Early Warning and Conflict Prevention
Problems, Pitfalls and Avenues for Success

  Introduction
  Conflict Analysis: Constraints and Opportunities
  Policy Relevant Risk Assessment
  Linking Early Warning to Response: A Role for Canada
  Endnotes

Early Warning and Conflict Prevention
Problems, Pitfalls and Avenues for Success

David Carment
&
Karen Garner

NPSIA
Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario
K1S 5B6

Accepted for publication in
Canadian Foreign Policy (Winter 1998)

1. Introduction
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In the mid 1980s, CIDA's South Asia Branch produced a glossy report on Canada's contribution to Sri Lanka's Mahaweli dam project. The report?s cover depicted two members of Sri Lanka's Sasana - prominent Buddhist monks in saffron robes, posed amid the ruins of Anuradhapura, the 12th century Buddhist kingdom excavated in tandem with the larger irrigation project. The ensuing repopulation of the ancient irrigation sites by Sinhalese farmers proved to be a lightening rod for Sinhalese and Tamil nationalism. The net political effect of the project was to extend the Sri Lankan conflict into the rural parts of northern Sri Lanka. Before then, Tamil and Sinhalese farmers had little stake in the larger conflict chiefly because it centred on urban issues such as university admissions and civil service appointments.1

According to Sri Lanka's Buddhist majority, the downfall of the old capital was the culmination of centuries of subjugation under invading Hindu Tamil kingdoms. In their view, the unearthing of Anuradhapura provided symbolic justification for Sinhalese re-colonization of the region. In contrast, the Tamils as the minority on the island strongly believed that the colonisation schemes would fall under Sinhalese domination.2

This little known account of Sri Lanka's ongoing conflict might give room for confidence if Canada's decision makers, having learned from their misinterpretation of the problem, were now equipped to anticipate and prevent others like it. Perhaps with adequate forewarning and consultation with area experts, Canada might have been part of a solution of foresighted prevention. But because Sri Lanka's disintegration occurred against a backdrop of stable Cold War relations, the association between the development of the dam and Sri Lanka's civil war held little importance but for a few Western scholars and the Sri Lankans themselves. Conflict prevention and early warning - if Canada's foreign policy could be understood in those terms circa 1983 - were largely subsumed as integral parts of the East-West environment; downplayed as a strategic disciplines in their own right. In reality, until 1993 when the UN eventually interceded, management of the Sri Lankan crisis focussed primarily on ensuring that the Indian federal government play the role of intermediary and peacekeeper - with only tacit Western support for the Sri Lankan government at the height of the Tamil insurgency.

More generally, during the Cold War the prevention of conflict was marked by a desire for system-wide equilibrium and East-West stability. Early warning focussed on the national intelligence gathering capabilities of individual states, to reduce interstate frictions and counter threats to national security. Faced with these traditional security threats, intelligence assets were deployed in support of defined, national security interests, in concert with allies, and against known enemies.3

The security threats of today are not easily understood in Cold War terms. For one, the security challenges of this transitional phase are not readily apparent. What to do about them is a thornier matter. Today, many factors that contribute to regional crises are transnational in character including population displacement, drug trafficking and the arms trade and involve the security of communal groups, militant religious groups and indigenous peoples. The increasing role of academics, private organizations and non-governmental organizations in risk assessment, analysis and policy formation points to an essential change in the way in which these threats to Canada's security are assessed and addressed.

Returning with renewed vengeance, the identity-based conflicts of today have become the touchstones for a new global agenda and have stimulated ordinary Canadians to support a new generation of peace support activities in many parts of the globe. Yet, we need look no further than Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda to realise that Canada (among others) has fallen short in ensuring that its policies are more effective and responsive to the problems at hand. Fifteen years since the onset of Sri Lanka's civil war, graphic images of starvation, ethnic violence and terrorism continue to be transmitted into our living rooms and around the world. The virtual explosion of violent conflicts around the world, which increasingly effect us at home and not just through painful satellite images, has assured that Canada will be engaged in some way in the management and prevention of conflict. It is therefore essential that the policy making community understands the complex social, political and international forces that dictate success and failure in estimating the risks associated with today's global problems. As analysts have come to understand the complexity of the root causes of today's conflicts they have come to realise that there is a need for different and complementary approaches to risk management and policy planning and a need for accurate and timely information for the purposes of early warning.

In this essay we focus on ways to improve the analysis of events that affect Canadian security. We explore the problems and pitfalls of early warning strategies and the related implications for Canadian foreign policy and conflict prevention. While the problems of today are not all new phenomena, the regional and global impact of these man-made catastrophes have highlighted the imperative for governmental, non-governmental, and multilateral actors to plan in advance to offset their more virulent causes and after-effects.

2. Conflict Analysis: Constraints and Opportunities
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The complexities of our era suggest that analytical capacity alone is insufficient to manage today's problems. There is a need to gather and sort additional information more effectively. The collection and analysis of intelligence is now more than ever heavily influenced by the shifting needs of policy makers. The central problem for decision makers in this transitional era is coping with unprecedented and rapid change. Transitional change has three distinct elements. First, the international system is in an unstable disequilibrium punctuated by frequent and dynamic disruptions.4 This means that the characteristics and requirements of foreign policy analysis are much different than they were during the Cold War. The analytical requirements of today's foreign policy focus on managing dynamic patterns of change and not on system stability. The net result is that states experience greater fluctuations in their foreign policies - a kind of zig zagging effect - marked by a continual search for innovation and flexibility in maintaining stable international relations.5 Accordingly, foreign policy ideas and strategies have a relatively short shelf life. Security concerns move constantly - states engulfed in internal crisis and civil war can move to the top of public attention and the policy makers' agenda with lightening speed - and just as readily disappear if the crisis is contained or resolved by truce, humanitarian intervention or other means.

Second, and following from the first point, there is a greater tendency for states to act out of synch with one another. As the system as a whole is unable to cope, there are tendencies for states to fall back on local and regional patterns of political authority.6 In extreme cases the result can be destabilisation of individual states, loss of control by the centre or worse, the defining of state interests along narrow bands of parochial sensibility. Overall, this means that the legitimacy and authority of the present system are undergoing a transition. The resulting tension is inextricably woven into a worldwide crisis of authority in which current norms cannot keep pace with changes in the issues and actors that seem to be evolving at a much faster pace.

Finally, there is tendency for domestic patterns of behaviour of even a modest magnitude to have a greater and often destabilising impact on the system. This dynamic interaction means that the distinction between foreign and domestic affairs is becoming increasingly obscure. The ramifications for policy planning are straightforward. Strategy selection and strategy change are now determined almost wholly by the preferences and values of domestic constituencies including, non governmental organizations (NGOs), interest groups and ordinary citizens. Decision makers must first consider the long term ramifications that their foreign policies engender among their constituencies. This means that the foreign policy agenda shifts constantly from one based on clearly defined national interests, to one based on a mix of domestic interests and domestic values.

To some extent, a very large domestic constraint can influence foreign policy by decreasing the attraction of strategies that involve risks to Canada and to Canadians. This linkage is especially important at a time when many of Canada's front-line workers abroad are no longer soldiers and diplomats but Canadian volunteers and aid workers, working in societies in transitions and zones of conflict where human rights are often trampled and Canadian lives are increasingly at risk.

The demand that such profound changes place on decision makers and analysts has been compared to kayaking in rapids. There is: "a premium on strategic timing and the ability to think beyond the next bend or, in other words, to be able to draw conclusions from a complex array of individual observations about how a system's dynamics may be about to undergo radical change.?7The informational requirement of the decision maker is placed squarely on enhanced analytical and organizational abilities. The end of the Cold War has not diminished the importance of intelligence gathering - but rather has made the process more difficult due to increased complexity in non-traditional areas such as transnational ethnic politics and violence, the environment, demographics and social migration.

Unfortunately, there is no direct route through which informational analysis can bypass the political constraints imposed by decision making. By itself, intelligence lacks the speed necessary to be a truly effective weapon in crisis situations.8 Technological change has ensured the trend toward more rapid escalation of crises. Decision makers are pressured to decide in progressively shorter time intervals. At peak points within a crisis, ad hoc forms of consultation often take precedence over established procedures. Consequently, the analysis of events requires constant and permanent updating not just by area experts but by all those involved in the formulation of policy.

Such an approach has two implications. First, it means that the analysis of events and intelligence gathering do not fit neatly into compartmentalized and modular frameworks of responsibilities (if they ever did). Everyone from the desk officer to the NGO worker in the field are potential players on the information gathering and analysis team. Second, it means that in order to cope with events as they unfold - "just in time" strategies of information gathering and analysis become crucial. Long term planning tends to take a back seat to more medium term and short term contingency planning.

There is secondarily the problem of weak signals leading to problems of interpretation. Errors in predicting outcomes become greater as we move away in time from crisis onset. The signals are inevitably clearer as a crisis looms but this is of less benefit to a decision maker. Additionally with the complexity of today?s conflicts analysts need to think about alternative sequences of events, not just one or two, but many and far enough ahead to anticipate a likely chain of events.

These problems mean that analysts must establish a time frame appropriate to the issue at hand. In this sense, conflict analysis is like peeling an onion in which each layer reveals progressively longer time lines - long term fundamental dynamics relating to structural causes and consequences, mid-term behavioural patterns and current events such as looming humanitarian crises. For example, warning must come years in advance to respond strategically to structural problems (development, institution building, establishing infrastructure) but only a year or two or less when escalation is imminent and when the tasks are to engage in preventive diplomacy, dialogue, and mediation.9

3. Policy Relevant Risk Assessment
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At different levels of aggregation, early warning has been extolled as a tool for overcoming some of these decisional constraints. While it is fair to say that early warning does offer the opportunity for surmounting some of the obstacles noted above, it is also true that early warning is a term used too loosely and is itself at risk of becoming an outdated cliche. Bereft of its theoretical import, early warning has been used to explain everything from risk assessment to forecasting. Properly understood, forecasting and risk assessment are complementary but distinct modes of analysis and can be distinguished from early warning in several important respects.

Forecasting is about the likelihood an event will happen. By itself it has no strategic connotation or purpose. Forecasting can be either passive (about events over which we have no control) or active (about events over which we have some control).10 For example, weather forecasts are a form of passive forecasting; they do not tell us that when there is a 50% chance of rain, whether it will rain half the day, or whether it will it rain every half hour or whether it will it cover half the region.

To be policy relevant, forecasting needs to take on three additional qualities. It must be diagnostic, by which emphasis is on describing how and why things work as they do. It must also take the form of a conditional generalization -- that is, in situation X, if one does Y, one should expect Z. Finally, policy-relevant forecasting must be prescriptive, offering explicit recommendations to policy makers faced with certain kinds of problems.11 Policy relevant forecasting (or risk assessment) has traditionally referred to the chance or probability that some event will occur with the associated word gravity used to describe the event?s consequences. More formally, risk means an expected value arrived at by multiplying consequences by the probability that they will occur. Risk indicates probabilities about consequences.

Risk assessments rely on the field monitoring of indicators of specific types of behaviour, monitoring of indicators of related factors and proximate causes or systematic analysis of events through predictive models.12 Collectively, their objective is to combine monitoring of indicators with diagnosis, using theoretical findings and index construction to develop knowledge of certain causes that produce specific effects.13 The effect can be either a danger, such as crisis, war or genocide or an opportunity such as investment or the victory of a democratic government.14

Not surprisingly, as we move from passive to policy relevant forecasting, the effects of forecasting are more consequential. The need for accuracy is paramount. First, since resources and lives are at stake it is important that risk assessments be as reliable as possible. The appropriate analogy is the public health model. For example, each year there is a high probability that winter flu will be a problem based on recent experience. Immunisation campaigns are carried out to treat the symptoms of flu based on the assumption that this will help sever the link between cause (the influenza virus) and effect (illness and death).15

Second, since risk assessments precede and complement early warning, accurate diagnosis has implications for strategic planning. Assessments identify background and intervening conditions that establish the risk for potential crisis and conflict.16 They focus monitoring and analytical attention on high risk situations before they are fully developed and they provide a framework for interpreting the results of real-time monitoring.17

Third, risks assessments can overcome misperceptions of high risk. For example, extensive media coverage leads people to overestimate the risk of international violence and to give undue importance to human generated catastrophes.18 From the standpoint of the average Canadian, though the odds of their occurrence may be identical, the death of 350 people in an aeroplane crash or bomb explosion is more horrific and receives much more publicity than the separate deaths of 350 individuals. Analysts call this the problem of optimal risk.

The problem of optimal risk arises because analysts do not always convey real risks to policy makers.19 The main impediments in communicating reliable forecasts are twofold. First, there may be conflicting and competing risk assessments of identical problems. Second, decision makers may choose to ignore the advice they are given, not so much because they doubt the forecast?s veracity, but because the proposed action may not generate much political capital.

With respect to the first point, intuitively there is no statistical means by which to test the accuracy of forecasts since all forecasting models will always have a margin of error (and as we move away from the event in time the margin of error is greater).20 However, it is possible to test forecasting effectiveness by comparing behaviour before and after the assessment was made. This is especially important when analysts assess political risks. For example, observers who have tracked patterns of ethnic conflict on a country, regional and global basis from 1945 to the present point out that ethnically-based rebellions, much less genocide, do not just erupt spontaneously without prior indication normally extending back over many years.21 At least in principle, this provides the basis for testing predictions by measuring conflict situations of high risk before and after their occurrence.

Once information is weighed for its relative importance there still remains a significant gap between analysing the information and developing a strategy to deal with the problem. Analysis by itself does not generate an immediate solution. At best, monitoring of indicators helps in regulating the flow of information to policy makers.22 This is because the primary goal of risk assessment is to diagnose a situation and only secondarily to devise solutions. With respect to the second point, by itself the communication to policy makers of real risk furnishes no guarantee that action will be taken. Ultimately, the choice of a policy response would be derived from its feasibility, the interactive effects on operating conditions and the intended impact. Additionally, to convince themselves that action is necessary decision makers would need exact knowledge about the costs of not being involved coupled with the likelihood that a conflict will escalate; so there may also be the desire for knowing what effects inaction might produce.23

On one side of the ledger is the expectation that once the information is communicated it is the decision maker's responsibility to come up with an appropriate strategy and appropriate policy responses. There are, of course, important reasons for risk assessments to be policy neutral and independent from the policy making process. Stripped of its objective appeal, risk assessment could fall prey to ideological and political constraints.

On the other side of the ledger is the problem of policy inaction simply because decision makers are convinced that they cannot satisfy the most basic prerequisites for mounting an appropriate response.24 Invariably these prerequisites can be whittled down to three interrelated factors: credibility, commitment and resolve. For a response to take place there needs to be an optimal combination of interest and capacity not only to ensuring that information is collected and communicated, but to react.25 In an era where state interests are not always easily identified, this means that states will act on risk assessments, if and only if, leaders can be sufficiently assured that action will protect and enhance one's own security, welfare and prestige.26

There are of course associated political risks in acting on signals that may be inaccurate. Governments still carry the heavy burden of having to choose to act in a timely and responsible fashion when confronted with a problem. As Bruce Jentleson has argued, the main issue is that taking risk assessments seriously means deciding what to do about them.27 As Adelman and Suhrke observe "...assignation of roles encourages waffling because a decision must be made and responsibilities accepted.?28 Ultimately even if a strategy is developed and put in place, domestic constraints may impede action. Lund has argued that a state may be unable to act until it has secured the support of its public and political elite.29

Early warning has been touted as a means of overcoming these kinds of policy inertia. Early warning is distinct from risk assessment in several important respects. First, it is a political process designed to pinpoint appropriate, forward looking, developmental, political and military preventive strategies. The policy relevance of early warning stems directly from the fact early warning systems are not restricted to analysing a crisis, but also assess the capacities, needs, and responses for dealing with a crisis.30 Second, early warning is essentially networks- states, Inter-Governmental Organizations and NGOs - conducting their analyses together in order to prevent likely events from occurring.31 According to the Forum for Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER) early warning is "the communication of information on a crisis area, analysis of that information and development of potential strategic responses to respond to the crisis in a timely manner.?32 The central purpose of early warning is not only to identify potential problems but also to create the necessary political will for preventive action to be taken.

4. Linking Early Warning to Response: A Role for Canada
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What is to be done? Ethnic and religious tensions, the increasing number of `failed states', and the persistence of inter-state conflicts over borders and resources, strongly suggest that the future of Canada's foreign policy will be multi-dimensional and will require making use of early warning strategies, risk assessments and preventive measures to counter existing and potential threats to its security. Canada has played a role in encouraging the international community to respond to both the causes and consequences of violent conflict. To continue to play a significant role in this field however, Canadian policy makers, like those of other states, need to orient their thinking toward conflict prevention. If the foundations are properly laid then, the chances are that many potential problems, whether international or internal, will remain manageable.

In what ways can Canada enhance its prevention of conflict through early warning and risk assessment? Consistent with the preceding analysis, there are two complementary but distinct prevention strategies encompassed in risk assessment and early warning. To this end, Canada has two policy options. The first would be to rely primarily on early warning networks such as FEWER and others, for the analysis of impending humanitarian crises and complex emergencies and only secondarily to utilise risk assessment for purposes of medium term planning and resource allocation within DFAIT and CIDA. This option would see Canada rely to some extent on global networks for its informational analysis. Such capacity is slowly falling into place. For example, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has established an emergency response unit in order to respond to refugee-related humanitarian emergencies and the FAO's Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) has been assigned the mandate of constantly monitoring the global food supply and demand situation and alerting the international community to countries or regions threatened by serious food shortages.33

The strengths of the network approach is in potential cost savings and information distribution through an institutional division of labour. For example, since the FEWER initiative serves as a "conduit through which the field research efforts of its member organizations are made available" it could become, in principle, the largest early warning resource base from which to draw findings on impending problems.34 Having access to many eyes and ears could, in practice, surmount two hurdles. The first hurdle is the informational problem of obtaining the necessary quantity and quality of intelligence in a reliable and timely fashion. The second hurdle is the analytic problem of avoiding misperception. The inclusion of NGOs in the information gathering process could potentially overcome faulty analysis of the likelihood of diffusion and/or escalation of a conflict or complex emergency .

The weaknesses of such an approach are also twofold. First, the FEWER initiative is still very much a conduit for the informational system of individual governments and for this reason it is still dependent on the intelligent gathering assets of individual countries. This in itself is not a weakness, but there is always the potential for some countries to withhold information on sensitive political issues. Second, FEWER is not a global early warning system capable of assessing and developing responses to politically generated conflict. FEWER?s mandate is primarily the prevention of humanitarian emergencies. Indeed, no such global entity that is capable of monitoring politically generated catastrophes currently exists.

Since the call for preventive action by former UN Secretary general Boutros Ghali in 1992, the UN inter-agency arrangement for humanitarian early warning (HEWS) was created to assist humanitarian operations. It is not, however, equipped to detect or analyse political and military warning signals. The UN lost its capacity to analyse political early warning information when it disbanded the Office for Research and Collection of Information (ORCI). Since the loss of ORCI the UN does not and will not in the foreseeable future have the capacity for political early warning. This point was made abundantly clear in the Joint Evaluation Report on the Emergency Response to Genocide in Rwanda:

More simply, the UN lacks a system for drawing on existing information sources, in the region and outside, from specialists in state agencies, academic institutions, rights monitoring agencies, and the various agencies of the UN itself. The UN lacks a specialized unit, without operational responsibilities, for analysing such information and translating that analysis into evolving strategic options that can be channelled directly to the Secretary-General.35In principle, NGOs under the direction of FEWER could fill the informational and analytical vacuum left vacant by the UN from the early warning field. NGOs in the field already constitute a loose, decentralized and very appropriate global network and they are already conveniently divided into a defacto division of labour for monitoring human rights, refugee and migration issues, relief and development and victims of war. Workers in the field can and do collect and analyse information without compromising their political neutrality by operating through discrete channels.36 As William DeMars argues, there is a natural convergence of attention between states and NGOs toward analysing the causal linkages between war and humanitarian crisis to facilitate policy learning and effectiveness.37 Jones and Stein have found that some NGOs, especially smaller ones, are well suited to the task of information collection and monitoring.38 In their assessment of early warning failure in Rwanda, Stein and Jones argue that within large organizations, information tends to move too slowly up the chain of command. Leaders of large organizations tend to discount important information that requires a response. In contrast, smaller NGOs have a direct line to headquarters and are not systematically discouraged by political organizational complexities to get things done.39

Nevertheless, a second weakness of the early warning network option is that the early warning required to respond to humanitarian disasters is really late warning; a response to disasters that are at an advanced stage of escalation and violence. The inherent risk for policy makers in this approach is that, at the height of a crisis, policy options are rapidly and significantly constrained and significantly narrowed to military and humanitarian responses. This is a problem that the Carnegie Commission?s Report on Preventing Deadly Conflict recognizes as being a fundamental stumbling block to the development of more effective long term conflict prevention policies.40 Late response, with the attendant likelihood that a strategy will be less than successful, is the strongest ammunition against developing more coherent forward looking approaches. Critics are quick to claim that early warning rarely succeeds - but the evidence they cite to support this argument are situations where action is taken to treat the symptoms rather than the underlying causes.41 While the Commission?s Report does highlight the need for the short-term treatment of impending crises through the preventive deployment of multinational coalitions, the key emphasis is on attitudinal change among policy makers toward more effective conflict prevention strategies. Effective preventive strategies rest on three principles: early reaction to signs of trouble; a comprehensive, balanced approach to alleviate the pressures, or risk factors, that trigger violent conflict; and an extended effort to resolve the underlying root causes of violence.42

It is with the Commission?s latter two points in mind, that a second (and not necessarily mutually exclusive) policy option for Canada can be understood. More specifically Canada?s Department of Foreign Affairs should pursue the integration of risk assessments into strategic and contingency planning - perhaps beginning with developmental aid - in order to develop coherent , sustainable and long term policies on conflict prevention. Under this schema, prevention would consist of:

....policies and institutions that are taken deliberately to keep particular states or organized groups within them from threatening or using organized violence, armed force, or related forms of coercion, such as repression, as the means to settle interstate or national political disputes, especially in situations where the existing means cannot peacefully manage the destabilizing effects of economic, social, political and international change.43

Ultimately any measurement of success in Lund?s approach, with its focus on the maintenance and the creation of peace, depends heavily on a clear sense of the structural factors responsible for violence. A blend of analytical skills - those that combine in-depth analysis with regional and country expertise - in addition to those which can identify and explain dynamic patterns of behaviour are necessary but not sufficient preconditions for proper analysis. This is because, by themselves, risk assessments cannot be expected to provide precise points at which specific events are likely to occur.44 To come close to that goal, case-study, country specific information and field reports must also be effectively integrated into the policy-making process.45

The primary goal is to make Canada's development assistance more effective and efficient by identifying areas where resources can have the largest structural effect. Within Canada, long term conflict prevention strategies are strongly associated with development, through distributive justice, encouraging the rule of law, protecting fundamental human rights, and fostering the growth of democratic institutions, not only for their own sake, but also because making progress toward them is believed to contribute powerfully to national and international security.46

Those countries whose economies are declining, whose political institutions are failing, and where human rights are not respected should also be the ones experiencing the greatest amounts of Canada's areas of interest. 47 This view is shared by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs whose report Preventing Violent Conflict proposes early conflict prevention strategies as the corner-stone of Sweden?s developmental assistance programmes.48 Among its recommendations are: the call for a strengthening of a secretariat or ?task force? within the Swedish Foreign Ministry whose activities would be to establish methods for preventive measures through development cooperation, the development of security mechanisms within troubled regions and the establishment of a regional (EU-based) early warning network.

Within Canada the heretofore invisibility of the preventive impact of development work may be due largely to the attitudinal propensity to consider prevention a facet of development activity and not an end in itself. The long term choice for Canadian policy makers is to push for a better understanding of the root causes of conflict and relate aid directly to preventive initiatives.49 The implication is that development programming and project initiatives will have to be done differently if their preventive impacts are to be anticipated and assessed. It is no longer enough to hope for a conflict prevention spin-off of a development activity.50

Under this option, risk analysis would be linked more thoroughly to policy planning through a five step process. First, because risk assessment data and information must satisfy the needs of different agencies there is a need to more closely integrate them into routinised foreign policy activities of the various departments engaged in foreign and security policy.

Second, integration means that assessments are used to identify not only future risks but also to identify links between conflict processes and identifiable focal points of activity in which the end user is engaged. Assessments should be able to identify a sequence of events that are logically consistent with operational responses.51

Third, the end user, be he or she a representative of DFAIT, CIDA or DND, should be able to use the information in a way that helps them plan for contingencies.52 In essence, the goal is to establish a risk assessment chain that is multi-departmental, multi-purpose and multi-directional.

Fourth, measurements of effectiveness need to be harmonized within Canada and across states. As structured databases will continue to be an important tool despite their imperfections, the current situation of decentralized data holding will only be able to function if the information handling systems - including indicators - in the different countries are harmonized.

Fifth and finally, an essential step in moving the Canadian government toward a forward-looking preventive approach would be to establish a research bureau under a conflict prevention secretariat. Its central tasks would be liaison between the relevant policy areas, the promotion and study of knowledge, and the forging of intergovernmental and nongovernmental links. In the context of global developments, the bureau?s risk assessments of structural causes of conflict will be as pertinent as first-hand information of a likely civil war or humanitarian disaster. Since many of today's conflicts stem from underlying social or economic causes, practical research would focus on the development and dissemination of knowledge about internal economic and social developments as well as of the state of political or international relations.53

A second task of the bureau would be to assist practitioners in the field - be they peacekeepers or NGOs - to develop specific analytical skills, risk assessment techniques and most importantly, conflict resolution capacity.54 Most successful monitoring and preventive efforts have been training programmes, introducing people who live in conflict areas to the theory and practice of conflict management, and providing training in negotiation, facilitation, mediation, and consensus building.55

Ultimately, the bureau would be responsible for an evaluation and impact assessment of its own prevention methods.56 Such evaluation would include the systematic documentation of conflict interventions and post-conflict assessments; improved information exchange among conflict prevention practitioners and with parties outside the conflict management field; assessment and evaluation of conflict prevention interventions; and improved coordination of conflict prevention activities.

Endnotes
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1 Moore, Mick. 1985. The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka. London: Cambridge University Press.

2 Conversely, the Sinhalese have never lost sight of the fact that it is they that are the minority within the South Indian region, not the Tamils.

3 However, interstate war is becoming increasingly rare in the international system. It is absent entirely among democratic states and declining as a factor in measures of global violence. Wallensteen, P. and Sollenberg, Margareta. 1997. "Armed Conflict, Conflict Termination and Peace Agreements" Journal of Peace Research vol. 34, no. 4. pp. 339-358. Since 1980, there have been five interstate wars. In contrast, in 1994 alone there were more than 24 internal conflicts over either territory or government. This is not to suggest that we have seen the last outbreak of interstate hostilities. There are a number of dangerous rivalries, primarily in the Middle East and Asia, which have erupted in warfare in the past and may do so again.

4 Brecher, Michael. 1993. Crises in World Politics: Theory and Reality, Oxford and New York, Pergamon Press. Rupesinghe, Kumar. "Towards a Policy Framework for Advancing Preventive Diplomacy.? Paper presented at: Towards a Common Agenda for Conflict Prevention, Oslo, May 1995.

5 von Muller, Albrecht and David Law. 1995. "The Needs of Researchers: Crisis Management and Conflict Prevention in a Historic Transition Period", Information Technologies and International Security, Number 30/95, p. 27-38.

6 von Muller, Albrecht and David Law. 1995. "The Needs of Researchers: Crisis Management and Conflict Prevention in a Historic Transition Period.?

7von Muller, Albrecht and David Law. 1995. "The Needs of Researchers: Crisis Management and Conflict Prevention in a Historic Transition Period? p. 28.

8 Ben Dor, Gabriel. 1997. "Intelligence and Early Warning: Lessons from a Case Study" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, pp. 10-15.

9 McCarthy, Mary, O. 1997. "Potential Humanitarian Crises: The Warning Process and Roles for Intelligence" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, pp. 15-16.

10 Gupta, Dipak. 1997. "An Early Warning About Forecasts: Oracle to Academics" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, pp. 375-396.

11 George, Alexander and Jane Holl. 1997. The Warning-Response Problem and Missed Opportunities in Preventive Diplomacy: Discussion Paper, Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Washington, D.C., Carnegie Corporation of New York.

12 Gurr, Ted, R. 1996. "Early Warning Systems: From Surveillance to Assessment to Action" in Cahill, Kevin, M. ed. Preventive Diplomacy: The Therapeutics of Mediation, Proceedings of a conference at the United Nations, New York, April 23-24, 1996.

13 Gurr, Ted, R. 1996. "Early Warning Systems: From Surveillance to Assessment to Action.?

14 Frei, Daniel and Ruhoff, Dieter. 1989. Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis, London, Martinus Nijhoff.

15 Alternatively, risk assessments can focus on underlying causes and not just symptoms (ie smoking is bad for productivity and therefore education is necessary to discourage smoking).

16 Leatherman, Janie, and Raimo Vayrynen. 1995. ?Structure, Culture and Territory: Three Sets of Early Warning Indicators?, Paper presented at the International Studies Association 36th Annual Convention, Chicago, 21-25 Apr. 1995.

17 Moore, Will and Gurr, T.R. 1997. Assessing Risks of Ethnopolitical Rebellion in the Year 2000: Three Empirical Approaches" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, pp. 45-70.

18 Zeckhauser, Richard, J. and Viscusi, W. Kip. 1996. "The Risk Management Dilemma", The Annals of the AAPSS, May 1996, pp. 144-155.

19 The idea of optimal risk may seem like a strange notion in the context of a terrorist bombing in a country where the chances of being personally affected are small. The problem of optimal risk arises because lay people disagree with experts in given areas about where the greater risk to their lives lies. For example, scientific experts, believe that societies in general have an irrational fear of new technologies. Nuclear power, for instance, certainly is risky but pollution from fossil-fuel power is also risky especially given the threat of global warming. Usually, when citizen's lives are at risk, experts know, with uncanny accuracy, the threat levels associated with that risk, even when the perception of threat is taken out of a proportion by an excited public (See Zeckhauser and Viscusi 1996).

20 Gupta, Dipak. 1997. "An Early Warning About Forecasts: Oracle to Academics."

21 Moore, Will and Gurr, T.R. 1997. Assessing Risks of Ethnopolitical Rebellion in the Year 2000: Three Empirical Approaches."

22 Gurr, Ted, R. 1996. "Early Warning Systems: From Surveillance to Assessment to Action."

23 Jentleson, Bruce. 1996. ?Preventive Diplomacy: Possible and Necessary?, IGCC Working Paper, UC-San Diego, California.

24 Carment, David and Harvey, Frank. 1997. "Early Warning and Deterrence Strategies: States Versus Institutions" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, p. 113-136

25 Adelman, Howard and Astri Suhrke, 1996. Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda , Chr.Michelson Inst. Norway, Summary Report.

26 Lund, M.S. 1996b. Preventing Violent Conflict: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy , Washington D.C., United States Institute of Peace Press.

27 Jentleson, Bruce. 1996. ?Preventive Diplomacy: Possible and Necessary.?

28 Adelman, Howard and Astri Suhrke, 1996. Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, Summary Report, p. 34.

29 Lund, M.S. 1996a. "Early Warning and Preventive Diplomacy" in Hampson, F. Crocker, C. and Aall, P. eds., Managing Global Chaos, Washington, D.C., USIP Press, pp. 379-403.

30 Adelman, Howard. 1996. "Responding to Failed States" Paper prepared for a Conference on Canada and Global Issues, Ottawa, October 15.

31 Adelman, Howard. 1996. "Responding to Failed States."

32 Adelman, Howard. 1997. "Defining Humanitarian Early Warning" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, pp. 1-9.

33 Other UN-based early warning bodies include: the WMO/IAEA Convention of Early Notification of Nuclear Accidents; the UN System-wide Earthwatch; HazardNet for disasters; the Epidemiological Early Warning System (NEWS) for health concerns and; the global early warning system for displaced persons (GEWS).

34 Rusu, Sharon. 1997. "Early Warning and Information: The Role of ReliefWeb" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, pp. 251.

35 Adelman, Howard and Astri Suhrke, 1996. Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda (Chr.Michelson Inst. Norway). Volume II on Early Warning p. 35.

36 Jones, Bruce and Gross Stein, Janice. 1997. "NGOs and Early Warning: The Case of Rwanda" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, pp. 235-248.

37 DeMars, William. 1997. "Eyes and Ears? Limits of NGO Information for Early Warning" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, pp. 213-234.

38 Jones, Bruce and Gross Stein, Janice. 1997. "NGOs and Early Warning: The Case of Rwanda.?

39 University-based early warning research projects are underway at Harvard, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Ohio State University. Of particular note are Cambridge?s Institute for the Study of Genocide with Helen Fein, the University of Paris? Polemos project under Didier Bigo, Hayward R. Alker?s University of Southern California?s conflict early warning system (CEWS) research program, the University of Maryland?s Centre for International Development and Conflict Management, the Protocol for the Assessment of Nonviolent Direct Action (PANDA) under the direction of Doug Bond at Harvard, the Kansas Events Data System (KEDS) directed by Deborah Gerner and Phil Schrodt and the Global Events Data System (GEDS), coordinated by John L. Davies and Barbara Harff at Maryland.

40 Holl, Jane, et. al . 1997. Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict: Final Report (Washington, D.C., Carnegie Corporation of New York) Web-based text is available at http://www.ccpdc.org/frpub.htm, chapter 3.

41 See for example: Stedman, S.J. 1995. "Alchemy for a New World Disorder: Overselling Preventive Diplomacy", Foreign Affairs, (May/June).

42 Holl, Jane, et. al . 1997. Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict: Final Report. Executive Summary.

43 Lund, M.S. 1996a. "Early Warning and Preventive Diplomacy," p. 379.

44 Schneider, Gerald. and Weitsman, Patricia. eds., Enforcing Cooperation: Risky States and Intergovernmental Management of Conflict, London, MacMillan, chapters 1, and 2.

45 With the rise of new communications technology including web-base technologies, risk analysis based on quantitative and qualitative approaches could be more fully integrated into foreign policy decision-making in real time. Political risk models would be updated continually and cross-referenced with other modes of analysis such as qualitative assessments and field reports from either field officers or NGOs.

46 Vayrynen, R. 1996. Toward Effective Conflict Prevention: Comparison of The Usability and Impact of Different Instruments" Presented at the ISA Annual Meeting, San Diego, Ca, April 16-20, 1996.

47 See for example, CIDA?s 1997 International Humanitarian Assistance Report with its emphasis on capacity building to prevent both natural and man-made disasters; the use of accountability and performance reports and the integration of risk assessments into follow-up monitoring and facilitation. CIDA/IHA Performance Review Report, 23 October 1997.

48 Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 1997. Preventing Violent Conflict: A Study (Stockholm, Norstedts Tryckeri AB). Key recommendations include: strengthening civil society, strengthening of regional security arrangements, efforts to address religious and cultural conflicts and strengthening of early warning mechanisms such as FEWER.

49 Lund, M.S. 1996b. Preventing Violent Conflict: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy.

50 For example, it is quite possible that an education project aimed to produce students able to pass state-wide exams, may also succeed in reducing tensions between particular ethnic groups by creating and institutionalizing a non-threatening and constructive environment which increases contact and decreases misunderstanding by dispelling stereotypes and misconceptions. It is also quite possible that such a project will have little impact outside the classroom beyond producing students able to pass state wide exams.

51 Cockell, John. 1997. "Towards Response-Oriented Early Warning Analysis: Policy and Operational Considerations" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, p. 289-300.

52 Of immediate relevance for the policy making community is the question of the contribution of open source information to the analysis of political risks, particularly those conflicts which have a potential for escalation to the levels of violence experienced in Bosnia and Rwanda.

53 By this it is meant that any one or more of the following conditions can impede conflict reduction: a) a lack of restraints on violence wherein the key goal is to contain and manage violence perhaps through quick reaction; b) a lack of process in which the key goal is to create channels for communication through mediation and good offices; c) a lack of resources in which the key goal is provide elemental aid and developmental aid, d) a lack of solutions- in which the key goal is to address political problems through problem solving workshops; e) a lack of incentives in which the key goal is induce parties to adopt solutions and; f) a lack of trust in which the key goal is to create security through mutual assurance, education and media. See: Lund, M.S. 1996b. Preventing Violent Conflict: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy.

54 See: Cockell, John. 1997. "Towards Response-Oriented Early Warning Analysis: Policy and Operational Considerations,? Lund, M.S. 1996a. "Early Warning and Preventive Diplomacy," and Gurr, Ted, R. 1996. "Early Warning Systems: From Surveillance to Assessment to Action."

55 Systematic compilation and sharing of experiences will help prevention practitioners to learn from each others' successes and failures, and will thereby improve their performance and productivity. The systematic compilation and exchange of information about the plans, capabilities, resources, experiences and observations of the various actors will be also be crucial to successful coordination. Finally, there needs to be accountability. Sharing of knowledge will help to ensure that conflict interventions are appropriately conducted and evaluated. The wide circulation of early warning information will document the fact that warning has been given, thus creating a wider expectation that appropriate action will be taken.

56. Guilmette, John, H. "The Paradox of Prevention: Successful Prevention Erases the Proof of Success" in Schmeidl, S. & Adelman, H. eds. Synergy in Early Warning Conference Proceedings, March 15-18, 1997, Toronto, Canada, p. 261-272.

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