Panel Discussions - Monday, November 15, 2010
"The Trouble With the Congo" by Severine Autesserre
During the past decade, international actors such as the United Nations and the European Union have engaged heavily in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in an attempt to help the country transition from war to peace. Yet billions of dollars in international assistance, and the UN’s largest peacekeeping operation have failed to bring peace and good governance to the DRC.
In an IPI roundtable discussion launching her new book, The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding, Dr. Séverine Autesserre argued that international peacebuilding efforts in the Congo have largely failed because they have focused exclusively at the macro-level, without also analyzing and addressing the micro-dynamics of conflict. She prescribed intercommunity reconciliation and land reform as key mechanisms for mitigating sources of tension at the local level.
In the book, Dr. Autesserre, who is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University, writes, “only when international interveners address the micro-foundations of peace settlements will they become…able to defeat the perpetrators of human rights violations.”
Dr. Stephen Jackson, Director of the Policy Planning Unit, UN Department of Political Affairs, served as discussant at this November 15, 2010 event, which attracted approximately thirty experts on the DRC and peacebuilding from the UN Secretariat, member states, and NGOs.
The Global Observatory
Interview with John Prendergast, Co-Founder, Enough Project
Mr. Prendergast discusses the international justice system and the new ground forged by Invisible Children's Kony2012 campaign.
Key Global Events to Watch in May
A list of key upcoming meetings and events with implications for global affairs.
The Global Observatory is a new website by IPI, providing timely analysis on peace and security issues, interviews with leading policymakers, interactive maps, and more.
Recent Events
May 10, 2012
Arbour: What the Rule of Law Means
“In my understanding of the rule of law, fundamentally, what the rule of law means is that it embraces the principle of equality before the law,” Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), told an IPI audience on May 10, 2012. Ms. Arbour outlined that this means that no one is above the law and everyone has both equal protection and equal benefit of the law. 
May 03, 2012
Shachtman: Cyber Threats Akin to South Bronx, Not Pearl Harbor
“There’s not a danger of a cyber Pearl Harbor… it’s more like the South Bronx circa 1999, where there’s a danger that it becomes such a tough neighborhood that no one wants to set up shop there and people move out,” Noah Shachtman, editor of the Danger Room blog at Wired magazine and non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, told an IPI audience at a panel on cyber security on May 3, 2011.
April 27, 2012
Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems
An April 27th roundtable discussion at IPI titled “Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems” examined the progress, prospects and challenges of regional and international early warning and response mechanisms to monitor, anticipate, and mitigate potential conflict situations in Africa.