Jus post bellum requires a certain degree of moderation, in terms of its normative ambition, content and operation. Approaches towards the concept of a “just peace” differ. Mark Evans has argued that a “just peace” is an “elusive ideal”.[1] In her study on “Cosmopolitan Peace”, Cecile Fabre noted that “justice” is predominantly “procedural justice”.[2] Barela and Keller have argued that peace requires recognition and a certain degree of concession and compromise from parties involved (principle of renouncement).[3] As shown by the Colombian peace process, a “just” peace is not only related to form and process, i.e. negotiation of what is “just” in a specific context. It involves “substantive” justice, namely a “just” order with common rules, “just” institutions and arrangements, which secure peace, procedures to maintain peace, and a certain sense of societal acceptance. 

Jus post bellum requires pragmatism and limitation.I undertake a study of different concepts of peace and argue that a just peace in the context of jus post bellum should be understood as a “decent peace which is stable for a substantial period of time”. 

[1] Mark Evans, Just Peace: An Elusive Ideal, in Eric Patterson (ed.) Ethics beyond War's End (Georgetown University Press, 2012), 220.

[2] Cecile Fabre, Cosmopolitan Peace (OUP, 2016).

[3] Steven J. Barela and Alexis Keller, Justice, Peace and Jus Post Bellum, Amsterdam Law Forum (2015), 98.