This report explores the ways in which ICTs and the data they generate can assist international actors, governments, and civil society organizations to more effectively prevent violence and conflict. It examines the contributions that cell phones, social media, crowdsourcing, crisis mapping, blogging, and big data analytics can make to short-term efforts to forestall crises and to long-term initiatives to address the root causes of violence.
Five case studies assess the use of such tools in a variety of regions (Africa, Asia, Latin America) experiencing different types of violence (criminal violence, election-related violence, armed conflict, short-term crisis) in different political contexts (restrictive and collaborative governments). The cases demonstrate clearly that employing new technologies for conflict prevention can produce very different results depending on the context in which they are applied and whether or not those using the technology take that context into account.
Key findings:
- Big data can serve descriptive, predictive, and diagnostic functions for conflict prevention. It can be used to identify patterns and signatures associated with conflict—and those associated with peace—presenting huge opportunities for better-informed efforts to prevent violence and conflict. Law-enforcement agencies are already searching for patterns in data from 911 calls, close-circuit cameras, and crime reports in an attempt to stop crime before it happens. Academics and civil society actors are predicting social unrest and riots by tracking food prices and correlating their patterns with previous events. Nonetheless, there are significant hurdles to overcome before big data can begin to systematically and reliably inform conflict prevention. In conflict settings—where individuals face higher risks to their personal security—getting the balance right in terms of who has access to what data for what purpose is critical. Conflict settings also produce unique analytical challenges for big data. For example, if unequal access to technology in a society mirrors the conflict cleavages, problems with the representativeness of the data take on a whole new dimension, which could serve to exacerbate the situation.
- Persons seeking to prevent conflict and save lives need to adapt their strategies to the context at hand. For example, the types of technology that link civil, governmental, and regional early-warning efforts in a relatively stable setting—as shown in the Kenya study—may have limited impact in an environment where governments act precisely to restrict such information flows—as shown in the Kyrgyzstan case.
- New technologies are not a panacea for holistic solutions. In particular, when trying to integrate operational prevention (targeting a crisis at hand) and structural prevention (addressing root causes of conflict). They should be accompanied by more traditional tools, such as preventive diplomacy, governance reforms, and economic initiatives. They may complement other elements of prevention—for example, by increasing citizen participation in governance reforms—but should not replace them.
- Once a project is underway, continual input from local beneficiaries is vital to any attempt to use technology to support prevention efforts. The case studies show that interventions designed almost exclusively in a top-down manner are set up to fail. In addition, insufficient awareness of or collaboration with existing initiatives can lead to a multiplicity of technological platforms and initiatives, as seen in Kenya. Community participation alone may not always be enough to prevent a conflict, particularly when it comes to large-scale collective violence and war. New technologies make it possible for international organizations and government agencies to acquire more information and more granular information to inform prevention efforts—whether this data is voluntarily given in the form of citizen reporting, harvested from the data deluge online, or collected using new surveillance technologies.