ACCORD’s Knowledge Production Department (KPD) recently hosted an internal staff seminar with Dr William Tsuma, the Programme Manager of Action Learning from the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) in The Hague. Dr Tsuma gave a talk on preventive action, focusing on bridging the gap between early warning and response.
In his presentation to staff from ACCORD’s Interventions and Knowledge Production Department on 2 March 2011, Dr Tsuma explored the concepts and practices of preventive action of determine which strategies may have the greatest potential for averting outbreaks of violence. The presentation was followed by an animated discussion during which ACCORD staff presented their own experiences and examples of recent and ongoing attempts to prevent violent conflict in Africa.
Among the many inputs during the discussion, it was argued that effective preventive action relies on well-developed systems of early warning, explicitly provides for resource pooling and burden sharing among a range of diverse actors and agencies, aims at redressing underlying structural problems as well as the proximate causes of conflict, and applies diplomatic and military leverage appropriate to the problem at hand.
The seminar provided ACCORD staff with an in-depth analysis on preventive action to reduce the risk of violent conflict. It concluded that, where sufficient political, economic, and military resources are properly mobilised for a task, conflict prevention can be successful.
