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Webinar: Five Criteria for Lasting and Just Peace Agreements - with speakers from Romania, Ukraine and Belarus - Join us on Europe Day (Friday, May 9) at 19:00 Brussels Time

Freitag, 9. Mai 2025 7:00 PM MEZ to 8.30 PM

Host Contact Info: greta@worldbeyondwar.org

Join us on Europe Day (Friday, May 9) at 19:00 Brussels Time (find the time in your time zone) for this webinar that will examine Five Criteria for Lasting and Just Peace Agreements.


A look at the most important peace negotiations and treaties in Europe over the past centuries (1648, 1815, 1919, 1975, etc.) from the perspective of international law and the history of international law shows that the most enduring peace agreements followed a set of criteria or principles, referred to here as the SMILE criteria.


What are the SMILE criteria?

  1. S stands for STRUCTURED / SERIAL. This means that negotiations took place within a structured institutional framework and were conducted repeatedly (serially).

  2. M stands for MULTILATERAL. Multiple states participated in the negotiations, not just the directly involved warring parties.

  3. I stands for INCLUSIVE. All warring parties took part in the negotiations; none were excluded.

  4. L stands for LEGAL / LEGITIMATE. The negotiations and the resulting peace agreement adhered to the prevailing rules of international law and were generally considered just.

  5. E stands for EMANCIPATORY or EMPOWERING. The peace negotiations and their outcome incorporated (at least to a certain degree) the interests of the affected populations.


WBW Romania Chapter Co-Coordinator Hans Hedrich will present the SMILE principles, an analysis of key peace agreements in Europe in terms of their adherence to the SMILE criteria, and how the criteria could be applied to achieve a lasting and just solution to the war in Ukraine.


The subsequent Q&A session will subject the SMILE peace model to a stress test—critical questions are highly welcome!


Remarks will be given by Yurii Sheliazhenko, Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, and Olga Karach, Director of Our House (Belarus), who will comment on the feasibility of the SMILE criteria based on their regional contexts and how we can chart a path forward for peace.The symbolically significant year 2025 presents an ideal opportunity to launch this peace process—fifty years after the founding of the CSCE, and eighty years after the end of World War II and the establishment of the United Nations.


About Our Speakers:

  • Hans Hedrich is a political scientist, environmental activist, and civil rights advocate from the multiethnic region of Transylvania, Romania, and a co-coordinator of the World BEYOND War Romania Chapter.


  • Yurii Sheliazhenko, PhD, is Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, a board member of World BEYOND War, a board member of the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection, and a council member of the International Peace Bureau. He obtained a Master of Mediation and Conflict Management degree in 2021 and a Master of Laws degree in 2016 at KROK University. In addition to his participation in the peace movement, he is a journalist, blogger, human rights defender, and legal scholar, an author of academic publications and a lecturer on legal theory and history. Yurii is a winner of the International Peace Bureau’s 2022 Sean MacBride Peace Prize.


  • Olga Karach has a Master of Arts in Political Sciences from European

    Humanitarian University, Vilnius, Lithuania. She was contracted to work for the school but in 2002-2004 the contract was cancelled by the school for political activities. In 2017 she was one of the founders of the Global Peacebuilders Summit in Berlin. She is a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and an active participant in the “Women’s Peace Dialogue” international. Currently she is Director at the Centre for Civil Initiatives, “Our House,” a Belarusian human rights organization, which is an affiliate of World BEYOND War.


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The event will be recorded and the recording will be made available to all registrants afterward. Automated live transcription of this event will be enabled on the Zoom platform.


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