How to analyze conflicts and their root causes in order to build a more secure world

The Broker explores the relationship between security and development from the perspective of local, regional and global realities. Integrated strategies are needed to solve the conflicts of the 21st century and build a more secure world.  

The world today isn’t a safe place.

The end of the Cold War, two decades ago, didn’t bring the peace dividend many hoped for. Instead, a different breed of violent conflict – partly the result of increased transnational connections in a globalized world – has replaced the ‘old wars’. Local and global insecurity caused by ‘state fragility’ have become a major concern in international politics. The threat and perception of terrorism, and the response to both, have further exacerbated relationships within and between countries and regions. 

Conflict and insecurity have a deep impact on the lives of those who live through it, whether citizens and soldiers, refugees and revolutionaries, students, parents or peace builders. Insecurity also impacts societies as a whole. It impedes development and stalls post-conflict reconstruction, often across wider regions. 

The Broker's aim on this human security theme page is to enrich the analyses of the relationship between security and development – in both theory and policy practice, and from the perspective of local, national, regional and global realities. Gaining a better understanding of this relationship and offering new perspectives on it are sorely needed. To improve political and policy approaches to the complex conflicts of the 21st century, and to advance human well-being in conflict-ridden places. 

The Broker’s raison d’être is to contribute to evidence-based policy making. We do so by bringing together different communities – academics, policy makers and professionals – in one virtual place. We believe that urgent policy issues pertaining to human security can greatly benefit from dialogue and discussion between these communities.

One issue that deserves close examination is the fact that ‘security’ is increasingly considered a central issue of development or aid policy. Recent development policies and priorities as formulated by governments in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, and many other countries testify to this. This is encouraging in as far as this development is a sign of more coherent and integrated policy making. However, it needs critical monitoring too. The marriage between security and development policies is inevitably tied up with all sorts of political interests. An important reference point in this discussion is the latest World Development Report published in April 2011, Conflict, Security and Development, which brings the issue of security back to the heart of global development efforts.

A second priority issue concerns fragile or failed states. An estimated 1.5 billion people live in situations of fragility, an issue that has featured on national and multilateral policy agendas for quite some time now. However, successes in this notoriously complex and contested policy area are few. This theme page will provide insights into the latest discussions on state fragility and state building, and introduce innovative approaches, such as complexity thinking, to stir the debate and help progress towards policies that work.

Third, shifting global powers and emerging, or emerged, states are bound to impact the international response to conflict and war. The current uprisings in the Middle East are a clear example. But exactly what the long-term impact is, and how it will affect people’s realities and experiences of security and insecurity, can only be guessed. This theme page will therefore also publish analyses of current conflicts and the international response to them from a typical Broker perspective: multidisciplinary analyses, with a focus on what these developments mean for the poor, for inequality, and for regional and global relationships.