Conflict Prevention

On Tuesday, 7 July 2009, EWI’s Preventive Diplomacy Initiatives hosted representatives from Latin American and Caribbean embassies, the Council of the European Union, NGOs and academia for a seminar on conflict and security in Latin America and the Caribbean. The event, held at EWI’s Brussels Center, was the first step in a process  feeding into regional dialogues across the four continents, to identify key spaces for preventive action.

The goals of the roundtable were to explore and identify:

• The main challenges to peace and security in the region;
• Existing frameworks and initiatives to address these challenges, including lessons learned and success stories; and
• Opportunities for more effective preventive action.

On Thursday, April 2, EWI’s Preventive Diplomacy Initiatives launched a new series of expert dialogues on water security in Afghanistan and the region. The series, Alternative Futures for Afghanistan and the Stability of Southwest Asia: Improving Regional Cooperation on Water, follows a decision by the EastWest Institute’s Parliamentarians Network on Conflict Prevention and Human Security to focus on water security as a critical component of conflict prevention.

The opening session of the series, held in Brussels, brought together leaders and experts from Afghanistan and the region to forge collective action on water – the most critical of natural resources.

The key issues identified at the meeting were:

• The political sensitivity of the water issue;
• The potential of collaborative water management as a means to build trust and confidence in the region;
• The importance of sharing information;
• The need for better management of water as a precondition for social and economic development; and
• The connections between water and energy (hydropower).

This was the first in a series of five policy dialogues. Each of the next four sessions will focus on a specific water resource shared between Afghanistan and one or more of its neighbors. The series will produce an action-oriented policy paper and build towards an international conference on regional cooperation over water in December 2009.

Following are the remaining sessions in the series:

• Thursday, 30 April, 2009: Management of the Amu Darya river and Afghanistan’s relations with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan;
• Thursday, 28 May, 2009: Management of the Helmand river and Afghanistan’s relations with Iran;
• Thursday, 25 June, 2009: Management of the Kabul river and Afghanistan’s relations with Pakistan;
• July, 2009 (date to be confirmed): Management of the Harirud and Murghab rivers and Afghanistan’s relations with Iran and Turkmenistan.

February 26, 2009 – Parliamentarians, government officials, and leading civil society organizations came together at EastWest Institute’s Brussels center and called for stronger international efforts to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity. At a policy dialogue organized by EWI’s Preventive Diplomacy Program, leaders emphasized the need to:

• dedicate greater resources to prevent genocide, not just respond to genocide once it has begun;
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• better equip the international community to prevent genocide;
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• improve institutional structures for genocide and conflict prevention;
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• enhance information sharing; and
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• establish a trigger mechanism for the international community to respond to threats of genocide.

The dialogue, organized under the aegis of EWI’s Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention, followed the recent release of Preventing Genocide, a landmark report from U.S. Institute of Peace’s Genocide Prevention Task Force. The dialogue is in line with the Parliamentarians Network’s guiding principles, which urge its members “to ensure that governments are legally bound to report promptly to their respective parliaments in case of pending conflict, in particular genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.”

“We must not look at the prevention of genocide in too much of a restrictive way,” said Hilde Vautmans, chair of the Belgian Federal Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and a member of the Parliamentarians Network. “We should look at what development can do. Building up a country’s military apparatus, the education infrastructure, the police force; that is also the prevention of genocide.”

Lawrence Woocher, a key drafter of Preventing Genocide, echoed Vautman’s statements, stressing the need to shift the debate from military intervention to a broader set of tools and resources focused on prevention efforts.

Many participants applauded the success of current genocide prevention efforts. Olivia Swaak-Goldman of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, pointed to the proactive role the ICC has recently played in Darfur and the court’s arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.

“All past genocides, in World War II in Europe, in Rwanda, and in the Former Yugoslavia, have been carefully planned,” she said. “Now the planners know that they can be prosecuted.”

Hamdi Osman of the Sudanese Embassy in Brussels disagreed with Swaak-Goldman, urging the international community to recognize the Darfur conflict not as genocide but as a long-standing tribal conflict exacerbated by climate change and water shortages.

Swaak-Goldman suggested that the final decision to issue a warrant lies with ICC judges. If they did, she said, it would be the end of impunity for Bashir and an opportunity to prevent future crimes. (The ICC has since issued a warrant for Bashir’s arrest.)

Participants also stressed the need for greater international coordination on genocide, especially between Europe and the U.S. Belgium’s Vautmans called on European states to convince the U.S. to join genocide prevention efforts.

“There needs to be a spotlight on genocide prevention as a national priority in the U.S., from the president to the public,” added USIP’s Woocher.

Other participants acknowledged the need for greater international cooperation, but reminded the group that such cooperation is still rhetoric rather than reality, as is the commitment of resources for genocide prevention and preventive action.

“Genocide is the single most cruel crime against humanity,” said Vautmans. “We can prevent it, but not alone. We should reach a state where never again we need to say ‘never again.’ ”

Ortwin Hennig, EastWest Institute vice-president and head of the Conflict Prevention Program, chaired the meeting.

The Countering Violent Extremism Initiative is taking part in the Alliance for Youth Movements Summit organized by Howcast, Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, the U.S. Department of State, Columbia Law School and Access 360 Media. Watch it now on Howcast!

The Hindu community of Sommerset, NJ. discusses how moderates of faith can counter the growing surge of violent extremism.

On November 22, 2008, EWI’s Countering Violent Extremism Initiative continued efforts to create a global movement of moderates with a colloquium of Hindu leaders in Somerset, New Jersey (U.S.A.). The colloquium, convened by the Hindu Collective Initiative at the Arsha Bodha Center, was one of several gatherings in the United States that allow faith communities to openly discuss the nature, causes, and effects of violent extremism. The agenda of the meeting included discussions on varying definitions of violence and extremism, the tools extremists use to spread their ideology, and the role the Hindu community can play to counter the growth of violent extremism.

Discussion with students at Seton Hall University to find ways of empowering young voices to contribute to a safer and better world.

The Global Youth Collaborative on Peace and Security (GYC)—part of the EastWest Institute’s Countering Violent Extremism Initiative—recently conducted a student workshop at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ (U.S.A.). The workshop was one in a series hosted by the EastWest Institute to complement the GYC’s growing virtual network. The meeting focused on young people’s perceptions of violent extremism and the support they need to speak up, organize, and contribute to a safer and better world.

Discussion with youth at the Lutheran Theological Seminary to find ways of empowering young voices to contribute to a safer and better world.

The Global Youth Collaborative (GYC) of the Countering Violent Extremism Initiative is premised on the idea that youth around the world can and must act as agents of change within their communities to counter the underlying root causes that lead to violent extremism. To discuss this idea and garner concrete suggestions from relevant local leaders, the GYC held a workshop at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, PA, on November 18, 2008. 

On the  invitation of Israeli and Palestinian members of EWI’s International Task Force on Preventive Diplomacy, the core group of the task force held meetings in Jerusalem and Ramallah from November 9 to 11, 2008.

Task force members agreed their program of work for 2009 and 2010, which will culminate in the Global Summit on Conflict and Security on October 10, 2010, and start reframing traditional security and development policy to include conflict prevention.

The Global Summit on Conflict and Security will provide the first ever forum that brings together traditional security elites, including military elites, and development policy decision-makers in the peace-building community. The summit will arrive at a global action program and operationalize early and effective diplomatic actions to prevent violent conflict. It will also mandate an International Panel on Conflict Prevention and Human Security, which was called for in December 2007 in the Task Force Declaration, Making Conflict Prevention Real.

In Jerusalem, the task force met with members of the Palestinian-Israeli Peace NGO Forum, a network representing more than 100 Palestinian and Israeli organizations that cooperate across boundaries, nationalities and religions and help build peace from the ground up.

In Ramallah, task force members met with high-ranking Palestinian leaders, including former prime minister and current chief negotiator with Israel, Mr. Ahmed Qurei (a.k.a. Abu Ala). Fatah Foreign Relations Commissioner Abdallah Frangi, hosted a dinner. The group also met with members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, three of whom agreed to join the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention and Human Security.

A colloquium to help support the work of the Countering Violent Extremism’s forthcoming Faith and Diplomacy Task Force was held on November 3, 2008, in Charleston, South Carolina. The Task Force is being commissioned to work to secure not only the political will but also the spiritual will to overcome the divisions that all too often lead to violence.

The interfaith participants at this colloquium—one of several being held in the United States—were asked about their roles as social engineers of peace, security, and prosperity. The agenda of the meeting focused on different perceptions of violent extremism and how people of faith and governments can collectively act to promote safety and diversity for local communities. The colloquium was held at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul. The EastWest Institute would like to thank our hosts—the Cathedral Church and Catherine Murray Smith and Hilton Smith.