A ceasefire agreement is an agreed suspension of hostilities in an international or non-international armed conflict. It may include, inter alia, provisions on: timing; identification and definition of prohibited acts; separation of armed forces (including delineation of ceasefire lines); verification, supervision and monitoring; repatriation of prisoners of war, missing persons and internally displaced people; reparation and compensation of claims; conflict-specific issues; war crimes; and ad hoc provisions that are particular to the context in question.
Ceasefire agreements are often signed towards the start of a negotiation process or alongside, and even as part of, a more substantive settlement agreement. The length of a ceasefire may also be specified, and in some cases it can be expressly time limited.
In the case of protracted social conflicts ceasefire agreements can often only be accompanied by broader peacebuilding arrangements and structural changes. This is because such a transition usually requires the political, the military and the economic dimensions of a conflict to be addressed simultaneously. By the mid-1990s, mediation practices had begun to develop emerging norms and common elements of a ceasefire agreement, and these were later consolidated in UN Security Council Resolution 686 (1991) for Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since then specific ceasefire agreements have been negotiated in a variety of settings and with different levels of complexity. The 2022 DPPA Guidance on Mediation of Ceasefires builds upon these experiences and lessons. It also identifies additional, important technical considerations that are relevant for supporting the negotiations of a ceasefire agreement.
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