International Crisis Group
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Can the Vatican Pull Venezuela Back from the Brink?
Venezuela’s blocking of a recall referendum on ending the presidency of Nicolás Maduro has made a peaceful solution to the country’s festering conflict harder to achieve. Vatican mediation now offers one of the few hopes of progress.
If it fails, the Vatican’s intervention to restart dialogue will be remembered as yet another lost opportunity to halt the downward slide to greater conflict. However, such is the moral authority of the Pope, especially in a Catholic country like Venezuela, that to walk away from Vatican mediation could prove too costly for both sides and an agreement may eventually be reached. In that case, the moderates will emerge empowered, and the mediation could lay the basis for a negotiated transition.
IMAGE SOURCE: REUTERS/Marco Bello
SOURCE: Crisis Group
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The Libyan Political Agreement: Time for a Reset
Burned cars are piled along a dirt road in Benghazi, 19 July 2016. CRISIS GROUP/Claudia Gazzini
The UN-brokered peace process in Libya has stalled, leaving unresolved pressing issues like worsening living conditions, control of oil facilities, people-smuggling, and the struggle against jihadist groups. New negotiations are needed to engage key actors who have been excluded so far.
SOURCE: Crisis Group
Read full report here
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CrisisWatch - Tracking Conflict Worldwide
Global Overview
October saw Venezuela’s tense political standoff at new heights amid economic stress and popular unrest, and Haiti’s weak political and security equilibrium struck by a major natural disaster and humanitarian crisis. In Africa, violence worsened in the Central African Republic (CAR), north-eastern Kenya, Mozambique and western Niger, while in Ethiopia the government hardened its response to continued protests. In Myanmar, unprecedented attacks on police in the north triggered deadly clashes and displacement threatening to exacerbate intercommunal tensions across the country, while Russia’s North Caucasus saw an increase in conflict-related casualties, detentions and counter-terrorism operations. In the Middle East, the election of Michel Aoun as president of Lebanon signals a long-awaited breakthrough ending two years of political deadlock.
SOURCE: Crisis Group
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“Some of us looking at the conflict from the West have consistently underestimated the capacity for bloodshed in Syria to worsen, There’s a temptation to think, Well, it can’t get any worse. And yet repeatedly it has gotten worse. And I think there’s a lesson there. There’s no reason to believe this will be as bad as things get.” —Noah Bonsey, Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst, Syria
SOURCE: TIME, The White Helmets of Syria
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Shoring Up the Status Quo at Jerusalem’s Holy Esplanade
The southern and eastern façades, and the much-contested foundations, of Jerusalem’s Holy Esplanade. PHOTO: Rob Bye
Even the name of Jerusalem’s holiest site causes fundamental disagreement. For Jews, it is the Temple Mount, for Muslims, the Noble Sanctuary or the Al-Aqsa Mosque. So when the Holy Esplanade looked set to become an Israeli-Palestinian flashpoint once again in 2014-2015, International Crisis Group raised the alarm and set out to forge some common ground in the notoriously intractable conflict.
Our steady flow of ideas for incremental ways forward in this tangible, vital microcosm of the conflict had a real, positive impact, more productive in some ways than grand plans to solve the whole century-long Israeli-Palestinian dispute
SOURCE: Crisis Group
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Myanmar’s Peace Process: Getting to a Political Dialogue
Image Source: AFP/Ye Aung THU
The current government term may be the best chance for a negotiated political settlement to almost 70 years of armed conflict that has devastated the lives of minority communities and held back Myanmar as a whole. Aung San Suu Kyi and her administration have made the peace process a top priority. While the previous government did the same, she has a number of advantages, such as her domestic political stature, huge election mandate and strong international backing, including qualified support on the issue from China. These contributed to participation by nearly all armed groups – something the former government had been unable to achieve – in the Panglong-21 peace conference that commenced on 31 August. But if real progress is to be made, both the government and armed groups need to adjust their approach so they can start a substantive political dialogue as soon as possible.
SOURCE: Crisis Group
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Ukraine’s Unlucky Town Called Happiness
As great powers debate Russia’s place in the world, its role in eastern Ukraine’s 2-½-year-old war, and the Minsk peace process to end it, ordinary people living along the front line in eastern Ukraine are just as worried about many of the local leaders’ Soviet-style habits of governance, corruption and patronage.
‘Babushki’ women singing Slavic songs gather at a communal pergola in Schastia, eastern Ukraine, a few meters away from a crater created during artillery fighting last August.
Image Source: CRISIS GROUP/Magdalena Grono
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Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The “Street” and Politics in DR Congo
President Kabila’s attempt to stay in power beyond his second and last constitutionally-permitted term, which concludes on 19 December, is unravelling more than a decade of progress. In our new briefing, we take a look at the current political context in DRC, and suggest ways to reduce the potential for urban violence in the coming months.
Image Source: AFP/Mustafa Mulopwe
Source: Crisis Group
Read full briefing here…
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Reassembling Colombia’s Rejected Peace Deal
Three interlocking sets of negotiations can still end Colombia’s 52 years of civil war, even after a 2 October referendum voted down a 26 September peace deal. But success will need energetic new engagement by all sides – especially in the region.
SOURCE: Crisis Group
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The Economic Disaster Behind Afghanistan’s Mounting Human Crisis
As Afghanistan’s international donors meet in Brussels in a summit co-hosted by the European Union and the Kabul government on 4-5 October, Afghanistan’s rapidly deteriorating economy must be their central concern. Before this and an escalating humanitarian crisis merge to reach a dangerous critical mass, all must agree on several priorities – alongside renewed efforts to bring peace and political stability: realistic planning based on a thorough new socio-economic assessment, currently absent; adequate aid and support for state policy implementation, especially to help an alarming rise in numbers of displaced and shelterless people; halting repatriation of Afghan refugees, especially from Europe and Pakistan; and boosting investment and above all job creation in the country.
SOURCE: Crisis Group