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Person specification for the High Representative - Vacant at Christmas 2014

Baroness Ashton will step down as High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security, and First Vice President of the Council – effectively the closest the EU has to a minister of foreign affairs, at the end of 2014.

The UN High Level Panel (HLP) on the Post-2015 Development Agenda has  reported.

This third volume of the South Caucasus Literary Almanac presents a new selection of prose, poetry and essays from the five literatures of the South Caucasus, published in Russian. Following the theme of the 'ordinary person' suspended between war and peace, this volume expands the scope of artistic material, featuring paintings and sculptures as well as interviews with prominent cultural figures reflecting on the phenomenon of a South Caucasian cultural identity.

Full report

In both low and middle income countries, well established arguments and solid evidence confirm that there is no real development without peace and only the peace of the graveyard without development. These conclusions have shifted the fulcrum of discussion about development over the past several years. But they have not yet added up to telling anybody how to do it.

An innovative project in Rwanda is helping to heal old wounds by bringing genocide survivors, ex-combatants, ex-prisoners and the youth together through dialogue.

We are proud to present four more articles in our Caucasus Dialogues series, which focuses on current issues evolving in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict context. This month the articles focus on three different themes: the role of the church in the conflict context; the new politics of the new Georgian government; and the role and effectiveness of the Abkhaz parliament.

Resilience is a wonderful metaphor. It somehow conveys in a single word the qualities of bending without breaking, of healing after an injury, of tensile rather than brittle strength. Oak and palm trees are resilient to the power of strong winds, before which they bend and then straighten again. Resilient people pick themselves up after being knocked down, draw on their reserves of ideas and strength to deal with difficult challenges, or hunker down until the gale has blown itself away.

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.

There has been a great deal of noise, confusion, and at times sound and fury, over Value for Money (VfM) among overseas development NGOs based in the UK, of late. This is because so many of us depend on UK government funding from DFID, which has been taking VfM more seriously since the last election – and not surprising it has, given the degree of scepticism about overseas aid among UK taxpayers, some MPs, and journalists.

The state is the organising principle of national and international politics and states are the subject of abundant historical research, academic theory and contemporary analysis.  That perhaps makes it a little strange to say that both the state as a category and states in general tend to be taken for granted. But that’s how it is – and it’s a problem.

I recently read volume one of Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order (Profile Books, 2011) in which he explores how different models of governance have emerged and decayed “from prehuman history to the French Revolution”. Volume two is forthcoming, and will bring the story up to the present day. As someone who works in peacebuilding, which is largely about fostering good governance today, I have a keen interest in how different governance regimes have emerged and decayed in history, if they provide us with clues for the present.

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.

International Alert is included in this year's list of top 100 NGOs in the world by The Global Journal, for the second year running.