Gareth Evans Ex-Foreign Minister Trying to Bring Conflict Prevention to Center Stage by John Shaw Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister and now the president of the International Crisis Group, has spent much of his professional career trying to prevent armed conflicts from destroying the lives of innocent people. Conflict prevention is an important challenge even if it doesnít garner many headlines, Evans said in an interview at the ICGís Washington office. He believes that the political difficulty surrounding conflict prevention is based on a simple fact: Successful preventive efforts are rarely noticed and seldom appreciated. But he added that the ICG, his highly regarded non-governmental organization that is based in Brussels, Belgium, is determined to do all it can to prevent bloody conflicts from destroying nations and shattering lives. ìWeíre trying to bring conflict prevention and containment to center stage and to get people focused on doing it. Weíre not doing the sexy stuff. Weíre not doing conflict resolution. Weíre trying to do things before the blood is running in the streets , before the amputated kids show up on CNN,î he said. A prolific writer, creative thinker and skillful political operator, Evans assumed the presidency of the ICG in January 2000 after a distinguished career in Australian politics and diplomacy. Informal, energetic and intense, Evans, 57, said his job at the ICG is a natural extension of his past work. ìThe challenge and fascination of this job is to give content and meaning to conflict prevention. What you save in terms of lives, what you save in terms of misery, what you save in terms of money, is truly remarkable,î he said. The ICG is a private, multinational organization committed to strengthening the capacity of the international community to anticipate, understand, and act to prevent and contain conflict. Established in 1995 by a group of international affairs experts, the ICG was conceived as a response to the disasters of the mid-1990s: Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. It was designed to provide high quality advice and sophisticated advocacy to help governments and international organizations prevent deadly conflicts ó or at least contain them as much as possible. The ICGís approach is grounded in field research. It uses former diplomats, journalists, lawyers and others to gather information from a wide range of sources, assess crisis situations, and produce regular analytical reports with practical recommendations targeted at key international decision-makers. Headquartered in Brussels, the ICG has advocacy offices in Washington, New York, and Paris. It has staff working in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Macedonia, Yugoslavia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, the Ferghana Valley of Central Asia, Myanmar, Cambodia and Indonesia. The ICGís budget doubled from $3 million to more than $6 million last year, and its full-time staff expanded from 25 to 55. It produced 49 reports and briefing papers on conflicts and crises in 18 nations. The European Union, charitable foundations, private companies, individual donors and more than a dozen governments fund the organization. Of ICGís funds, 40 percent come from governments, 44 percent from foundations and 16 percent from individuals. As president and chief executive officer, Evans runs the ICG on a daily basis. He spends about half of his time on the road, traveling between the ICGís Brussels headquarters and its other offices, meeting with donors, supervising projects, and making the case for prevention to key officials and influential groups around the world. ìOur approach is to confront the hard issues, develop a serious, proactive, preventive agenda and hope that every now and again we actually succeed,î he said. ìWe are in a sense a private foreign office doing things that well-focused and well-resourced governments ought to be doing for themselves but donít often do because immediate priorities are always driving out long-term ones.î Evans brings extensive experience in politics and diplomacy to his work at the ICG. He studied politics, economics and law at the University of Melbourne and Oxford University. He traveled widely as a young man and those experiences still shape his view of the world. Evans was an industrial and constitutional lawyer before entering the Australian Parliament in 1978. He served as a senator from the state of Victoria from 1978 to 1996 and in the House of Representatives from 1996 to 1999. He has written or edited eight books and published more than 70 journal articles. His 1993 book, ìCooperating for Peaceî won wide praise and he earned a prestigious award for a 1994 article, ìCooperative Security and Intrastate Conflict,î that appeared in Foreign Policy magazine. Evans was a cabinet minister for 13 years, holding top positions in both the Hawke and Keating governments. He served as attorney general from 1983-84, minister for Energy and Resources from 1984-87, minister for Transport and Communications from 1987-88 and foreign minister from 1988-96. One of Australiaís longest-serving foreign ministers, he played key roles in developing a peace plan for Cambodia, securing an international agreement on the Chemical Weapons Convention, setting up the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and initiating the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. He won the prestigious ANZAC Peace Prize in 1994 for his diplomacy in Cambodia. ìBecoming foreign minister was a job made in heaven, a dream job, especially during that time, 1988 to 1996. With the end of the Cold War it was a time of complete rethinking of relationships. It was a time of great opportunity ó the art of the possible. It was an exciting time to be alive and a fascinating time professionally,î he said. Evans said he relished the opportunities available to midsize nations such as Australia that are actively engaged in global initiatives. Significant opportunities, he said, are open to those nations that are quick on their feet, creative, and able to build coalitions with other nations. Evansís Labor Party was defeated in Australiaís 1996 parliamentary elections. He then served as the deputy leader of the opposition for several years before retiring from Australian politics in 1999. His bid to win the top job at UNESCO in 1999 became ensnared in international politicking and he eventually withdrew. Evans jumped at the chance to head up the ICG. ìI knew about the ICG from its genesis. I was one of the founding godfathers. Wearing my hat as Australian foreign minister, I worked to give it some seed money from Australia,î he added. Evans has thought deeply about and written extensively on prevention. Successful prevention, he said, requires early warnings of looming crises, careful use of structural and direct prevention measures, and effective mobilization of political will. Creating the necessary political will, Evans said, requires fostering a culture of prevention and forcing decisions to the top of the in-box of policymakers. It also requires using the right arguments to key people at the appropriate time. Evans said the ICG is having a positive impact as it uses its ìglittering list of former presidents and prime ministersî to get the attention of decision makers about potential crises and then offering clear assessments and specific policy advice. ìWe provide first-class analysis of what the currents are and what the needs are. Good policy flows out of that and is based on a hardheaded analysis of how the real world actually works. We go beyond the existing marketplace of ideas and push the envelope a bit. We use direct advocacy to get stuff out into the media. The objective is to move the decision-making process. What we care about is getting results,î he added. In addition to his work at the ICG, Evans is involved in other international projects. He sits on a number of boards and was a member of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. Last year the Canadian government asked Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun of Algeria to co-chair the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Evans said this commission is trying to build a broader understanding of the problem of reconciling respect for the sovereign rights of states with the need to act in the face of massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law. He said the panel is examining the legal, moral, operational and political issues surrounding intervention and is determined to go beyond the sterile debates of the past. Evans bel ieves this panel will be successful because of its strong membership, sharp focus and political realism. The panel is holding meetings on all five continents and will issue its final report later this year to the U.N. General Assembly. Evans said its key contribution may be to re-examine the idea of ìright to interveneî so it is viewed as the ìresponsibility to protect.î ìWe are trying to turn the debate upside down. What this is all about is not a right but a responsibility. And itís not about intervention: Itís about prevention. So the right to intervene becomes the responsibility to protect,î he said. This formulation, Evans said, shifts international focus to helping the victims of conflict. He defines protection as a commitment to prevent suffering, to respond strongly when it occurs and to remain engaged in trouble spots until stability returns. Evans has a grueling schedule in which he spends much of his time traveling. His wife, Merran, is a professor at Monash University in Australia, and his two children are university students there. He misses his family, but he said that running a major non-governmental organization is a huge challenge and a valuable opportunity. ìThe best part of the job is the sense weíre gradually making headway, giving tooth and muscle to the concept of prevention. You can change mind-sets. You can create new ways of thinking. If you succeed, it can be very important,î he said. ìConflict prevention is a concept that has finally won general acceptance. But in many ways, weíre still as far away as ever from translating it into effective action. Our hope is never another Srebenica, never another Rwanda, never another Somalia. These three motifs of everything that can go wrong that we saw in the early ë90s stand as the awful warning. Thatís what prevention is all about.î John Shaw is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.