News
Programme Updates
Moving Towards Sustainable Security
On Monday 14th December, SustainableSecurity.org published a new
article by Janani Vivekananda, International Alert's Climate Policy Advisor on climate change and security, entitled “Climate change,
conflict and fragility: understanding the linkages, shaping balanced responses”. As negotiations unfold in Copenhagen on Climate Change, the issue of heightened risk of violent conflict is absent from the agenda.
Vivekananda argues that any global agreement must carefully address the links between climate, conflict, governance and development. She goes on to argue that the discussion needs to move beyond the question
of how to raise climate funds for adaptation and mitigation, into one of how to spend these funds and the necessary changes to make spending effective. The article concludes by noting that if negotiators in Copenhagen can understand the interlinks between climate, conflict and fragility, there is a chance that climate change response could yield a double dividend “increasing resilience to climate change and to violent conflict”.
Recording Casualties of Armed Conflict
ORG's casualty recording programme gets funding boost
We are delighted that a new “Strategic Funding Group” of The Funding Network (TFN) has awarded ORG £24,000 to co-ordinate a team of international legal experts, headed by Dr Susan Breau of the Centre for International Law at the University of Surrey, to work with appropriate government officials and international agencies to develop a regulatory framework (such as a treaty or convention) for the recording of casualties in armed conflict. TFN's Strategic Funding Group exists “to provide second stage funding for well-run, high impact and scalable projects previously funded through TFN”.
The funding comes with matched funding for one of ORG's partner organisations, Iraq Body Count (IBC), to allow the IBC website to be translated into Arabic so it is more accessible to Iraqi people. These linked projects will begin in January 2010.
Human Security and the Middle East
New funding for the Middle East programme is currently being negotiated an is looking promising. It will allow us to go ahead and start work on the Israeli Strategic Forum and the Palestinian Strategy Group in the new year.
The Middle East team has also recently been part of a meeting in Doha which focused on state-building and national dialogues in a number of countries: Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Somalia. As a result of the
meeting, we are planning a specialised consultation in Gaza as an inquiry into state-building initiatives, examining questions such as how to avoid excluding the people of Gaza from any state-building initiatives, identifying their specific needs, and how they might like to be involved in such an initiative.
The director of the Middle East programme, Gabrielle Rifkind, is currently taking part in a high-level meeting in Damascus which will focus on regional security, primarily around water issues as security and conflict-resolution mechanisms.
Staff changes
At the end of December, two of our staff members are leaving ORG's employment. Andy Roberts (Office Manager) and Fiona Harrison (Fundraiser) joined ORG in 2007, and have been the backbone of the ORG central support function for nearly three years. At a reception on 8th December, ORG's Chair Professor Oliver Ramsbotham, in making a "thank you" presentation to them, highlighted their important contributions to raising ORG's professional standards, which has left the organisation with considerably more robust procedures. We wish them all the best for the future.
Paul Rogers also writes a weekly global security column for openDemocracy.
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