International Crisis Group

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The International Crisis Group is an international, non-profit, non-governmental organization whose mission is to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy.

1 Organization and purpose
- 1.1 Today
- 1.2 History
2 Countries and territories with ongoing Crisis Group activity
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Organization and purpose

Crisis Group's primary goal is to prevent deadly conflict, and where efforts at prevention fail, to contain it. The organisations two primary tools are field-based research and high-level advocacy; the former informs the latter. Crisis Group maintains teams of analysts in 17 field offices worldwide, who are dispatched to areas at risk of the outbreak, escalation or recurrence of conflict. Based on the information these teams gather, the organization creates analytical reports with recommendations targeted at various world leaders and organizations. In addition to this work, Crisis Group publishes a monthly newsletter, CrisisWatch, which provides a brief overview of continuing or impending violence in the world. All of Crisis Group's reporting is available on its website.

[edit] Today

Crisis Group is co-chaired by former British politician and European Commissioner for External Affairs, Christopher Patten and former US Ambassador to the United Nation, Thomas R. Pickering. Its President and Chief Executive since January 2000 has been former Foreign Minister of Australia, Gareth Evans.

Crisis Group's international headquarters are in Brussels, with advocacy offices in Washington DC (where it is based as a legal entity), New York, London and Moscow. The organisation currently operates seventeen field offices (in Abuja, Amman, Bishkek, Bogotá, Cairo, Colombo, Dakar, Dushanbe, Islamabad, Jakarta, Kabul, Kathmandu, Nairobi, Port-au-Prince, Pristina, Seoul and Tbilisi), with analysts working in over 50 crisis-affected countries and territories across four continents (see list below). Crisis Group raises funds from governments, charitable foundations, companies and individual donors. In 2006, 40% of its funding came from 22 different governments, 32% from 15 philanthropic organisations, and 28% from individuals and private foundations.

[edit] History

The International Crisis Group was founded in 1995 by World Bank Vice-President Mark Malloch Brown, former US diplomat Morton Abramowitz and Fred Cuny, an international disaster relief specialist who disappeared in Chechnya in 1995. Their aim was to create an organisation, wholly independent from any government, to assist governments, intergovernmental bodies and the international community at large in preventing deadly conflict.

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said of Crisis Group: "[T]he International Crisis Group [is] a global voice of conscience, and a genuine force for peace. Your mediation work – and your leadership in early warning and conflict prevention – have been enormously important. So has your intellectual contribution to finding new approaches to long-standing conflicts. Your well researched and carefully argued reports have greatly helped us in understanding the origins and complexities of the conflict in which we become involved – often at short notice" (5 October 2002).