What is PA-X?
The PA-X Peace Agreement Database (pax.peaceagreements.org) is a database and repository of peace agreements from 1990 to date, current up until January 2024. PA-X provides a comprehensive dataset of peace agreements, capable of underpinning both quantitative and qualitative research.
PA-X has been designed to provide easy access to peace agreement texts and to allow users to explore patterns of agreements over time, both within processes and across processes. PA-X is primarily produced by a team of researchers at the University of Edinburgh as part of the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Program (PeaceRep).
It aims to be accessible to:
- mediators and parties in conflict seeking to understand how compromise can be crafted
- civic actors seeking to influence on-going peace talks and proposals
- social science researchers interested in understanding peace agreements quantitatively and qualitatively.
For peace agreement definitions see here. Download PA-X Codebook here.
What does PA-X include?
PA-X contains:
- over 2055 agreements in over 150 peace processes
- coding of provisions for 225+ substantive categories such as power-sharing, women, and transitional justice .
It enables search permutations which can disaggregate the data by country, entity, region, conflict type, and stage of agreement; and allows examination of different combinations of issues addressed. See more here.
What is PA-X Gender?
PA-X is accompanied by PA-X Gender, which contains more detailed analysis of the over all agreements in the main PA-X collection that mention women, girls, or gender. This database breaks down the relevant provisions into 53 categories, again with detailed search mechanisms and quantitative data fully available.
The search mechanisms and pages on PA-X Gender work the same way as PAX, although they involve different sub-coding of gender provisions. PA-X Gender was launched in 2015 and has been central to research by institutions including UN Women and the Council of Foreign Relations.
What is PA-X Local?
PA-X is accompanied by PA-X Local, which contains agreements that have been collected in PA-X that deal in some way with local issues, involve local actors, and deal with forms of local/communal violent conflict. PA-X Local offers a glimpse into the processes and outcomes of local peacemaking, including information on how it relates to any national peace process. Agreements span the 1990 to 2024, with global coverage, forming a collection of 349 local agreements.
This collection stems from the work on the main PA-X database and is not exhaustive of all local negotiation practices, since it only brings together documents which are written, formally agreed, and publicly available. Often informal and unwritten agreements are also used in these types of peace processes.
Where do the agreements in the PA-X database come from?
Agreements were sourced using: existing collections; country-specific websites and literature; websites of other civic groups; official documentation of international organisations; and writing to or meeting with and requesting documentation from governments and actors who have signed peace agreements, or mediators involved in conflicts.
- See more on sources here.
- Download an spreadsheet export of all sources up to version 8 by peace agreement here. Please note that, in some cases, the original websites that hosted the agreement documents are no longer available. In each case, a hard copy of the agreement document is kept on file. Whenever possible the sources were recorded on Wayback Machine.
- For Notice and Takedown Policy see here.
How do I use PA-X?
How do I cite PA-X?
PA-X Dataset Conceptualisation:
- Bell, C., & Badanjak, S. (2019). Introducing PA-X: A new peace agreement database and dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 56(3), 452-466. Available at https://www.peaceagreements.org/
PA-X V8 Codebook
- Bell, Christine, Sanja Badanjak, Adam Farquhar, Juline Beaujouan, Tim Epple, Robert Forster, Astrid Jamar, Kevin McNicholl, Sean Molloy, Kathryn Nash, Jan Pospisil, Robert Wilson, Laura Wise. (2024). PA-X Codebook, Version 8. Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep), University of Edinburgh.
For further citation information see our here.
For more details on previous PA-X versions click here.
If you are using a PA-X copyrighted translation please acknowledge the translation as Agreement name and date, (Unofficial translation, PA-X Peace Agreement Database www.peaceagreements.org). You may attach translated pdfs of translations but only in the original PA-X format with the copyright header.
Get in Touch
We invite feedback, comments, suggestions, and ideas that would help us make new data releases even better. We are particularly interested to hear if there are any documents that you think should be part of PA-X, or if you find that there is scope for cooperation. We would also like to know if the PA-X data are being used in other research projects, or if they have inspired similar endeavours. Get in touch at PeaceRep@ed.ac.uk.
Additional Resources
For full printable version of instructions and background information see here.
Acknowledgements
The current Peace Agreements Database is an output of PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, funded by UK International Development from the UK government. However, the views expressed and information contained in it are not necessarily those endorsed by the UK government’s official policies.
The current database has also received some funding from UN Women, to feed into the Global Study and UN Secretary General’s Report on the fifteen-year review of UNSCR 1325, and from funding from the College of Arts and Humanities, Knowledge Transfer Fund, of the University of Edinburgh. The pilot phases of the project were funded at different times by: the Nuffield Foundation (2006) and the British Academy (2007).
For more information on the development and contributions to PA-X Peace Agreements Database, see more here.