The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict.
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Women, certainly in our day and age, have much more capacity to understand that there is something noble about attending to your daily needs. You may not build cathedrals, but every day you feed your children, you clean your house. This is part of the human condition.
Louise Arbour, Crisis Group’s President and CEO, in an interview with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
We have to accept that we will live with conflict. We cannot aspire to eradicating it. Conflict comes from competition for access to resources, particularly in a world in which the institutions are not geared to an equitable distribution of resources and of wealth. So we will have conflict. The question is how to appease conflict, resolve it, without recourse to deadly, violent interaction.
Louise Arbour, Crisis Group’s President and CEO, in an interview with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Photo: svenwerk/Flickr
"The management of conflict is a daily task—conflict within peoples, within families, within communities, and then within broader communities of people who have different cultural aspirations, different religious affiliations. To think that we would eradicate the tensions that come from the sense of belonging to communities, to different cultural groups, I think is extremely unrealistic. The question is to build the tools and the institutions for the peaceful management of conflict, not some idea that conflict altogether would disappear."
—Louise Arbour, Crisis Group’s President and CEO, in an interview with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
We still live in a world that is much more deferential to states than to the people that these states are supposed to represent. I think we have yet to build communities that genuinely reflect their own population.
Louise Arbour, Crisis Group’s President and CEO, in an interview with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
When we ask the question of whether things are getting better or worse, I think we need to be extremely specific about what things we’re talking about. They’re getting a lot better for some, not better at all for many, and considerably worse, I think, for those who can appreciate the difference and realize that they are not part of that progress.
Louise Arbour, Crisis Group’s President and CEO, in an interview with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Photo: United Nations Photo/Flickr
I think we have fallen short, in a sense, by not capitalizing on the contribution and talent of half of the population of the world.
Louise Arbour, Crisis Group’s President and CEO, in an interview with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
"I think at the root of conflict is our inability to seriously address inequalities, inequalities within states, between people within their own states, inequalities between states, extremely inequitable and unequal distribution of the wealth of the planet…. We have still fallen short, considerably, of addressing that."
—Louise Arbour, Crisis Group’s President and CEO, in an interview with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Hi tumblr, check out our new interactive map showing the military forces in the Central African Republic, as well as the spread of the Seleka rebellion!
Military Forces in the Central African Republic (crisisgroup.org)
from 10 Conflicts to Watch in 2013 | Foreign Policy
by Louise Arbour
Sudan
Unsurprisingly, the “Sudan Problem” did not go away with the South’s secession in 2011. Civil war, driven by concentration of power and resources in the hands of a small elite, continues to plague the country, and threatens to lead to further disintegration. Divisions within the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), growing popular unrest, and a steady national economic meltdown also could send this country off the rails.
Sadly, 10 years ago, the situation was almost identical — only then Khartoum was fighting against the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), representing the entire South, whereas now government coffers are drained by ongoing fighting against the Sudan Revolutionary Front, an alliance of major rebel groups from Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile states. The victims, as always, are the civilians caught in the middle. As it did in the South, the government has sought to use access to humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip, essentially using mass starvation as part of its military strategy.
The only lasting solution is a comprehensive one, bringing all of Sudan’s stakeholders together to reform how power is wielded in a large and diverse country. Over the long term, the status quo — incessant warfare, millions displaced, billions spent on aid — is intolerable for all parties. If it is to be resolved for good, the NCP and international players will need to offer much more than at any time in the past — the former a process of genuine all-inclusive dialogue, the latter economic and political incentives.
Photo: United Nations Photo/Flickr
10 Conflicts to Watch in 2013 | Foreign Policy
By Louise Arbour, Crisis Group’s President and CEO
Every year, around the world, old conflicts worsen, new ones emerge and, occasionally, some situations improve. There is no shortage of storm clouds looming over 2013: Once again, hotspots old and new will present a challenge to the security of people across the globe.
Photo: IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation/Flickr
