Building an Effective Warning-Response System on Violent Conflict and Instability
Prepared for Conflict Prevention Working Group (CPWG) Roundtable: Bridging the gap
between early warning and early response to violent conflict
Christoph Meyer, King’s College London, 24 April 2015
Key symptoms of Warning-Response Gap:
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warnings are often not timely, but generally late or too late, particularly in countries that are
“off-the-radar” or in situations of “noise” and “deceit”
political and cognitive biases of analysts, and sometimes lack of deep, qualitative country
knowledge, can best explain why errors in warning analysis occur, not lack of data or data
integration
warnings are often communicated in a way that makes them insufficiently intelligible and
relevant to decision-makers, lacking specificity and actionability
knowledgeable warning producers are not believed because of lack of seniority or perceived
political or national bias (see multi-national settings and cross-country collaboration)
bureaucracies do not process warnings and plan policy quickly enough for instruments to be
targeted at quickly evolving dynamics on the ground
decision-makers disbelieve good evidence for problematic (political) reasons, trust sources
that are not necessarily knowledgeable and generally pay attention to warning too late
instruments take too long to deploy and are not sufficiently knowledge-, and time-sensitive.
Key causes of the Warning-Response Gap:
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over-emphasis on improving data collection and devising products, with insufficient attention
spent on whether such data are relevant and how the products will feed into decision-making
simplistic assumptions about how decision-making about conflict prevention in government
works and why warnings can be politically inconvenient/controversial
internal and external incentives against timely warning and acting early among Foreign
Governments (bureaucratic cultures, lack/nature of media coverage and NGO advocacy)
disagreements within and across government over which situation/warning merits attention
10 Steps towards building an effective Warning-Response System:
1. Assess level of interest in specific country/preventing specific kinds of conflicts – key basis
for prioritisation of warnings and resources
2. Assess which response instruments are available at local, regional and foreign-state level to
prevent conflict & create peace in these countries (alone or with partners) and what is their
“lead-time”, including typically decision-making speed.
3. If possible devolve authority to warn and respond to the lowest possible level, but beware of
bindspots and blockages among local and regional actors
4. Assess whether there is scope for shortening response lead-times by shortening either
decision-times or lead times for instruments (by devolving authority downwards, creating
fast-track channels, create new or improve current instruments)
5. Assess who the key decision-makers are for mobilising these instruments: what are their timeresources, information needs, interests, worldviews?
6. Take steps to ringfence bureaucrautic and individual decision-makers time for preventive
rather than reactive action
7. Assess the expertise available in-house/in the region or in collaboration with others for early
warning about specific conflicts in specific countries/regions
8. Train warning producers on common sources of errors and facilitate sharing of information
and critical dialogue on analysis with other warning producers, ideally those with different
disciplinary or national outlooks
9. Build high-level and deep relationships between warning producers and decision-makers to:
a) educate decision-makers about potential and limits of forecasts about violence and
expertise and how to interpret warnings
b) educate warning producers about decision-makers information needs, receptivity,
worldviews, capacities for taking action and how to effectively communicate
warnings
10. Regularly assess when warning and response has been successful or unsuccessful – celebrate
warning and response success!
Based on research conducted for the Foresight project (ERC grant 202022).