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Wars Rising
In conversation with Comfort Ero.
“It’s not a beauty contest. There is no one path to resolution,” Comfort Ero told me. In a world with sixty active conflicts, the President and CEO of the International Crisis Group isn’t looking for a silver bullet. She’s looking for openings.
Founded in 1995 in response to the failures of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia, the ICG has a mission that couldn’t be more straightforward: When war looms, sound the alarm. When it breaks out, work to stop it. When it drags on, find ways to alleviate the suffering it causes. Ero has spent twenty-five years doing exactly that — in West Africa, on the ground in Liberia with the UN, in transitional justice, and for the past four and a half years as head of the world’s most respected and consequential conflict prevention organisation.
We recorded this conversation five days after the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding that few are sure will hold. The trust deficit between Washington and Tehran, as Ero puts it, is “less than zero.” Add to that the extractive nature of this administration’s diplomacy, the way warfare is being reshaped every single day in Ukraine, and Sudan’s continuing inability to command the world’s attention despite being the largest humanitarian catastrophe on earth, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
This conversation is for anyone trying to understand not just what is happening in the world right now, but the architecture of why. It's also a reminder of what serious, rigorous, field-based analysis looks like in an era when the assumptions that underpinned the international order no longer seem quite so certain.
Have something to say? I'm all ears.
If this conversation meant something to you, please leave a rating, follow the show and share it with someone else. It's how the podcast gets found.
If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription to All That I Have Met goes a long way. Subscribe here
If you'd like to watch clips and video previews, you'll find them on YouTube
Credits:
Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson
Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs
Music: Ilya Kuznetsov
View all episodes
By Meredith Ogilvie-ThompsonIn conversation with Comfort Ero.
“It’s not a beauty contest. There is no one path to resolution,” Comfort Ero told me. In a world with sixty active conflicts, the President and CEO of the International Crisis Group isn’t looking for a silver bullet. She’s looking for openings.
Founded in 1995 in response to the failures of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia, the ICG has a mission that couldn’t be more straightforward: When war looms, sound the alarm. When it breaks out, work to stop it. When it drags on, find ways to alleviate the suffering it causes. Ero has spent twenty-five years doing exactly that — in West Africa, on the ground in Liberia with the UN, in transitional justice, and for the past four and a half years as head of the world’s most respected and consequential conflict prevention organisation.
We recorded this conversation five days after the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding that few are sure will hold. The trust deficit between Washington and Tehran, as Ero puts it, is “less than zero.” Add to that the extractive nature of this administration’s diplomacy, the way warfare is being reshaped every single day in Ukraine, and Sudan’s continuing inability to command the world’s attention despite being the largest humanitarian catastrophe on earth, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
This conversation is for anyone trying to understand not just what is happening in the world right now, but the architecture of why. It's also a reminder of what serious, rigorous, field-based analysis looks like in an era when the assumptions that underpinned the international order no longer seem quite so certain.
Have something to say? I'm all ears.
If this conversation meant something to you, please leave a rating, follow the show and share it with someone else. It's how the podcast gets found.
If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription to All That I Have Met goes a long way. Subscribe here
If you'd like to watch clips and video previews, you'll find them on YouTube
Credits:
Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson
Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs
Music: Ilya Kuznetsov