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Elizabeth P. Buensuceso

The ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation and Its Role in Preventing Crises

AIPR is still in its formative stage. In the coming years, it has the potential to play a significant role in promoting knowledge sharing and policy recommendations to help foster peace and reconciliation and the prevention of crises in ASEAN.

Rashid Alimov

The Role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Counteracting Threats to Peace and Security

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was established as a multilateral association to ensure security and maintain stability across the vast Eurasian region, join forces to counteract emerging challenges and threats, and enhance trade, as well as cultural and humanitarian cooperation.

Force Commander Lund. Cyprus, April 2015. © UNFICYP
Kristin Lund and Laura Mitchell

Preventing Crisis and Conflict: Women's Role in Ongoing Peace Processes

Women play a variety of roles in complex, multitrack peace processes. They can sit at the formal negotiating table, on a technical committee or subcommission, or they can be outside the talks engaged as civil society actors in following developments. All of these roles are critical.

Vinod Saighal

The Ingredients of Prevention

The present great power policies are not conducive to peace in the world. A continuance of these policies threatens to dismantle the existing global order and plunge the world into deepening distress—for human beings as well as for the health of the planet.

Farid Zarif

Advancing the Debate on a Culture of Conflict Prevention

Prompt political interventions give time for actors in society to come to terms with change and think differently about old problems. For example, during the first half of 2016, UNMIL mobilized to diffuse potential conflict between Liberian Christian and Muslim communities which emerged from the country's constitutional review process promoting a constitutional amendment defining Liberia as a Christian nation.

Maher Nasser

Foreword

With this issue of the Ãå±±½ûµØChronicle, we hope to help inform the discussion on the culture of prevention, and contribute to the objective of strengthening and sustaining peace and security, human rights, the rule of law, and development, for current and future generations.

A student protest demanding increased dialogue in decision-making processes at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, 2016. © CLADE Archives 
Camilla Croso

Empowering Civil Society in Latin America to Promote Equality and Prevent Conflict

Data shows that among the 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world, 14 are in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).The region also has very high rates of violence against the LGBTQ community, although it has some of the most progressive laws for LGBTQ equality and protection.

Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the Security Council ministerial-level open debate on conflict prevention and sustaining peace.  10 January 2017, United Nations, New York. ©Ãå±±½ûµØPhoto/Rick Bajornas
António Guterres

Meeting the Prevention Challenge

Preventing human suffering and ensuring progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are primarily the responsibility of Member States. But the United Nations has a vital supporting role. We need to become much better at it, building trust with Member States and all stakeholders. I see us doing this in four ways: a surge in preventive diplomacy; bold efforts to implement the Agenda 2030 and Sustaining Peace; strengthened partnerships; and comprehensive reforms to overcome fragmentation and consolidate our capacities to deliver.

A9 highway in Kilinochchi District, Sri Lanka. © Indi Samarajiva
Nadhiya Najab, Anupama Ranawana and Kulasabanathan Romeshun

The Gates of Paradise are Open…but Who Benefits? Experiences from Post-War Sri Lanka

This article is written in response to the theme of eradicating poverty as a means of conflict prevention. By asking whether the eradication of poverty prevents conflict, we reflect upon its complexity and interdependence with other aspects of modern day life. To focus solely on poverty reduction as a means of conflict prevention is somewhat reductive.

Karan Jerath

Our Oceans, Our Lives

Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life Below Water, does not end with the oceans, but instead, starts with the oceans. By protecting our oceans, we are able to work towards living healthier more sustainable lives with fewer contaminants in our food, harnessing natural energy resources such as wind and tidal energy, and reducing the effects of climate change.

Yusup Kamalov, standing in what 40 years ago was a deep seaport, heads the Union for the Defense of the Aral Sea, a local non-governmental organization based in Nukus.  ©Eric Hilger.
Beatrice Grabish

Dry Tears of the Aral

The Aral Sea is only the epicentre of the tragedy, as Central Asians commonly refer to this legacy of environmental misuse; the damage has also consumed thousands of surrounding square kilometers. Called the most staggering disaster of the twentieth century by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Aral Sea basin intersects all five Central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - which lie in a 690,000-square-kilometer landlocked zone.

Courtesy Edward Norton
Edward Norton

We Must Protect the Bounty and Beauty of the Sea

As the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity, I have travelled the world speaking to people about the defining challenge of our generation: bringing the way we live into a sustainable interaction with our planet.

Isabella Lövin

Climate Change Poses a Threat to Our Oceans

Oceans, however, happen to be borderless and are also unevenly distributed across the planet. We cannot protect our share of the ocean with walls; instead, we must cooperate in a spirit of solidarity if we are to succeed in preserving and protecting the water that we have at our joint disposal. We must work together with our closest neighbours and cooperate at a global level, between countries.

Schooling French grunts, surrounding pillar coral in the Bloody Bay Marine Park on Little Cayman. ©Diana Schmitt
Carrie Manfrino

Can We Save Coral Reefs?

The collapse of coral reefs has far-reaching implications for the entire ocean, for people and, indeed, for the planet. Going forward, the focus must be on how to conserve what is left, ideally taking bold, decisive steps to reverse the unthinkable trajectory.

A ship recycling yard in Bangladesh, November 2016. © International Maritime Organization
Kitack Lim

The Role of the International Maritime Organization in Preventing the Pollution of the World's Oceans from Ships and Shipping

Shipping is a key user of the oceans, delivering more than 80 per cent of world trade, taking ferry passengers to their destinations and carrying millions of tourists on cruises. Annually, more than 50,000 seagoing ships carry between them more than 10 billion tons of vital and desired cargoes, including commodities, fuel, raw materials and consumer goods.