammered out the final details of the Good Friday Agreement, bringing peace to Northern Ireland. It was a “masterclass in constructive ambiguity” that allowed different factions to hold on to core convictions while committing to resolve conflicts through peaceful means. Nahlah Ayed and guests discuss the agreement that’s still hailed as a gold standard for addressing intractable conflicts worldwide.