CEWARN convened an annual review meeting of its conflict early warning indicators from 24-26 November in Naivasha, Kenya.

CEWARN broke norm this year by inviting representatives of line ministries from the seven IGAD member states: Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda that reflect is five sectors of Focus. In preceding years, the exercise involved representatives of CEWARN’s national research institutes with relevant expertise.

Since 2012, CEWARN’s conflict early warning and response operations are organized around five sectors, namely: security, governance, social affairs, economy and environment. The multi-sectoral focus that cumulatively covers all scopes of human activity enables robust conflict prevention and peace building interventions to human security challenges in the IGAD region. CEWARN’s early warning operations are also guided by a set of indicators across its five sectors of focus that were methodically developed to monitor and analyze regional developments.

Given that CEWARN’s current strategic focus is engaging with high level decision making in IGAD Member States, engagement with relevant line-ministries is a step forward in this direction. This move is aimed at complementing CEWARN’s routine short-term or crisis management focus with longer-term structural prevention support to Member States.

Accordingly, the review meeting entailed: a presentation on CEWARN’s operations with a focus on its early warning methodology and tools as well as presentation on CEWARN’s analytic reports/ products. Subsequently, delegates worked along sectoral groups to examine CEWARN’s early warning indicators and proposed improvements. The delegates also provided their inputs on customization of current analytic products to better suit the needs of their respective institutions. #