From Protracted Conflict to Sustainable Peace?

Across the globe, the number of protracted armed conflicts is rising, with many societies enduring the consequences of violence and conflict-related socio-economic disruption for decades. These enduring conflicts present complex and evolving challenges—legal, (geo)political, institutional, humanitarian, developmental, and environmental—that demand new approaches. In response, policy frameworks increasingly advocate for the so-called Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus (the 'Triple Nexus'), which seeks to bridge traditionally siloed agendas in favour of a more integrated response to protracted conflict. Yet, despite growing policy interest, the legal dimensions of protracted conflict and the implications of the Triple Nexus remain under-explored in international law. From Protracted Conflict to Sustainable Peace? offers the first comprehensive legal and interdisciplinary examination of how international law engages with the realities of protracted conflict. Drawing on a wide range of legal fields—including international humanitarian law, development law, economic law, refugee law, human rights law, criminal law, and peacebuilding law—contributors explore how legal regimes interact, overlap, and at times conflict in these complex settings. Through a conceptual framework and a series of thematic chapters, the volume addresses the lived impacts of protracted conflict, the role of international institutions and the challenges they face, and the potential of legal frameworks to respond to long-term crises. It provides scholars and practitioners with a vital resource for rethinking legal strategies in the face of enduring violence and for imagining pathways toward sustainable peace. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.