International Crisis Group

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The International Crisis Group is an international, non-profit, non-governmental organization whose mission is to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts through high-level advocacy.

1 Organization and purpose
- 1.1 Today
- 1.2 History
2 Countries and territories with ongoing Crisis Group activity
3 Issues research
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Organization and purpose

Crisis Group's primary goal is to prevent deadly conflict, and where efforts at prevention fail, to contain it. The organisations two primary tools are field-based research and high-level advocacy; the former informs the latter. Crisis Group maintains teams of analysts in 17 field offices worldwide, who are dispatched to areas at risk of the outbreak, escalation or recurrence of conflict. Based on the information these teams gather, the organization creates analytical reports with recommendations targeted at various world leaders and organizations. In addition to this work, Crisis Group publishes a monthly newsletter, CrisisWatch, which provides a brief overview of continuing or impending violence in the world. All of Crisis Group's reporting is available on its website.

[edit] Today

Crisis Group is co-chaired by former British politician and European Commissioner for External Affairs, Christopher Patten and former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Thomas R. Pickering. Its President and Chief Executive since January 2000 has been former Foreign Minister of Australia, Gareth Evans.

Crisis Group's international headquarters are in Brussels, with advocacy offices in Washington DC (where it is based as a legal entity), New York, London and Moscow. The organisation currently operates seventeen field offices (in Abuja, Amman, Bishkek, Bogotá, Cairo, Colombo, Dakar, Dushanbe, Islamabad, Jakarta, Kabul, Kathmandu, Nairobi, Port-au-Prince, Priština, Seoul and Tbilisi), with analysts working in over 50 crisis-affected countries and territories across four continents (see list below). Crisis Group raises funds from governments, charitable foundations, companies and individual donors. In 2006, 40% of its funding came from 22 different governments, 32% from 15 philanthropic organisations, and 28% from individuals and private foundations.

[edit] History

The International Crisis Group was founded in 1995 by World Bank Vice-President Mark Malloch Brown, former US diplomat Morton Abramowitz and Fred Cuny, an international disaster relief specialist who disappeared in Chechnya in 1995. Their aim was to create an organisation, wholly independent from any government, to assist governments, intergovernmental bodies and the international community at large in preventing deadly conflict.

[edit] Countries and territories with ongoing Crisis Group activity

Africa: Angola, Burundi, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe
Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China/Taiwan Strait, Cyprus, India (Kashmir), Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar/Burma, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan
Europe: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Georgia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey
Latin America: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Venezuela
Middle East/North Africa: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria

[edit] Issues research

Crisis Group's ten areas of issues research is co-ordinated out of Brussels. Reports published in 2001 and 2005 under the "Issues" heading "draw on lessons from Crisis Group's in-country experience in crisis zones around the world as well as existing studies by research institutions and think tanks."^[1] The ten research areas are Islamism, Violence and Reform, Energy Issues, The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), Peace and justice, Gender and Conflict, Climate Change and Conflict, International Terrorism, Democratisation, The European Union and its crisis response capability, and HIV/AIDS as a security issue.^[2]

Crisis Group President Gareth Evans served as co-chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that first fully articulated the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect concept in 2001. The doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) holds that sovereign states, and the international community as a whole, have a responsibility to protect civilians from mass atrocity crimes.^[3]