The field of conflict early warning seeks to forecast the outbreak of

armed conflict War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

, or, at minimum, to detect the early escalation of violence, with the objective of preventing the outbreak or the further escalation of violence in order to save lives. Initial conceptions of conflict early warning materialized in the 1970s and 1980s but the field really emerged on the international policy agenda after the end of the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches have been developed for conflict forecasting and conflict monitoring. Qualitative methodologies typically draw on local area experts with extensive knowledge on one country or region. This is the approach taken by the

International Crisis Group The International Crisis Group (ICG; also known as the Crisis Group) is a global non-profit, non-governmental organisation founded in 1995. It is a think tank, used by policymakers and academics, conducting research and analysis on global crises. ...

, for example. In contrast, quantitative methodologies quantify conflict trends and use mathematical techniques to forecast future trends or "events of interest" (EOIs) such as the onset of conflicts. For example, the Integrated Conflict Early Warning System (ICEWS) project at the

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

(DARPA) takes this approach. Some approaches to conflict early warning combine both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, such as

Swisspeace swisspeace - the Swiss Peace Foundation is a practice and research institute located in Basel, Switzerland promoting effective peacebuilding. Partnerships with local and international actors form the basis of its work. Together with its partner o ...

's formerly operational project called FAST.

Origins

The unanticipated events of the

Yom Kippur War The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was fought from 6 to 25 October 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states led by Egypt and S ...

in 1973 and that of the

Falklands War The Falklands War () was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and Falkland Islands Dependenci ...

in 1982 provoked a series of debates over the lack of early warning. The incident over the Falklands had taken the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

completely by surprise and it is said "no map of the islands was available in the Secretariat when the invasion began". The initial drivers, however, were humanitarian agencies "driven by the need for accurate and timely predictions of refugee flows to enable effective contingency planning". After the end of the Cold War, political scientists at leading academic institutions began modifying old Cold War models of conflict to understand the onset of new wars. The horrors of the 1994

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Gre ...

also spurred increased interest in operational conflict early warning systems. The FAST project of Swisspeace and the Forum on Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER) were responses to the

genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...

Origins

See also

References

Further reading