Crisis Group's Call for Support

Dear Crisis Group Supporters,

2009 has been another eventful year in international relations, and on behalf of all of us at Crisis Group, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for joining in our efforts to prevent deadly conflict. Whether by using our reports, engaging us in policy debates, or providing us with much needed financial support, you play a critical role in assisting our efforts in the pursuit of peace and security.

It has been almost six months since I took on the position of Crisis Group’s President, and I am constantly impressed with the calibre of all associated with the organisation—our Board members and staff, our Council members and supporters as well as Crisis Group’s interlocutors in the field and advocacy capitals.

Contributions up to a total of $500,000 made to Crisis Group before the end of the year will be doubled. Click here to help us meet the Matching Challenge.

I write today to provide you with a very brief update on some of this year’s key issues, a look towards 2010 and to let you know of an important year-end Matching Challenge.

We have continued to produce timely hard-hitting reports on a wide range of situations all over the world, often putting in the public domain ideas and recommendations that diplomats and political actors welcome privately and eventually incorporate into their policy orientations. Even when we do not succeed in preventing altogether recourse to unlawful deadly force in conflict, our engagement, in Sri Lanka for example, clearly serves to mitigate the devastation.

We cover some 60 conflicts, some heavily mediatised, others that would be almost invisible among opinion makers but for our intervention. We increasingly use podcasts, videos, blogs and other interactive features online—all of which have helped Crisis Group improve its efficacy and expand its reach even further.

Crisis Group will continue to build on our achievements in 2010 as the authoritative source of field-based insights, analyses and recommendations and as a prime reference for international and domestic policymakers on conflict resolution. We will remain engaged in debates involving many actors in complex situations, such as Afghanistan/Pakistan, the Middle East and Sudan, while continuing to draw attention to preventive opportunities in situations that, if neglected, could enflame entire2 0countries and regions. Our current work on Guinea is a good example of our efforts to intervene early in less known but potentially deadly emerging conflicts.

We look forward to your continued support of our efforts. Maintaining a diverse funding base is critical to preserving Crisis Group's political independence and credibility, and it is with this in mind that we are pleased to announce a year-end Matching Challenge. Thanks to the generous initiative of Crisis Group Board member, Frank Giustra, contributions up to a total of $500,000 made to Crisis Group before the end of the year will be doubled. We hope that you will help us meet this Challenge as we, collectively, continue to rise to the challenge of the advancement of international peace and security.

Once again, thank you so much for your involvement with Crisis Group. I wish you and your family the very best in this holiday season and for the New Year.

Yours sincerely,

Louise Arbour
President

following up

Pristina/Brussels, 15 October 2009: Local elections on 15 November provide a key opportunity for Kosovo Serbs to choose their own representatives and push forward on decentralisation, if they do not heed Belgrade’s calls to boycott.
Kosovo: Štrpce, a Model Serb Enclave?,* the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, focuses on the Štrpce municipality, one of southern Kosovo’s largest Serb enclaves, to demonstrate how Serb communities can protect their interests within Kosovo’s constitutional order. In Štrpce good interethnic relations have survived the war, and the Brezovica ski resort and vacation areas offer real economic potential.
But like elsewhere in the country, local Serbs’ mistrust of the government has grown since Kosovo’s declaration of independence. Belgrade has fuelled the resentment by establishing a parallel municipal regime since May 2008. The Kosovo government on its side has so far refused to grant Štrpce the enhanced municipal competencies envisaged for Serb-majority areas by the Ahtissari plan. Štrpce now risks falling victim to the status dispute between Belgrade and Pristina, if local elections on 15 November do not give it a legitimate government.
“Štrpce offers Kosovo’s best hope of establishing a prosperous Serb-majority municipality”, says Marko Prelec, Crisis Group’s Balkans Project Director. “Belgrade, Pristina and the international community should encourage voting and thereafter equip the municipal government with the expanded powers and resources it needs.”
Štrpce’s economic prospects and good Serb-Albanian relations are endangered by the situation prevailing since 2008. The municipality has been governed by two competing Serb-led authorities: an official government appointed in the face of local opposition and a parallel regime elected in defiance of Kosovo law and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244. Even though local Serbs are instructed by Belgrade to cooperate with the parallel municipal government, it provides few benefits and is increasingly irrelevant to their daily lives. Serbia lacks the ability to provide meaningful government services in southern enclaves such as Štrpce.
Serbia’s government should stop supporting the parallel institutions, and encourage local Serbs to vote on 15 November. International actors and Pristina should explain the concrete advantages of voting, reassuring Serbs that their ties to Belgrade will not be imperilled. However, if Serbs boycott the vote, after consultation with Serb community leaders, executive appointments will be needed to establish a credible Serb-led government. The new municipal government will face important challenges such as privatising the lucrative Brezovica ski resort, the cornerstone for regional economic development, and regulating extensive illegal construction on prime national park land. It will be able to make the parallel government irrelevant only if 20it is able to solve these problems.
“Overcoming Serb distrust can only be done on the basis of tangible benefits in everyday life: responsible locally-led government, municipal services and economic growth”, says Sabine Freizer, Crisis Group’s Europe Program Director. “It is hard to see how Serb integration can work anywhere, if it cannot work there.”

free will experiments

Champions of free will, take heart. A landmark 1980s experiment that purported to show free will doesn't exist is being challenged.

In 1983, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet asked volunteers wearing scalp electrodes to flex a finger or wrist. When they did, the movements were preceded by a dip in the signals being recorded, called the "readiness potential". Libet interpreted this RP as the brain preparing for movement.

Crucially, the RP came a few tenths of a second before the volunteers said they had decided to move. Libet concluded that unconscious neural processes determine our actions before we are ever aware of making a decision.

Since then, others have quoted the experiment as evidence that free will is an illusion – a conclusion that was always controversial, particularly as there is no proof the RP represents a decision to move.

Sound decisions

Long sceptical of Libet's interpretation, Jeff Miller and Judy Trevena of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, attempted to tease apart what prompts the RP using a similar experiment, with a key twist.

They also used scalp electrodes, but instead of letting their volunteers decide when to move, Miller and Trevena asked them to wait for an audio tone before deciding whether to tap a key. If Libet's interpretation were correct, Miller reasoned, the RP should be greater after the tone when a person chose to tap the key.

While there was an RP before volunteers made their decision to move, the signal was the same whether or not they elected to tap. Miller concludes that the RP may merely be a sign that the brain is paying attention and does not indicate that a decision has been made.

Miller and Trevena also failed to find evidence of subconscious decision-making in a second experiment. This time they asked volunteers to press a key after the tone, but to decide on the spot whether to use their left or right hand. As movement in the right limbs is related to the brain signals in the left hemisphere and vice versa, they reasoned that if an unconscious process is driving this decision, where it occurs in the brain should depend on which hand is chosen. But they found no such correlation.

[the rest of this interesting piece, on the NewScientist.com]