General News

With cuts to local services, fewer resources for supporting local communities and rising unemployment, especially among the young, many people fear tensions among communities will get worse in England.

It is important that those of us who promote good relations among communities tell local and national decision-makers what works in reducing these tensions.

The civil war in Burundi led to the death of 300,000 people and the displacement of 1 million more. Now with an influx of people returning, the road to recovery truly begins. Moving on from conflict means the rebuilding of lives after the trauma of violence, dealing with the death of loved ones and returning home to find land and homes repossessed.

The pressure of participatory politics it taking its toll on Tunisia’s ruling Nahda party. Factions within the Nadha party are all the more prevalent after the resignation of Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali on 19 February. The Secretary General of Nahda relinquished his role as prime minister after failing to convince his party of a plan to unite Tunisia.

Conflict deaths are decreasing as a result of fewer civil wars and inter-state wars. However, a quarter of the world’s population still lives in the shadows of different types of organised violence, including armed insurgencies, terrorism and violent extremism, gang-violence and violence associated with organised crime. This suggests that the constituents, landscapes, cycles and dynamics of pervasive violence have changed.

In northern Uganda, the Acholi communities are settling back into their villages after years of insecurity and internal displacement as a result of the conflict between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government.  The conflict, displacement and return process had different impacts on men, women, boys and girls. The consequences of this require gender-relational approaches to peacebuilding.

On 7 February, Janani Vivekananda, International Alert’s Climate Change and Conflict Programme Manager, spoke at the Strengthening Responses to Climate Variability in South Asia conference at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC. Janani presented four case studies - on Nepal, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh - to illustrate levels of risk and resilience to environmental change at village level.

Last month representatives from the youth wings of 18 political parties in Lebanon shared a joint declaration on the rights of Palestinian refugees. The declaration was the result of a series of discussions supported by International Alert to encourage peaceful debate among the political parties in the country.