Joint Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi presented this report at the United Nations Security Council on Janaury 29, 2013, to inform negotiations with Syria.

A former top National Security Council officer in the Bush White House tells the full inside story of the Bush administration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Every aspiring beauty-pageant queen knows what to say when asked what she wants most: "World peace." World peace is at least nominally what we all want most. But evidently, we are not very good at making it.

CFR's James M. Lindsay discusses the signing of the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993, including the secret negotiations that produced the agreement, what its terms stipulated, and how it failed to produce lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

ASEAN has failed to ease tensions over the South China Sea this summer, but China and its neighbors still have options for restoring calm, writes CFR's Joshua Kurlantzick.

UN Security Council Resolution 2052 regarding extension of the mandate of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) monitoring the Israel-Syria ceasefire until December 31, 2012 was adopted by the UN Security Council on June 27, 2012.

UN Security Council Resolution 788 regarding Liberia was adopted on November 19, 1992.

Kofi Annan, Joint Special Envoy for the United Nations and the League of Arab States, drew up this six-point peace plan for Syria. It was submitted to the UN in March 2012 and on March 27 the Syrian government accepted the proposal. The ceasefire came in to effect on April 12, 2012 but as reported by the UN and other bodies, has not been honored.

A potential Taliban office in Qatar has raised hopes for a negotiated end to the Afghan war. But numerous challenges remain even as a new controversy over U.S. troop behavior threatens to derail talks.

Recent data on organized violence shows that conflicts between a state and one or more nonstate armed groups vastly outnumber interstate conflicts. As a result, argues former international affairs fellow Payton L. Knopf in a new CFR Working Paper, the State Department needs clear guidelines as to why, when, and how its diplomats should conduct outreach to these groups.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs released this statement on October 2, 2011. It was the country's first official response to the September 2011 statement made by the Quartet urging direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Quartet —U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union Catherine Ashton— met in New York on 23rd September 2011. They were joined by Quartet Representative Tony Blair.

The assassination of Afghan government negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani signals the challenges in any reconciliation talks with the Taliban and could exacerbate ethnic divisions, pushing the country into a civil war.

Steven Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations discusses the prospects and implications of the Palestinian bid for UN recognition of statehood. Cook cautions that "an American veto or American opposition to this declaration of statehood is likely to roil already intense and uncertain and unstable political environments throughout the region."

James Dobbins and James J. Shinn, coauthors of Afghan Peace Talks: A Primer, discuss the relationships between al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, as well as the obstacles and possible outcomes of peace negotiations.

This detailed New York Times editorial on Afghanistan spells out five strategic issues that must be addressed before the conflict can reach a "minimally successful end."

This Policy Innovation Memorandum recommends the United States redefine "peacemaking" for Darfur in order to better achieve its objectives there.

Religious leaders from Sudan discuss the upcoming referendum, as well as ways that the international community can strengthen human rights in Southern Sudan.