UN Security Council

World order §4: Conflict management in a disordered world: the Security Council and Gaza

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

During the 2020s, on current trends, four times as many people (or more) will die in war as in the first decade of this century. Since 2010, the number of armed conflicts each year has almost doubled. The number of refugees has more than doubled in the same period. Meanwhile the world spends vastly more on the military than ever before, 2.443 trillion US dollars in 2023, compared to about 1.1 trillion at the start of the century.

What is going on? What has happened – is happening – to the world and to conflict? How come conflict management doesn’t seem to be working any more?

This post is number 4 in a series, based on the introductory chapter to the recently released SIPRI Yearbook 2024, asking, What world are we shaping for ourselves in the coming decades if these trends continue unchanged? 

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Climate change, security, the UN – and EVIDENCE

/ Dan Smith / 7 Comments

All eyes are on the Covid-19 pandemic and the unfolding crisis it is causing, whose full dimensions are not yet clear. Meanwhile, there’s the climate crisis. It too has multiple, unfolding impacts about whose full details we cannot yet be sure. We should not lose sight of it, of course, and not only because it is very, very important. Some of what we are are (or should be) learning from the pandemic is relevant to the climate crisis, not least the widespread deficiency in resilience that Covid-19 is revealing.

At French initiative, the UN Security Council held what is known as an Arria Formula debate on 22 April. This is a relatively informal meeting so the Council can be briefed on and discuss major issues. The meeting was virtual and I joined Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo and International Crisis Group President, Robert Malley, to provide the initial briefings, after which some 23 representatives of member states plus the representatives of the African Union and the European Union also spoke.

Here, in more formal tones than I normally use in this blog but rather less formally than my last UNSC briefing in February, is what I said.

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