A Model Regulation for Modern Peacemakers: Establishing a Qualified Legal Defence for Good-faith Private Actors who Engage in Dialogue with Organised Criminal Groups

Negotiations with organised criminal groups – such as mafias, cartels, gangs and pirates – occur more often than imagined. It is a subject dissected in depth in IFIT’s globally groundbreaking study, Negotiating with Violent Criminal Groups: Lessons and Guidelines from Global Practice (Freeman and Felbab-Brown, 2021), which offered key lessons drawn from the most diverse set of negotiations with organised criminal groups ever examined in one place. The study focused on cases of negotiation intended to reduce or end widespread violence by or between such groups and drew on three years of in-depth IFIT research involving dozens of first-person interviews conducted with those directly involved in the talks. One the study’s many original findings was “how often in the examined cases the impetus (to negotiate) lay in a single, well-intentioned third party, such as an activist, a religious leader, an academic team, an NGO or even a solo police officer, sometimes without any direct government involvement.” But as noted in the study, and in a subsequent IFIT practice brief, Negotiating with Criminal Groups: IFIT Guidance Note for Good-Faith Promoters (Freeman and Afako, 2024), their courageous acts often involved immense security, reputational and legal risks. Against this backdrop, this new IFIT publication introduces an original Model Regulation to deal specifically with the legal risks assumed by private individuals and institutions who engage in good-faith negotiations and communications with organised criminal groups.