Latest Updates

With South Sudan’s peace process still far from secure, failure to renew a UN arms embargo set to expire this weekend could tip the country back into conflict. South Africa, sitting at the UN Security Council, should support its extension.

Every year Crisis Group publishes two additional Watch List editions that complement its annual Watch List for the EU, most recently published in January 2020. These publications identify major crises and conflict situations where the European Union and its member states can generate stronger prospects for peace. The Spring Edition of the Watch List 2020 includes entries on Côte d’Ivoire, Myanmar, northern Syria, Yemen and Venezuela.

At least twelve conflict parties have signed on to UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s appeal for a worldwide cessation of hostilities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a promising start, and despite setbacks in some places, the Security Council should endorse the call wholeheartedly.

This week on War & Peace, Olga Oliker and Hugh Pope talk to Claudia Gazzini, Crisis Group's Libya expert, about the role of foreign powers in the Libyan conflict and the fighting around Tripoli after the UN called for a global ceasefire to mobilise against the pandemic.

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, died this week.  In this piece, originally published in World Politics Review in February, our UN Director assesses his legacy.

The African Union has been taking a larger role of late in addressing questions of peace and security on the continent. Our annual survey identifies eight situations where the organisation’s timely intercession could help resolve, mitigate or ward off conflict.

Tensions are mounting among the permanent five members of the UN Security Council. After a series of rows over the Middle East, and with further disputes on the horizon, the five should convene a September summit as proposed by France and Russia to contain their differences.

The African Union is best positioned to send peacekeepers to the continent’s various war zones. But it often lacks the funds available to the UN’s blue helmets. A compromise over co-financing peacekeeping missions would serve the conflict prevention goals of both institutions.

Crisis Group’s early-warning Watch List identifies up to ten countries and regions at risk of conflict or escalation of violence. In these situations, early action, driven or supported by the EU and its member states, could generate stronger prospects for peace. The Watch List 2020 includes a President’s Note and detailed conflict analyses on Bolivia, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Great Lakes region, Ethiopia, the U.S.-Iranian impasse, ISIS returnees, Libya, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and Ukraine.

This week on War & Peace, Olga Oliker and Hugh Pope talk to Giuseppe Famà and Lisa Musiol, Crisis Group's EU experts, about the new threats to peace and security in the world and the role of the newly appointed Josep Borrell in helping member states rise to the challenge.