General News

Equitable economic recovery is a key requirement for consolidating peace in Nepal, where the economic exclusion of various groups, ownership of productive resources by a small elite, and decades of failed development have fed both poverty and multiple conflicts. Public expectations of “peace dividends” remain high and are defined largely in terms of economic opportunity. The perceived failure of the peace process to meet these expectations thus far is fuelling increased frustration, particularly amongst young people.

‘Global Trends and Threats and the South Caucasus’ was the topic of a regional roundtable that International Alert organised in Tbilisi, Georgia on 13th April 2010. Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian experts took part in this one-day event, together with representatives from the international community and international organisations based in Tbilisi, as well as diplomats from some of the embassies in Georgia.

International Alert, together with the Bangladesh Institute for Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS) and  the Regional Centre for Security Studies and the Peacebuilding and Development Institute in Sri Lanka, co-hosted an expert roundtable on the Security Implications of Climate Change in South Asia in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 29th-30th March 2010.

International Alert recently published a report on Refugee return to eastern DRC, a discussion document that explores and warns of the dangers posed by the issue of returning refugees from Rwanda to North Kivu in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Members of the Chamber of Commerce from São Tomé and Príncipe recently met in Príncipe to discuss the role of the private sector as the country prepares to join the ranks of the oil-producing countries of Africa.

The meeting, which took place at the Príncipe Cultural Center on 20th April, was attended by seven representatives of the national Chamber of Commerce and over 45 members of the Chamber of Commerce of the island of Príncipe.  

Conflict-sensitive approaches to development and humanitarian interventions were the focus of a recent training course conducted by International Alert for senior programme staff from UNDP, UNICEF and UNRCO in Nepal.

Aiming to introduce a practical set of tools for programme staff to integrate into operations at a field level, the course imparted knowledge on how to identify conflict risks and impacts, mitigating steps and recognising potential opportunities.

Last year International Alert’s Secretary-General Dan Smith was selected to review the UK Department for International Development’s policy on state-building and peacebuilding, an issue which is a bit of a hot topic in many of the countries where Alert works. Smith challenged some of the UK Government’s key assumptions and provided new ways of thinking about the interlinkages between state-building and peacebuilding.

This article is an abstract from Dan Smith’s contribution to the new Foreign Policy Centre pamphlet Tackling the world water crisis: Reshaping the future of foreign policy.

Water is a basic condition for life. We depend upon it for daily use, agriculture and industry. Both declining availability and quality as well as an excess of water undermines welfare, impairs human security and generates risk of conflict.

Letter published in The Guardian on 5 June 2010

Andrew Mitchell, the new secretary of state for international development, has announced a new regime of transparency and accountability in how Britain's aid is spent. Welcome as that is, questions remain about what to measure, which means discussing the aims, and how to do it without distorting those aims.

The repeated recurrences of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict since 1992 following the break-up of the Soviet Union, along with the increasing isolation of South Ossetia from the outside world have resulted in widespread trauma and the destruction of South Ossetian social fabric. In particular, since the latest flare-up of violent hostilities in August 2008, working on such a prolonged and deep conflict requires an extremely careful and balanced approach based on the principle of “do no harm”.

A draft policy concept on the prevention of radicalism among youth in Tajikistan was presented this week at a Forum organised by International Alert in partnership with the Committee on Youth Affairs, Sport and Tourism of the Government of Tajikistan. Over 60 government officials, political party leaders, civil society representatives, students, religious scholars and other key experts joined in constructive discussions on policy steps to increase youth’s resilience to radical ideas.

On 1st and 2nd December 2010, International Alert hosted a meeting of political analysts, sociologists, journalists, bloggers and civil society activists from the Caucasus to begin to design a new research project examining how to address myths and stereotypes that feed into conflict dynamics in the region.

International Alert hosted a roundtable on Georgian-Abkhaz relations in Brussels on 29th November with experts from the South Caucasus, Russia and representatives of European institutions and the UN. This roundtable was the culmination of a two-year dialogue through research process between Georgian and Abkhaz experts which International Alert has been facilitating with a view to contribute new thinking on conflict related issues to as wide an audience as possible.

International Alert recently published a report examining women’s representation in parliament in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Drawing on local views, Women, elections and violence in West Africa provides an assessment of the current state of women’s political participation in the two countries ahead of their forthcoming elections in 2011 and 2012.

Alert is pleased to present its most recent publication on the Caucasus: Dialogue on security guarantees in the context of the Georgian-Abkhaz Conflict. This paper presents the separate analyses of both Georgian and Abkhaz civil society experts on the need for security guarantees in the region, the reasons why the two sides have been unable to agree on these and the barriers and opportunities for future agreements.