There’s impetus for NZ to build on past glories as a peacemaker in international conflicts. But with resources scarce, what could this look like?
New Zealand may be missing an opportunity to elevate our standing in the international community by becoming a more active agent of peace diplomacy.
This would go further than endorsing the ideals of peace and security in global debate, or supporting measures by the United Nations, Asean (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and other international forums, as New Zealand already does.
It would mean dirtying boots by committing – in strategy and practice – to position New Zealand as a willing and able third-party broker of peace in foreign conflicts, if asked.
But instead of accelerating towards this opportunity to fulfil our diplomatic potential, it seems we may be idling.
The idea of dispatching gallant New Zealanders overseas to stand between conflict participants can certainly be seen as romantic. But in two separate studies in recent years, the idea has found favour with diplomatic, strategic and intellectual heavyweights.
A report released mid last year by an independent advisory group, commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Mfat) under the previous Labour administration, proposes boosting our peace diplomacy capacity as one way to retool our foreign policy to better handle a geopolitical landscape that repeatedly troubles human rights, peace and security.
Embracing peace mediation will help fix problems and, in the process, build relations.
An earlier study, by independent advocacy group Te Kuaka New Zealand Alternative, presented a similar argument in a 2018 analysis of our foreign policy settings. And yet, however persuasive or earnest this pitch might be, neither report moved the policy dials of the government of the day. The current National-led coalition similarly remains unmoved.
In a statement to media earlier this year, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said the recommendations in the 2023 report will be “carefully considered, taking into account the government’s international agenda and priorities”. It was a characteristically artful but nonetheless reasonable political hedge at the time, given the new government was still finding its feet.
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The idea that New Zealand should deliver on its peace diplomacy promise has been bandied about for decades with varying degrees of intensity and conviction.
Sir Don McKinnon, New Zealand’s longest serving foreign minister from 1990-99, says the peace-broker idea was being put forward around the country throughout the 1980s, emboldened by the anti-nuclear movement and our suspension from the Anzus defence alliance. It intensified as the decade drew to a close and the Cold War ended, and the new international order emerged in its place, says McKinnon.
“From the time I became foreign minister, there were many who said New Zealand should just be a neutral state and concentrate on those issues such as mediation and peacekeeping rather than get caught up in big power politics.”
New Zealand has furnished a cadre of active peacemakers in decades past, McKinnon among them. And their skills were employed mainly in an ad hoc manner, drawing on quintessential Kiwi mettle and ingenuity to do the job.
Indeed, it is an episode of unscripted peace diplomacy – where resources and capacity were scarce, and improvisation important – that registered a high-water mark in New Zealand diplomacy: the Bougainville conflict peace process.
From 1988-98, the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea was gripped by a potentially ruinous civil war, marked by broiling local tensions around exploitation of natural resources, environmental loss, racism, and national sovereignty claims by the Bougainville people.
New Zealand, with Australia, played a leading role in resolving the conflict and the Kiwi delegation was at the forefront of the peace facilitation process. New Zealand officials – diplomatic and military – toiled to lower tensions on the island and bridge differences between parties, repairing to Burnham Military Camp near Christchurch for peace talks. The ensuing Lincoln Agreement, signed in 1997, de-militarised the conflict and implemented a ceasefire. In 2001, the PNG and Autonomous Bougainville governments signed an agreement ending the civil war.
McKinnon, who presided over New Zealand’s efforts in Bougainville, says the peace process revived broader interest in this country as a peace mediator, “attested to by the mail I got, with many suggesting, some forcefully, that we do nothing but make peace around the world”.
The Bougainville peace process represented a crowded hour for New Zealand diplomacy – many held it up as a gold standard for peace facilitation and McKinnon was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Even today, our role in Bougainville resonates with high praise. As Australian academic, John Braithwaite, breathlessly declared in a 2024 study of the crisis, that New Zealand’s peacebuilding contribution “counts among the finest moments of [its] history”. It is a history still being written. While post-peace justice is proving tricky in Bougainville, New Zealand remains committed to supporting ongoing political dialogue between the PNG and Autonomous Bougainville governments.
“We are open to assisting other mediation efforts in this manner in the future, if requested,” Mfat said in response to a Listener Official Information Act request – so, leaving the door ajar while not committing to walk through it.
But through that door has stepped Sir Jerry Mateparae. In October, Peters announced that the former Defence Force chief and governor-general has been installed in Port Moresby on a new mission. Mateparae is on familiar ground, having served as the commander of the Truce Monitoring Group in Bougainville in the 1990s.
Now, at the invitation of the PNG and Autonomous Bougainville governments, he is acting as an independent moderator between the two parties to settle outstanding matters on Bougainville’s future. This includes mediating issues around the ratification of the 2019 Bougainville independence referendum, which passed emphatically in favour of full independence.
Mateparae’s return to the fray is a stark reminder that peace is nearly always imperfect and is often streaked with unresolved matters requiring constant pastoral care.
Nordic model
As McKinnon suggests, interest in New Zealand as a peace broker has ebbed and flowed over time. It is often triggered by factors and events. These can include a shifting strategic environment, a resurgent political voice, new policy priorities, moments of success that inspire attitudes, and perhaps even a visit by the Norwegian high priests of global peace activism.
For more than a century, Norway’s global image has been burnished as a leading purveyor of peace. Underpinned by the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded annually in its capital of Oslo since 1901, the Nordic nation’s modern peace diplomacy has given greater meaning to its place in the world. Its long-standing practice of mustering resources to send Norwegians around the world to help resolve civil conflicts is played out under conditions of political support for the effort at home.
Norway’s peace diplomacy was a main theme of then Norwegian prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik’s trip to New Zealand in 2005. In his only public address, at Victoria University of Wellington, Bondevik said Norway’s role in the world and its national identity are inseparable from its active pursuit of peace.
“The work for peace has been one of the bases that Norway has built on for centuries,” Bondevik told the audience. “That is perhaps our best hallmark internationally.”
If we want to achieve a big impact, we need to use our mana and other tools such as peace mediation.
The deeper details of Norway’s peace diplomacy were also under discussion when Bondevik’s delegation met foreign affairs officials in Wellington. By happenstance or not, around the time of the visit, delegations also visited from Sweden and Finland – other nations which have actively engaged in direct peacemaking. Add Denmark to this pack of Nordic peace entrepreneurs.
The unshakable inference from the Norwegian visit, and possibly those of the Swedes and Finns, is that the then prime minister Helen Clark – a noted Nordic fan – and her officials were looking at New Zealand’s potential in peace brokering. Even so, neither a shift in policy nor posture emerged as a result.
So, what are the constituent parts of New Zealand’s raw and rare potential as an effective global peace broker? Smaller states, agile and independently minded like New Zealand, tend to be do well in third-party mediation and facilitation. The Nordics notwithstanding, Switzerland, Ireland and Qatar have all done so in various forms.
But for the most part, New Zealand’s promise is grounded in a disposition and legacy similar to Norway’s. New Zealand is widely considered as non-threatening and an honest broker. It has no prejudicial historical baggage of note, nor does it easily invite animus from others. It is seen as a model international citizen, one committed to global norms and practices. The promotion of peace and security and human rights are among its core values.
However, where Norway has abundant riches, New Zealand has few. Norway’s NZ$2.94 trillion sovereign wealth fund, sourced mainly from its energy wealth, comfortably supports its international ambitions. Though Peters has seemingly ringfenced Mfat’s budget against wider public spending cuts, New Zealand’s foreign policy spend is far more limiting. Norway’s large and robust civil society strengthens the country’s peace and conflict resolution output; New Zealand has few such resources to call on.
Capacity building
Yet these constraints fail to blunt the idea of New Zealand as peace broker, as those 2018 and 2023 reports suggest. Of those two, the latter is the more resonant, as its authors were baptised by officialdom. A year earlier, Mfat convened a group of experts in international affairs, human rights, law, and Māoridom to advise on the adequacy of our current foreign policy tools. The group chair was former senior diplomat Colin Keating, who, among his career achievements, represented New Zealand on the UN Security Council in 1993 and 1994.
The advisory group’s report contained many recommendations to strengthen foreign policy instruments to fit the times. Among them was institutionalising mediation and conflict-prevention capacity in government in the form of a new unit dedicated to the cause.
Dutifully reflecting its minister’s public lack of urgency, Mfat said in its OIA response to the Listener that “at present there are no plans to establish a dedicated peace mediation and conflict resolution capability”. Nor is there a specific budget allocated to the cause, it added.
The ministry shrugged off the need to improve internal capacity by saying its staff are already trained in skills relevant to the work. But even so, the effort can also be outsourced to external specialists when the situation warrants it, it says.
Keating sees beyond merely boosting capability, however. Echoing Bondevik’s sentiments, the seasoned internationalist says his group’s report “looks at how to enrich New Zealand foreign policy in a way that builds the country’s moral authority, its mana”.
Keating is pragmatic yet bullish about what New Zealand could do relative to resources. “[The report] looks at what we can do to build our global reputation at a modest cost. If we want to achieve a big impact, we need to use our mana and other tools such as peace mediation.”
New Zealand needs to solve problems and not just build relations, says Keating. “Embracing peace mediation will help fix problems and, in the process, build relations,” he says, indicating its powerful symbiotic effect on other parts of diplomacy.
The Te Kuaka report, issued at the height of Jacinda Ardern’s first term and penned by a team of academics and intellectuals, makes the case for a progressive foreign policy. Similar to Keating’s group, Te Kuaka calls for a dedicated conflict prevention unit independent of the government but funded by it. The unit’s establishment cost and first-year budget was estimated by Te Kuaka somewhat modestly at $1.1 million.
All the big processes these days involve multiple actors, and if New Zealand wishes to lower the risk and cost, it probably shouldn’t act alone.
Keating hints at why the instinct for conflict prevention and mediation has failed to convert into action over the past few decades. As New Zealand’s representative on the Security Council, he was present during an especially excruciating chapter of intra-state conflict and human rights abuse – characterised by the Bosnian War, the Rwandan Genocide and the Somalian civil conflict.
This two-year stint on the Security Council left New Zealand highly alert to measures that prevented conflict from flaring in the first place, says Keating. This endured until the end of the Bougainville case. “The capacity dwindled away, however, and what was needed was some political courage and resources.”
McKinnon believes sustained and visible high-level political support certainly helped galvanise the Bougainville effort. “Without active ministerial leadership, the PNG government and the Bougainvilleans would doubt [New Zealand’s] commitment. I did not want to give that signal.”
Beneath that political support, New Zealand’s work in the Bougainville peace process is mostly characterised by its extemporaneous nature, says former diplomat John Hayes. “[Bougainville] was largely an ad hoc affair; there was no dedicated strategy,” he says.
If McKinnon was the highest-ranking officer in the Bougainville campaign, Hayes was his able lieutenant on the ground. Before becoming a National MP in 2005, Hayes was a senior member of our foreign service. For about a decade, from his initial post as high commissioner in PNG and in various leadership roles in Mfat that followed, Hayes was at the vanguard of this country’s effort to settle the conflict in Bougainville.
“I was given a long leash and much autonomy by Don McKinnon to meet challenges as they arose,” says Hayes. “He identified the outcome, and I basically improvised to make it happen.”
In his days surveying the tricky conflict landscape in Bougainville, Hayes cut an intrepid figure. He speaks of dealing with flaring local tensions across the island, which at one time resulted in his helicopter taking a volley of gunfire from below as it withdrew from a remote location. Amid this combustible environment, Hayes says, his main aims were to build trust and establish rapport between locals and himself and the NZ government, and to do the same between the various disparate Bougainvillean communities involved in the dispute. “In end, the goal was to get people to talk to each other under the veil of trust. We had a process to get the various tribes in Bougainville to speak with one voice. That was the point of the first two weeks at Burnham.”
Empowering Bougainvilleans to take the lead in the talks was important, he says. “Success stemmed from the Bougainvillean people owning the outcome and helping create the conditions where parties actually wanted to stop fighting.”
Funding doubts
Despite his Bougainville ad-libbing, Hayes is wary about the viability of New Zealand having a formal peace mediation capability. “Our foreign service is very small, and we have to use our limited assets and resources wisely.”Though Hayes and Keating differ on institutionalising peace diplomacy, they both accept that any such effort must be properly funded. The pair share scepticism about Te Kuaka’s notional cost for a specialised mediation unit. “It will need an annual budget of at least $10 million. But that cost and allocation of resources will inevitably come with the expectation of results, which cannot be guaranteed”, says Hayes.
McKinnon is also cautious about institutionalising peace mediation and assured outcomes. “This would be a major policy change and could create an expectation of activity [with] doubtful results,” he says.
Doubtful results are inherent in mediation. Despite Norway’s considerable investment in time, money and expertise, outcomes are always uncertain and not always desirable. Most famously in the 1990s, Israeli-Palestinian relations quickly soured despite Norway’s ardent behind-the-scenes facilitation work that led to the landmark 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between the two parties. The problem endures today.
Rather than having a standing force of peace mediators, and a dedicated strategy and budget to boot, McKinnon and Hayes suggest improvisation is the way forward for New Zealand, as it was in Bougainville.
“When a Bougainville issue arises, only then take an active mediation and peacekeeping role and both squeeze and get more tagged resources,” says McKinnon.
Andrew Ladley resists using Bougainville as a sure-fire template for how we should conduct peace diplomacy. “Every situation has its own answers,” he says.
Ladley knows a thing or two about international mediation. An international consultant on conflict issues, he was a member of the inaugural UN Standby Team of Mediation Experts. He has worked on conflict resolution and transitions to peace and stability in places such as East Timor, Kenya, Kosovo and Serbia.
The reasons New Zealand played that critical role in Bougainville were profoundly case-specific in terms of relationships, circumstances and – importantly – people, says Ladley. “It is pretty tough to conjure up another John Hayes.”
Ladley also once worked for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a peace mediation and conflict resolution NGO, based in Geneva. Its director is David Harland, a New Zealand-born veteran of UN peacekeeping. Harland sees some merit in this country not staking out a leadership role in peace diplomacy. “All the big processes these days involve multiple actors, and if New Zealand wishes to lower the risk and cost, it probably shouldn’t act alone”, he says.
Informed by tikanga
If New Zealand has a singular superpower as a peace broker – particularly within the Pacific – it is commonly understood to be its Māori heritage, and the background in wrestling with issues of historical injustice and managing differences through the Waitangi Tribunal process. “We don’t need to pretend that we’ve done everything right, or that it is over, but what we’ve learnt we can share,” says Harland.
The Mfat Advisory Group and Te Kuaka reports stress the role te ao Māori perspectives and tikanga Māori have in informing our approach to peacemaking.
“It’s who we are, and helps build trust and rapport,” says Keating. “New Zealand also benefits because we are not yet the finished product ourselves, that we are on a journey, and we can therefore understand the journey of others.”
Hayes says exposing key players in Bougainville to Māori culture outreach – especially through the New Zealand Defence Force contingent under Brigadier Roger Mortlock – helped deliver relatable Pacific undertones, and was instrumental in de-escalating local tensions and improving co-operation with locals.
Ladley says tikanga Māori “is the oil that helped grease the Bougainville process”. McKinnon believes the involvement of tangata whenua was important in the Bougainville process in helping to locate New Zealand within the Pacific world.
Partly because of this and its track record in the region, Hayes believes New Zealand is naturally suited to address disputes within the Pacific. “The matter of peace mediation is too complex for New Zealand to be set up as a world saviour. What we have done in the Pacific region is not expected to work in the likes of Peru,” he says.
Indeed, Mfat leans heavily into a Pacific-led approach to dispute settlement in the region, supported by its diplomatic engagement and military and policing contributions.
Keating, however, lifts his gaze and says New Zealand could equally leverage its Māori tools and perspective in Africa, Asia and the Middle East to good effect.
The potency of the Māori experience aside, consensus on New Zealand peace diplomacy can be as elusive as peace itself. The agreed contours of New Zealand as a third-party peace broker are not yet fully drawn even after decades of deliberation and periodic achievement. Perhaps peace diplomacy will forever fall victim to a classic impasse of policymaking: that an idea glorified in principle is unattainable in practice. New Zealand’s loss, maybe. But also, potentially the world’s.
Craig Greaves is a Wellington-based journalist and writer who has worked in foreign affairs.
