Afghanistan: A victim-centred approach to durable peace-building 1. Executive summary As the cost of war becomes unbearable, momentum is growing for peace negotiations in Afghanistan. The Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, has made an “unconditional” offer of peace to the Taliban. The United States is pushing for a rapid deal within its own tight deadlines. As the Afghan government and its allies move towards talks, they have made only symbolic references to the inclusion of victims of war. Indeed, not only are victims being ignored, but there are dangerous indications that the Afghan peace process will be driven by bargaining among a narrow clique of power brokers from parties to the conflict. This paper will show that this is not just a moral but also a strategic mistake: there is ample empirical evidence that the substantive involvement of war victims is essential to move from a protracted conflict to a durable peace. Civilians are the primary victims of Afghanistan’s multi-decade conflict: in the last ten years alone there have been over 70,000 civilian victims killed or injured, according to the UN. This doesn’t account for the victims who have suffered harms that go beyond physical injuries, or the more than 1.5 million victims from the previous decades of war. Afghans from all ethnicities and regions of the country have born profound loss and suffering. To conclude protracted conflicts with a sustainable peace, it is essential to initiate a victim-centred peace process, where victims’ views and demands are incorporated in the final settlement. Exclusionary, elite led peace processes that ignore victims tend to be deeply unpopular, lack legitimacy and the grassroots support that is necessary to endure. Indeed, such peace agreements often collapse in the implementation phase, triggering the resumption of another round of violence and destruction. Civil society and victim’s involvement influences the positions of negotiators on contested agendas during peace talks and imposes an ethical framework upon the negotiating parties to accept, at least, in part, responsibility for their conduct in the course of conflict and abide by the terms of the peace agreement they sign. Victim involvement helps create a grassroots constituency for peace, and generates greater legitimacy for the eventual agreement and its durability. Given this complex well of grievance and suffering, victims need robust participation in all stages and institutional layers of peace-building. This paper will outline a number of options necessary for a multidimensional strategy with a strong element of direct participation, which can produce results most favourable to both victims and to durable peace-building efforts.