After a period of decline, violent conflict has been increasing over the last decade. Today’s conflicts are proving increasingly difficult to resolve due to the proliferation of actors and of forms of violence – such as criminal, local and unconventional warfare – creating complex systems of confrontation resistant to traditional conflict management techniques. The UN needs a strong understanding of these multi-dimensional conflict systems and also of how its tools for addressing violence can be adapted to these contexts to manage, resolve and – centrally – prevent this violence and conflict.
UNU-CPR aims to help the UN and its partners develop and implement
effective, evidence-based policies to prevent violent conflict around the world. Our goal is to combine evidence and analysis to influence policy discussions in New York and other policy centres and – equally or even more importantly – inform prevention and conflict resolution initiatives in the field.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development published States of Fragility 2018 on 17 July 2018. The report includes short pieces on trends in fragility by external authors, including this contribution by the Centre for Policy Research's Richard Gowan.