The Negotiators

In 2014, the government of the Philippines signed a peace deal with Muslim separatists in the southern part of the country known as the Bangsamoro. The agreement brought a gradual end to a conflict that had killed more than 120,000 people over decades.This week on The Negotiators, we hear from the government official who navigated the talks, Miriam Coronel-Ferrer. She was the first woman ever to lead a negotiation with an armed rebel group—the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Coronel-Ferrer was a political science professor before going to work for the government in 2010. One thing that made her effective at negotiating with the rebels was that she herself had been an anti-government activist during the era of Filipino strongman Ferdinand Marcos.  

These days, with the world divided as it is, it’s hard to imagine more than 195 countries coming together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet that’s precisely what happened in 2015 with the Paris Climate Agreement. The accord was a historic deal, but what do we really know about how it was reached? On the first episode of The Negotiators, we hear from Tom Rivett-Carnac, who helped bring countries together in Paris. Rivett-Carnac began his adult life as a Buddhist monk and eventually became the senior advisor to Christiana Figueres, who helmed the U.N. talks that led to the climate agreement.

The Paris Climate Agreement. The Iran Nuclear Deal. The Bring Back our Girls campaign. How did these deals get made? On The Negotiators, each episode will feature one person telling the story of one dramatic negotiation. Hosted by Jenn Williams, The Negotiators is a production of Foreign Policy and Doha Debates.