Contributing to Preventive Action

The European Union and its member states recognized the need to act before incidents escalate into violence and to invest in post-conflict reconstruction in the many war-torn countries and regions of the world. As such they are keen to re-focus their foreign policy to emphasize early warning and preventive action. This is a challenge for policy makers in the EU institutions and for planners and academic analysts alike. The European Commission and the European Parliament have therefore initiated, in cooperation with SWP, the Conflict Prevention Network (CPN) which consists of a body of experts from both practitioner and university backgrounds who can be called on to provide advice. The CPN yearbooks are intended to animate this discussion at the forefront of research in this field and to contribute to the EU"s conflict prevention policy. This first yearbook contains contributions from MEP Michel Rocard and Günter Burghardt, Political Director of External Relations in the European Commission, as well as twenty articles from the conflict prevention community investigating instruments and actors, methods and strategies, and presenting some of the lessons learned so far.