Moving peace forward: Negotiating freedom of movement in peace processes

Freedom of movement is a critical yet underexplored element of peace processes. During conflict, warring parties often restrict movement through checkpoints, curfews, blockades, or sieges, disrupting civilian life and obstructing humanitarian and peace operations. While peace negotiations frequently address such restrictions, existing literature tends to overlook freedom of movement or treats it as a secondary or technical issue. This article seeks to fill that gap by outlining a new research agenda at the intersection of political geography and conflict management. First, we conceptualise freedom of movement as the ability of people and goods to move unobstructed through physical space. Coding over 10,000 negotiation rounds in inter-state, intra-state, and nonstate conflicts between 1989 and 2023, we then classify negotiation topics according to whether they concern the movement of actors, the movement of goods, or movement to and from specific spaces and highlight the prevalence of negotiations on freedom of movement in peace processes. Building on this, we illustrate how freedom of movement can function both as a negotiated outcome and a means for advancing peace processes and outline several avenues for future research.