Coping with Crisis
The Coping with Crisis Program announces the launch of the Working Paper Series. For more information please click here.
Coping with Crisis, Conflict, and Change: The United Nations and evolving capacities for managing global crises (‘Coping with Crisis’) is a multi-year research and policy-facilitation program on emerging human and international security challenges and institutional response capacities. The program takes as its starting point the progress made – and opportunities missed – in the reform initiative that began with the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, which was elaborated through the Secretary-General’s own proposals for change in his report, In Larger Freedom, and culminated in the outcome of the 2005 World Summit. This builds on prior IPI (formerly International Peace Academy) activities related to UN Reform.
Coping with Crisis seeks to inform and assist decisionmakers in the UN, multilateral organizations, member state capitals, and civil society by the following:
- Conducting research and analysis on the dynamics and interlinkages of key challenges to human and international security;
- Analyzing gaps in prevention and response capacities, with an emphasis on the UN and other international institutions;
- Developing ideas for critical reform initiatives and facilitating policy initiatives within and across institutions.
The program’s outputs will be a combination of new publications, public events, researcher-practitioner dialogues, ‘real-time’ support to policy processes, and off-the-record meetings.
Coping with Crisis will build on a solid foundation of work that IPA has undertaken in recent years on conflict prevention, economic agendas in civil wars, peace implementation, statebuilding, and the security-development nexus. IPA will ensure a dynamic link between the Coping with Crisis agenda and other areas of IPA’s work, such as our Africa, Middle East, Asia, and Statebuilding Programs.
The first two years of the program are organized in three sets of activities:
- Mapping Challenges and Response Capacity – through a combination of papers and meetings involving leading experts and policymakers in the UN and key donor states;
- Strengthening UN Capacity for Conflict Management and Crisis Response – through work on UN headquarters and field capacities as well as on specific core issues;
- Strengthening UN Partnerships and Institutional Linkages – through research, policy facilitation, and partnerships with regional organizations and other actors relevant to these challenges.
Program Support
Coping with Crisis benefits from the generous support of the Governments of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.