The inaugural roundtable meeting of a new IISS programme on Economics and Conflict Resolution was held in Washington DC on 6 May 2009. The meeting was attended by about 60 specialists in development, military officers, defence professionals and officials from governments and international financial institutions.
Alexander Nicoll, IISS Director of Editorial, told the meeting that the impetus for the programme had come from Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank group, in a speech he made in September 2008 to the Institute’s Global Strategic Review conference in Geneva. The theme of his remarks was that addressing fragile states affected by conflict required new ways of thinking about development, and that security and development needed to be brought together in order to ensure peace, stability, and lasting development. He urged the IISS to help strengthen the exchange among security specialists, students of governance, development practitioners, and political leaders. This was a challenge that Dr John Chipman, IISS Director-General and Chief Executive, readily accepted.
The Portland Trust, a UK charitable foundation headed by Sir Ronald Cohen, provided the funding that enabled the programme to be launched. Further events will be held and the IISS plans to publish a series of articles on the issues that arise.
Nicoll told participants in the roundtable meeting: ‘This is not a new field, in fact it’s one in which many of you have been working for a long time, perhaps your whole careers. To many it seems self-evident that you cannot understand how conflicts are caused, prosecuted or resolved without understanding the economic factors that are at play. But I think you’ll agree that that understanding has not always penetrated through into the ways in which governments actually try to address conflict. We certainly do not believe that you can end wars only through the use of economic instruments. But we do believe that it’s beneficial to bring together the best minds on the subject in the hope that we can take some new and practical steps forward.’
Sessions of the meeting, which was held at the National Press Club, were chaired by Dr Mats Berdal, Professor of Security and Development at King’s College London, who is an IISS Senior Consulting Fellow associated with the Economics and Conflict Resolution programme, and a former IISS Director of Studies; Nigel Inkster, IISS Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk; Nader Mousavizadeh, Executive Director of Goldman Sachs International and an IISS Consulting Senior Fellow associated with the programme; and Dr Andrew Parasiliti, Executive Director, IISS-US. The meeting was organised by Kay Floyd and Clara Catherall.