By World BEYOND War, May 10, 2025
On Europe Day (Friday, May 9, 2025), the World BEYOND War Europe Network hosted this webinar to examine Five Criteria for Lasting and Just Peace Agreements. A look at the most important peace negotiations and treaties in Europe over the past centuries (1648, 1815, 1919, 1975, etc.) from the perspective of international law and the history of international law shows that the most enduring peace agreements followed a set of criteria or principles, referred to here as the SMILE criteria.
What are the SMILE criteria?
-S stands for STRUCTURED / SERIAL. This means that negotiations took place within a structured institutional framework and were conducted repeatedly (serially).
-M stands for MULTILATERAL. Multiple states participated in the negotiations, not just the directly involved warring parties.
-I stands for INCLUSIVE. All warring parties took part in the negotiations; none were excluded.
-L stands for LEGAL / LEGITIMATE. The negotiations and the resulting peace agreement adhered to the prevailing rules of international law and were generally considered just.
-E stands for EMANCIPATORY or EMPOWERING.
The peace negotiations and their outcome incorporated (at least to a certain degree) the interests of the affected populations.
WBW Romania Chapter Co-Coordinator Hans Hedrich presented the SMILE principles, an analysis of key peace agreements in Europe in terms of their adherence to the SMILE criteria, and how the criteria could be applied to achieve a lasting and just solution to the war in Ukraine.
Remarks were given by Yurii Sheliazhenko, Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, and Olga Karach, Director of Our House (Belarus), who commented on the feasibility of the SMILE criteria based on their regional contexts and how we can chart a path forward for peace.
