International Crisis Group

The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict. crisisgroup.org

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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.

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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

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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 2-1/2-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 

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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

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Yemen cannot bear the demise of yet another opportunity to end the war. It has become a failed and divided state and soon could also be a starving one.

Crisis Group

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Picturing Islam in Kyrgyzstan

Crisis Group’s Publications Officer Julie David de Lossy, formerly a freelance photographer of Central Asia, travels to Kyrgyzstan to take a look through her camera lens at the context of our conflict-prevention work.

SOURCE: Crisis Group

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Kyrgyzstan: State Fragility and Radicalisation

Kyrgyzstan models itself as Central Asia’s only parliamentary democracy, but multiple challenges threaten its stability. Divided ethnically between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks and geographically north and south, the state is deeply corrupt and fails to deliver basic services, in particular justice and law enforcement.  Its political institutions are under stress: the October 2015 parliamentary elections had a veneer of respectability but were undermined by systematic graft at the party and administrative level, and presidential elections will test state cohesion in 2017. The 30 August suicide car bomb attack on the Chinese embassy in Bishkek underscored Kyrgyzstan’s security vulnerabilities. There is need to prevent and counter the threat of growing radicalisation by bolstering the credibility of its institutions and adopting a more tolerant attitude toward non-violent Islamists.

Source: Crisis Group

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Attention and interest has shifted away from the Burundi crisis. The government appears to have realised that keeping casualties to a minimum limits scrutiny and is forging ahead with plans to change the constitution and abolish presidential term limits. Discussions about this could begin at October’s parliamentary session. Though the 2020 election cycle seems far off, international actors should press harder for a political settlement.

Crisis Group briefing, “The African Union and the Burundi Crisis: Ambition versus Reality”

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Uzbekistan: In Transition

Islam Karimov’s death creates uncertainty, first for Uzbekistan but also for neighbours and major powers, all with strong interest in the strategic state’s stability. The transition’s first stage has been smooth. Shavkat Mirziyoyev, prime minister since 2003, has emerged as the main leader, expected to be elected president on 4 December. However, he will inherit an authoritarian state with pressing economic and social issues, environmental concerns, unpredictable neighbours and a jihadist extremism threat. The ruling elite will want to preserve the status quo if it can, though Uzbekistan’s governance system is deplorable for most Uzbeks. Russia, China, the U.S. and Europe, each from its own perspective, wish to avoid unmanaged upsets. But all should use the transition to recalculate how best to preserve long-term stability and recalibrate relations with Uzbekistan. They should offer cooperation in practical areas benefiting the population while highlighting need for meaningful reforms; departure from abusive practices; and long-term consequences if the incoming leadership continue to run a police state.

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Burkina Faso: Preserving the Religious Balance

Burkina Faso’s great religious diversity and tolerance make it an exception in Africa’s sub-Saharan Sahel. Its model of religious coexistence remains solid but could be at risk of being eroded. For several years now, Muslim leaders have complained that Muslims are under-represented in the civil service and that the administration is not always even-handed in its treatment of Christianity and Islam. Meanwhile, the rising tide of religiously motivated violence in West Africa and the Sahel has created a new regional context. As Burkina is recovering from a period of instability following the October 2014 downfall of former President Blaise Compaoré, and faced with a security emergency and strong social pressures, the government could be tempted to ignore these developments. It would be risky to raise the sensitive issue of religion in a country where religious identity is of secondary importance. But the government must take steps now to ease frustrations and regulate religious discourse to safeguard Burkina’s model of peaceful coexistence.

SOURCE: Crisis group 

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Turkey's post-coup funk reaches far and wide

Turkey's rulers say the world does not understand how much the attempted coup in mid-July traumatized the country. To judge by three weeks in the rural backwoods of the southern province of Antalya, they are not far wrong. But the distress is not just because of the shocking acts of the night of July 15, but also the aftermath.

Hugh Pope, Crisis Group’s director of Communication and Outreach writes on the situation in Turkey

Source: Nikkei

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