Feedback for the Anthropomorphic Concept

1.0: Introduction 2.0: Objectives 3.0: Main Contents 4.0: Conclusion 5.0: Summary

6.0: Tutor Marked Assignments

7.0: References and Further Reading 1.0 Introduction

This unit pointedly takes you to the main focus of this course which is early warning signs of violent conflicts and humanitarian crises resulting from such conflicts. This will be done as clearly as possible in order to equip you with the needed skills in the practice of conflict handling and designing of programmes to forestall violent conflicts. This is why the presentation of early warning in this unit will be limited to its use in the field of peace studies and conflict resolution alone.

2.0 Objectives

At the end of this unit you should be able to:

• Know what early warning means in the field of peace studies and conflict resolution

• Have a broad view of the different perspectives on the concept of early warning 3.0 Main Contents

The concept of early warning could mean different things to different people because the term early warning is applicable in fields such as medicine, environmental management and forecasts of natural disasters. The use of early warning as a means of predicting future events is not a very new phenomenon. According to the

earlywarning.wordpress.com/page/2, the following predictions were made way back in December 1900 in an article entitled “What may Happen in the Next 100 Years” by Elfreth Watkins in The Ladies Home Journal:

• There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted.

• There will be no street cars within our large cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above the ground.

• Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there is a battle in China in a hundred years hence, snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later.

• There will be airships, but they will not successful compete with surface cars and water vessels but they will be maintained as deadly war vessels by all military nations.

• There will be no wild animals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated. The horse will have become practically extinct.

• Man will see around the world. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move.

• Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a “hello girl”.

• A university education will be free to every man and woman. Several great national

• Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy;

then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.

The above is an indication of the forecasting or prophetic angle of early warning. Early warning has been described as the “The systematic collection and analysis of information coming from areas of crises for the purpose of:

a) Anticipating the escalation of violent conflict;

b) The development of strategic responses to these crises; and

c) The presentation of options to critical actors for the purposes of decision-making"

(FEWER, 1997:1).

In the field of disaster management, early warning exists to warn of tsunamis, hurricanes and floods. Similarly, conflict early warning systems can be developed to help warn for civil war, state failure and inter-state conflict. From the foregoing, it implies that early warning is indispensable for operational conflict prevention. Operational prevention seeks to prevent, contain or reverse the escalation of violent conflict by deploying the tools of preventive diplomacy, economic sanctions and/or incentives, and/or military force.

Early warning is said to be a prerequisite for operational prevention.

In contrast, structural prevention seeks to reduce “the risk of violent conflict in countries or regions by transforming social, economic, cultural, or political sources of conflict. According to a contemporary definition, “early warning is the act of alerting a recognized authority (such as the UN Security Council) to a new (or renewed) threat to peace at a sufficiently early stage. A more general definition describes early warning as the proactive engagement in the early stages of a potential conflict or crisis, to prevent or at least mitigate violent and deadly conflict. As in preventive medicine, the ultimate goal is not to create fewer clients (sick patients) but to work toward diminishing the need for

curative approaches (such as relief for humanitarian emergencies). We maintain that the success of early warning should not be measured by accurate warnings but rather by the prevention of armed conflict. Indeed, as the sociologist Auguste Comte concluded over 200 years ago, “knowing to predict, predict to prevent.”

The concept can be described in other ways. Some scholars have identified a similarity between the concept of early warning and preventive diplomacy. This is because of the similarity in the objectives of the two which is the prevention of massive hostilities.

Others consider the early warning as concerned with the early detection of developments that may result in the manifest expression of violence, just like preventive diplomacy. It is a specific aspect of the more general concept of conflict prevention that refers to situations in which conflicting goals are controlled in order to avoid the outburst of hostilities, (Rupesinghe, 1994). Based on this, early warning can be described as aimed at the prevention of any form of violent conflict.

4.0 Conclusion

The unit presented different perspectives of early warning. The unit also showed the theoretical and practical link between early warning and preventive diplomacy. It is clear that early warning seeks to prevent the break-out of violence just like preventive diplomacy.

Self Assessment Exercise

Discuss briefly what you understand as preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention at both local and international levels.

5.0 Summary

The unit presented different perspectives of early warning and showed the similarities between early warning and preventive diplomacy.

6.0 Tutor Marked Assignments

• According to this unit differentiate clearly the between structural prevention

7.0 References and Further Reading

Forum on Early Warning and Early Response (1997), fewer.org. accessed on 10-09-2009

Rupesinghe, K. (1994) ‘Introduction’. In: Early Warning and Conflict

Resolution, Kumar Rupesinghe and Michiko Kuroda, (Eds). New York:

St. Martin's Press, 1992.

Watkins, E. www.yorktownhistory .org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm

Unit 4: Gender Perspective on Early Warning