A Guide:
	Institutionalizing a System for Conflict Prevention and Mitigation

Many of the issues that arise in anticipating or responding to an emerging conflict could be effectively addressed if an international system for conflict prevention and mitigation were developed and institutionalized. Devising such a system would reduce response time, minimize the intervention learning curve and stretch limited resources. An effective institutionalized conflict prevention system might exhibit the following characteristics.

§ Proactive interest in and early response to low-level conflicts.

§ Resources and attention focused on especially troubled areas.

§ Emphasis on peaceful change.

§ Coherent local conflict prevention and mitigation strategies.

§ Local and sub-regional actors authorized and empowered to act as the first line of prevention.

§ A graduated sequence of contingent responses based on the conflict’s intensity and antagonists’ power.

§ Higher-level, more coercive responses by major powers and other global actors when necessary.

§ Multilateral cooperation and coordination at all levels.

§ Public-private partnership between official bodies and NGOs.

§ US leadership.

The following guidelines could help to establish such a system.

Unify functional mandates. A range of actors participate in conflict prevention and mitigation, each bringing different strengths, weaknesses, jurisdictions, mandates, funding sources, constituencies, objectives and procedures. Comparative advantages could be better leveraged if intervenors’ strategies and programs were deliberately melded.

A set of established procedures might keep disputants from delaying or playing different actors against each other. A coordinated strategy might assist outsiders in gaining a mandate to preempt potential crises before they erupt and provide a way to measure progress in the event of intervention. Pooling available resources for conflict prevention and mitigation and assigning tasks deliberately would make more conscious and coordinated use of the respective political, moral and material advantages of the third parties involved in conflict prevention around the world.

Reduce top-down policy formulation and overload. The way conflict prevention and other policies are developed in many organizations limits effective early response.

§ Most governmental and non-governmental entities—including the UN, the US government, many NGOs and other governments—use a centralized decision-making process which overloads top officials’ capacity to deal with the multiple demands competing for their attention.

§ Overloaded policy-makers tend to ration their energies and concentrate only on problems that have reached a crisis point, attracted significant public attention, or are advanced by the most persuasive policy entrepreneurs or the most forceful domestic interest groups.

§ Short-term pursuits tend to push long- and medium-term concerns off the conflict prevention agenda; even policy planning units established specifically to take a longer view get swallowed up in current operations.

Functional fragmentation and vertically centralized structures lead to stock responses to emerging conflicts as policy-makers recapitulate standard operating procedures to address the situation within their traditional competence.

Develop an integrated multilateral response system. Labor divided vertically and horizontally would give discretion to diplomats and others within the different organizations comprising this conflict prevention system to work together laterally. This means linking conflict prevention organizations loosely in a single system featuring:

§ An organizational culture fostering openness, flexibility and cooperation.

§ Decentralization with autonomy.

§ Shared vision and common goals.

§ A strategic planning process to implement established goals.

§ Clear allocation of responsibility within an overall approach.

§ Transparency in planning and operations.

§ Authority based on knowledge rather than position.

§ Mature leaders and members.

These arrangements would constitute a set of procedures and understandings among regional and international entities, authorizing member organizations to undertake the chief responsibilities with links to semi-independent NGOs to carry out certain tasks.

Make the local arena the first line of preventive defense. When signals warn of a deepening dispute, the regional and international community should explicitly and vocally reiterate the expectation that disputing parties will seek their own solutions by engaging each other peacefully as early as possible. Third party actions should seek to strengthen—not replace—local political institutions, focussing on pre-conflict peacebuilding. Only when local or national institutions have failed should responsibility for preventive diplomacy shift to sub-regional or regional organizations.

Make the regional arena the second level of prevention. Sub-regional and regional multilateral organizations (RMOs) can play a more active role in strengthening regional inter-state security and in peacefully resolving ethnic and other internal political conflicts within member states. The international community should capitalize on RMO assets by giving them progressively greater authority to engage in local conflict prevention activities, developing commonly accepted rules for RMO initiatives, and providing more financial and logistical support to equip RMOs to perform their new responsibilities.

Some RMOs cannot currently handle disputes. Empowering RMOs can be accomplished in phases, with initial international support of ad hoc regional preventive efforts while working over the long term to develop RMO capacity to assume greater preventive responsibilities.

Save global intervention for the last resort. As conflict prevention responsibilities are progressively pushed downwards, global-level actors such as the UN can devote their attention and resources to large-scale crises that local and regional efforts cannot handle (major wars, nuclear threats), to lower-level regional conflicts that third parties have tried but failed to prevent, and to back-up peace enforcement where regional military resources are inadequate.

Use a horizontal process. As each of the vertical levels assumes greater conflict prevention responsibilities, all players should engage in greater lateral cooperation, coordinating actions, pooling resources, and assigning responsibilities according to a conflict’s circumstances. An economical approach might be to face a potential conflict by constituting an informal multilateral task force or contact group comprising NGOs, RMOs, the US, the UN, and other relevant players to design and implement the conflict prevention strategy.

Form government-NGO partnerships. NGOs are active in relevant fields such as "track two" diplomacy, conflict resolution training, democracy-building, and refugee and humanitarian work. NGOs’ private auspices, transnational contacts and humanitarian goals endow them with special legitimacy; their wide-ranging partnerships—trade unions, professional groups, business associations, universities—and work on the ground often gives them a degree of local access that regional or international actors cannot muster. NGOs can play non-threatening and positive roles in alleviating low-level tensions and pre-violent conflict; the advantages NGOs offer over direct official government involvement warrant further exploration.

Organize under US leadership. A stratified, multilateral conflict prevention system must be championed by an actor of global stature. The US is appropriate for this role in light of its extensive foreign policy network, information-gathering apparatus and membership in regional organizations worldwide. US leadership in conflict prevention can be exercised by:

§ Legitimizing and publicizing the strategic sense of early intervention.

§ Furnishing resources to multilateral organizations and NGOs on the front lines of conflict prevention.

§ Supplying diplomatic muscle, sponsorship and energy to particular preventive efforts.

§ Providing experienced diplomats to mediate incipient disputes.

§ Welcoming, encouraging and seeking to enhance the international roles of other states and entities.

§ Supporting the development of regional conflict prevention capabilities.