International Crisis Group (ICG)

The International Crisis Group is now generally recognised as the world’s leading independent, non-partisan, source of analysis and advice to governments, and intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations, European Union and World Bank, on the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict. Crisis Group was founded in 1995 as an international non-governmental organisation on the initiative of a group of well known transatlantic figures who despaired at the international community’s failure to anticipate and respond effectively to the tragedies in the early 1990s of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. They were led by Morton Abramowitz (former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Thailand, then President of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace), Mark Malloch Brown (later head of the UNDP, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN and UK Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN), and its first Chairman, Senator George Mitchell. The idea was to create a new organisation – unlike any other – with a highly professional staff acting as the world’s eyes and ears for impending conflicts, and with a highly influential board that could mobilise effective action from the world’s policy-makers.

From small beginnings – a two-person office in London, and a tiny field staff in the Balkans and West Africa – Crisis Group has grown very rapidly in the last few years. It currently employs worldwide some 130 full-time staff, representing between them 48 nationalities and speaking 52 different languages, plus at any given time around 20 consultants and 35 interns. They are located on the ground in eleven regional offices and seventeen other locations covering between them over 60 countries or situations of actual or potential conflict; in four advocacy offices, in Brussels (the global headquarters), Washington, New York and London; and as liaison presences in Moscow and Beijing. Crisis Group publishes annually around 90 reports and briefing papers, as well as the CrisisWatch bulletin assessing every month the current state of play in some 70 countries or areas of actual or potential conflict.

What distinguishes Crisis Group from other organisations working on conflict analysis, prevention or resolution is a unique combination of field-based analysis, sharp-edged policy prescription, and high-level advocacy, with key roles being played – very unusually for an NGO – by a senior management team highly experienced in government and by a highly active Board of Trustees containing many senior statesmen and women used to making things happen. Crisis Group’s President and CEO has been, since January 2000, Gareth Evans, former Foreign Minister of Australia (1988-96) and a member of many international panels and commissions.

Crisis Group’s reports, and the advocacy associated with them, have had a very significant direct impact on conflict prevention and resolution in such areas as the Balkans and West, Central and Horn of Africa, and an ever-growing influence elsewhere, particularly in the Middle East and throughout Asia, as policymakers wrestle with how to handle Islamist terrorism, nuclear proliferation, local conflict and the multiple problems associated with failed, failing and fragile states worldwide. The group is generally seen as playing a major role in six main ways:

• ● ringing early warning alarm bells, in the monthly CrisisWatch bulletin, and in specific ‘crisis alerts’, eg in Ethiopia-Eritrea, Darfur, Somalia and Pakistan;
  ● contributing, on both process and substance, behind the scenes support and advice to critical peace negotiations, eg in Sudan, Burundi, Northern Uganda, Aceh, Nepal and Kenya;
  ● producing highly detailed analysis and advice on specific policy issues in scores of conflict or potential conflict situations around the world, helping policymakers in the UN Security Council, regional organisations, donor countries and others with major influence, and in the countries at risk themselves, do better in preventing, managing and resolving conflict, and in rebuilding after it: recent examples include Cote d’Ivoire, the DRC, Haiti, Afghanistan and Southern Thailand;
  ● providing detailed information unobtainable elsewhere on developments regarding conflict, mass violence and terrorism of particular utility to policymakers, eg on the Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and Islamic Courts in Somalia.
  ● offering new strategic thinking on some of the world’s most intractable conflicts and crises, challenging or refining prevailing wisdom, eg on the Iran nuclear issue, the role of Islamism worldwide, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the way forward in Kosovo, Iraq and the Western Sahara; and
  ● strongly supporting a rules-based, rather than force-based, international order, in particular significantly influencing UN resolutions and institutional structures in relation to the new international norm of the ‘responsibility to protect’.

Crisis Group’s international headquarters are in Brussels, with major advocacy offices in Washington DC (where it is based as a legal entity) and New York, a smaller one in London, and liaison presences in Moscow and Beijing. The organisation currently has regional offices or local field representation in Abuja, Baku, Bangkok, Beirut, Bishkek, Bogotá, Cairo, Colombo, Dakar, Damascus, Dili, Dushanbe, Islamabad, Istanbul, Jakarta, Jerusalem, Kabul, Kathmandu, Kinshasa, Nairobi, Ouagadougou, Port-au-Prince, Pretoria, Pristina, Sarajevo, Seoul, Tbilisi and Tehran, with analysts working in over 60 crisis-affected countries and territories across four continents. In Africa, these include Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe; in Asia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kashmir, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar/Burma, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan Strait, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; in Europe, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Georgia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Russia (North Caucasus), Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine; in the Middle East, the whole region from North Africa to Iran; and in Latin America, Colombia, the rest of the Andean region, Guatemala and Haiti.

Crisis Group’s annual budget is now just over $16 million. In 2007, it raised funds from 21 governments (roughly 40 per cent), 13 major charitable foundations (30 per cent), and a range of individual and corporate donors (30 per cent), most in the welcome form of unrestricted core funding (73 per cent) rather than being earmarked for specific programs (27 per cent).

Crisis Group : At a Glance

• ● Founded: 1995
  ● Annual budget (2008): US$ 16 million
  ● Number of staff worldwide: some 130 full-time, from 49 nationalities with 52 languages
  ● Number of conflict and potential conflict situations covered: 65
  ● Number of reports and briefings published annually: around 90, plus monthly CrisisWatch
  ● Number of reports and briefings published since 1995: over 845, plus 63 issues of CrisisWatch
  ● Number of targeted recipients of reports: over 26,000
  ● Number of people subscribing through website to receive reports: over 100,000
  ● Number of annual website visits: over 2.1 million
  ● Number of annual media mentions worldwide: over 13,000
  ● Number of opinion pieces published annually: over 200
  ● President and CEO: Gareth Evans, former Australian Foreign Minister (since January 2000)