Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 11/2012

Mitigating the Consequences of Violent Conflict: What Works and What Does Not?

Robert Muggah, Birger Heldt

November 2012

International Peace Institute

Abstract

The landscape of contemporary organized violence is diffuse and dynamic. While 525,000 persons are killed by intentional violence each year, only about 10 percent die from combat-related causes in war. The vast majority of the global burden occurs not in countries affected by armed conflict but in those that are ostensibly peaceful. What are the challenges posed by organized violence in contemporary conflict? And what does this mean for the role of UN peacekeepers and special envoys? These were the questions addressed by the second International Expert Forum hosted by IPI in collaboration with the Folke Bernadotte Academy, the SecDev Group, and the Social Science Research Council.