General News

International Alert, ISS and OXFAM organised a conference on "Aid effectiveness in Fragile and Conflict-affected Contexts: the New Deal Framework and Citizens’ Security" on 29th and 30th May 2012 in Addis Ababa.

In the context of an ongoing programme on Women’s Economic Empowerment, Alert co-organised a regional workshop with the Economic Community of the Great Lakes (CEPGL) and UN WOMEN on April 25th – 27th in Gisenyi, Rwanda.

International Alert in cooperation with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, EU Brussels, and AIM Centre for Development Management, convened an expert roundtable discussion on the security implications of climate change in the Philippines on 24th April 2012.

This month we gave a fond farewell to our outgoing Chair of Trustees, Frida Nokken, after six years as a member of Alert’s Board, and welcomed Pierre Schori as our newly elected Chair of Trustees. Pierre has been a member of Alert’s Board since 2010 and Vice-Chair for the past year. The Board of Trustees is responsible for general control and management of the administration of Alert.

Conflict Sensitivity Consortium (with support from DFID) has been working since 2008 to enhance the impact of development, humanitarian aid and peacebuilding programming through increased and more effective integration of conflict sensitivity. This experience (drawing from 35 member agencies in 4 countries) has culminated in the production of 'The how to guide to conflict sensitivity'.

International Alert implemented a Training of Trainers in  Batken Province (Oblast) of the Kyrgyz Republic between 2nd and 6th April 2012, as part of Alert’s contribution to TASK – an EU-funded conflict mitigation and peacebuiding project in Kyrgyzstan implemented by Alert together with partners Foundation for Tolerance International (FTI) and Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society (CDCS), and 12 other international and national NGOs.

International Alert has published a new Economy and Conflict study on the Georgian-Abkhaz context. Prospects for the regulation of trans-Ingur/i economic relations: Stakeholder analysis analyses the views among business communities, particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), on the issue of regulating economic relations across the river Ingur/i which largely follows the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict divide.

In early March 2012, seven British Sri Lankans and two British MPs met communities in Puttalam, Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Killinochchi and Trincomalee in Sri Lanka to improve the understanding of British-Sri Lankan communities in the UK of the rapidly changing circumstances in Sri Lanka following the end of the war.