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| Aid Worker Security Database Launched
19 August 2010 marks World Humanitarian Day and the launch of the online version of the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD).
The rising trend of violence against aid workers has generated a need for better reporting, tracking and analyzing of attacks against aid workers. The Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) records over a decade of the major incidents of violence against aid workers, from 1997 to the present. The database is single most comprehensive global source of this data, and we hope that in this publicly accessible form it will provide a much-needed quantitative evidence base for analysis of the changing security environment for civilian aid operations. With this database we will be able to provide consistent monitoring and regular analysis of trends in operational security, including the publication of biannual policy briefs, statistical analysis, as well as respond to agency-specific security data upon request.
The AWSD is a project of Humanitarian Outcomes and led by two of its partners Dr. Abby Stoddard (CIC non-resident fellow) and Adele Harmer. The project is supported by CIC Senior Programme Officer, Victoria DiDomenico.
 Recent Press : CNN, National Public Radio (NPR), EU Observer, People's Daily
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UN Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force: WMD Working Group Report
The United Nations Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF) was established in 2005 by the Secretary-General and works to ensure overall coordination and coherence among at least two dozen entities throughout the UN system involved in counter-terrorism efforts. The CTITF Working Group on Preventing and Responding to Weapons of Mass Destruction Attacks is currently reviewing existing arrangements for these coordination efforts in response to a terrorist attack using nuclear and/or radiological weapons or materials. The Working Group will prepare a report that outlines these arrangements and identifies potential gaps. Fiona Simpson, CIC Senior Fellow, has been selected to draft the report, which will go before the UN General Assembly in September 2010.
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Press Advisory - Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2010
Praise for the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2010 :
“Few bestselling books read as well as this annual gem; few text books have even half as much useful and well-presented information on a crucial subject; few publications hold a candle to the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations.
—MICHAEL O’HANLON
Director of Research and Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
“The Annual Review represents a critical tool for practitioners and academics in understanding the myriad operational and financial challenges confronting peacekeeping operations today. As we work toward ensuring that peacekeeping is prepared to meet current and future demands, the analysis and data presented in this volume provide the foundations for addressing these issues with a realistic and deeply informed approach.”
—AMBASSADOR DR. PETER WITTIG
Permanent Representative of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United Nations
“Peacekeeping has grown enormously in terms of both size and complexity in the last decade. Our goal is to strike a balance between delivering support to our missions in a timely and efficient manner and meeting the high standards and complying with procedures set by the UN. The Annual Review is a crucial resource that clearly presents the contours of these challenges as we begin updating the way that we manage our operations to ensure that they deliver on their stated goals.”
—SUSANA MALCORRA
UN Under Secretary-General for the Department of Field Support
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The Center on International Cooperation and the Canadian Permanent Mission to the United Nations are convening a series of panel discussions to explore critical issues confronting the future of UN peace operations.
 Read the background paper - English - Français
 Visit Thematic Series Project Page
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Conflict Prevention: Back to Basics
Summer 2010
Richard Gowan and Bruce D. Jones warn that conflict prevention is getting harder - tensions between major powers and a proliferation of mediators is making it harder to avert or mitigate civil wars. They offer a strategic assessment of the UN's role in operational conflict prevention based on a series of regional studies commissioned by CIC. The report argues that the UN should adopt a conflict prevention strategy that (i) concentrates on the political dimensions and short-term drivers of violence rather than concentrating to heavily on the "root causes" of conflict; (ii) prioritizes the development of anticipatory relationships with decision-makers in countries at risk of conflict; and (iii) promotes closer operational ties with other potential mediators, even when this explicitly involves the UN taking a secondary supporting or facilitating role.
 Back to Basics: The UN and crisis diplomacy in an age of strategic uncertainty
 Series of Regional Studies on conflict prevention
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Beyond Heavy Peacekeeping
Summer 2010
On 2 June 2010, the Center on International Cooperation (CIC), the Center for International Peace Operations (ZIF) and the German Foreign Office hosted an expert seminar in Berlin, Germany titled "Beyond Heavy Peacekeeping: Alternative Mission Models for Building the Rule of Law". The meeting brought together participants from the German Ministry of Defense, European Union (EU), Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and United Nations (UN) to discuss the political and operational feasibility of alternatives to peacekeeping. Key topics discussed included the types of alternative models both historically and currently deployed; the benefits and limitations of these models; and how the international community can better utilize the full range of alternatives. Among the main findings of the meeting were the need for an international framework to aid in the provision of optimal political, operational and technical assistance regardless of mission type and for a sharing of lessons learned and best practices within and amongst peace operations actors.
Meeting Note
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The African Union in Darfur: Understanding the afro-arab response to the crisis
Summer 2010
In this recent paper for FRIDE, Dr. Sarjoh Bah analyzes the "Afro-Arab" response to the ongoing conflict in Sudan. Dr. Bah explores the complexities surrounding the African Union’s (AU) response to the crisis in Darfur: a regional approach to what had essentially become an international problem. It focuses on how the AU’s political strategy of pursuing dialogue between the parties was contradicted by the policies of some of its members, especially from North Africa, the League of Arab States (LAS) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). The paper was formally launched along with other papers commissioned by FRIDE at a high-level policy seminar in Madrid on 16-17 June. The Meeting was attended by representatives of the Governemnt of Sudan, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and a new break-away faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, the League of Arab States, the United Nations and academic and policy researchers from Sudan and the Middle East.
The African Union in Darfur: Understanding the afro-arab response to the crisis - English - Arabic
Visit FRIDE site
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Two Silver Linings at the 2010 G8 and G-20 Summits
By Bruce Jones
Most of the commentary on the Canadian G8 and G20 meetings will focus on the failure to coordinate policy on two key issues: the shift from stimulus to debt reduction and common regulation of the international financial sector. The attention to these two failures is much deserved - a collective response to the lingering effects of the financial crisis is as important now as it was in the fall of 2008. While the G20 meeting has been the target for the majority of the criticism, the real divide was within the G8. I will return to that point in a moment.
The G8 and G20 leaders generated other targets to shoot at in Canada. The G8’s decision to walk away from its aid pledge is being lamented by the development crowd, though I’d find the critique more compelling if I thought that aid mattered very much for development; all the evidence is that trade, policy, and stability matter more.
Continue reading Dr. Jones' commentary here
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Preparing For A Second Nuclear Age
Spring 2010
The US and Russia have signed an agreement on a replacement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). After years of divisiveness and lack of progress, it is tempting to conclude that the nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament regime is on the upswing. However, three sets of developments present a new group of challenges. First, changing patterns of power at the regional and global level have increased inter-state security tensions. Second, growing concern about the effect of carbon-based energy on climate change is leading to growing calls for new investment in nuclear energy. Third, global energy consumption is growing, bolstering demand for new energy sources. All of this has led some analysts to describe a coming ‘second nuclear age.’
Preparing for a Second Nuclear Age, a report published by CIC, argues that although very real dangers associated with the three pressures on nuclear capacity remain, there is now a political window in which to strengthen the multilateral nuclear regime.
Preparing for a Second Nuclear Age
| Conflict Prevention in Southeast Asia and the Pacific
Spring 2010
The Asia Pacific has experienced thirty years without inter-state conflict, but a number of long-running, low-level internal conflicts continue in Southeast Asia, and several South Pacific states have recent experience of instability. Tensions also remain at the inter-state level, and shifting power dynamics between the US, China, and other Asian states have the potential to foster regional instability. A raft of transnational threats, such as resource scarcity and climate change, are creating additional uncertainty.
Who will take responsibility for conflict prevention and conflict management in the region in this transitional period? And in particular, what role can the UN and other multilateral institutions play? In Conflict Prevention in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, Senior Fellow Elsina Wainwright examines the nature of crises and existing conflict prevention mechanisms in the region, and concludes with recommendations on how the UN and other actors can develop tools and networks to underpin a flexible strategy for prevention in the Asia Pacific.
Conflict Prevention in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific
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Dilemmas of Regional Peacemaking: The Dynamics of the AU's Response to Darfur
Spring 2010
The Darfur crisis has proved to be a major test of the African Union’s capacity to implement its ambitious peace and security agenda. In this paper, Dr. A. Sarjoh Bah, assesses the complexities of the AU’s response to the crisis by focusing on its two pronged strategy: political (mediation) and military/peacekeeping. The paper concludes that, the AU’s peacemaking efforts floundered due to a combination of factors, ranging from lack of cooperation and commitment by the parties to the conflict, a fractured UN Security Council to an acute shortage of resources – human and materiel. At the same time, the AU’s engagement exposed the fault-lines in Afro-Arab relations on the continent and beyond. The paper concludes by amongst others, calling on the AU to establish an African criminal court o deal with growing tide of impunity on the continent. The paper will be formally launched on 17 March at a joint CIC/IPI event.
Dilemmas of Regional Peacemaking: The Dynamics of the AU's Response to Darfur
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Peacekeeping: India's Chance to Lead
Spring 2010
U.S. and European analysts have given China's growing contribution to UN peacekeeping a great deal of attention in recent years. Yet they have often overlooked India's larger role. Richard Gowan argues in Pragati that India should use its investment in the UN as the basis to stake its leadership as a driver of new thinking about peacekeeping in a multipolar world.
 Peacekeeping: India's Chance to Lead
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Cooperating for Peace and Security: Reforming the United Nations and NATO
Spring 2010
On March 24, the Managing Global Insecurity Project (MGI) at Brookings hosted a discussion on Cooperating for Peace and Security (Cambridge University Press, 2010), edited by CIC's Bruce D. Jones, Shepard Forman and Richard Gowan. With essays on topics such as U.S. multilateral cooperation, NATO, peacekeeping and nuclear security, the book shows how the operational activities of international organizations meet current global security needs. Panelists included contributors Bruce Jones, Stewart Patrick, Fellow Jean-Marie Guehenno, and Richard Gowan. Martin Indyk, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.
Discussion Transcript
 Discussion Recording
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Global Dashboard was started in 2007 by CIC Fellows Alex Evans and David Steven. The website explores global risks and international affairs, bringing together authors who work on foreign policy in think tanks, government, academia and the media.
Global Dashboard
Humanitarian Outcomes is a team of specialist consultants providing research and policy advice for humanitarian aid agencies and donor governments. The organization was started by CIC non-resident fellow Abby Stoddard and former CIC staff member Adele Harmer along with their three other partners.
Humanitarian Outcomes
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Drug Production and Trafficking, Counterdrug Policies, and Security and Governance in Afghanistan
Summer 2010
The United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan view counternarcotics initiatives as vital to counterinsurgency efforts by cutting off revenue to insurgents. This report by Jonathan Caulkins, Mark Kleiman, and Jonathan Kulick utilizes microeconomic analysis of the likely consequences of various counternarcotics strategies to challenge this assumption. It argues that: (i) current counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan is financially benefiting – rather than hurting – insurgents; (ii) rural development efforts should be focused on assisting rural populations – aid should not be conditioned on desistance from poppy-growing; (iii) and counter-narcotics policy should be refocused to discriminate against illegal armed groups and corrupt officials in enforcement. The report was formally launched at the US Institute of Peace on July 6 2010. Click on link below to view CSPAN Video of the launch including remarks by the White House drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske.
Drug Production and Trafficking, Counterdrug Policies, and Security and Governance in Afghanistan
 CSPAN video
Financial Times op-ed on the findings of the above report
More Afghanistan Project News and Publications |
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Arif Jamal, former visiting scholar at CIC, latest book is Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir.
For nearly sixty years, India and Pakistan have battled over the territory of Kashmir. The two nuclear-armed states have fought three bloody wars in the region, but the countries have also fought in the shadows.
Having interviewed nearly a thousand militants in war-torn Kashmir, Arif Jamal presents a news-breaking account of Pakistan's secret battles with India. From the early 1980s, when the Kashmiri conflict lurked in the background of the CIA's proxy war in Afghanistan, to the eruption of insurgent violence in 1988, to recent Kashmiri connections to terrorist financing and training, Jamal brings much to light.
Jamal reveals that the Pakistani military has trained nearly half a million insurgents and, as a matter of defense policy, continued the conflict at great human cost. He also shows how CIA money destined for the Afghan mujahideen was funneled to Kashmiri jihadis, leading to a twenty-year insurgency rarely discussed in Western media.
A contributing writer to The New York Times, Arif Jamal is currently a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. A leading Pakistani reporter, he has written for the Pakistan Times, The News, and international media such as Radio France International and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. |
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