(Page 1 of 13) - Early Warning System of Interethnic Conflict: Theoretical Grounds of Practice (Crimean Case Study) authored by Gabriyelyan, Oleg.

Early warning system of interethnic conflict: theoretical grounds of practice

(Crimean Case Study)

Ph.D. O.A. Gabriyelyan

The problem: Interethnic tension in the Crimea.

The aim: To create conflict early warning system (EWS) to make political decisions and carry
out preventive measures.

The annotation: The creation of conflict early warning system presupposes the availability of
information network including ethnopolitical monitoring and policy-oriented research – systemic
and systematic analysis of the problem. For that it is necessary to coordinate the efforts of
researchers, policy-makers and communities. Organizationally it might look as coordination of
activity of research centers, public and local authorities and social organizations.
The task of this article is to interpret weak and strong aspects of the job done by other
organizations and research centers in creating the EWS and then establish the Crimean version of
it and to propose some recommendations, which might, on the one hand, make EWS a more
objective instrument, and, on the other hand, decrease its cost as much as possible. Undoubtedly,
the principal point is to create not an ad hoc system to satisfy the given situation and the specific
problem, but a system, which might react adequately to dynamically changing parameters of
interethnic relations during a considerable period of time.

The first circumstance can be explained by the fact that the Crimea has been in a permanent

political crisis. Different political forces, including ethnic ones, aspire to use actively all the
possible resources to achieve their objectives. In connection with it, the EWS will be exposed to
the pressure, which may influence objectivity of the results, due to the system of values, political
biases and ethnic belonging of the experts and researchers themselves, too. We will try to propose
measurement of such conflict indicators, which are impartial to the maximum. Undoubtedly,
there will always be a problem of interpretation of the data by both researchers and policy-
makers. But it is evident that the objective character of the data will be of great importance for
either.

The second circumstance is caused by the fact that it is necessary to create such a EWS,

which might exist for a long period of time at the expense of mainly local resources, not only
funds of international organizations. Their task is to help establishment of such a system at the
first stage, not a constant support of it. It is quite explainable. It is the Crimean society itself that
must be interested in the EWS support.

Below we give the structure of the EWS, as we see it, taking into account specific character

of the Crimea. However, it might be used in other societies with interethnic tension as well. This
structure involves mechanism of the EWS only. Beyond the bounds of it there are measures,
which can be considered a necessary and composing part of it. They will be described later on.
The EWS will not be complete without them. But it cannot be reduced to one, though extremely
popular, element. Moreover, the EWS makes sense and matters only if it has a consumer, able
and wanting to use the results of the system to warn conflicts.