Martti Ahtisaari is a unique individual. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, he has been at the heart of resolving several of the nastiest and most intractable conflicts of the past few decades. He helped end a bitter war between the Indonesian government and separatists in Aceh, and was a major participant in the negotiations that sought to resolve what to do with Kosovo after the war and genocide of 1999. He was one of the architects of the Namibian independence movement, which made the country independent from South Africa in 1990, worked in Iraq and Northern Ireland, and in between managed to find time to serve a term as President of Finland, during which Finland joined the EU.

He is a tall and broad man, though softly spoken – approachable and imposing in equal measure. Asked what drew him to a career in mediating between groups locked in violent conflict, he is quick to say that he arrived at negotiation only indirectly, after years spent first as a schoolteacher and then as a diplomat. He does admit, however, that his childhood may have left him cut out for the task. The region of Finland into which Ahtisaari was born was annexed by the Soviet Union during World War II, and he spent the first years of his life as a refugee in his own country. He explains, ‘I grew up with the feeling of being a stranger, and I think that allowed me to develop a sensitivity to what people are thinking without even any words. That’s not a bad thing for a peace mediator to have.’ He says that even as a student, he was known among his friends for his willingness to step into disputes and calm things down.

That kind of calmness, he claims, regardless of how gruesome a conflict may become, is vital for third parties if they are ever to help bring about peace. He also stressed the importance of a concerted, international effort in resolving tension: ‘These days, governments don’t want to internationalise their internal problems; they think it’s easier to try to make peace themselves. This is what happened in Indonesia; they tried to make their own ceasefire and it lasted only half a year.’ Indonesia’s Aceh province was wracked by violence between separatists and government troops for decades, with little movement towards peace.

Perversely, it took the destruction inflicted by the tsunami in 2004, which destroyed much of the Aceh region, to bring both parties back to the table. International aid was desperately needed, but could not be brought in while there was still a threat of violence. Ahtisaari emphasises that negotiators cannot step in and initiate a move towards peace: ‘if the two parties are ultimately not interested in solving a conflict, then there is really very little I can do, however brilliant I might be’ he says, with a grim laugh.

Ahtisaari currently works with an organisation called Crisis Management Initiative, an NGO devoted to helping war-torn parts of the globe piece themselves back together. Though he stresses again that third-party groups such as his can never bring belligerents to the negotiating table without the support of national governments, he argues that they do have a useful role to play. ‘Our main advantage from the perspective of governments is to do with blame: if we manage to make peace, then the governments who support us get a piece of the glory; if we fail, then it’s us that takes all the blame.’

It seems like a bleak assessment of his sometimes thankless line of work, but he seems almost pleased to be free of the burdens of political office. I ask what drew him back to run for the Finnish Presidency after so many years spent working on the international stage, and again he is quick to deny any real political ambition. He had never held political office before running for President in 1994, having built his career instead within the diplomatic service. ‘I think that I won in the end because everyone was fed up with traditional politicians, though I doubt anyone with a similar background to me would be able to do it again. I am not pleased with our system, where people start out in politics as a teenager and stay in it till they retire. I would rather see people spend at least some time in another career before they move on to politics.’

In the end, he says, he ran because he was asked to by friends and colleagues, and more importantly because he came top of a surprise poll of potential candidates than included several non-political candidates along with the mainstream party figures. He comes across as perhaps the most reluctant head of state ever to hold office, adding that even after winning his party’s primary, he would have pulled out had the other candidates asked him to. ‘I had my own career and interests,’ he adds.

Ahtisaari is an firm supporter of the EU in a country that had long been sceptical of the organisation, until it joined in 1995 under his leadership. He argues that the EU is better placed than most nation states to help resolve conflicts across the world, not least because it is one step removed from the pressures of national election cycles. More important, and often forgotten in discussions of EU politics which tend to focus on the continents western half, is the diversity of experience in the body. ‘If you look at the Arab Spring, we have countries like Libya and Egypt that are emerging from authoritarian rule, and are trying to reform. A country like Poland that only twenty years ago went through the same process can give much better advice than a more established state like Finland or the United Kingdom.’

Again, he stresses the importance of trust and of good reputation, two qualities that Western states have not always done their best to maintain. Asked what he thinks of more interventionist bodies such as the International Criminal Court, which has come under fire in recent years for focusing almost exclusively on Africa, Ahtisaari seems cautiously optimistic about the organisation’s future. ‘I think we need organisations that can really take to task individuals who have committed crimes against humanity, but they have to deal with all cases in that category, and will face accusations of double standards if they focus on one particular region. But that problem is not unique to the ICC; it’s something that the UN has been dealing with for decades.’ There is still much work to be done. He is annoyed and even ashamed, he says, that the international community has allowed so many wars to become ‘frozen conflicts’ in Africa and Asia, left to smoulder away without any real steps towards resolution. He is throughout the interview a calm, even dour man, but underlying his work and his beliefs is a remarkable degree of optimism, and above all a faith that war is ultimately not necessary. In his own words, ‘all conflicts can be solved’

When the first wave of protests initiated what is now known as the ‘Arab Spring’, Syria hardly featured. A few disturbances were easily quashed and the respected Arab broadcaster, Al Jazeera, even suggested that “a popular president, dreaded security forces and religious diversity make a Syrian revolution unlikely”.

How much difference a year makes. Violence has gradually escalated, sanctions have been imposed, ‘elections’ have taken place, and the Kofi Anan Peace Plan to impose a ceasefire was supposed to come into effect on 10^th April 2012. Instead of peace, however, Syria now faces the prospect of a full blown civil war.

True, Bashar al-Assad’s government is extremely repressive: there is and has never been any real democracy, the human rights record is appalling and bloody massacres have been associated with the regime for decades. However, it is easy to forget that under the al-Assad rule, women’s rights are strongly respected and freedom of religion is greater than in perhaps any other country in the Middle East. The ruling élite are Alawite Muslims, a branch of Shia, and as a small minority group, the government has found it useful to promote other minorities, producing progressive results for perhaps the wrong reasons. There are a few Jews, then 10% of the population are Christian, 16% are Druze, Alawite and Shia, while the 74% majority are Sunni. However, it is from this religious mix  that much of today’s trouble stems.

In Libya and Egypt there was a definite opposition and leaders willing to co-operate against the government. In Syria, this is not the case and co-ordination is still desperately lacking. The UN want dialogue with representative official figures, but with the pockets of resistance all fighting for different sects, different causes and in different demographics, the likelihood of success is low.

The Sunni-led Syrian National Congress has failed to win support from the large minority groups, who have resisted on the grounds that the SNC is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and unrepresentative of the rest. The Muslim Brotherhood are apparently strong supporters of democracy, of sexual equality and while their belief in internal discipline and support for Sharia law remains a worry to the West, their comparative moderation may be the best compromise in a post-Bashar government. But moderation seems a long way off; this is a part of the world where revenge is not just sweet, it is a duty. Alawite communities are petrified of repercussions should the Alawite-led regime fall. The most recent atrocities on civilians in Houla, are widely felt to have been the work of the Shabiha, the Alawite militia who support the regime, and revenge attacks are an ongoing concern.

But what of the ‘international community’? The ‘West’ is trying diplomatic pressure but will not get involved directly when no-one can see and end game, and the situation is one of such complexity. Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia is willing to get involved. True, it has an unsavory record on human rights, democracy and the position of women, but it does sit on a quarter of the world’s oil reserves. Hilary Clinton considers it a “key partner and friend”, and like Britain, is happy to sell them arms on a grand scale: only last week, British defence giant BAE signed a £1.9bn deal to supply Hawk trainer jets.

As a strict Sunni monarchy, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states, now actively finance Syrian rebels and lobbying hard for the US to step up its involvement against the al-Assad regime. But with evidence of Al Qaeda participation, and many attacks carrying the hallmarks of those with bomb-making experience from Iraq, the US finds itself in a tricky situation. It is hard to see any outcome other than further descent into violence and bloody sectarian disaster. No group looks like it can win and yet no-one is prepared to recognize that they can’t.

Ironically, Russia, the regime’s key ally, could now be the key to a path towards a solution. The US and the UK have made their stance quite clear from the outset – that Bashar must go. This bold statement, however, gives little room for negotiation; with their backs against the wall the regime will want to fight to the death. Russia sees its involvement in other countries’ civil wars as a grave mistake and has so far resisted attempts at international action against Syria. But as its patience runs out with the Syrian government, Russia may be the only chance in persuading the al-Assad regime that it must give up, and that exile in Russia is their only hope.

Sadly for the moment, the only certainty is that Syria is beyond all imaginable realms of complexity. There are so many contributing factors, that anyone who claims to understand it almost certainly doesn’t, including myself.

Izzy Westbury lived for 3 years as an expat in Damascus, Syria, between 1998-2001. She was in Damascus when Bashar al-Assad came to power in the summer of 2000.

I meet Adri in a rain-soaked village at the edge of a lake in Southern Benin. ‘Hello Boss!’ he cries, as he greets me with a toothy grin and a shot-glass of welcome palm-wine. We’re here to talk about the business of trafficking – and his having been trafficked in particular. ‘We were on our way to Gabon, to work in the fisheries’, he explains. ‘Their lakes are much richer than ours, so we thought that if we went there we could use our skills and make some money’.

Adri and his fellow travellers had paid a smuggler a few thousand francs to get them across the water – ‘our Dads negotiated the price, we were excited to go’. ‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘Before we’d even arrived, we were rounded up by police, whites and NGO people. ‘You are child slaves, trafficked children’, they told us. We are here to rescue you.’’ ‘And then?’ ‘Then they sent us back to the village. Gave us apprenticeships we didn’t want and left. Most of the boys have migrated again’.

Adri’s story is not unique. Since the 2001 discovery of the Etireno boat on which Adri and hundreds of other teenage boys were travelling, Benin has been blacklisted as a global hub for the traffic in children. The country’s dark past as a lynch-pin in the trans-Atlantic slave trade has only served to cement this label. Now, the crime of trafficking – movement and exploitation – is called ‘modern-day slavery’, and is said both to be the major force keeping the country’s rural young out of school and best tackled by keeping them ‘at home’.

 I head to the central cotton-belt to learn more. In Sehere village, John tells me that he was himself in school until his father died. ‘I didn’t have enough money to continue’, he says, ‘so I decided to move to Nigeria’. Sat with us are five other boys who have just returned with John from the mines across the border. Officially, they too are ‘victims of trafficking’, since they moved to engage in work that the anti-trafficking establishment deems inherently exploitative for minors.

‘The work wasn’t that bad, you know’, Peter explains. ‘Sure it was hard, and we spent hours under the sun, but we ate well, we were paid, and we worked surrounded by all our friends’. Rory continues: ‘Of course school would have been great, but I did two years there and earned 140,000 francs (about $200). That’s enough to set me up now that I’m home’.

When I ask what they make of the way their work is viewed by policy-makers, the boys are palpably dismissive. ‘The government, foreigners, NGOs, they all come here and tell us that moving is bad – that we’ll end up as slaves if we go. It’s just not true’. Village elders echo these frustrations. ‘There’s nothing wrong with boys doing hard work’, Elise says. ‘We all do hard work, and we have to move in order to find it, because what we have here just doesn’t provide. Life depends on money, and our crops don’t earn us enough like they once did’.

Where the policy establishment has blamed both the migration and exploitation that comprises trafficking and keeps rural children out of school on ‘ignorance’, ‘devious traffickers’ or unspecified ‘poverty’, the ‘trafficked’ and their communities tell a different tale. It is the crash and sustained depression in cotton prices that they identify as underpinning their problems, forcing them out of the classroom and on the road to tough jobs elsewhere.

‘When cotton worked, things were different here’, Charley states, pointing to the brickbuilt houses around him as evidence of better times past. ‘Farmers earned money, young people stayed at home and went to school, people were able to build things for their families’. Now? ‘All that has changed’. This change came in the late 1990s, when an international collapse in cotton prices heralded a prolonged depression that devastated household incomes. As the World Trade Organisation itself recognised, this depression didn’t just ‘happen’ – it was a partly the result of American cotton subsidies, and it deepened as these subsidies have continued.

When I ask policy-makers why they aren’t addressing such tangible and unjust ‘root causes’, instead of focussing on stopping movement or demonising work, the responses I receive are as damning as they are revealing. ‘We know that this is a big problem, but our hands are tied by the State Department’, one US staffer tells me. ‘That is simply not our responsibility’, says another. Sandra, a wisened Beninese government official, perhaps best sums it up: ‘Politicians aren’t going to change these policies just because a few kids are forced from school or are trafficked. In their reports, they say ‘poverty is the cause’, they blame culture or the poor distribution of resources. We know it’s a lie, everyone knows it’s a lie, but what can we do? We aren’t allowed to say anything, so we don’t. It’s organisational hypocrisy’.

The more I learn, the more I ’m left with the feeling she’s right. Trade Justice activists have long since argued for reform in this field. In a paper produced back in 2003 as part of Oxfam’s campaign against US subsidies, the economists Nicholas Minot and Lisa Daniels suggest that subsidies represent as much as a $60 annual loss to the average Beninese cotton farmer – the difference between a family like Peter’s sending two of their children to school, or two of them away to work.

Though this is all well known, still nothing changes. As with so much in the development field, the political interests of the powerful are once again trumping the basic needs and rights of the powerless. While the institutions that are supposed to work on their behalf remain deafeningly silent. In the meantime, young people like those I talk to are caught in the middle. Unable to continue school because subsidies have hollowed out their earnings, they are unable to migrate for work because trafficking policy calls that work slavery – and promptly returns them home if they are found. In meeting Adri again, I ask him how he feels about this. ‘Bof’, he replies. ‘C’est la vie, non?’