Conflict & peace

Blog starting up again

/ Dan Smith / 2 Comments

This blog has been silent for several months. The main reason was simply that, alongside my day job, I had taken on another research and writing task – preparing the next edition of my atlas of world affairs, The State of the World – and that took priority. But that’s done (publication date January 2013 but if you really want to use it as a Christmas present, get in touch – pre-publication copies have to be available) and so the blog is back.

At this point, I just want to give an idea of what I intend to be tackling over the coming months. There are five big issues that we – the world – need to get right if more people are to be able live in peace and with a reasonable degree of dignity. They are

  1. Wealth and poverty;
  2. War and peace;
  3. Rights and respect;
  4. Health of people;
  5. Health of the planet – the natural environment.

Despite the pessimism in Europe and America in this extended “moment” of prolonged economic downturn, reasonable progress has been made on three of those issues – war and peace, rights and respect, and health. Even though progress is limited and at risk from powerful countervailing trends, there has been real improvement. It’s on the economy and the environment that we are continuing to screw up.

The background to this lies in some very big issues:

  • The unprecedented scale of demographic shifts, including both population growth and staggeringly fast urbanisation;
  •  The scale of resource use and economic activity, which has increased much more quickly than population has grown;
  • The deep, global environmental predicament we are in – and getting deeper in: it is still poorly understood – among the missing ingredients of our knowledge are the consequences of different environmental issues interacting with each other.

Against this background, questions for my blogging include

  • How to keep building peace and expanding the scope of freedom;
  • Finding ways to ensure that economic and social development is about improving the conditions of ordinary people, not about strengthening the hold of an increasingly transnational-ised elite;
  • Working out which of our national and international institutions are not delivering the way they should be, why, and what can be done to, with and about them;
  • What kinds of knowledge we need in order to do better.

Looking at some peacebuilding assumptions

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My most recent post (29 Jan) reflected about peacebuilding inside the bounds of the European Union as well as outside. My thinking grew out of International Alert’s recently started work  in the UK. Going a bit further,  some more thoughts have appeared in the online magazine and discussion forum, openDemocracy. What follows is an abridged version. Continue reading →

Peacebuilding IN Europe?

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In 2001 – a different time and a different world – the EU Gothenburg summit agreed to make the prevention of violent conflict a priority for the EU. Measured by money, it’s now the world’s biggest player in peacebuilding. But look around Europe now and we can ask, should peacebuilding also start to be a priority inside the EU? Continue reading →

A scorecard for Busan: did the High Level Forum help conflict-affected countries?

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At the end of November, 2,000 representatives of governments, international agencies and NGOs met in Busan as the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. But how effective was Busan for conflict-affected countries? Continue reading →

The UN Peacebuilding Fund – four years on

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The decision to set up the UN Peacebuilding Commission, Peacebuilding Support Office and Peacebuilding Fund was taken in September 2005 and bit by bit the new architecture was ready for business in 2006 and into 2007. I have just finished four years on the Fund’s independent Advisory Group, the last two as its chair, so here are my reflections. Continue reading →

Aid effectiveness forum at Busan: what would success be for countries in conflict?

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The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness convenes in Busan, South Korea, on 29 November. Two thousand representatives of governments, the UN, other multilateral organisations and NGOs will meet to discuss and come up with a statement on how development aid can be delivered more effectively. So what would a successful High Level Forum look like for countries affected by armed conflict, which face the toughest development challenges? Continue reading →

Take note of every casualty

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A new charter has been launched, to recognise every casualty of armed violence. The campaign to get governments to sign up started last week. It needs the support of some major NGOs and a campaigning newspaper or two to get some momentum. But why does it matter? Continue reading →

Thinking of the peace builders

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On 21 September – the UN International Peace Day – International Alert launched a video for showing in cinema and around the internet, for tweeting and generally going viral, to spark interest in peacebuilding. Take a look:

Continue reading →

England’s riots: If the UK were a fragile state…

/ Dan Smith / 9 Comments

Last week, rioting and looting gripped England. At a time when many people are feeling in one way or another bad about our country, it seemed salient (and perhaps inevitable) to ask, if the UK were a fragile state, how would we approach the events of last week, their aftermath and the future? Continue reading →

Libya: the (next) moment of decision is approaching

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When intervention in Libya was being discussed in Britain a few months back, the key ethical argument was the dual claim of the urgency of doing something and impossibility of standing by and doing nothing. After the first 2-3 weeks, it became clear even to passionate advocates of intervention that the issue was more complicated than that. Continue reading →