Text Box: The First Committee of Permanent Secretaries Meeting, Uganda 2002 Text Box: History At the 8th Summit of IGAD Heads of State held in Khartoum in 2000, IGAD decided to establish a conflict early warning and response mechanism as part of its broader mandate on development, peace and security. The decision also reflected IGAD’s realization that timely interventions to prevent escalation or mitigate the worst effects of violent conflicts was more effective and much cheaper than the material and human costs involved when dealing with full blown crises.

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The Conflict Early Warning & Response Mechanism of IGAD
Text Box: A protocol agreement was signed by the IGAD Council of Ministers on the establishment of CEWARN in January 2002 and in June 2003, the CEWARN Unit was officially opened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. How the Mechanism Works The CEWARN Protocol lays down a wide range of areas on which CEWARN can collect information. These include livestock rustling, conflicts over grazing and water points, nomadic movements, smuggling and illegal trade, refugees, land mines and banditry. CEWARN has, however, been mandated by the Member States to commence with the monitoring of cross-border pastoral and related conflicts, providing information to Member States concerning potentially violent conflicts as well as their outbreak and escalation in the IGAD region. Incidentally, the Horn is home to the largest pastoralist population in the world and cattle rustling is one of the violent practices among the pastoral communities. The Mechanism has been operationalized in three Clusters known as the Karamoja, Somali and Afar-Issa clusters. The above areas only represent a portion of pastoral communities in the Horn of Africa. CEWARN operates an indicator-based early warning system focused on cross border and interstate pastoral and related conflicts, monitoring specific factors in so far as any aspect relating to them could be a peace-promoting or conflict generating. Collection and analysis of information received from the field is done through National Research Institutes (NRIs), independent bodies contracted directly by CEWARN. Part of the strength of the Mechanism is the ability to link up with the formal government structures at the national and local levels as well as with the civil society. At the national level, national Early Warning and Early Response Units referred to as CEWERUs have been established in all Member States except Somalia. The composition of CEWERUs include representatives from government, security agencies, Members of Parliament and civil society. The value of the CEWERU lies in its capacity to generate or cause a response as a result of information or alerts received from CEWARN. The data analyzed reports generated by CEWARN is shared with the CEWERUs at the national level and with coordinating structures of the mechanism like the Technical Committee on Early Warning (TCEW) and the Committee of Permanent Secretaries (CPS) at the regional level.

History

CEWARN Structure

Strategy

Rapid Response Fund

CEWARN Protocol