The final conference of the SNIS project, titled "Power-sharing for Peace? Balancing Adaptability and Durability in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq," was held on August 23, 2024, at the University of Fribourg.

Researchers from Swisspeace, the University of Brendan (Canada), the Holy Spirit University of Kislik (Lebanon), Peace Paradigms (Iraq), the Arab Network for NGOs (AAND, Lebanon), and the Institute of Federalism found that power-sharing negotiations occur in various arenas—domestic, international, and within the interactions between domestic and international actors. They also identified several connections between power-sharing provisions and their long-term acceptability, such as provisions that strengthened power-sharing and those that were never implemented, thus failing to impact the power-sharing system (e.g., the second chambers in Lebanon and Iraq).

In the second part of the conference, a panel of esteemed practitioners discussed different aspects of power-sharing adaptability and implementation. Professor Tamirace Fakhoury from Tufts University emphasized the need to understand the contestation of power-sharing in Iraq and Lebanon to identify what people are dissatisfied with. Dr. Zedoun Alzoubi, a leading civil society figure in Syria, demonstrated how power-sharing among armed groups could potentially create new problems and may not result in the liberal democracy many Syrians aspire to. Dr. Julian Hottinger, a former Senior Mediator for the Swiss Foreign Office, argued that power-sharing is becoming increasingly complex as conflicts evolve and the key issues in conflicts shift. Dr. David Lanz from Humanitarian Dialogue added that, overall, the effectiveness of power-sharing is mixed. The session included many insightful questions from both the in-person and online audiences.

The research team would like to thank all participants who took part in the event at the University of Fribourg and online. Special thanks go to the sponsor, the Swiss Network for International Studies.