Summary

• Military operations are taking place with increasing frequency in densely populated areas. Such operations result in loss of life and harm to civilians, as well as damage to civilian objects, (including infrastructure providing essential services). In order to protect civilians, it is imperative that armed forces and groups comply with the rules of international humanitarian law on the conduct of hostilities, including the rule of proportionality.
• The rule of proportionality prohibits attacks which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. This research paper analyses the key steps that belligerents must take to give effect to the rule, with a particular focus on one side of proportionality assessments – the expected incidental harm.
• Those undertaking proportionality assessments before or during an attack must consider whether the expected harm will be caused by the attack, and whether that harm could be expected (that is, was it reasonably foreseeable).
• For the purpose of proportionality assessments, injury to civilians includes disease, and there is no reason in principle to exclude mental harm, even though it is currently challenging to identify and quantify it. Damage to civilian objects includes damage to elements of the natural environment.
• Once the incidental harm to be considered has been identified, a value or weight must be assigned to it. This is then balanced against the value or weight of the military advantage anticipated from the attack to determine whether the harm would be excessive.
• In the determination of whether the expected incidental harm would be excessive compared to the anticipated military advantage, ‘excessive’ is a wide but not indeterminate standard.
• Belligerents should develop methodologies so that those planning and deciding attacks are provided with all necessary information on expected incidental harm, and to assist them in assigning weight to the incidental harm to be considered.
• If it becomes apparent that the rule of proportionality will be contravened, the attack in question must be cancelled or suspended.
• Clarification of the law is important in ensuring compliance with the rule of proportionality, but a culture of compliance within armed forces and groups, inculcated by their leaders, is also crucial.

Following just over one year in office, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, outlines her ongoing priorities at a tumultuous time for fundamental rights protections worldwide.

She discusses the rights implications of climate change, gender inequality including the advancement of sexual and reproductive rights, the protection of vulnerable groups and the need to work closely with states, civil society and business to protect and advance human rights.

Summary

• The vast majority of state-to-state cyberattacks consist of persistent, low-level intrusions that take place below the threshold of use of force. International law, including the principle of non-intervention in another state’s internal affairs and the principle of sovereignty, applies to these cyber operations.
• It is not clear whether any unauthorized cyber intrusion would violate the target state’s sovereignty, or whether there is a threshold in operation. While some would like to set limits by reference to effects of the cyber activity, at this time such limits are not reflected in customary international law. The assessment of whether sovereignty has been violated therefore has to be made on a case by case basis, if no other more specific rules of international law apply.
• In due course, further state practice and opinio iuris may give rise to an emerging cyber-specific understanding of sovereignty, just as specific rules deriving from the sovereignty principle have crystallized in other areas of international law.
• Before a principle of due diligence can be invoked in the cyber context, further work is needed by states to agree upon rules as to what might be expected of a state in this context.
• The principle of non-intervention applies to a state’s cyber operations as it does to other state activities. It consists of coercive behaviour by one state that deprives the target state of its free will in relation to the exercise of its sovereign functions in order to compel an outcome in, or conduct with respect to, a matter reserved to the target state.
• In practice, activities that contravene the non-intervention principle and activities that violates sovereignty will often overlap.
• In order to reach agreement on how international law applies to states’ cyber operations below the level of use of force, states should put their views on record, where possible giving examples of when they consider that an obligation may be breached, as states such as the UK, Australia, France and the Netherlands have done.
• Further discussion between states should focus on how the rules apply to practical examples of state-sponsored cyber operations. There is likely to be more commonality about specific applications of the law than there is about abstract principles.
• The prospects of a general treaty in this area are still far off. In due course, there may be benefit in considering limited rules, for example on due diligence and a prohibition on attacking critical infrastructure, before tackling broad principles.

Summary

• The 70th anniversary of the adoption of the 1949 Geneva Conventions was commemorated in 2019. But violations of the Conventions and of the 1977 Additional Protocols are widespread.
• Contemporary conflicts have been marked by violations of some of the foundational rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) relating to the protection of the wounded and sick and of providers of medical assistance.
• A further area of IHL that has come under strain and scrutiny are the rules regulating humanitarian relief operations and their application to sieges and blockades.
• War has a huge impact on children, and the treatment of children in armed conflict is another area of the law that requires further attention.
• In the current political climate, it is unlikely that new treaties will be negotiated to address emerging issues or uncertainties in the law.
• Other measures must be explored, including the adoption of domestic measures to implement existing law; support for processes that interpret the law; and initiatives to promote compliance with the law by organized armed groups.
• One overarching challenge is the interplay between IHL and counterterrorism measures. It can undermine the protections set out in IHL, and hinder principled humanitarian action and activities to promote compliance with the law by organized armed groups.

• Civil nuclear facilities and organizations hold sensitive information on security clearances, national security, health and safety, nuclear regulatory issues and international inspection obligations. The sensitivity and variety of such data mean that products tailored for insuring the civil nuclear industry have evolved independently and are likely to continue to do so.
• ‘Air-gaps’ – measures designed to isolate computer systems from the internet – need to be continually maintained for industrial systems. Yet years of evidence indicate that proper maintenance of such protections is often lacking (mainly because very real economic drivers exist that push users towards keeping infrastructure connected). Indeed, even when air-gaps are maintained, security breaches can still occur.
• Even if a particular organization has staff that are highly trained, ready and capable of handling a technological accident, hacking attack or incidence of insider sabotage, it still has to do business and/or communicate with other organizations that may not have the essentials of cybersecurity in place.
• Regardless of whether the choice is made to buy external insurance or put aside revenues in preparation for costly incidents, the approach to cyber risk calculation should be the same. Prevention is one part of the equation, but an organization will also need to consider the resources and contingency measures available to it should prevention strategies fail. Can it balance the likelihood of a hacker’s success against the maximum cost to the organization, and put aside enough capital and manpower to get it through a crisis?
• All civil nuclear facilities should consider the establishment of computer security incident response (CSIR) teams as a relevant concern, if such arrangements are not already in place. The existence of a CSIR team will be a prerequisite for any facility seeking to obtain civil nuclear cyber insurance.
• Preventing attacks such as those involving phishing and ransomware requires good cyber hygiene practices throughout the workforce. Reducing an organization’s ‘time to recovery’ takes training and dedication. Practising the necessary tasks in crisis simulations greatly reduces the likelihood of friction and the potential for error in a crisis.

Understanding the complexity and the wickedness of the situation allows analysts and strategic planners to approach these complex and intractable issues in new and transformative ways – with a better chance of coping or succeeding and reducing the divisions between experts.

Using complexity theory, a complex adaptive system representing the international system and its interaction with the environment can be represented through an interactive visualization tool that will aid thought processes and policy decision-making. 

Until recently, analysts did not have the tools to be able to create models that could represent the complexity of the international system and the role that nuclear weapons play. Now that these tools are available, analysts should use them to enable decision-makers to gain insights into the range of possible outcomes from a set of possible actions.

This programme builds on work by Chatham House on cyber security and artificial intelligence (AI) in the nuclear/strategic realms.

In order to approach nuclear weapons as wicked problems in a complex adaptive system from different and sometimes competing perspectives, the programme of work involves the wider community of specialists who do not agree on what constitutes the problems of nuclear weapons nor on what are the desired solutions.

Different theories of deterrence, restraint and disarmament are tested. The initiative is international and inclusive, paying attention to gender, age and other aspects of diversity, and the network of MacArthur Grantees are given the opportunity to participate in the research, including in the writing of research papers, so that the complexity modelling can be tested against a wide range of approaches and hypotheses.

In addition, a Senior Reference Group will work alongside the programme, challenging its outcome and findings, and evaluating and guiding the direction of the research.

This project is supported by the MacArthur Foundation.

A controversial debate during COVID-19 is the state of readiness within governments and health systems for a pandemic, with lines of the debate drawn on the issues of testing provision, personal protective equipment (PPE), and the speed of decision-making.

President Macron in a speech to the nation admitted French medical workers did not have enough PPE and that mistakes had been made: ‘Were we prepared for this crisis? We have to say that no, we weren’t, but we have to admit our errors … and we will learn from this’.

In reality few governments were fully prepared. In years to come, all will ask: ‘how could we have been better prepared, what did we do wrong, and what can we learn?’. But after every crisis, governments ask these same questions.

Most countries have put in place national risk assessments and established processes and systems to monitor and stress-test crisis-preparedness. So why have some countries been seemingly better prepared?

Comparing different approaches

Some have had more time and been able to watch the spread of the disease and learn from those countries that had it first. Others have taken their own routes, and there will be much to learn from comparing these different approaches in the longer run.

Governments in Asia have been strongly influenced by the experience of the SARS epidemic in 2002-3 and - South Korea in particular - the MERS-CoV outbreak in 2015 which was the largest outside the Middle East. Several carried out preparatory work in terms of risk assessment, preparedness measures and resilience planning for a wide range of threats.

Case Study of Preparedness: South Korea By 2007, South Korea had established the Division of Public Health Crisis Response in Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) and, in 2016, the KCDC Center for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response had established a round-the-clock Emergency Operations Center with rapid response teams. KCDC is responsible for the distribution of antiviral stockpiles to 16 cities and provinces that are required by law to hold and manage antiviral stockpiles.

And, at the international level, there are frameworks for preparedness for pandemics. The International Health Regulations (IHR) - adopted at the 2005 World Health Assembly and binding on member states - require countries to report certain disease outbreaks and public health events to the World Health Organization (WHO) and ‘prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease in ways that are commensurate with and restricted to public health risks, and which avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade’.

Under IHR, governments committed to a programme of building core capacities including coordination, surveillance, response and preparedness. The UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk highlights disaster preparedness for effective response as one of its main purposes and has already incorporated these measures into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other Agenda 2030 initiatives. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said COVID-19 ‘poses a significant threat to the maintenance of international peace and security’ and that ‘a signal of unity and resolve from the Council would count for a lot at this anxious time’.

Case Study of Preparedness: United States The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) established PERRC – the Preparedness for Emergency Response Research Centers - as a requirement of the 2006 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which required research to ‘improve federal, state, local, and tribal public health preparedness and response systems’. The 2006 Act has since been supplanted by the 2019 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act. This created the post of Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) and authorised the development and acquisitions of medical countermeasures and a quadrennial National Health Security Strategy. The 2019 Act also set in place a number of measures including the requirement for the US government to re-evaluate several important metrics of the Public Health Emergency Preparedness cooperative agreement and the Hospital Preparedness Program, and a requirement for a report on the states of preparedness and response in US healthcare facilities.

This pandemic looks set to continue to be a grave threat to humanity. But there will also be future pandemics – whether another type of coronavirus or a new influenza virus – and our species will be threatened again, we just don’t know when.

Other disasters too will befall us – we already see the impacts of climate change arriving on our doorsteps characterised by increased numbers and intensity of floods, hurricanes, fires, crop failure and other manifestations of a warming, increasingly turbulent atmosphere and we will continue to suffer major volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis. All high impact, unknown probability events.

Preparedness for an unknown future is expensive and requires a great deal of effort for events that may not happen within the preparers’ lifetimes. It is hard to imagine now, but people will forget this crisis, and revert to their imagined projections of the future where crises don’t occur, and progress follows progress. But history shows us otherwise.

Preparations for future crises always fall prey to financial cuts and austerity measures in lean times unless there is a mechanism to prevent that. Cost-benefit analyses will understandably tend to prioritise the urgent over the long-term. So governments should put in place legislation – or strengthen existing legislation – now to ensure their countries are as prepared as possible for whatever crisis is coming.

Such a legal requirement would require governments to report back to parliament every year on the state of their national preparations detailing such measures as:

• The exact levels of stocks of essential materials (including medical equipment)
• The ability of hospitals to cope with large influx of patients
• How many drills, exercises and simulations had been organised – and their findings
• What was being done to implement lessons learned & improve preparedness

In addition, further actions should be taken:

• Parliamentary committees such as the UK Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy should scrutinise the government’s readiness for the potential threats outlined in the National Risk register for Civil Emergencies in-depth on an annual basis.
• Parliamentarians, including ministers, with responsibility for national security and resilience should participate in drills, table-top exercises and simulations to see for themselves the problems inherent with dealing with crises.
• All governments should have a minister (or equivalent) with the sole responsibility for national crisis preparedness and resilience. The Minister would be empowered to liaise internationally and coordinate local responses such as local resilience groups.
• There should be ring-fenced budget lines in annual budgets specifically for preparedness and resilience measures, annually reported on and assessed by parliaments as part of the due diligence process.

And at the international level:

• The UN Security Council should establish a Crisis Preparedness Committee to bolster the ability of United Nations Member States to respond to international crisis such as pandemics, within their borders and across regions. The Committee would function in a similar fashion as the Counter Terrorism Committee that was established following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
• States should present reports on their level of preparedness to the UN Security Council. The Crisis Preparedness Committee could establish a group of experts who would conduct expert assessments of each member state’s risks and preparedness and facilitate technical assistance as required.
• Regional bodies such as the OSCE, ASEAN and ARF, the AU, the OAS, the PIF etc could also request national reports on crisis preparedness for discussion and cooperation at the regional level.

COVID-19 has been referred to as the 9/11 of crisis preparedness and response. Just as that shocking terrorist attack shifted the world and created a series of measures to address terrorism, we now recognise our security frameworks need far more emphasis on being prepared and being resilient. Whatever has been done in the past, it is clear that was nowhere near enough and that has to change.

Case Study of Preparedness: The UK The National Risk Register was first published in 2008 as part of the undertakings laid out in the National Security Strategy (the UK also published the Biological Security Strategy in July 2018). Now entitled the National Risk Register for Civil Emergencies it has been updated regularly to analyse the risks of major emergencies that could affect the UK in the next five years and provide resilience advice and guidance. The latest edition - produced in 2017 when the UK had a Minister for Government Resilience and Efficiency - placed the risk of a pandemic influenza in the ‘highly likely and most severe’ category. It stood out from all the other identified risks, whereas an emerging disease (such as COVID-19) was identified as ‘highly likely but with moderate impact’. However, much preparatory work for an influenza pandemic is the same as for COVID-19, particularly in prepositioning large stocks of PPE, readiness within large hospitals, and the creation of new hospitals and facilities. One key issue is that the 2017 NHS Operating Framework for Managing the Response to Pandemic Influenza was dependent on pre-positioned ’just in case’ stockpiles of PPE. But as it became clear the PPE stocks were not adequate for the pandemic, it was reported that recommendations about the stockpile by NERVTAG (the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group which advises the government on the threat posed by new and emerging respiratory viruses) had been subjected to an ‘economic assessment’ and decisions reversed on, for example, eye protection. The UK chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies, when speaking at the World Health Organization about Operation Cygnus – a 2016 three-day exercise on a flu pandemic in the UK – reportedly said the UK was not ready for a severe flu attack and ‘a lot of things need improving’. Aware of the significance of the situation, the UK Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy launched an inquiry in 2019 on ‘Biosecurity and human health: preparing for emerging infectious diseases and bioweapons’ which intended to coordinate a cross-government approach to biosecurity threats. But the inquiry had to postpone its oral hearings scheduled for late October 2019 and, because of the general election in December 2019, the committee was obliged to close the inquiry.

The assassination of General Qassem Soleimani has created much speculation about the possible impact on oil markets and – although any impact will very much depend upon what happens next in terms of political and military responses – theoretically the potential exists for Iran to seriously destabilize oil markets, raising oil prices.

Arguably, it would be in Iran’s interest to do so. It would certainly hurt Trump’s possibility of a second term if higher prices were to last for some time as the 2020 presidential election gets underway. And it would also help shore up Iran’s failing economy. 

The assassination did initially cause oil prices to rise by a few dollars before quickly falling back, and the missile attacks by Iran produced a similar response. However, direct action by Iran to raise prices – for example by trying to close the Strait of Hormuz – is unlikely.

Around one-fifth of the world's oil supplies passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow choke point between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Closing it would invite serious military action by the Americans and many of its allies who, so far, have been rather lukewarm over Trump’s actions. It would also possibly limit Iran’s own oil exports.

Similarly, overt attacks on American allies in the region such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE would probably invite too heavy a reaction, although this is uncertain given the lack of response after the alleged Iranian attacks on Abqaiq and Khurais in mid-September.

Indirect action by Iran to affect oil supplies is much more likely as they have many options by using their proxies to affect others’ oil production. This is especially true for Iraq, which is now an important source of global oil supply as Iraqi exports in 2019 averaged 3.53 million barrels per day (Mb/d), a significant amount.

Iraq’s future production has already been damaged as international oil companies are withdrawing staff for safety reasons, anticipating potential attacks by both Iraqi and Iranian sources. It is now very unlikely that the crucial ‘common seawater supply project’ being run by Exxon – essential for expanding production capacity – will go ahead in the near future.

However, one important consequence of the assassination that has attracted little attention is that it has almost fully restored the role of geopolitics into the determination of oil prices. Up to 2014, geopolitics played a key role in determining oil prices in the paper markets where perceptions and expectations ruled.

Prices determined in these markets – NYMEX in New York, ICE in London and other lesser futures markets throughout the world – then influence wet barrel markets where real barrels of oil are traded. 

In 2014, the world was so oversupplied with real oil barrels that the oil price collapsed – the price of Brent crude fell from $110.72 on 23 May to $46.44 eight months later. Thereafter, little if any attention was given to geopolitical events, and geopolitics became marginalized in the determination of crude oil prices.

This began to change in 2019. The market remained physically over-supplied but events in the Gulf began to attract attention. In June, there were a series of attacks on oil tankers close to the Gulf, followed by attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq processing facility and the Khurais oil field in September.

The Americans claimed these attacks were launched by Iran, but no convincing evidence for the claim was provided. Both attacks produced an initial price response but it was surprisingly limited and short-lived. However, it did suggest that geopolitics might be creeping back into influencing oil prices.

This became ever more noticeable in the third and fourth quarters as rumours regarding the trade talks between China and US clearly began to affect price – talks going well meant higher oil demand, and prices rose; talks going badly meant lower oil demand, and prices fell.

Meanwhile, the oil market showed signs of tightening towards the end of 2019. Although there was much cheating on the OPEC+ agreement that was trying to restrain production and protect prices, the OPEC meeting last December saw both Iraq and Nigeria agreeing to restrain production. 

US stock levels also began to fall in December and the futures markets began to price in a tightening market towards the end of 2020. Significantly, the tighter the market appears, the greater attention is paid to the level of spare producing capacity.

Just before the attack on Abqaiq, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated there was 3.5 Mb/d spare capacity in OPEC which, historically, is quite comfortable. However, 2.5 of this was estimated to be in Saudi Arabia, so how much of this spare capacity still existed after the Abqaiq attack?

The Saudis claimed the Abqaiq capacity was quickly restored but technical experts greeted this with considerable skepticism, not least because the Abqaiq equipment was highly specialized. If spare capacity is tight, this makes the oil price vulnerable to geopolitical scares and rumours, real or imagined. 

Although the assassination of General Soleimani has exacerbated the sensitivity of oil markets to geopolitical events, this becomes irrelevant if a serious shooting war starts in the region. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iraq’s oil infrastructure remains highly vulnerable to attack either directly by Iran or one of its many proxies, suggesting oil prices will become increasingly volatile but, at the same time, benefit from a rising geopolitical premium.

After a summer of regional tensions and continued uncertainty regarding the future of the JCPOA, the Chatham House MENA Programme held a closed workshop to examine the impact of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign.

Discussions focused on the domestic developments and challenges inside Iran, prospects for new negotiations with Iran, and the regional issues facing the country. Participants also considered the differences between American and European approaches towards Iran.

 

Summary

• China’s presence in the Maghreb has increased in recent years, raising concerns among Western powers. China has focused on bilateral relations with these countries while also working within the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and the China–Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF). However, this engagement has limited strategic value compared to relations China has with Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.
• Since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, China has shown greater interest in the Maghreb as an entry point to European and African markets. China has pursued commercial relations over political influence in the region. Morocco and Tunisia are still dependent on France, their former colonial power, and the European Union, which exert great political, economic, security and cultural influence over the two countries.
• The Maghreb countries’ economic relations with China have grown exponentially, with Algeria forming the closest relationship. However, Morocco and Tunisia are keen to attract China’s investment and involvement in major construction and infrastructure projects to boost industrial and economic development. While China’s investments in Morocco and Tunisia remain at a low level, trade relations with both countries have grown steadily. Politically, China’s policy of noninterference in domestic affairs appeals to Maghreb states, which resent Western interference.
• China’s influence in the Maghreb remains minimal. Its soft power push has struggled to promote advantages of strong relations with China beyond economics. Furthermore, Morocco and Tunisia’s populations have generally scant knowledge about China’s politics and culture. China has tried to address this lack of familiarity through the establishment of Confucius Institutes and other cultural activities. However, language and cultural barriers still impede the development of close relations, compared to those China has with other countries in Africa.

Three private roundtable meetings were convened in the first quarter of 2019, with the aim of generating informed and constructive new thinking on policy options and reforms that could help Sudan build a more economically prosperous, stable and inclusive nation. The roundtables were held under the Chatham House Rule.

The project sought to offer a neutral space for discussion to policymakers and influencers from a broad range of backgrounds: Sudanese government officials, opposition figures, economists, experts on Sudan’s political economy and governance, civil society figures, representatives of international financial institutions, and other international policymakers.

This paper draws together the key themes and findings from each of the three roundtables, ranging from broad structural economic issues to sector-specific priority interventions. It presents options and recommendations for Sudanese leaders, including the transitional government, in support of building a more economically prosperous, peaceful and inclusive nation.

African states are well represented in intergovernmental organizations linked by official language and colonial history such as the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP) and the Commonwealth. These organizations aim to provide support in addressing matters of mutual interest – in addition to responding to significant policy challenges such as improving sustainable growth prospects and opportunities to young populations – and citizens are increasingly vocal on key issues such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law. This event series examines the importance of these intergovernmental organizations in working with their members to responsibly and sustainably respond to policy challenges in Africa.

At this event, Louise Mushikiwabo, secretary general of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), will discuss the organisation’s relevance to African states and the future of the organization on the continent.

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULL AND REGISTRATION HAS NOW CLOSED.

As Côte d'Ivoire enters a critical final 12 months before presidential elections scheduled for October 2020, the political atmosphere remains highly uncertain, stoked by the fracturing of the RDR-PDCI alliance and the potential candidacy of a range of high-profile political names. While President Ouattara’s two terms in office have ushered in an improved business environment, with annual economic growth averaging 8 per cent since 2012, political instability over the next 12 months may pose a threat to recent progress and raises wider security concerns in light of the major post-election violence witnessed a decade previously.

At this event, Ivorian presidential contender, and former prime minister and parliamentary speaker, Guillaume Soro, will assess the prime-election context in Côte d'Ivoire and the policies required to deliver inclusive growth and future stability for its citizens.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

China has been a major market for elephant ivory for centuries. However, the Chinese government recently enacted bans on imports and exports of ivory (2015) and on the domestic ivory trade (2017). These bans appear to have come in response to intensive influence campaigns and public shaming from domestic and foreign activists, who cited declining elephant populations and highlighted China's role. However, this shaming-narrative is at odds with conventional wisdom regarding Chinese policy-making: China typically resists international pressures and its authoritarian government is thought to be largely insulated from domestic efforts by civil society groups. This article reconciles Beijing's ivory policy with these conventional beliefs about policy-making in China. I argue that the Chinese government saw unique benefits to banning the ivory trade, under growing international scrutiny, as doing so enhanced Chinese soft power while having very little impact on its sovereignty or development. Non-government organizations (NGOs) operating both inside and outside of China played a role as well: NGOs in China helped to shift Chinese public opinion towards favouring the bans, while those operating abroad led public relations efforts to publicize Chinese demand for ivory to foreign audiences. Efforts by the latter group of NGOs intensified pressure on the Chinese government to rein in the ivory market, while increasing the soft power benefits that banning ivory would bring to Beijing.

Over the last five years, the prevailing order in the Horn of Africa has been influenced by increasing engagement from the Gulf states across the Red Sea. Their growing presence has presented governments in the region with significant policy challenges, as they seek to leverage interest and competition to further their own objectives with Gulf players and their allies, while simultaneously navigating the multiple overlapping tensions and disputes that have long marked the Horn region.

Balancing regional and global dynamics will continue to be a considerable challenge for states in the Horn that already have to deal with complex internal development and political and conflict challenges. Interventions by the Gulf states have heightened tensions around internal and cross-border relationships but they have also contributed to reconciliation and have the potential to fuel long-term regional economic integration. Developing a collective action plan and coordinated strategies for engagement on common issues with the Gulf states and along the shared Red Sea arena will enable countries in the Horn of Africa to better meet the challenges and benefits from external interest.

This high-level invitation-only roundtable will bring together the special envoys and representatives for the Horn of Africa and Red Sea, along with expert participants, to analyse regional dynamics and explore options to boost collaboration and burden-sharing towards greater integration, development and more durable peace and security on both sides of the Red Sea.

The Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean has garnered media attention recently after the UK failed to abide by a UN deadline to return the islands to Mauritius. The US has landed in the middle of the dispute as a 1965 agreement with the UK has allowed the US to establish a military base on one of the islands, Diego Garcia, which has since become instrumental in US missions in the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. 

In February 2019, an Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that the Chagos archipelago was unlawfully dismembered from Mauritius, in violation of the right to self-determination and that the United Kingdom is under an obligation to end its administration of the Chagos archipelago ‘as rapidly as possible’. The UN General Assembly subsequently voted overwhelmingly in favour of the UK leaving the islands by the end of November 2019 and the right of the former residents who were removed by the UK to return. The UK does not accept the ICJ and UN rulings and argues that the islands are needed to protect Britain from security threats while Mauritius has made clear the base can remain.

Professor Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London and lead counsel for Mauritius on the ICJ case on Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, will be joining Ambassador Richard Burt, US chief negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the former Soviet Union for a discussion on the fate of the archipelago including the future of the military base and the right of return of former residents.  

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

The 2007-08 financial crisis wreaked havoc on the lives of millions of people across the globe, and upended the faith of many in the prevailing economic system, with many countries still recovering a decade on.

Drawing on extensive research in his new book, Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events, Professor Shiller will draw on a rich array of historical examples and data and outline a new way to think about economic change, and the narratives that shape it, to provide answers to questions such as whether lessons have been learned since the last financial crisis, are the same dislocations likely to occur again and what toolkits, if any, are there for anticipating the next financial crisis or recession?

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Using the UK as a case study, this book provides the first systematic exploration of how accountability is understood inside the secret world. It is based on new interviews with current and former UK intelligence practitioners, as well as extensive research into the performance and scrutiny of the UK intelligence machinery.

The result is the first detailed analysis of how intelligence professionals view their role, what they feel keeps them honest, and how far external overseers impact on their work.

The UK gathers material that helps inform global decisions on such issues as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, transnational crime, and breaches of international humanitarian law. On the flip side, the UK was a major contributor to the intelligence failures leading to the Iraq war in 2003, and its agencies were complicit in the widely discredited U.S. practices of torture and 'rendition' of terrorism suspects. UK agencies have come under greater scrutiny since those actions, but it is clear that problems remain.

Secrets and Spies is the result of a British Academy funded project (SG151249) on intelligence accountability.

Open society is increasingly defended by secret means. For this reason, oversight has never been more important. This book offers a new exploration of the widening world of accountability for UK intelligence, encompassing informal as well as informal mechanisms. It substantiates its claims well, drawing on an impressive range of interviews with senior figures. This excellent book offers both new information and fresh interpretations. It will have a major impact.

Richard Aldrich, Professor of International Security, University of Warwick, UK

Gaskarth’s novel approach, interpreting interviews with senior figures from the intelligence world, brings fresh insight on a significant yet contested topic. He offers an impressively holistic account of intelligence accountability—both formal and informal—and, most interestingly of all, of how those involved understand it. This is essential reading for those wanting to know what accountability means and how it is enacted.

Rory Cormac, Professor of International Relations, University of Nottingham

About the author

Jamie Gaskarth is senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he teaches strategy and decision-making. His research looks at the ethical dilemmas of leadership and accountability in intelligence, foreign policy, and defence. He is author/editor or co-editor of six books and served on the Academic Advisory panel for the 2015 UK National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review.

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