European Peace Institute / News

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Norway’s Foreign Minister, Ine Eriksen Søreide, was honored at an evening reception at IPI on March 14th during the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) gathering at the United Nations. Foreign Minister since October, 2017, Ms. Eriksen Søreide is the first woman to occupy the post, and in her remarks, she emphasized why she thinks that women’s participation in peace processes is so important.

“It is about building resilience, it is about making peace, and it is about making peace last,” she said. “Those three factors are very important, and for all of those to happen, women have to be part of this, fully integrated, from the beginning to the end.”

By way of example, she mentioned Norway’s involvement in the peace process in Colombia. “Norway is one of the guarantor countries,” she said, “and what we did was try to, from the beginning, integrate women into the whole process, and this guided our diplomatic efforts.

“I wanted to make a very particular point of this,” she said “because it’s easy to think that this is about women as victims, but it is not only about that, it is also about women as community leaders. Bear in mind that the peace process in Colombia was partly driven forward by women’s organizations and civil society organizations.”

Looking out at the large crowd that filled the room, she said she was pleased to find so many men there. “It is of vital importance that we engage men,” she said, “and I think it is even more important to engage young men, and the reason I am saying that is where we see across the world today that women’s rights are under immense pressure, is mostly in areas where young men are getting increasingly marginalized.”

She noted that while most people ascribed Norway’s wealth and economic growth to its oil, there was, in fact, a more compelling argument for this audience. “The most important thing is having women as part of the work force,” she said. “That accounts for a larger part of our GDP than oil does. So that is a bit of a lesson to everyone. To include women in the work force produces more economic growth, which leads to less marginalized groups in most regions and countries, and that is a win/win situation.”

Prior to her current job, she was the minister of defense, the third woman in a row to fill that post, and she recounted with some delight a happy consequence of that fact. “We’ve had female defense ministers – no female foreign minister until now – but so much so that young girls had a tendency to ask – and they’ve asked me several times– ‘Can a man be minister of defense in Norway?’”

On March 15, 2018, the Syrian armed conflict entered into its eighth year. Since 2011, attempts to facilitate a political solution to the Syrian conflict have either failed or stalled. Amidst this deadlock, one track that has not stalled is the civil society track. Against the odds, progress can be observed at this level as Syrian civil society has become better organized and more tightly interconnected, and as its voice in the process has grown stronger.

This issue brief looks at progress on this track through the Civil Society Support Room (CSSR), a novel approach to including civil society in a peace process that could become a model for other processes to follow. The paper outlines three of the CSSR’s central functions, three key contributions it can make to the peace process, and the three main challenges encountered. It also proposes three measures for the CSSR moving forward:

• For both the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Syria (OSE-S) and CSSR participants to engage in an open discussion about the scope of the latter’s role in the process;
• For the OSE-S to continue its efforts to reach out to and engage with civil society actors located in hard-to-reach areas inside Syria and in refugee camps in the region; and
• For the OSE-S to continue to engage with civil society actors not only during intra-Syrian talks in Geneva, but also between rounds of talks and in the region.

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Global indices are a way to assess and compare national progress on key issues by distilling an array of complex information into a single number and ranking. Until recently, there was no index that explicitly brought together the three dimensions of women’s inclusion, access to justice, and security.

To fill that void, a new women, peace, and security index has been created by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security (GIWPS). On March 15th, IPI, GIWPS, and the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations held a panel discussion on the subject.

“This index is actually the first one to be built on the principles of the SDGs. It encourages a holistic approach to rights, development, and security,” said the introductory speaker, Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ine Eriksen Søreide. “In my opinion, conflict prevention must be a key part of the strategy that we undertake for development and for the SDGs. And this index gives us a potential platform to integrate it into action.”

“For too long,” she said, “security and gender experts on both sides have been doing a lot of good work. And they have been working in parallel but not necessarily engaging with each other. So there is a real need to break down the silos. And I think all the good work that has been done in the respective silos now needs to be introduced to each other for the first time. By putting this index together with data from other indices, we are gaining a more complete picture than we’ve had so far.”

Jeni Klugman, Managing Director of GIWPS, introduced the jointly developed index and explained the benefits of this new form of measurement. She noted that other indices had major gaps in their focus on traditional development, and that they lacked key explanatory factors.

“For example, we look to see whether girls are attending school,” she said. “But surely that’s incomplete if the girls are not safe in their homes or if they’re not safe in their communities on the way to school. Likewise, if we look at traditional measures of security and peace, the aspects of discrimination and systematic exclusion are almost invariably excluded.”

Within the index’s three dimensions of inclusion, justice, and security, inclusion is measured by women’s achievements in education employment, and parliamentary representation, as well as access to cellphones and financial services. Justice is captured in both formal and informal aspects through indicators that measure the extent of discrimination in the legal system, alongside any bias in favor of sons and exposure to discriminatory norms. Finally, security is measured at three levels–family, community, and society.

The combination of these dimensions is unique, Dr. Klugman said, “In that sense, I think it is truly a major innovation.” The index is also the first measure to take advantage of the new emerging consensus associated with the sustainable development agenda, she said. She relayed the hope that the index would be used as “an opening to have deeper conversations.”

In their findings, one measure that emerged among the statistics of all 153 countries ranked was that while organized violence at the societal level is important, of greater relevance for many women around the world is “security at the community, as well as at the family level,” she said. “I think you’d all know that intimate partner violence is the most common form of violence experienced by women globally but with significant variation across countries.”

Despite the fact that intimate partner violence is significant globally, measuring its variation across countries is “notoriously difficult,” said Papa Seck, Chief Statistician of UN Women. Lack of resources and weak institutions, including national statistical systems, are some of the challenges of assembling reliable data, he noted.

Furthermore, he said, “All of the markers of data availability are worse in conflict and post-conflict situations,” and data collection and security are closely related, as “data collection requires security: the security of those who are collecting the data on the ground.”

On the importance of funding, Mr. Seck added, “For UN women in particular, it is a hot button issue. This index, I think, is really critical for us on how we make the case.” He also noted that in many cases statisticians are not trained in gender-specific approaches, and that gender experts are not often trained in statistics. This creates a gap in much needed data and analysis.

Lina Abou Habib, Executive Director of the Women’s Learning Partnership, whose group specializes in global south countries in or exiting from conflict, stressed the difficulties of gathering data in such places. Ms. Habib explained that data collection on women’s rights issues is not often given priority or resources, which, in addition to security as a prerequisite for data collection, continues to be a significant challenge. The answer to this problem, she said, requires “a framework where data collection is allowed.”

She spoke to the specific example of one unnamed country in which it is illegal to collect data. “It’s illegal to do any form of research, it’s illegal to go to the field and ask people questions,” she said. Ms. Abou Habib posited a solution to improve the scope of data collection, which she called making data collection a practice–“to make data collection empowering for women, to make it as part of a workshop, as part of a conversation with the community. I think advocacy is the most important thing in terms of the purpose of the data.”

Ms. Habib then described two levels of this data’s significance. First, the data can “hold governments accountable, and I’m not just saying it as a slogan. It means that women have to know about it.” The second level, she said, is using advocacy to build “a momentum, which I see it’s really possible from the relationship we have with the women with whom we work.” In terms of data collection, she emphasized the priority of frequency and accountability.

In conclusion, IPI Research Fellow and moderator Sarah Taylor, said, “There’s a reason that data collection is political, and it’s because properly collected data has the power to expose rights violations, to point to changes that need to be made. And so I think that really speaks to the power of the project, particularly in the women, peace, and security agenda.”

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Development programs tend to include women affected by conflict and violence as passive beneficiaries, rather than as active agents in strengthening gender equality, peacebuilding, and sustainable development. And where development partners do support women’s agency in strengthening recovery and reconciliation in rural areas, they often fail to link these activities to wider processes of women’s mobilization, peacebuilding, and statebuilding.

Confronting that reality requires looking at women as “actors rather than only as passive victims,” said Ursula Keller, chair of the Organization for Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee Network on Gender Equality (GENDERNET). It requires focusing “very strongly on women’s participation, but really meaningful participation: not just counting women but making women count,” she said.

Ms. Keller was speaking to a March 14th policy forum at IPI on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations, cosponsored by IPI, GENDERNET, and the Governments of Sweden and Switzerland.

In introductory remarks, Deqa Yasin Hagi Yusuf, Somalia’s Minister of Gender and Human Rights Development, said that during the recent conflict in her country “women provided the backbone of our economy” and that now that the conflict is largely over, “gender equality is a central objective for sustaining peace and development in our current national development plan.” Among the “significant strides” she reported were that women occupy 24% of the seats in the two houses of Parliament, an inclusive human rights commission has been formed with four women among the nine commissioners, and the country’s first legislation on sexual offenses has been developed under the leadership of her ministry.

Ms. Keller reported the findings of a new OECD policy report into how donors can provide these gender equality projects with support that is both qualitatively and quantitatively better. Gender roles and inequality can often be a driver in conflict, she said, naming societal expectations of masculinity as a cause for violence. Programming that considers gender-sensitive pathways can best tackle fragility as “conflict and fragility places enormous burdens on women’s rights,” she said. She also noted that “women’s active participation in peacebuilding and statebuilding can actually contribute to peace and resilience.”

Barbro Svedberg, Policy Specialist for Women, Peace, and Security at the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) said that women, peace, and security resolutions had been paramount to a collective understanding of “women as drivers of positive peace,” and had had an enormous impact on Swedish “feminist” foreign policy over the last year.

Sida considers the interlinkage of gender equality, conflict sensitivity, and human rights, as “key elements in all of our programming,” said Ms. Svedberg, adding that “gender equality, for Sida, is a prerequisite for peace.” Describing Sida’s two new strategies, she said “The first, gender equality, should inform the other, [peacebuilding and statebuilding].”

Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, International Coordinator of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, reiterated the significance of this interlinkage, highlighting that “gender inequality, conflict, and fragility are all parts of the same equation. Each one cannot be isolated from the other two.” She also acknowledged that “gender inequality is one of the drivers of conflict.”

Considering conflict and fragility as functions of gender inequality rather than inequality as a consequence of conflict, Ms. Cabrera-Balleza urged institutional supporters to offer sustainable and not project-based donations. “Sustainable peace is not a project,” she said, “it is a way of life and it should be part of our global culture.”

Sarah Douglas, Deputy Chief of Peace and Security of UN Women, said that the women’s empowerment aspect of the Sustainable Development Goals creates an effective framework that shifts thinking from technical to political approaches and “challenges us…to use political analysis when we’re thinking about development and peacebuilding in the aftermath of conflict.”

Ms. Douglas conceded that UN analysis of conflict usually focused more on women’s oppression than their “capacities for peace,” and argued, “that’s what a gender perspective can also bring.”

Because deliberation at United Nations headquarters can reflect a strikingly different vision of conflict than the reality on the ground, she emphasized the need that conversation at headquarters reflect the lived experience of “women on the ground in a much more authentic way.”

Referring to the importance of “breaking down silos” and adopting a more holistic approach to policy making, Ms. Douglas concluded that policy must consider, “Who are the women’s organizations at the grassroots level who are actually holding the fabric of society together and how can they be mobilized, supported, encouraged, have doors open to them to really be able to expand their work and ensure sustainability?”

IPI Research Fellow Sarah Taylor was the moderator.

On Wednesday, March 7th, IPI is hosting the latest event in its series featuring United Nations Humanitarian Coordinators and other senior humanitarian leaders from the field. This discussion with Najat Rochdi, United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Central African Republic (CAR), and Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in CAR (MINUSCA), will focus primarily on the humanitarian situation in CAR today.

Remarks will begin at 8:30am EST*

Intensified violence in the last several months has worsened the already drastic humanitarian situation in the Central African Republic. Plagued by ongoing clashes between armed groups, the country also faces regular attacks against hospitals and civilians, including targeted attacks against aid workers. Half of the country’s population are in need of aid, almost 700,000 people are internally displaced, and over 500,000 have fled to neighboring countries.

This event aims to raise awareness of the multiple obstacles and challenges faced by the UN and other humanitarian actors on the ground in accessing vulnerable populations and delivering lifesaving assistance, as well as of ongoing UN plans to address the humanitarian crisis.

Speaker:
Ms. Najat Rochdi, United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in the Central African Republic, and Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the MINUSCA.

Moderator:
Ambassador John Hirsch, Senior Adviser, International Peace Institute

*If you are not logged into Facebook, times are shown in PST.

On February 27th, IPI together with the Permanent Missions of Australia and Peru to the United Nations cohosted a policy forum event to discuss the recommendations of the Secretary-General’s Report on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace, and how it will further the implementation of the resolutions.

On April 27, 2016, the United Nations membership adopted by consensus the most comprehensive and far-reaching peacebuilding resolutions in the Organization’s history, introducing the concept of sustaining peace (A/RES/70/262 and S/RES/2282). The resolutions were Member States’ response to the Report of the Advisory Group of Experts (AGE) on the review of the UN’s Peacebuilding Architecture entitled “The Challenge of Sustaining Peace,” released on June 29, 2015 as the first stage of a comprehensive review of the UN’s peacebuilding efforts.

Led by former Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Ambassador Gert Rosenthal, the AGE Report underscored the global peace and security challenges faced, and the sustainability of UN peacebuilding efforts to date. The report and the resolutions urged the international community to fundamentally shift how the UN works to support Member States in sustaining peace. Pursuant to paragraph 30 of the resolutions, the Secretary-General is mandated to report on the implementation of the resolutions. This report will be released on February 23, 2018, 60 days prior to a High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace, convened by the President of the General Assembly on April 24-25, 2018.

The concept of sustaining peace calls for better linkages among the UN’s three foundational pillars of peace and security, development, and human rights, in addition to humanitarian action. It replaces what until now has been a sequential approach to conflict that often resulted in silos and fragmented responses and calls for better linkages and sharing of instruments across the system. It is intended to be holistic and inclusive, with a focus on the prevention of the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflict in all societies and at all stages of conflict.

Welcoming Remarks:
H. E. Mr. Gustavo Meza-Cuadra Velásquez, Permanent Representative of Peru to the United Nations

Speakers:
Mr. Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, Assistant Secretary General, United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office
Mr. Miroslav Jenca, Assistant Secretary General, United Nations Department of Political Affairs
Ms. Katy Thompson, Team Leader – Conflict Prevention, Governance and Peacebuilding, Bureau for Programme and Policy Support, United Nations Development Programme
H. E. Ms. Gillian Bird, Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations

Comments:
H.E. Mr. Masud Bin Momen, Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations

Moderator:
Dr. Youssef Mahmoud, Senior Adviser, International Peace Institute

Related materials:
“Sustaining Peace in Practice: Building on What Works” (International Peace Institute, 2018)

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Addressing a Distinguished Author Series audience at IPI on February 26th, writer William Drozdiak listed three key elements of postwar governance that had brought peace and prosperity to Europe—a continent, he noted, once better known for producing world wars. The three were a common currency, the free passage across national borders of goods and people, and an embrace of democracy.

“Unfortunately,” he added, “these three projects have recently all gone off the rails, and Europe is now as fragmented as ever.”

In the analysis of Mr. Drozdiak, author of Fractured Continent: Europe’s Crises and the Fate of the West, the financial crisis of 2008 undermined the effectiveness of having one currency for countries with unequal economies, the abrupt arrival in Europe of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Middle East wars strained the notion of relaxing borders and diversifying populations, and disillusioned European voters are now empowering illiberal parties and political leaders who are turning their backs on democracy.

“Identity politics are an important factor with people saying, ‘I lost a sense of my own country,’” he said. “Whether it is for economic reasons or because there are too many refugees or Catalonian separatism, there is a powerful backlash against globalization, producing a ‘lost generation’ of people who cannot get steady work, cannot start families and can end up living with their parents even after they are 40 years old.”

And compounding the problem, he said, is a dangerous lapse in the transatlantic alliance due to President Trump’s policy decision to treat Europeans “not as strategic allies but as commercial enemies.” As a result, he said, there is a growing tendency among European politicians to reduce their dependence on the United States.

On the Continent itself, there is disunion caused by countries like Hungary and Poland that have severely curbed press freedom and compromised the political independence of their judiciaries as well as declaring their hostility, sometimes on racial and religious grounds, to immigration. Mr. Drozdiak cited a study that showed that Germany alone will need 400,000 immigrants a year for the next 25 years to account for demographic shrinking and maintain an adequate workforce. “So using these racist arguments is going to come back to hurt Europe economically,” he said.

With Britain scheduled to depart the European Union officially in 2019, Poland will soon become the fifth largest economy in Europe, but there is rising irritation with the country, which receives 5 billion euros a month from the EU and yet is resisting refugee quotas and failing to protect basic freedoms enshrined in the EU. There are suggestions in Brussels that the EU should take action against its recalcitrant members like Poland and Hungary. One proposal Mr. Drozdiak cited would take away their voting rights and another would divert funds from their national budgets to countries that agree to accept their allotted number of refugees.

On the positive side, Mr. Drozdiak noted that European economies are all growing again and that the new President of France, Emmanuel Macron, was emerging as a forceful leader at home and influential supporter of the EU, whose traditional champion, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has been embattled by criticism over her having allowed more than a million Syrian refugees to settle in Germany in 2015.

This reappearance of French-German joint leadership, the original partnership behind the creation of the EU, is particularly welcome to EU supporters at a time when leaders like Ms. Merkel have declared that Europeans can no longer look to the United States for their security and must increasingly manage their own destiny.

“I came away from two years of reporting this book seeing that people have a profound desire to be governed by their own communities—and not by Brussels there or by Washington here,” he said.

Asked to speculate on Europe’s future, Mr. Drozdiak said, “The most optimistic view I have is to see European institutions deepen the most important and fundamental elements such as the customs union and trade, and forego, at least for the time being, some of the more grandiose ideas like a common European foreign policy or a common European army and get back to focusing on what is most important for their citizens.”

IPI Senior Adviser for External Relations Warren Hoge moderated the discussion.

Prevention is generally viewed as a crisis management tool to address the destructive dynamics of conflict. The sustaining peace agenda challenges this traditional understanding of preventive action by shifting the starting point of analysis to what is still working in society—the positive aspects of resilience—and building on these.

The goal of this volume is to build a shared understanding of what sustaining peace and prevention look like in practice at the national and international levels. Many of its chapters were previously published as issue briefs that fed into a series of monthly, high-level conversations convened at IPI in 2016 and 2017.

The volume is divided into four parts. The first part explores the concept of sustaining peace and what it means in practice. The second applies sustaining peace to five areas: the Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality, entrepreneurship, human rights, local governance, and preventing violent extremism. The third part looks at sustaining peace and the United Nations, specifically UN peace operations and regional political offices. The final part looks at a specific country—the Gambia—through the lens of sustaining peace.

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Addressing concern that current drug policy can have a negative effect on communities and run counter to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), IPI and the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum held a policy forum on February 22nd on how drug policy can be better aligned with the SDGs so as to enhance both.

Setting the tone of the discussion, David Bewley-Taylor, Personal Chair, Political and Cultural Studies of Swansea University, said, “Effective drug policy and sustainable development are both international priorities that should work in tandem.”

Dr. Bewley-Taylor was speaking as one of the authors of a report being launched at the forum that argues that we need to change the ways in which we measure the success of drug policy to accurately account for its impact on society as a whole. “If current drug policies are found to exacerbate gender inequality or hinder peace, they need to be re-examined,” he said.

Current metrics used to evaluate drug policy are largely “process-oriented,” he said, measuring intermediary values rather than outcomes, which poses a challenge in explaining causation.

As drug metrics are already extremely nuanced, reforming them will be a challenge, albeit a necessary one, he conceded. The current system “largely fails” to capture data on broader harms, he said. To gain a more comprehensive overview of the impact of drug policy, the framework’s “complexity needs to be acknowledged and embraced.”

He proposed a tagline, which echoes that of the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Statistical Commission. Instead of “better data, better lives,” Dr. Bewley-Taylor suggested, “We need to extend that to ‘better and different data, better lives.’”

Co-author Natasha Horsfield, Policy and Advocacy Officer, Health Poverty Action, further argued the need for a new framework to measure the impact of drug policy on the success of SDGs. “The SDG framework offers an example and an opportunity in this regard,” she said.

This framework, comprehensive in its provision of 244 indicators and over 169 targets, “can serve as a starting point for adapting and developing similarly ambitious drug metrics,” said Ms. Horsfield. She explained that it could provide more accurate data on the impacts of drug policy on individual communities and could be used to tailor indicators to measure data at a national level.

Addressing the concern that drug policy has not been developed in concert with the SDGs, Sabrina Stein, Program Manager of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum and co-author of the report, echoed Ms. Horsfield. “It’s evident that drug policy cannot be designed in a vacuum,” she said.

Ms. Stein described six concrete recommendations from the paper that would enable this mutual consideration. First, she noted that it would be imperative to develop a framework for policy coherence; next, to create an external advisory committee. Then, to enhance drug policy metrics, the report makes the recommendation to add SDG indicators related to drug policy and to put in place mechanisms to gather data on the effects of drug policies. Finally, the report urges policymakers to use the SDG indicators as a model for improving drug policy indicators, and prioritize outcome-oriented methods.

On the international context of the report and the efficacy of its recommendations, Chris Murgatroyd, Policy Advisor, Governance & Peacebuilding Cluster, Bureau for Policy & Programme Support, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said that the report has been a welcome contribution to dialogue on sustainable development. “UNDP, you won’t be surprised to hear, has been very pleased to be part of discussions already in this space,” he said.

Summarizing the discussion, Adam Lupel, IPI Vice President, who moderated the talk, said, “If drug policy and the 2030 agenda are not aligned, the SDGs are really at risk of not being achieved.”

Current drug policy too often has a negative impact on communities and runs counter to efforts to ameliorate poverty through sustainable development. However, this is often not captured by the metrics used to measure the impact of drug policy. One way to improve these metrics is to align them with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This would not only help overcome many of the limitations of drug policies resulting from suboptimal metrics but also make sure these policies enhance, rather than hinder, efforts to achieve the SDGs.

This report analyzes how more precise, more complete, and better conceived metrics can help us to understand the impact of drug policy on sustainable development and the prospects of achieving the SDGs. The report is the result of over a year of work by the International Expert Group on Drug Policy Metrics, convened by the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum and the International Peace Institute. This group puts forward the following recommendations for the UN, member states, and the drug policy community:

• Develop a framework for policy coherence between drug policy and sustainable development.
• Create an external advisory committee bringing together experts on drug policy and sustainable development.
• Add SDG indicators related to drug policy.
• Put in place mechanisms to gather data on the effects of drug policies.
• Use the SDG indicators as a model for improving drug policy indicators.
• Prioritize outcome – rather than process-oriented metrics.

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In the lead up to this year’s Our Ocean Conference, hosted by Indonesia, the International Peace Institute, One Earth Future (OEF), and the Permanent Mission of Indonesia to the UN co-organized a policy workshop on February 21, 2018, examining the nexus between the crosscutting issue of maritime security and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 14 and 16.

The following are the key takeaways from this event:

1. Efforts to tackle maritime issues need a holistic vision and a whole-of-society approach. Governments and relevant stakeholders, including regional organizations, would benefit from taking a more inclusive approach and engaging with local communities for a bottom-up solution. There is a need for structural integration to connect security and development actors.
2. Maritime security has multiple, diverse components, including food and economic security. As a result, governments’ efforts to build security in their maritime spaces will benefit from a holistic approach that considers sustainability. Demonstrating the linkages between stability and sustainable development, with accompanying cost-benefit analyses, could incentivize states to invest in maritime security and develop their blue economy to improve their food supply and economic well-being. There is a need to enhance capacities of developing countries, including small island developing states, to address maritime security and boost economic development through international cooperation.
3. Increasing public awareness about challenges to maritime security is key to tackling these issues. A global marketing campaign, in partnership with the private sector, to reveal the impact of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing on issues such as labor abuses, conservation, sex trafficking, and climate change could be one such approach. To maximize visibility, this campaign can involve celebrities and educational institutions and highlight member-state “champions” on the issue.
4. Improving maritime security and governance requires measuring progress and tracking commitments. This provides an opportunity for cross-sectoral collaboration among different government entities, civil society organizations, the UN, and other international organizations to coordinate their activities in a comprehensive manner while providing a feedback loop for collecting reliable and comprehensive data. It also provides a channel for sharing information and best practices on maritime governance. OEF’s Stable Seas Maritime Security Index is an example of such an effort to measure and map a range of threats in different areas.
5. In order to bridge the silos between efforts on maritime security and sustainable development that can bolster food and economic security, stakeholders should capitalize on upcoming opportunities such as the 2018 Our Ocean Conference in Indonesia. Another avenue for enhanced momentum is the 2019 UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which will focus, inter alia, on SDG 16. Bringing the issue of maritime instability into policy discussions at UN headquarters from the perspective of sustainable development can encourage buy-in from member states.

(This text is excerpted from the meeting brief, which you can read in full here).

On February 15th, IPI hosted a discussion featuring Ambassador Md. Shahidul Haque, Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh.

In partnership with local and international development agencies, H.E. Mr. Md. Shahidul Haque has been leading the work of the Government of Bangladesh to address the needs of recent refugees from Myanmar and facilitate their safe, dignified, and voluntary return.

Ambassador Haque has been serving as Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh since January 2013. Prior to assuming this post, he occupied several senior positions at the International Organization for Migration (IOM). From 2010 to 2012, he served as Director of IOM, dealing with its external and donor relations and international migration policy. He also served as Regional Representative for the Middle East from 2007 to 2009 and as Regional Representative for South Asia from 2001 to 2006. Prior to working at IOM, Ambassador Haque worked in the Bangladeshi Missions in London, Bangkok, and Geneva. He also served as director in various wings of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh, including as Director of the Foreign Secretary’s Office from 1996 to 1998.

The event was moderated by Dr. Adam Lupel, Vice President of IPI.

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Marking 17 years since Bahrain’s creation of the National Action Charter (NAC), IPI MENA and the Bahrain Parliament held a joint conference on Feburary 8, 2018 entitled, “Future Prospects, Sustainable Development and Peace.” The conference comprised of three panels that delved into political, religious, and economic aspects of sustainable development and democracy.

Opening the conference, H.E. Ahmed Bin Ibrahim Al Mulla, Bahrain’s Parliament Speaker, recalled the contribution of the NAC in restoring constitutional institutions, including the return of the parliamentarian activity. The Speaker said the current reform strategies are irreversible, and that Bahrain aims to join the global process towards progress, development, and peace.

Speaking on behalf of IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen, Nejib Friji, Director of IPI MENA, stressed the importance of this joint initiative in taking the first steps towards developing a collaborative framework on the road to advancing sustainable development and peace.

Mr. Friji commended the frameworks constructed by Bahrain’s constitutional monarchy in enabling the Kingdom to thrive in a number of fields that are crucial to and interconnected with sustainable development.

Recognizing Bahrain’s efforts to support gender equity and women empowerment as part of these developments, Mr. Friji stated that “women constitute half of Bahraini society, and the government has recognized their crucial and integral roles in the sustainable development of the Kingdom.” In particular, he noted the advancement and empowerment of women in the different domains, politically, economically and socially, “through the enactment of laws and legislations to integrate women in the development process of the Kingdom.”

Emphasizing the tolerance and cooperation valued in the Kingdom, Mr. Friji also commended their practical application in ways “that have allowed the IPI to host interreligious dialogues with representatives of the many religions that coexist peacefully, and that have maintained strong relations with the Kingdom.”

Mr. Friji stated that these developments have “enabled the Kingdom to maintain strong ties with the United Nations in observing their democratic policies in efforts to safeguard the diversity and unity of the Bahraini society.”

Concluding his remarks, the IPI MENA Director noted that, although several challenges remain on the road ahead, IPI will continue to assist, based on the values of the UN Charter, in the quest for peace, development, and security.

“This is only the first step,” Mr. Friji stated, “in the joint Bahrain Parliament and IPI partnership that will feature research, convening, ‘think tanking’ towards ‘do-tanking,’ and other activities.”

The conference was attended by Speakers of the Council of Representatives from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as senior government officials, diplomats, regional and international organizations, academics, journalists, and media representatives.

While the importance of good governance to sustaining peace is widely recognized, the focus tends to be on national governance. This overlooks the crucial role of local governance actors, particularly when the central government is fragmented or lacks broad legitimacy. These actors include not only formal institutions like municipal governments but also a mix of other actors that could range from traditional chieftaincies to community-based organizations to religious institutions.

This issue brief explores how good local governance can contribute to sustaining peace in three ways: (1) by delivering services and promoting sustainable development more effectively and efficiently; (2) by giving people voice in a representatives and inclusive way; and (3) by nurturing political will to resolve conflict and sustain peace. It also highlights how local governance actors can undermine peace if they do not fulfill these functions effectively.

This issue brief is part of the International Peace Institute’s (IPI) attempt to reframe prevention for the purpose of sustaining peace through a series of conversations. Other conversations have focused on how to approach the UN’s regional political offices, peace operations, the SDG on gender equality, entrepreneurship, and human rights from the perspective of sustaining peace, as well as on what sustaining peace means in practice.

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The International Peace Institute, Middle East & North Africa (IPI-MENA) hosted a preliminary meeting of experts set to join in finding solutions to structural challenges regarding pensions and savings on both the regional and global levels.

During the meeting, held February 1, 2018 at the IPI-MENA office in Manama, experts in pensions, finance and investment from the public and private sectors emphasized the link between savings and pensions, and the importance of both in sustaining social peace worldwide.Existing pension funds suffer from an inability to meet the needs of the burgeoning number of retirees, necessitating pivotal action to promote responsible wealth management.

Ebrahim K. Ebrahim, Pension Expert, noted that any initiative in this direction must include financial literacy education for the public and take a comprehensive approach, promoting a combination of governmental, private sector and individual efforts.

Nejib Friji, Director of IPI-MENA, reiterated that strong pension schemes are instrumental to sustaining peace and stability, and that decisive action now will reassure ageing regional and global retiree populations of a sustainable future.

Mr. Friji warned that 85% of the world’s salaried populations do not have a source of post-retirement income, which exacerbates inter-generational strains over limited public resources, thereby jeopardizing long-term social peace.

Other attendees of the meeting included Fareed El Naggar, Professor and Consultant, Management House for Training and Consultancy; Nehal Al Najjar, Associate Professor, Royal University of Women; Ali Al Marshid, Head of Fixed Income, SICO; Khurram Mirza, Head of Asset Allocation, OSOOL; Jameel Abdulnabi, Senior Manager of Financial Accounting and Vice Chairman of the Employee Savings Scheme, BAPCO and Ruan Rensburg, CEO – Bahrain and the Middle East, LUX Actuaries.

Bahrain’s status as a regional financial hub makes it a logical base from which to promote a savings and pension initiative. IPI-MENA is dedicated to working closely with future partners across the region and globe to advocate for a more robust savings, wealth management and pension culture, Mr. Friji said.

In December 2016 Gambians took to the polls and successfully replaced longtime president Yahya Jammeh with current President Adama Barrow, ushering in a political transition. More than a year into this transition, the country is at a tipping point. Public expectations remain high, and the list of competing priorities, from increasing economic opportunities to implementing transitional justice, is long.

As the new administration plans the way forward, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development can guide policymakers in planning and implementing inclusive policies that address both peace and sustainable development; as noted in the agenda, “There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.”

This issue brief is part of the International Peace Institute’s (IPI) SDGs4Peace project, which seeks to understand how the 2030 Agenda is being rooted at the national and local levels and to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. The project focuses on five case studies: the Gambia, Greece, Guatemala, Lebanon, and Myanmar. Implementation of the 2030 Agenda provides each of these countries an opportunity not only to buttress existing aspirations but also to build new partnerships that transcend traditional approaches.

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Two years into its current crisis, Yemen is torn apart by an interlinked series of conflicts with intricate and mobile front lines. These have resulted in what the UN has called “the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.” While compounded by decades of conflict, violence, and underdevelopment, the major cause of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen remains the conflict between the two competing governments, along with the intervention of the Saudi-led coalition.

This report assesses the humanitarian situation in Yemen, including the impact of the country’s conflicts on its healthcare system, economy, and infrastructure, as well as the resulting population movements. It also examines current humanitarian actors and responses in Yemen and in neighboring countries. It concludes by exploring several challenges and opportunities for humanitarian actors in Yemen. These include:

• Enhancing respect for humanitarian norms and principles: A strong and unified initiative aimed at enhancing respect for international humanitarian law could not only protect populations at risk but also ease tensions among different communities within and outside of Yemen. The UN Security Council could help in this area by playing a more proactive role. Humanitarian actors also need to strengthen the perception of their neutrality.
• Strengthening the humanitarian response: The many actors involved in the humanitarian response should improve coordination, adopt existing tools for publishing and sharing data, and explore innovative uses of technology. International humanitarian actors should also directly involve local private sector actors in humanitarian action and include local humanitarian actors in coordination and decision making. In addition, humanitarian organizations could push blockade authorities to facilitate access for both humanitarian and commercial shipments.
• Looking beyond immediate humanitarian needs: While it remains critical to invest in the humanitarian response, the international community also needs to invest in prevention in order to stem humanitarian needs and prevent further deterioration of the humanitarian crisis. This includes supporting Yemen’s healthcare facilities to prevent their total collapse and addressing the economic and financial impact of the lack of liquidity. A gender-based approach to the humanitarian response is also needed, reflecting women’s roles as potential peacemakers.

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Danilo Türk, Chair of the Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace, told a January 19, 2018 policy forum on global water management that at a time of growing scarcity of water and rising demand for it, insuring international water cooperation had become an essential “instrument of peace.”

Mr. Turk, a former President of Slovenia and UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, said that despite the creation of the panel three years ago aimed at strengthening the global framework to prevent and resolve water-related problems, the international response remained “painfully fragmented, and there is a need for much greater coherence and much more concentrated action.”

To that end, he said that a report produced by his panel had called for a “global observatory for water and peace” which, he said, would be “a kind of network type of international mechanism” to strengthen the cooperation of all of those already active on the subject and those likely to become active in the future when, he emphasized, the problem would become even greater. “It is important to understand that the world has to find ways to produce 50 percent more food in the next 25 years and to double energy production at the time when water is diminishing,” he said.

Sundeep Waslekar, President of the Strategic Foresight Group, a think tank based in India, said that the central message of the panel’s report was that “water cooperation is not only good for good water governance and sustainable development, but it is also essential for comprehensive peace and political stability.” He called water a “catalyst for political dynamics which go well beyond the traditional consideration of water.” He noted that, unlike oil which can be substituted by alternative sources of power like natural gas or solar energy, “the only alternative to water is water, and therefore water is a matter of survival.”

Mike Hammah, former Minister for Lands and Natural Resources of Ghana, cited the “undeniable fact that the lack of safe drinking water is not only a health issue but a security and development challenge as well.” In Africa, he pointed to the Volta Basin authority that balances the needs of three states, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Togo, as the kind of cooperation that can insure that water becomes not a matter of conflict but one of keeping the peace. The key consideration, he said, was that no country should do anything with its water resource that cut into the resources of its neighbors. He said that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had taken the matter a step further, creating a West African Coordinating Council to insure a “rational” water policy for the entire region.

Teresa Whitfield, Director of the Policy and Mediation Division in the UN Department of Political Affairs, said that UN operations had moved on from the days of having a general natural resources expert to one of having numbers of such experts to address specific needs. In the case of water, she said, the UN had been particularly active in Central Asia, an arid area of critical water need. She also noted the case of the Nile Basin “where you have questions of water and boundary use tangled up with broader geopolitical concerns.”

François Münger, Director of the Geneva Water Hub, pointed out the importance of having reliable and broadly credible data, particularly in potentially contentious situations like the dispute been Mauritania and Senegal over the Senegal River. “Data sharing is a key part of the cooperation,” he said.

The event was co-sponsored by IPI and the Geneva Water Hub.

The moderator of the conversation was IPI Vice President Adam Lupel.

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An IPI policy forum considered how to operationalize UN Security Council Resolution 2286, which condemned attacks against medical facilities and personnel in conflict situations and called on all parties to adopt practical measures to prevent and end violence against medical care and ensure accountability for violations. The January 16th discussion took place over a year and a half after the adoption of the resolution.

Attacks on healthcare workers and facilities touch “on the very basis of humanity and are at the core of humanitarian law,” Jürg Lauber, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the UN, said in opening remarks. He lamented that despite the adoption of the resolution in 2016, the rising trend of attacks on healthcare had not been reversed.

He also said that while terrorist groups posed a problem, it is essential to “ensure that counter-terrorism measures do not have adverse effects on the implementation of resolution 2286.”

“Counter-terrorism measures can put limitations on the provision of impartial healthcare in areas where groups labeled as terrorists are present.” he said. To illustrate where access to healthcare in conflict areas had been compromised, he offered the examples of “targeting and arresting healthcare workers, or deliberately denying assistance to the wounded and sick, if they are affiliated with listed armed groups or groups that are labeled as terrorists.”

Els Debuf, Deputy Head of Regional Delegation for Southern Europe, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and former Head of Humanitarian Affairs at IPI, presented highlights of a report she compiled with Alice Debarre of IPI, noting that 2286 was a landmark resolution and was having a positive effect even if it is hard to see that on the ground. ”We have a strong resolution and a strong framework that is battle-tested and still relevant,” she said.

Dr. Debuf said there were already a large number of mechanisms that could be used to investigate attacks on healthcare, and the report detailed them and their application. “We don’t need new mechanisms, we need to use existing mechanisms more systematically and strategically,” she said.

The report also considers the purpose of conducting investigations, listing prevention, accountability, justice for the victims, and dispute resolution among the motivating factors, and spurring political action as one key outcome.

The report puts forward key recommendations for the international community to implement the resolution, beyond just paying lip-service to an important issue, or “to walk the talk,” as she described it. Most require member state initiative: providing resources to those working on the ground, following up with the necessary political support to be successful, and establishing a platform that makes possible the regular interaction with other stakeholders.

Christine Monaghan, Research Officer, Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, said that civil society has “an important role to play in holding groups accountable after attacks.” She argued that “the mere spectre of accountability can serve as a preventative measure.”

Luis Bermúdez Alvarez, Deputy Permanent Representative of Uruguay to the UN—which has just finished two years as a member of the Security Council—said the Council “has a legal and moral responsibility to do everything in its power to avoid the violation of the most basic human rights, including access to healthcare.” He added, “We must be realistic; the attacks will not stop, but we must do a lot more in order to get them reduced.”

Jason Cone, Executive Director, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said that recent events in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and the Central African Republic remind us of the human toll of those trapped in conflict zones.

He listed three priorities for his organization to function: countering the “criminalization” of healthcare; negotiating the terms of deconfliction, and undertaking independent fact-finding. “We need to be able to identify what happened and how so that groups such as MSF can establish if it is safe to return to work in the area,” he said.

Adam Lupel, IPI Vice President, moderated the conversation.

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Nickolay Mladenov, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), detailed a decade of deteriorating conditions in Gaza, noting that it had “de-developed” over the past ten years of governance under Hamas and that a new agreement promising a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah had stalled.

“Hope was created with the agreement, but it seems to have been taken away,” he said, referring to a pact signed in Cairo in mid-October between the two Palestinian parties. “This is where we are in Gaza,” he said, adding the grim prognosis that if “you take hope away, violence follows.”

Mr. Mladenov was speaking at a Dec. 19 event in IPI’s “Leading for Peace: Voices From the Field” series, just days after a decision by President Trump had roiled the already troubled waters of peacemaking in the Middle East by declaring that the United States would now unilaterally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“We’re certainly at a critical crossroads of the Middle East peace process,” he said. “It’s not just the American decision, but it’s also the stalled peace process itself, the situation in Gaza, and the political dynamic among Israelis and Palestinians that is creating a very different situation than we have had in a long time. The international architecture dealing with this is collapsing.”

He enumerated some stark figures to illustrate the desperation of life in Gaza. He said that in the year 2000, 98 percent of the water flowing in Gaza’s pipes had been drinkable but that today only 10 percent is. With the local aquifer becoming increasingly polluted, he said, the situation would be “irreversible” by 2020.

Desalinization is declining and hospitals are failing because normal electricity is available only 12 hours a day, he said. He noted that overall unemployment is now at 45 percent, and, for youths, at 67 percent, and 40 percent of the residents of Gaza live in poverty.

By contrast, he said, in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority governs, there has been progress, and international assistance exists. He compared that to Gaza, under Hamas governance, where there is no access to development financing, and institution-building has stopped.

The key, therefore, to alleviating this humanitarian crisis, he said, was bringing the legitimate Palestinian national authority back to Gaza–which is the stated purpose of the Cairo agreement.

He said that there were commonly acknowledged steps to be taken to put the agreement into practice, like clearing closures and moving to restore services and bringing back legitimate governance, but that neither side had followed up on them. What was missing, he was asked. “Political will,” he said.

He argued that there was movement in some Arab governments to building “centers of moderation” in the troubled region that could resist radicalization and start to create internal capabilities to deal with threats.

“However, it’s easy for the people of Gaza to blame everything on Israel if things are going wrong and not blame Hamas,” he said. “If you want to protest against the occupation, you are welcome to do so, but if you want to protest the rising prices of food or the lack of work, you’ll find yourself in a dark spot.”

In conclusion, he said, “People adapt to worsening situations, that is the way human nature is structured. I say that the situation is unsustainable, yet it’s gone on for half a century.”

Warren Hoge, IPI’s Senior Adviser for External Relations, moderated the conversation.