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2. Looking Ahead: Trends and Solutions for 2022
- Author:
- Sarah Cliffe
- Publication Date:
- 01-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- It would be good to write a very optimistic piece at the dawn of 2022—and indeed we do try to focus in this piece not just on trends but on solutions. Yet, overall, it is impossible to avoid “telling it as it is”—internationally and for multilateral action, the year has not had an auspicious start. Omicron is sweeping through communities worldwide, with many hospital systems warning of the risk of being overwhelmed. The political instability of which we and many others have long warned, driven by economic and governance links, is coming to pass. Kazakhstan is the most recent example, but this also covers the quintupling of coups in Africa in 2021, and heightened polarization in many Western, Asian, and Latin American electoral processes.
- Topic:
- Governance, Multilateralism, Humanitarian Crisis, Instability, and Peacebuilding
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Kazakhstan, Latin America, and West Asia
3. Blowback from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
- Author:
- Sarah Cliffe, Leah Zamore, and James Traub
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- While the Ukrainian army and people continue to resist, the costs of Russia's invasion in human terms are mounting. As of March 15, the United Nations (UN) had verified 1,900 civilian casualties, including 726 deaths (fifty of them children), as Russia intensifies its assault on civilian targets, seizes the Zaporizhzhia nuclear site, lays siege to Mariupol which is without food, energy, or water in freezing temperatures, continues to threaten Kyiv, begins a push on Odesa and assaults Kharkiv with heavy and indiscriminate shelling.
- Topic:
- Security, War Crimes, Armed Conflict, and Russia-Ukraine War
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Ukraine
4. Good Peacebuilding Financing: Recommendations for Revitalizing Commitments
- Author:
- Sarah Cliffe, Paige Arthur, and Betty N. Wainaina
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- At a moment of intense global pressure due to the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, support for prevention and peacebuilding remains as vital as ever. This brief offers action-oriented recommendations to advance new and more inclusive approaches to peacebuilding financing on the eve of the UN High-level Meeting on Peacebuilding Financing.
- Topic:
- Conflict Prevention, United Nations, Finance, and Peacebuilding
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
5. Recent UN Votes on Ukraine: What Needs to be Done to Maintain International Unity (Part I)
- Author:
- Sarah Cliffe, Faiza Shaheen, Leah Zamore, Karina Gerlach, and Nendirmwa Noel
- Publication Date:
- 04-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- Horrific images of the loss of life and humanitarian suffering in Ukraine continue to come to light, including significant evidence of large-scale human rights abuses. As the war in Ukraine looks likely to enter a period of rearming, redeployment and renewed attacks in the East, maintaining international pressure for a negotiated peace agreement that maintains territorial integrity and upholds international law will be crucial.
- Topic:
- International Law, Multilateralism, Humanitarian Crisis, and Russia-Ukraine War
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Ukraine
6. Gulf States and Peacebuilding: Key Characteristics, Dynamics, and Opportunities
- Author:
- Sultan Barakat
- Publication Date:
- 04-2022
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- While the Gulf States have long been generous providers of foreign aid, it is only in recent years that they have publicly committed to playing a major role as peacebuilders. This paper analyzes the current role and prospects of the Gulf States as actors in the field of peacebuilding.
- Topic:
- Conflict Prevention, Foreign Aid, Gulf Cooperation Council, and Peacebuilding
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Gulf Nations
7. Mental Health and Psychosocial Support to Sustain Peace: Four Areas to Explore for Improving Practice
- Author:
- Paige Arthur and Céline Monnier
- Publication Date:
- 04-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- After experimenting with months of lockdown and imposed social distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, people everywhere now have a more immediate understanding of how prolonged crisis can create challenges for both individuals’ mental health as well as maintaining the social fabric of communities. However, social fragmentation and mental distress created by adverse environments are not new, nor are they limited to COVID-19. Gross social injustices or armed conflicts have provoked wide-spread mental suffering, broken down social norms, and undermined social cohesion since time immemorial. Generations grow up in the midst of violence, normalizing it, or losing capacity to trust others or their institutions. Hence, neglecting the psychosocial impacts of social injustices and violence on the individual and society undermines other efforts to build peaceful societies. Nevertheless, the use of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) approaches to build peace or prevent violent conflict remains anecdotal and ad hoc. This paper summarizes the existing arguments for why MHPSS should be more systematically used to sustain peace, and offers four opportunities to use MHPSS approaches in sustaining peace efforts at the UN: Support national capacities; Integrate MHPSS as a normal part of sustaining peace strategies; Increase expertise on MHPSS as part of sustaining peace; Creative partnerships to support an integrated approach.
- Topic:
- Mental Health, Peace, COVID-19, and Health Crisis
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
8. Recognizing Communities: Local Level Responses to the Pathfinders Grand Challenges
- Author:
- Tara Moayed
- Publication Date:
- 02-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- Communities are not homogenous. Within a single community, there are often divisions along class, ethnic, and gender lines. Further, not all communities are the same. Dynamics from one community to the next can widely differ, including power relations, land allocations, gender dynamics, mobility, and the level of government influence. James Scott, in Seeing Like A State, showed how much of the vocabulary of state administration carries with it the mechanisms to disempower local authority and invest it in state agents who can then wield state authority. Rebalancing this relationship requires finding ways to overcome the monopolies over information, decision-making, and convening power that state agents have, particularly in systems that emerged from an extractive colonial context. Ignoring these dynamics when designing a CDD project will most likely result in elite capture, and possibly lead to local conflict, increased inequality, and erode trust between citizens and the state. This research paper argues the importance of the role of the community within the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies discussion over inequality. The paper’s case studies are based largely on government-led community-driven development (CDD) programs that aim to ensure recognition of the complicated dynamics within the community itself. Unless the heterogeneity of communities is considered and fostered through an inclusive design and facilitation process, no program or project can hope to impact inclusion, empowerment, and the citizen-state relationship. A deep understanding of community dynamics and good facilitation are prerequisites for any CDD model to have a positive social impact.
- Topic:
- Citizenship, State, Community, Society, and Inclusion
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
9. Inequality, Lockdown, and COVID-19: Unequal Societies Struggle to Contain the Virus
- Author:
- Paul von Chamier
- Publication Date:
- 04-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- There is nothing equal about COVID-19. It is now well established that poor and underprivileged social groups have absorbed most of the pandemic’s negative impact. However, the connection between COVID-19 and inequality might run even deeper. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, one additional point of the Gini coefficient correlated with a 1.34 percentage point higher rate of weekly new infections across countries. This difference in infection rates compounds like interest every week. This means that after twenty-one weeks of the pandemic, just one additional Gini å correlates with an approximately 1/3 higher overall number of cases in a country. More equal countries might enjoy an “equality dividend” that is associated with more shock resilience during the ongoing crisis. This new research from CIC sought to understand if pre-existing systemic inequities could be linked to higher COVID-19 infection rates, examining infection rates in 70 countries from mid-March 2020 through early August 2020, or what is widely seen as the first 21 weeks of the pandemic. It also studied these nations’ levels of inequality and other potential predictive variables: government efficiency (a measure indicating quality of public services and civil service capability), urban population share, share of the population over the age of 65, lockdown measures (calculated by stringency), and geographic mobility (a population’s physical movements as measured by Google’s COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports). The study tracked inequality by using the “Gini Coefficient,” a commonly used metric for measuring income inequality within nations--or, specifically, how far a country’s wealth or income distribution deviates from a completely equal distribution. Under this calculation, the higher the coefficient, the greater the income inequality within that country.
- Topic:
- Inequality, Resilience, COVID-19, Health Crisis, and Society
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
10. Introducing the Mind-the-Gap Index: A tool to understand urban spatial inequality
- Author:
- Jeni Klugman and Matthew Moore
- Publication Date:
- 05-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation
- Abstract:
- Where people live exerts a strong influence on multiple aspects of their well-being, including their access to economic opportunities, education, health and other services and to their security, as well as other goals envisioned in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In a world with high and growing levels of urbanization, policy makers are increasingly aware that the future of inequality depends largely on what happens in cities. There is also concern that rising spatial inequality can lead to social unrest, rioting, increased crime, and erode trust among separated societal groups. The World Bank estimates that half of the area that will be urbanized by 2050 has not yet been built, which implies major opportunities for the policies and decisions affecting cities to shape the world we live in. First, this paper synthesizes several research papers regarding what we already know–drawing on recent research from UNDESA and others–to outline the extent of spatial disparities, the ways that spatial inequality shapes today’s cities, and the key factors driving spatial disparities. Additionally, the paper introduces a new index designed to capture key dimensions of spatial inequality, along with analysis of results from three pilot applications in Addis Ababa, Jakarta, and Mexico City which highlights the importance of granular and up-to-date data, as well as the accumulating nature of disadvantage in poor neighborhoods.
- Topic:
- Inequality, Sustainable Development Goals, and Urban
- Political Geography:
- Indonesia, Ethiopia, and Mexico
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