As for the role of local communities, the grassroots, I’m weary of too much focus on reporting at the expense of allocating time and resources towards conflict preparedness, contingency planning and early response. If you peruse the literature on nonviolent movements around the world, particularly studies that focus on tactics, the traditional role of information collection does not figure prominently.

This is because at the grassroots level, local communities often already know by way of informal, intangible indicators or signs that tensions are increasing. (It is rather us, who are a few steps removed, who “need” the reports, which makes the field of conflict early warning rather egocentric). Local communities do not need to fill out incident and situation report forms on a weekly basis in order to quantify conflict and graph it over time in order to know whether tensions are increasing.

Conflict can escalate rather quickly at the community level, and the act of filling out reports is highly unlikely to do anything for early response. In fact, the vast majority of conflict “early warning” systems out there rarely inform decision-making anyway. In a recent study I carried out with a colleague, we found little evidence that decision-makers actually drew on formal conflict early warning systems to make their decisions.

In term of your concern regarding how to generate enough confidence in early warning reports, the question I would pose is whether our early warning reports warrant any confidence? The follow up question why inform decision-makers when they rarely respond anyway?

As for whether it is possible to hold government accountable for no/late response, even citizens in “democratic” countries aren’t able to keep their elected officials accountable. Even though the US called the atrocities in the Sudan a genocide, which obligates the international community to respond, we haven’t seen any significant response. As for the Responsibility to Protect, while a noble principle, is completely unenforceable.

May I recommend two papers which may be of interest to you and perhaps useful in your work? If so, have a look at the decision-making paper and early response paper available here:

http://www.conflict-reduction.org/meier/

Please don’t hesitate to follow up with any other questions/concerns you may have. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but am always looking to learn from fellow colleagues.

This is interesting. I look forward to your insight on the issues raised.

You are certainly more optimistic than I am. The way I see it, the concept of conflict early warning is not an emerging one, we’ve been talking about conflict early warning since WWII but especially since the 1980s.

I’m all for awareness and advocacy but not if this excludes actual operational and tactical response. In terms of early warning systems providing a data bank of information, in my own experience, I have found this to be of little to no use for operational conflict early response. Data does not equal prevention; indicators do not protect people in conflict zones.

I think talk of methodology runs the risk of becoming overly academic too quickly. I’m an advocate for good enough analysis since even information presented in a marketable format is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that policy makers will act.

It is a system that we must not give up on. Despite the shortfalls and ‘no response’ experienced, i think the noise about the conflict early warning must be sustained. Gradually it will catch on and perhaps we can save communities, nations and indeed the world from war and crisis.

Onyinye Onwuka
Institute for Peace and conflict Resolution
Abuja, Nigeria