working to prevent conflict worldwide – in many languages
… The International Crisis Group is now generally recognised as the world’s leading independent, non-partisan, source of analysis and advice to governments, and intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations, European Union and World Bank, on the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict … (full text, about 1/2).
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(About 2/2):
… Crisis Group was founded in 1995 as an international non-governmental organisation on the initiative of a group of well known transatlantic figures who despaired at the international community’s failure to anticipate and respond effectively to the tragedies in the early 1990s of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia.
They were led by Morton Abramowitz (former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Thailand, then President of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace), Mark Malloch Brown (later head of the UNDP, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN and UK Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN), and its first Chairman, Senator George Mitchell. The idea was to create a new organisation – unlike any other – with a highly professional staff acting as the world’s eyes and ears for impending conflicts, and with a highly influential board that could mobilise effective action from the world’s policy-makers …
… We are generally seen as playing a major role in six main ways:
- ringing early warning alarm bells, in the monthly CrisisWatch bulletin, and in specific ‘crisis alerts’, eg in Ethiopia-Eritrea, Darfur, Somalia and Pakistan;
- contributing, on both process and substance, behind the scenes support and advice to critical peace negotiations, eg in Sudan, Burundi, Northern Uganda, Aceh, Nepal and Kenya;
- producing highly detailed analysis and advice on specific policy issues in scores of conflict or potential conflict situations around the world, helping policymakers in the UN Security Council, regional organisations, donor countries and others with major influence, and in the countries at risk themselves, do better in preventing, managing and resolving conflict, and in rebuilding after it: recent examples include Cote d’Ivoire, the DRC, Haiti, Afghanistan and Southern Thailand;
- providing detailed information unobtainable elsewhere on developments regarding conflict, mass violence and terrorism of particular utility to policymakers, eg on the Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and Islamic Courts in Somalia;
- offering new strategic thinking on some of the world’s most intractable conflicts and crises, challenging or refining prevailing wisdom, eg on the Iran nuclear issue, the role of Islamism worldwide, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the way forward in Kosovo, Iraq and the Western Sahara;
- strongly supporting a rules-based, rather than force-based, international order, in particular significantly influencing UN resolutions and institutional structures in relation to the new international norm of the ‘responsibility to protect’.
… (full text).