Post-Conflict and Peacekeeping Activities

USIP’s Nadia Naviwala highlights the mood among the parties and the public on the eve of the May 11 vote.

Learn how to develop effective strategies for establishing stable institutions and a robust civil society, including how to address the interplay among issues of corruption, accountability, rule of law, elections, political party development, public administration, and economic reconstruction in divided societies.

During the 2011 uprisings, Arab protestors channeled decades of discontent with failed economic policy. However, the demise of leaders will not be enough to answer this discontent nor ensure productive development. Scholarship on the political determinates of economic development finds that the common recipe of expanding the private sector and increasing trade openness may be valuable, but alone are not sufficient for successful development. The Arab World’s economic path to 2011 included implementation in these areas, yet reform in underlying socio-economic structures and interests lagged. Addressing these conditions constitutes one of the most serious challenges facing Arab economies and politics. 

The landmark agreement reached between the governments of Serbia and Kosovo on April 19th in the latest round of normalization talks lays out policies for governing the mixed or predominately ethnic Serbian municipalities in northern Kosovo. But given the security and political challenges, and absent implementation support, the 15-point plan could instead generate significant instability.

United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson says today’s intensely complicated conflicts demand a broader approach to international diplomacy and peacekeeping, taking in a wider array of players and devising solutions such as the offensive U.N. force just approved for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The killing this week of five United Nations peacekeepers and seven civilians by armed attackers in South Sudan is a tragic reminder of the sacrifices made by U.N. personnel around the world in conflict zones.

North Korea’s almost daily delivery of threats against South Korea, Japan and the United States in the past week has eyes turning toward neighboring China for influence to defuse the tensions. Two USIP experts who are former U.S. arms control officials say statements and actions by the U.S. and its allies South Korea and Japan send signals to China just as much as to North Korea.