1994-1997: Dynamic Transformation

In the second half of the 20th century, the world changed at unprecedented speed and in varied ways. Yet many global concerns and problems went essentially unaltered – particularly those relating to peace and justice. International Alert’s first decade of work confirmed the importance of the insights and commitment that brought it into existence; tragedies in internal conflict, such as Chechnya, Bosnia and Rwanda, showed that international institutions were still struggling to prevent violence.

While the international community saw the need for organisations such as International Alert, it was a trying time for the peacebuilding sector – struggling in comparison with the global reach of many development agencies. Alert, like other peacebuilding organisations, continued to search for its niche and role in an increasingly violent and warring world.

A strong effort to increase and stabilise funding enabled Alert to secure major grants and increase income six-fold during this period. With improved funds, Alert began to push the boundaries of peacebuilding work. While new organisations had emerged throughout the world with a focus on conflict-related issues, Alert remained a pioneer, continuing to raise awareness of issues surrounding violent conflict – and encouraging others to take part.

Pushing regional boundaries

As a direct response to the increasing number of violent internal conflicts affecting many African societies, International Alert expanded its engagement on the continent, including the Great Lakes region of Africa, Sierra Leone and Liberia. A high-profile international conference in Ethiopia in 1994 discussed challenges ahead for Africa and how organisations such as Alert could help to address some of these problems.

In 1995 Alert was invited by Ambassador Ould Abdallah, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative to Burundi, to bring together influential and senior figures from the highest levels on both sides of the divide. At the same time, Alert started a programme to stimulate more equal participation by Burundian women in civil society. Alert realised a peaceful society was only possible by working at both a high level as well as the ground level – and linking the two together. The capacity-building work with women’s groups in Burundi sparked further interest in Rwanda in 2001, where Alert was asked to train female judges to participate in the traditional Gacaca justice tribunals. The programmes in the Great Lakes region continue today.

Alert’s work in West Africa started in 1993. While working on the problems occasioned by armed conflict in Liberia, Alert realised that there could be no viable solution to that protracted conflict without taking into account what was happening in the country’s neighbourhood. In Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast, fighting often would overflow state borders, engulfing other communities and states. This focus then expanded to include the war in Sierra Leone.

Alert’s engagement in Sierra Leone was based on a multi-track approach involving facilitation of peace negotiations, assisting a national peace constituency and building an international support group. During this period, Alert helped to encourage dialogue that enabled hostages held by the rebels to be freed. Subsequently, its interventions focused increasingly on the peace negotiations of 1996. Alert was involved in the pre-negotiations and the formal negotiations, which saw changes in the government and led, finally, to the signing of the historic Abidjan Accord in November 1996.

Although Alert played an important role in the different events and processes leading up to the peace agreement, it became tangled in the politics of the country and received a number of serious criticisms of its involvement. During the following period, Alert reflected on these criticisms, learned from its experiences, and sought to correct the various misunderstandings of its decisions and actions.

High level advocacy and training

With 10 years of history and experience, International Alert started a more high-profile advocacy strategy. Alert staff attended meetings and spoke at conferences to call for support and adoption of preventive diplomacy measures at the highest policy levels. In addition there was increasing collaboration at every level with bodies such as the OAU, the EU and the UN to achieve policy changes and bring about better coordination of peacebuilding efforts.

Around this time, Alert began to design its own conflict resolution training programmes. The training was originally created to strengthen theory and practice of conflict resolution and support emerging civil societies within Russia and other areas of the former Soviet Union. In the years to follow, Alert’s training expanded, reaching peacebuilders in the North Caucasus; Lebanon; the Basque region of Spain; the former Yugoslavia; Kenya; and Zimbabwe. To meet the need for training materials specific to violent social and political conflicts, Alert developed a substantial Resource Pack for Conflict Transformation in 1996; a tool which is still used widely today.

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Last updated: July 2006

■ Alert supports a major peace conference in
Sri Lanka, launching a national peace movement and a peoples’ peace council.

■ A seminar with Colombian bishops leads to more regional meetings to develop their role as mediators, and work with peace advocates in the country.

■ Missions to Mozambique to assess its transition to a post-conflict society, and to Cambodia to lay foundations for negotiations with Vietnam.

■ Colloquium in London on the role of the international community in Burundi paves the way to Alert’s programme in the Great Lakes.

■ Mission to Albania
to analyse the link between development and conflict prevention.

■ Alert co-organises a workshop with the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) in Guatemala.

■ Dagestan programme begins to look at growing tensions on the Dagestan/Azerbaijan border.

■ Confidence-building workshops with individuals from Georgia and the breakaway republics of Abkhazia.

■ Alert, with 12 other organisations, creates FEWER to develop coherent indicators of conflict risk and early warning reports.

■ Media workshop in Liberia encourages responsible reporting of the elections.