William Ury is one of the most famous negotiation experts in the world. He co-wrote the classic book Getting to Yes and co-founded Harvard’s Program on Negotiation. On today’s episode of the Negotiators, our last of the season, Ury describes his role in mediating some of the world’s most difficult conflicts. His forthcoming book, Possible, includes lessons from a long career as an international troubleshooter.  The Negotiators is a partnership between Doha Debates and Foreign Policy.

After nine years of war in Yemen, a peace deal finally seems at hand. Representatives of the Houthis met with the Saudis in Riyadh in September, in their first official visit since the war in 2014 began. On today’s episode of The Negotiators, we talk to Yemeni mediators about how they have advanced the peace process and what they think is needed to end the war. First, host Jenn Williams speaks with Maeen Al-Obaidi, one of the most successful local negotiators in Yemen, about how she has...

The staggering violence between Israelis and Palestinians over the past month has rekindled a question long vexing professionals in the negotiating business: Why have efforts to mediate peace between the two sides failed again and again? To explore that question, we look back to an initiative 20 years ago known as the road map, which seemed to hold particular promise. Sponsored by some of the world’s major players—The United States, Russia, The United Nations and the European Union—the road...

The Colorado River provides water to about 40 million people in seven U.S. states, 30 Native American tribes, and northern Mexico. But because of climate change, the river has become significantly drier in recent decades. On today’s episode of The Negotiators, we hear how the U.S. states and Native American tribes reached a historic agreement in May to reduce water consumption by 13 percent—after an excruciating negotiation. This is Part 2 in our look at negotiations over the Colorado River....

You may have heard about the Colorado River negotiations that ended in May. In a monumentally important agreement, several U.S. states along the Colorado River agreed to cut water use. We will cover that deal in next week’s show.  But for today’s episode of The Negotiators, we hear about an earlier round of Colorado River talks between the United States and Mexico. These binational talks from 2007 to 2012 tell us something about resource scarcity and the delicate negotiations required to...

Former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, who passed away five years ago, was one of the most famous diplomats of his time. On today’s episode of The Negotiators, we hear about Annan’s mediation of a Kenyan political crisis in 2008—which stands out as one of his most impressive acts of diplomacy. A disputed election in late December 2007 spurred violence and displacement across Kenya. A number of diplomats tried to mediate an end to the conflict. But ultimately, Kofi Annan...

The Writers Guild of America struck a deal recently with Hollywood studios, ending one of the longest strikes in the union’s history.  Ellen Stutzman, Assistant Executive Director of the Writers Guild of America West, was the union’s chief negotiator in the talks. She is our guest this week on The Negotiators.  The interview, conducted by our senior producer Laura Rosbrow-Telem, is the most extensive one Stutzman has given since the deal was reached. The Negotiators is a collaboration between...

Gang violence in Los Angeles surged dramatically in the 1980s. Over a seven-year period beginning in 1985, more than 4,000 people died from gang-related clashes. That’s more than the death toll in some high-profile conflicts around the world, including the Troubles in Northern Ireland. On the latest episode of The Negotiators podcast, we look at the Watts truce in 1992—a peace agreement between rival gangs in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. It had a significant impact: Gang-related...

This bonus episode from the podcast The Closer is a complement to our recent episode about the U.S. Soccer equal pay negotiations. While the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team is among the most decorated teams in the game, until recently, its players were paid only a fraction of what the men took home.  On The Negotiators, you heard from Cindy Parlow Cone, the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, about the role she played in the fight for equal pay. On this episode of The Closer, you’ll...

For the first time in U.S. soccer history, the men’s and women’s national teams are getting paid at the same rate. That’s the result of a grueling negotiation that ended last year, led by Cindy Parlow Cone—a former professional player who became the U.S. Soccer Federation President.   On the latest episode of The Negotiators podcast, Cone describes how far apart the two sides were at the start and how they reached an agreement. She spoke with producer Karen Given. The Negotiators is a...

Our podcast The Negotiators launches its third season this week with a look at one of the most famous diplomatic deals ever: the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.  Jonathan Powell was UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief negotiator for the Good Friday Talks. He was also Blair’s newly appointed chief of staff. In an interview on the podcast, he describes the painstaking negotiations that led to the deal—followed by years of additional diplomacy over...

The Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. U.S. soccer negotiations for gender parity. How Kofi Annan mediated a political crisis in Kenya.  The Negotiators podcast is back on Sep. 19 with all new stories from people resolving some of the world’s most dramatic conflicts. Hosted by Jenn Williams, the Negotiators is a production of Doha Debates and Foreign Policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We wanted to take this time to introduce listeners to The Catch, another podcast from Foreign Policy. Recently the series did a bonus episode talking about the signing of the landmark agreement regarding our oceans. After nearly two decades of negotiating, the United Nations passed an agreement called the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, also known as the High Seas Treaty. Host Ruxandra Guidi is joined by Lisa Speers, the Natural Resources Defense Council's Director of the...

President Vladimir Putin recently announced that Russia would suspend its participation in the New START agreement with the United States. Putin’s move puts the last remaining nuclear arms deal between the two countries into question. Last season, we spoke with the chief U.S. envoy to the New START talks, Rose Gottemoeller. She shares the grueling process of negotiating that treaty—which was finally signed in 2010. Even as Putin threatens to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Russia continued to...

Earlier this year, a British Pakistani man took several people hostage at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas—including the congregation’s rabbi, Charlie Cytron-Walker. During the 11-hour saga, FBI negotiators posted outside tried to persuade the gunman to come out quietly. Meanwhile, another kind of negotiation was happening inside the temple’s walls: between the rabbi and the hostage taker. This week on our podcast The Negotiators, Rabbi Cytron-Walker describes how he tried to humanize...

The negotiations that led to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union lasted more than four years. During that grueling process, three different prime ministers came and went in Britain, shifting positions and occasionally roiling the talks. The one constant was Michel Barnier, the European Commissioner in charge of Brexit talks.  This week on our podcast The Negotiators, Barnier tells host Jenn Williams about challenges he faced in the talks, including one that couples often...

The uprising in Libya that ended Muammar Qaddafi’s long reign in 2011 was supposed to provide a path to stability. Instead, the country descended into civil war, with regional powers vying for influence and resources. An election brokered by the United Nations last year was called off at the last moment and the sides to the conflict remain at an impasse. But while official negotiations have stalled, one peace group decided this past summer to bring opponents together in Norway, where they...

Criminal justice advocates have tried for decades to pass legislation to reduce the United States prison population. Yet somehow, at a moment when the United States felt more polarized than ever, lawmakers managed to agree on a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill during Donald Trump’s presidency. It was called the First Step Act and it reduced the sentences of thousands of incarcerated people in federal prisons.  This week on our podcast The Negotiators, we talk to Jessica Jackson, a...

When Chileans were asked in a referendum in 2020 whether they wanted a new constitution, the response was overwhelming. The current one dated back to the rule of Augusto Pinochet, the military dictator who had stepped down more than three decades earlier. Nearly eighty percent of the population voted in favor of a negotiation that would lead to a new charter for the country. But the negotiation process—which included representatives from the left and right side of the political map, along...

In 2009, the last nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia was about to expire. The START agreement, and others like it, had helped protect people around the globe from the possibility of a nuclear confrontation between the world’s two superpowers. Barack Obama, who became president that year, was eager to get a new deal in place.  On the latest episode of The Negotiators podcast, we hear from the chief U.S. envoy to the New START talks, Rose Gottemoeller, about the...

Military officers in Burkina Faso seized power last month, in the country’s second coup this year. In both cases, the main justification was leadership’s failure to curb violence from groups linked to the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. The insurgency has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced about 10 percent of the population. This week on our podcast, The Negotiators, we tell the story of one community leader in Burkina Faso who set out to negotiate with the insurgents so that...

For decades, Canadian activists have criticized the government in Ottawa for underfunding Indigenous communities, leading to various harms and hardships. The activists, led by Cindy Blackstock of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, sued the Canadian government in 2007, claiming that federal underfunding prompted First Nations children to end up in foster care in large numbers once residential schools were closed. The court battle dragged on for 15 years. But in January of this...

Welcome back to The Negotiators, the podcast that brings you stories from mediators, troubleshooters, and negotiators around the world. The show is a collaboration between Doha Debates and Foreign Policy, hosted by FP Deputy Editor Jenn Williams. We begin our second season with a dramatic prisoner negotiation. Danny Fenster is an American journalist who covered the coup in Myanmar in 2021. Months later, while trying to leave the country for a visit with his family in the United States, he...

This is part two of negotiator Mickey Bergman’s story about the American journalist Danny Fenster, who was serving an 11-year prison sentence in Myanmar. In the first episode, Bergman described how much work it took to get to the gatekeepers. In this second part, he and his boss, Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, are finally in Myanmar for the secret talks.