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Distribution of Ceasefires and Follow-​up Arrangements

This week’s featured graphic shows the distribution of ceasefires and follow-up arrangements across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East between 1989 and 2018. For more on the role of ceasefires in intra-state peace processes, read Govinda Clayton, Simon J. A. Mason, Valerie Sticher and Claudia Wiehler’s CSS Analyses in Security Policy here.

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CSS Mediation Perspectives: Settling an Armed Conflict with a Sworn Enemy

Image courtesy of Flickr. President Santos signing the peace agreement with the FARC on 26 September 2016. Less than a week later, the deal was rejected in a plebiscite.

Mediation Perspectives is a regular series of blog contributions by the CSS Mediation Support Team and occasional guest authors.

Intrastate conflicts are notoriously difficult to settle. In many regions of the world, from Afghanistan and Myanmar to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, citizens have grown up during war, only to see their children or even grandchildren born into continued conflict. That is not to say that long-standing enemies never manage to reach a negotiated settlement. In Colombia, after more than half a century of fighting, the government reached a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC) in 2016. But implementation is slow, and the state remains at war with the country’s last guerrilla organization, the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN).

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Countries that Experienced Armed Conflict with Religious Dimensions

This graphic maps out the various countries that experienced armed conflicts with religious dimensions. To find out more about the interlinkages of religion and conflict and how conflict resolution approaches should respond, see Jonas Baumann, Daniel Finnbogason, and Isak Svensson’s CSS Policy Perspective here. For more graphics on conflict resolution, see the CSS’ collection of graphs and charts on the subject here.

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Mediation Perspectives: Artificial Intelligence in Conflict Resolution

Image courtesy of ev/Unsplash

Mediation Perspectives is a periodic blog entry that’s provided by the CSS’ Mediation Support Team and occasional guest authors.

How is artificial intelligence (AI) affecting conflict and its resolution? Peace practitioners and scholars cannot afford to disregard ongoing developments related to AI-based technologies – both from an ethical and a pragmatic perspective. In this blog, I explore AI as an evolving field of information management technologies that is changing both the nature of armed conflict and the way we can respond to it. AI encompasses the use of computer programmes to analyse big amounts of data (such as online communication and transactions) in order to learn from patterns and predict human behaviour on a massive scale. This is potentially useful for managing corporations and shaping markets, but also for gaining political influence, conducting psychological warfare and controlling populations.

Conflict Is Still Africa’s Biggest Challenge in 2020

Image courtesy AMISOM Public Information/Tobin Jones

This article was originally published by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) on 6 January 2020.

Can African leaders repeat the show of unity achieved on continental free trade to silence the guns?

For the African Union, 2020 is supposed to be a landmark year. Its ‘silencing the guns’ initiative is aimed at ‘ending all wars, civil conflicts, gender-based violence, violent conflicts and preventing genocide in the continent by 2020.’ While no one can argue with that laudable goal, the continental body and its member states will have to work miracles to achieve it by the end of this year – especially when the trend seems to be heading in the other direction.