Early warning and response to violent conflict: Time for a rethink?
As part of a project designed to facilitate dialogue on conflict prevention between China and the UK, Saferworld’s Conflict Prevention Working Group (CPWG) have been examining different approaches to conflict prevention, including upstream conflict prevention, crisis response and early warning.
Within China, experience and knowledge relating to early warning is comparatively undeveloped, yet it is an emerging area in which China is expressing increasing interest. For this reason, the CPWG has begun to explore whether and how early warning systems might act as an entry through which China-UK dialogue and cooperation on conflict prevention could focus.
This report, written by CPWG member David Nyheim, aims to stimulate debate on this topic and to provide the international community with food for thought about the future of early warning systems.
The author suggests why we need to question the effectiveness of current early warning and response systems, and proposes recommendations for how these vital instruments and mechanisms can be strengthened.
The Afterword, by Dr Xue Lei, addresses the prospect for China-UK cooperation in early warning, and conflict prevention more broadly, and outlines some of the different levels at which China-UK cooperation could take place. It acknowledges that whilst this form of partnership would not be without obstacles, the two countries would benefit from working together towards shared goals for peace and stability.
Download Early warning and response to violent conflict: Time for a rethink?
Read more about the CPWG here.
“The notion and approach to evidence-based decision-making in responses to violent conflict ... needs to broaden: from a focus on ground-truthed information, to information about the personal, institutional, and political dynamics behind response decision-making...”
David Nyheim
