Workplan 2019/2020 PUBLIC VERSION INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP Contents Foreword from President and CEO ................................................................................. 5 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 7 2 Regional Program Overviews ..................................................................................... 9 2.1 Africa .................................................................................................................. 9 2.2 Asia ..................................................................................................................... 10 2.3 Europe and Central Asia .................................................................................... 11 2.4 Latin America and the Caribbean ...................................................................... 12 2.5 Middle East and North Africa ............................................................................ 13 2.6 United States ...................................................................................................... 14 3 Gender ......................................................................................................................... 15 4 From Early Warning to Early Action .......................................................................... 16 5 Cross-cutting Work Streams ....................................................................................... 17 5.1 Jihad in Modern Conflict ................................................................................... 17 5.2 Economics of Conflict ........................................................................................ 17 5.3 Climate Change and Conflict ............................................................................. 18 5.4 Technology and War .......................................................................................... 18 6 Communications and Advocacy ................................................................................. 19 6.1 Communications and Advocacy ......................................................................... 19 7 Setting Priorities ......................................................................................................... 21 7.1 Strategic Prioritisation ....................................................................................... 21 7.2 Monitoring and Evaluation ................................................................................ 21 7.3 Partnerships and Collaboration ......................................................................... 22 8 Summary of Expected Work ....................................................................................... 23 9 Annexes ....................................................................................................................... 24 9.1 Breakdown of Issues by Region ......................................................................... 24 9.2 Crisis Group’s Coverage Worldwide .................................................................. 53 Foreword from President and CEO Much has remained the same in the almost 25 years since Crisis Group was founded. We began our first quarter-century in the shadow of calamities in Rwanda, Somalia and the Balkans. We embark on our second haunted by more than a half-million dead in Syria, conflicts ravaging, among a depressingly long list, in Afghanistan, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, and record numbers of people displaced by war. Amid the proliferation of conflict, we have not altered our mission or core methodology. We start with rigorous fieldwork in the war zones. We talk to all parties to the conflict in question so as to understand – and fairly portray – their interests and motivations. We develop sound, practical policy advice for resolving conflicts. And we depend on our credi- bility with and access to decision- and opinion-makers across the globe to help translate those recommendations into reality. Throughout, we strive to be unconstrained by politics or ideology, to serve no single country but rather an international public good, to represent conflict victims worldwide and to offer transparent analysis grounded in the facts. These are the habits honed over a quarter-century of experience on the front lines and the hall- marks of a tradition to which we shall remain faithful. The conflict landscape has changed a great deal, however, and we must make our own ad- justments. The West, once predominant, has seen its relative influence fade and its willing- ness – or ability to – resolve conflicts erode. China and Russia have grown more assertive. International polarisation has diminished the (already questionable) effectiveness of mul- tilateral institutions. Uncertainty as to the global balance of power has encouraged re- gional actors to stoke, perpetuate and manipulate conflicts to their advantage or their ri- vals’ detriment. Social media as well as new technologies have revolutionised how wars are covered and how they are waged. The Workplan before you will show you the ways in which we are adapting. It flows from our new 2019-2024 Strategic Framework. The fruit of eight months of study and consulta- tion, the Framework charts an ambitious course for the next five years to meet our objective – that policymakers and opinion-shapers around the globe turn to Crisis Group as the world’s premier conflict prevention organisation – and to fulfil our mission of preventing, miti- gating and resolving deadly conflict. The Framework rests on three pillars. First, we must maintain and sharpen our research and analytic capacity. To address grow- ing demand for our work from governments, non-state actors, civil society, the business community and the media alike, we are recruiting additional staff to deepen our exper- tise with regard to both existing and emerging conflicts. We also have taken initial steps to launch initiatives on Climate Change and Conflict as well as on Technology and War, Crisis Group Workplan 2019-2020 | Public Version 6 complementing our existing cross-cutting work on Gender, Economics of Conflict and Ji- had in Modern Conflict. Another novelty – our Dialogue Initiative – is a demand-driven effort to bring conflict stakeholders together. Secondly, we must enhance our advocacy. The most insightful analysis is only as good as its impact. Accordingly, we must be creative in developing ways to shape stakeholders’ un- derstanding and policy, particularly at a time when power is more diffuse. As this Workplan illustrates, we are appealing to new audiences by balancing long-form reports with shorter, more targeted outputs. We also are bolstering our use of videos, infographics and interactive web content. Thirdly, we must invest in strategic communications. Facing greater competition for poli- cymakers’ time and attention, we are working to raise our visibility so that those we wish to influence know they can and should turn to Crisis Group for the most reliable, up-to-date field-based knowledge and analysis and the most incisive policy recommenda- tions regarding conflict resolution. So, too, with media: in order that our ideas might carry weight with decision-makers, we are bolstering our efforts to ensure that both the tradi- tional press and social media feature our output prominently. Crisis Group is a collective enterprise – a collective comprising our richly diverse and ded- icated staff, but also our consumers. We cannot succeed unless those we want to reach find us credible, reliable, timely and useful. We are looking forward to your feedback on this Workplan, which, as always, will remain flexible and adaptable in response to new demands or unexpected crises. Finally, I cannot conclude without highlighting the plight of our colleague Michael Kovrig. As this Workplan goes to press, he has been wrongfully imprisoned in China for over 200 days. He is a pawn in a game that others are playing. Our every thought is with Michael and his family. We will continue to fight for his release, relentlessly and without fail, until he is at home, surrounded by his many loved ones. We will count on the help of all who support our work to make that day come soon. Robert Malley President & CEO 1 Introduction This Workplan describes what Crisis Group intends to do between 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2020. It is based on and reflects the priorities of our new Strategic Framework (2019-2024), which details how Crisis Group will advance its mission to prevent, resolve and mitigate deadly conflict while adapting to changes in the conflict landscape. Our Strategic Frame- work has several objectives, including maintaining and sharpening our research and anal- ysis as well as bolstering our impact on those who make and influence policy. Our plans to boost our research and analysis form the core of this Workplan (Sections 2-5). We will complement conflict-specific analysis with a robust cross-cutting research agenda. As the concerns of policymakers and other conflict actors shift, we will strive to stay on top of global conflict trends and incorporate cutting-edge methods into our field-based analysis. Toward this end, we will deepen our efforts to integrate gender analysis in our work (Sec- tion 3). We aim to understand the distinct roles of men and women in both sustaining and ending conflict; to recommend paths toward increased women’s participation in the peace and security realm; and to propose policy prescriptions that take