Coronavirus and Conflict: The Security Sector Response

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This USIP event, which took place on April 15, 2020, looked at creative solutions on how to respond to the confluence of coronavirus and conflict. USIP President and CEO Nancy Lindborg shared lessons from her experience responding to Ebola in West Africa and discussed why COVID-19 is a unique challenge to conflict-affected regions. This was followed by a panel discussion with experts from around the world on how security sectors are responding to coronavirus, how…

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COVID-19: Four ways peacebuilders can respond

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At International Alert, as in every other peacebuilding organisation around the world, they are emerging from our initial shock at the speed at which the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has swept the globe. In this blog post, Rebecca Crozier is providing four ways of how peacebuilders can respond.   Read more

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Adaptive leadership in the coronavirus response

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The coronavirus pandemic poses unprecedented challenges to science, policy and the interface between the two. How – and how quickly – policymakers, practitioners and researchers react to this emerging and complex crisis is making a profound difference to people’s lives and livelihoods (WHO, 2020). But how can we ensure effective collective decision-making on the basis of emerging evidence, changing trends and shifting scientific understanding, all in the face of considerable uncertainty? Recent experience highlights the…

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The role of community peacebuilders in a pandemic: what we learnt from the Ebola crisis

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Comparing the current situation with the Ebola crisis, Janet Adama Mohammed from Conciliation Resources argues that a deep-rooted mistrust towards the government had been one of the main reasons for the rapid spread of this disease and that this is where local peacebuilders have an extremely important role as bridgebuilders between communities and government institutions. Read more

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Coronavirus in Conflict Zones: A Sobering Landscape

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The new coronavirus is spreading into conflict-affected states. Frances Z. Brown and Jarrett Blanc from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argue that the pandemic and efforts to contain it are much more likely to aggravate and multiply conflicts than reduce or end them, and offer analyses for several conflict-affected contexts around the world. Read more

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Policy Lessons From COVID-19 in Africa

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In his blog “An Africanist Perspective”, Ken Opalo, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University and the author of Legislative Development in Africa, draws some lessons he has gleaned from African governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.   Read more

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Briefing: What’s behind South Sudan’s COVID-19 inspired UN-backlash

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South Sudan reported its first four cases of coronavirus last week – all UN staff members – and the news quickly triggered a xenophobic backlash that has amped up tensions and restricted the movement of aid agencies. Obi Anyadike addresses South Sudan’s vulnerability to COVID-19, the reasons for this xenophobia, as well as the impact of the crisis on the peace process.   Read more

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In-depth Analysis: What should be Africa’s strategy to counter #Covid19? A strategy for containment

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The current Covid-19 pandemic, like most of its kind, poses two closely interlinked challenges. They can be summarized as the demands for urgent actions needed to contain the outbreak; and the requirement to work on long-term strategic issues including investments directed towards social and economic recovery, and peace and security. The last part— peace and security that is intrinsically tangled with governance, the nature and the role of state, the popular and performance legitimacy and…

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COVID-19 and the impact on local peacebuilding

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As the impact of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic grows, local peacebuilders continue working to help communities break through cycles of violent conflict. During the first week of April, Peace Direct and Conducive Space for Peace held a series of consultations asking local peacebuilders how their lives and work have been affected by this unprecedented health emergency, what their communities need, and how they see their role during this time of crisis. These consultations included…

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Coronavirus in conflict: The fight has hardly begun

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In this article, the authors argue that for several reasons, conflict-affected environments are especially vulnerable to the outbreak of infectious diseases, are less likely to be able to identify and respond to outbreaks, and are less equipped to stop their spread within and beyond their often porous borders.   Read more

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