Introduction

Within the last three decades, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become established mediation actors. NGO mediators, understood as private actors taking on discreet or public ‘mediative’ or facilitative functions among and between the negotiating parties in a peace process, are increasingly invited by negotiating parties to assist in negotiations towards a peace agreement. As private actors, NGO mediators can take on politically sensitive roles without the same accountability mechanisms required by formal mediation actors such as the United Nations (UN), regional organizations or state representatives. For instance, NGO mediators can mediate informally and discreetly in high-stake negotiations without risking the same level of political blowback if things go awry. As private actors, NGO mediators can engage directly with armed actors that are politically sensitive or proscribed as terrorist organizations. As private actors, NGO mediators are not beholden to the same regulations as formal international organizations bound by state or international organization (IO)-sanctioned counter-terrorism regulations. There is little consensus on what the consequences of this phenomenon are for the theory and practice of international peace mediation. NGO mediators have been lauded both as entrepreneurial ‘mavericks’ redefining the mediation field and as ‘cowboys’ that disregard the field's normative and political parameters (Martin, 2006).

The rise of NGO mediators coincides with an increasing imperative to promote international norms such as inclusivity, gender equality, human rights and transitional justice in mediation processes (Hellmüller et al, 2015). This normative shift in the mediation field has found mediators increasingly pressured to promote the inclusion of normative parameters at the peace table and in any resulting peace agreements. This chapter is concerned with the normative agency of mediators, or their ability to promote norms to the negotiating parties. While the UN, states and regional organizations are formal entities that wield high amounts of political authority to integrate norms into their mediation interventions, NGO mediators present a more curious puzzle: if NGO mediators do not have high amounts of political leverage, formal mandates and material resources, under what conditions can they promote certain norms to negotiating parties? In other words, what gets them in the negotiating room and what enables them to promote norms to the parties?