100 years of International Affairs Other resource dora.popova 1 March 2023

Charting a century of key moments in international relations and International Affairs.

International Affairs was created to be a record of speeches given by visiting dignitaries at Chatham House. Over the last 100 years, the journal has evolved into an independent academic journal publishing work of the highest quality.

On the fringes of the Paris peace conference Lionel Curtis called for an organization whose purpose would be to foster mutual understanding of and between nations. Chatham House was established in 1920 and for much of the time since, International Affairs has been a central part of the institute’s publishing output.

As such, for most of its history, contributions to the journal have reflected the prevailing attitudes of the time, both in terms of who was published and the content of their work. Perhaps the most important change over the last century has been the increasing diversity of voices and perspectives published in IA’s pages. Today, as the journal enters its second century, it publishes authors from across the globe. Yet the editorial team is all too aware there is still much to do.

Keep reading to explore the journal’s history and to find out more about our second century.

The drawings in this timeline were commissioned by the International Affairs team from Sequential Potential Comics.

Annual Review 2021–22 Other resource NCapeling 11 July 2022

Explore highlights from our work over the past year, including research, events, and next generation initiatives.

Chair’s statement

The past 12 months have seen new levels of instability injected into international affairs. The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the continued fracturing of the international system and Russia’s war on Ukraine, which triggered the largest movement of refugees since the Second World War, have had severe impacts on trade, prices and people around the world.

Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme and its Ukraine Forum have advised allied governments on their response to the war on Ukraine, and secured the participation of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the most watched event of the institute’s history.

The challenge now is to ensure Chatham House can bring together its diverse areas of research and offer influential ideas on how to respond to the uncertain future. Council has supported the push to define clear priorities for the institute’s work, and the launch of two new research centres covering sustainability and global governance.

Drawing out the best from the institute’s expertise in the changed geopolitical landscape will be a top priority for Bronwen Maddox when she takes over as director at the end of August. Council is delighted to have found such a worthy successor to Robin Niblett. Robin’s 15 years of inspiring leadership have seen the institute more than triple in size of staff and budget. New areas of research under his tenure include cyber policy, digital governance, global health, the US and the Americas, and the UK in the world post-Brexit.

Robin also launched the Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs, providing the base for many initiatives to engage the next generation. He also leaves the institute with a rebuilt balance sheet after securing some major long-term gifts; expanded and renovated premises; and a strong communications and digital infrastructure that has raised the profile of Chatham House with our audiences.

Council places on record the institute’s debt to Robin and to his wife, Trisha de Borchgrave. Chatham House’s supporters around the world were delighted to see Robin awarded a knighthood in HM The Queen’s Birthday Honours 2022.

I pay tribute also to my predecessor, Jim O’Neill, and I am grateful to Simon Fraser, deputy chair, and to the other four retiring members of Council (Mimi Ajibadé, Heide Baumann, Kenneth Cukier and Tim Willasey-Wilsey) for their dedication and counsel.

Council will continue to focus on strengthening the impact of the institute’s work and on improving governance, as well as providing continuity during the leadership transition. We will act as a strategic partner for Bronwen as she takes Chatham House forward. Central to this will be implementing the institute’s plan to strengthen equality, diversity and inclusion across the board. Finally, I thank the staff for their commitment through this period of transformation.

Sir Nigel Sheinwald GCMG

The Justice Laboratory: International Law in Africa Book dora.popova 30 March 2022

The Justice Laboratory is the first major study of the institutions created to enforce international criminal justice standards in Sub-Saharan Africa, including the UN tribunal for the Rwandan genocide.

Since the Second World War, the United Nations and other international actors have created laws, treaties, and institutions to punish perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. But international criminal justice now seems to be a declining force — its energy sapped by long delays in prosecutions, lagging public attention, and a globally rising authoritarianism that disregards legal niceties.

The Justice Laboratory reviews five examples of international criminal justice as they have been applied across Africa, where brutal civil conflicts in recent decades resulted in varying degrees of global attention and action.

Written in an accessible style, the book explores the connections between politics and the doctrine of international criminal law. Highlighting little-known institutional examples and under-discussed political situations, the book contributes to a broader international understanding of African politics and international criminal justice, and the lessons African experiences can offer to other countries.

This book is part of the Insights series.

Praise for The Justice Laboratory

About the author

Kerstin Bree Carlson is associate professor of international law at the Department of Social Science and Business, Roskilde University, where she teaches topics in law and society, global studies, international politics, and Nordic migration.

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Belarusians’ views on the political crisis - Nov 2021 Other resource NCapeling 20 January 2022

Results of a public opinion poll conducted between 1 and 10 November 2021.

Chatham House surveyed a total of 767 respondents between 1 and 10 November 2021. Our survey sample corresponds to the general structure of Belarus’s urban population and is adjusted by gender, age, education level and the size of respondents’ place of residence.

Summary

• After Aliaksandr Lukashenka, the most well-known political figures in Belarus are the protest leaders: Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Viktar Babaryka, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, Valery Tsapkala, Marya Kalesnikava and Pavel Latushka.
• Lukashenka and Babaryka have the highest popularity ratings among Belarus’s urban population. At the same time, Lukashenka has a high negative rating: half of the city residents surveyed say that they would never vote for him. Babaryka has one of the lowest negative ratings in the country.
• The popularity ratings of pro-government politicians are low, and their negative ratings remain extremely high, although the latter have decreased slightly in comparison with July 2021. The popularity ratings of protest leaders are significantly higher than those of politicians who support the current government.
• Trust in state and independent organizations is polarized along political lines. Thus, respondents classed as hardcore protesters do not trust state structures and do trust independent ones, while Lukashenka’s supporters hold the opposite positions.
• Belarusians’ geopolitical orientations remain stable. The most widely preferred option for a geopolitical union is simultaneous integration with the EU and Russia.
• Belarusians have become increasingly negative about the possibility that Russian airbases could be established on Belarusian territory (48 per cent in November 2021, compared to 39 per cent in July 2021).
• Belarusians are now feeling more strongly that the situation concerning the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened: in November, more than half were beginning to respond that Belarus is unable to cope with the spread of coronavirus.
• Sanctions against Lukashenka and those around him are supported more widely than sanctions against state enterprises.
• Belarusians feel there is acute social tension in their country: almost everyone surveyed states that social tension exists, while one in every five respondents considers the situation catastrophic. A perception that there is social tension is closely related to many factors, with the strongest of all being a sense of a lack of personal safety.
• Only one-third of Belarusians are prepared to call the state built under Lukashenka their own. Most of the survey respondents do not trust this state to some degree, and do not believe that the state protects the interests of Belarusian citizens.

Download a presentation of the survey’s main findings

• Belarusians’ views on the political crisis (PDF)

• Взгляды белорусов на политический кризис (PDF)

Diagnosing social behavioural dynamics of corruption Other resource dora.popova 8 December 2021

This interactive toolkit identifies the types of social expectations which sustain selected corrupt practices and provides behaviourally-informed recommendations for changing them.

When tackling a problem as complex as corruption, it is important to understand why and how people behave in different situations where corruption occurs. In contexts where it is easier to engage in corruption than avoid it, identifying the social expectations and informal rules which sustain corrupt practices can advance corruption prevention and deepen collective action.  

Behavioural approaches to corruption offer a better understanding of diverse social settings, group dynamics, power distribution, social motivations, and expectations that contribute to a more tolerant environment for certain forms of the phenomenon. They are also highly complementary to traditional corruption measures, which tend to focus on the enforcement of legal sanctions and deterrents. Behavioural approaches, especially those inspired by social norms theory, highlight complex social characteristics and informal rules of specific corrupt practices, and effectively support implementation of more dynamic context-specific anti-corruption interventions.

Since 2016, the Chatham House Africa programme’s Social Norms and Accountable Governance (SNAG) project has adopted a behavioural approach based on social norms methodology to investigate the social beliefs which motivate different forms of corruption. Drawing on the project’s extensive evidence-gathering and analysis, this toolkit offers users navigable behavioural mapping of contextual factors, beliefs, and expectations surrounding common corrupt practices. 

It aims to support anti-corruption actors in diagnosing informal rules and social expectations which sustain corruption in some societies. It also proposes behavioural-informed guidance for developing or adapting anti-corruption interventions and activities, so they account for informal rules of behaviour such as social norms. 
 
The toolkit supports users to:

• Identify whether and how widespread corrupt practices are motivated by social beliefs and expectations.

• Understand how society influences the types of corrupt activity individuals engage in, or avoid, and the factors informing these choices

• Integrate empirical evidence and behavioural insights into anti-corruption strategies from diagnostics to design, and eventual implementation and evaluation

The toolkit presents evidence from SNAG’s research into three key corrupt practices – bribery, embezzlement, and electoral fraud. Each was examined in the context of typical situations in which they occur, such as law enforcement, healthcare, the power sector, voting, and education while critical factors such as religion, gender, and ethnicity were considered. 

The toolkit presents an overview of specific contexts and behavioural features of the practices and provides behavioural-informed recommendations. It also contains pop-up features with definitions and explanations of key concepts. The toolkit is designed to be expandable, allowing further content and behavioural dynamics to be added.   

COP26: What happened, what does this mean, and what happens next? Chatham House briefing NCapeling 15 November 2021

Analysing a crucial opportunity for enhancing ambitions on climate finance, adaptation, and ‘loss and damage’, and the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Key findings

Raising the ambition of national emission reduction targets (nationally determined contributions – NDCs) was a critical task for COP26. On this front, governments fell short: although over 120 parties have submitted new or updated NDCs, the new targets only narrow the gap to 1.5°C by 15–17 per cent, and are, if fully implemented (and this is far from certain), projected to result in warming of 2.4°C by the end of the century.

If warming is to be limited to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, additional emissions reductions before 2030, over and above current NDC pledges, will need to equate to reducing emissions by the equivalent of two years of current annual emissions. To keep warming to 2°C, the equivalent reductions would be needed of one year’s total emissions.

The Glasgow Climate Pact – the main political outcome of COP26 – requests governments to revisit and strengthen their NDCs before the end of 2022 to bring these in line with the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal. To keep 1.5°C within reach, it will be absolutely essential that governments return to the table with significantly enhanced offers ahead of COP27, which will take place at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2022.

Another key feature of the Glasgow Climate Pact is the reference to ‘accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies’. Although the language was watered down over the course of the negotiations, COP26 marks the first time ever reducing fossil fuels is mentioned in a COP decision.

Discussions around climate finance, adaptation, and loss and damage were centre stage in Glasgow, and were critical points of contention. Although the Glasgow Climate Pact urges developed countries to ‘fully’ deliver on the $100 billion annual climate finance pledge through to 2025, it remains unclear when this sum will actually be raised in full – and if a total of $500 billion will be mobilized between 2020 and 2025 to make up for initial shortfalls.

And while the Pact urges developed countries to double their adaptation finance by 2025, and establishes a dialogue on loss and damage finance, much more will need to be done to address the needs of climate-vulnerable developing countries. 

COP26 saw a flurry of plurilateral deals on key issues such as phasing out various forms of fossil fuels and ending deforestation. These initiatives have the potential to accelerate decarbonization, but monitoring their implementation and holding governments and other institutions to account will be critical. Future COPs provide a platform for doing this, and governments should seek to incorporate the pledges made outside the formal remits of the UNFCCC process in their NDCs.

While some progress was made at COP26, the next 12 months will be crucial in determining if the formal agreements reached in Glasgow provide grounds for optimism that 1.5°C remains firmly in sight, and are sufficient to build trust between countries and between citizens and governments.

Read the full analysis

Impact report 2020–21 Other resource dora.popova 14 July 2021

Explore our policy impact in the past year, including through our research, convening and next generation initiatives, in a revised format annual review.

Chair’s statement

It has been an extraordinary year of change for us all. The COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest challenge to the world for generations. Millions have lost their lives or suffered devastating impacts on their health, both from COVID-19 itself and because health systems have been unable to deliver treatments for other conditions. The pandemic has also caused the greatest shock to the global economy since the 1930s, setting back the progress of recent years in eliminating poverty, getting more children into education and improving global health.

This means Chatham House is needed more than ever. Our world-leading convening and cutting-edge research on the major challenges facing the world, from building more sustainable economic growth and tackling climate change to easing geopolitical tensions, has continued despite the challenges of lockdown. For that I pay tribute to the resilience and ingenuity of the staff who have found innovative solutions to the obstacles presented by the pandemic, all while working largely from home.

This year I am also delighted to note the exceptional gift of £10 million from the MAVA Foundation to enable us to launch the Sustainability Accelerator. This initiative builds on the Hoffmann Centre’s last five years of innovative convening and activity. And it puts sustainability at the core of the institute’s work in this critical year for addressing climate change and biodiversity.

So, as I prepare to step down from my three years as chair of the institute, I would like to thank my fellow Council members and Robin Niblett and his team for their hard work and ambition to deliver on Chatham House’s mission. I have also been especially pleased to see how we are engaging younger, more diverse audiences through the next generation initiatives, including our Panel of Young Advisers, the Common Futures Conversations project, the QEII Academy Ambassadors, our Internship Programme and the Chatham House-SNF CoLab.

I am particularly pleased about the Chatham House Summer School, where 16–18-year-olds can now engage with experts on international affairs and get an insight into careers within the charity and not-for-profit sector.

It has been an honour to lead this extraordinary institution and I look forward to continuing my involvement with Chatham House in new ways.

Lord Jim O’Neill

Belarusians’ views on the political crisis - April 2021 Other resource NCapeling 11 June 2021

Results of a public opinion poll conducted between 20 and 30 April 2021.

Chatham House surveyed a total of 937 respondents between 20 and 30 April 2021. Our survey sample corresponds to the general structure of Belarus’s urban population and is corrected and weighted by gender, age, size of respondents’ town of residence and education level.

Summary

• After Lukashenka, the most known political figures in Belarus are pro-protest politicians: Tsikhanouskaya, Babaryka, Tsikhanouski, Kalesnikava, Tsapkala and Latushka. Viktar Babaryka is the most popular presidential candidate among Belarusian urban citizens, and Lukashenka comes second to him.
• State organizations and bodies are still mistrusted by more than half the population, while the army is slightly more popular than other bodies. Independent media, labour unions and human rights organizations are trusted far more than state ones.
• Russia leads when it comes to positive attitudes to foreign states: one in three Belarusians feel very positive about their neighbour and 79 per cent feel positive in general. 71 per cent Belarusians feel positive about China, which is the next highest indicator. Despite propaganda efforts, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and EU states in general are still perceived positively by more than 60 per cent of Belarusians, with fewer than 20 per cent feeling negative about them.
• The position on Russian interference in the Belarusian political crisis is consolidated enough: 58 per cent think that Russia should remain neutral. The rest are almost equally divided between those who think Russia should support the protest movement (19 per cent) and those who think Russia should support Lukashenka (23 per cent).
• 40 per cent have changed their attitude to the Russian government since it supported Lukashenka in the crisis, and 73 per cent are sure that Russia is his sole support.
• While 32 per cent of Belarusians see union with Russia as the most appropriate foreign policy, 46 per cent would like to be in a union with both Russia and the EU simultaneously.
• Almost half the population thinks that Belarusian foreign policy in the event of a pro-protest government coming to power would be oriented toward friendship and cooperation with both Russia and the West, which correlates with how the majority thinks it should be. Although 42 per cent expect foreign policy would lean toward the EU in that situation, which is less acceptable: only 25 per cent think it ‘should’.
• The proportion of respondents who think Belarus should remain in the Collective Security Treaty Organization is 58 per cent, while 35 per cent would like to see Belarus not belonging to any military bloc and a small share (seven per cent) would prefer Belarus to join NATO.
• Almost half of the population considers Lukashenka to be the major obstacle for political stability and economic development and is sure he does not care about, and in fact is a threat to, independence.
• In general, most Belarusians have a consolidated opinion that the authorities should start negotiating with opponents and free all political prisoners.
• More than half of Belarusians think that Lukashenka must leave immediately or before the end of 2021, while 27 per cent think he should leave when his term ends in 2025. The opinion that Lukashenka should rule for another term beginning in 2025 is marginal – only ten per cent support this.
• Expectations are not so optimistic though: only 26 per cent believe he will leave office this year. One in three thinks he will leave in 2025; a further 19 per cent say that he will stay on for further terms in office.
• If Lukashenka doesn’t leave, people expect an increase in emigration and unemployment, the continuation of repression in all areas of life, falling exchange rates and the tightening of dependency on Russia.
• Opinion on abortions is still consolidated, with only 19 per cent thinking they should be banned in most or all cases. The same applies to Lukashenka’s infamous statement that society in Belarus is not ready to have a female president: only 20 per cent agree with the opinion.
• 52 per cent don’t think there is a problem of wage inequality between men and women in Belarus, while 37 per cent do see an issue.

Download a presentation of the survey’s main findings

War Time: Temporality and the Decline of Western Military Power Book dora.popova 22 February 2021

In War Time the Western way of war, its pace and timing, are discussed and analysed by experts who question the West’s ability to maintain its military superiority given the political and strategic failures of interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In War Time, war studies experts examine the trajectory of Western military power. They discuss conflicting perceptions of time anchored within Western political and military institutions, and the Western attachment to fast-paced warfare at the expense of longer-term political solutions.

Divided into three sections, the book covers ‘civic militarism’ and the trajectory of Western power, Western perceptions of time and the international normative order, and military operations and temporality. War Time explains why the West has been overwhelmingly powerful on the battlefield and yet strategically and politically weak as exemplified by the return of the Taliban and the hasty evacuation of troops and personnel from Afghanistan.

The book identifies policies that decision-makers must adopt to stave off the decline of Western military dominance.

This book is part of the Insights series.

Watch the event

A special event was held in March 2021 to mark the launch of the book. View the event here.

Praise for War Time

About the editors

Sten Rynning is professor of war studies at the University of Southern Denmark.

Olivier Schmitt is professor with special responsibilities at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark, and currently director of research and studies at the French Institute for Higher National Defence Studies.

Amelie Theussen is assistant professor at the Center for War Studies, University of 
Southern Denmark.

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Gender, think-tanks and international affairs: A toolkit Other resource NCapeling 9 February 2021

Encouraging a more gender-sensitive approach for think-tank activities such as convening and debate, research and analysis, and communications and publishing.

Compiled by staff at Chatham House, the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy and the British American Security Information Council, the toolkit provides think-tanks with guidance on ways of adapting organizational structures, activities and practices in order to embed greater awareness of gender issues and adopt gender-sensitive approaches throughout their work.

The toolkit is designed for all people working in international affairs think-tanks, regardless of role, experience or level of seniority. It will be particularly useful for those think-tanks that are just beginning the process of raising greater awareness of gender issues internally, as well as for those that have already begun to make changes but wish to expand this work further.

The work to develop the toolkit came as a response to the commonly gendered nature of think-tanks and their activities. The toolkit recognizes the discrimination and under-representation that women often experience within the sector, as well as the relative absence of women among executive leadership, governance structures and senior researcher positions in many think-tanks.

The toolkit’s focus on gender is a starting point for wider intersectional analysis and action within the think-tank community. Embedding inclusive research, convening and communication practices is not just ‘the right thing to do’. When diversity and inclusion initiatives succeed, organizations are more resilient, innovative and better at decision-making.

While there has already been incremental change within think-tanks, the toolkit’s authors intend that their work will build on the important body of research and practices that already exist by encouraging think-tanks to examine their own processes and develop ways of working that focus not just on women’s representation, but on the structures and systems that perpetuate biases and inequalities.

Centenary Series: Exploring the International Affairs Archive dora.popova 14 September 2020

International Affairs has been a central part of the institute’s history, both as a record of speeches made by dignitaries such as Mahatma Gandhi and Henry Kissinger, and as a forum for policy-relevant academic research.

Delving into the International Affairs archive brings out stories behind some of the most significant players of the last century.

Secrets and Spies: UK Intelligence Accountability After Iraq and Snowden Book sysadmin 15 January 2020

How can democratic governments hold intelligence and security agencies to account when what they do is largely secret? Jamie Gaskarth explores how intelligence professionals view accountability in the context of 21st century politics.

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. The book is published as part of the Insights series.

Praise for Secrets and Spies

About the author

Jamie Gaskarth is Professor of Foreign Policy and International Relations at The Open University. He was previously senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham where he taught strategy and decision-making. His research focused on 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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Subsidies and Sustainable Agriculture: Mapping the Policy Landscape Research paper sysadmin 10 December 2019

Agricultural subsidies shape production and consumption patterns, with potentially significant effects on poverty, nutrition and other sustainability concerns. This paper maps the different types of support provided by governments to the agricultural sector, and highlights some of the complex political economy dynamics that underpin the relevant policies.

Summary

• Agricultural subsidies, a mainstay of government policy, have a large part in shaping production and consumption patterns, with potentially significant effects as regards poverty, food security, nutrition, and other sustainability concerns such as climate change, land use practices and biodiversity.
• There are multiple types of direct and indirect support provided by governments to various actors in the agricultural sector; and in terms of political economy, there are complex dynamics underpinning the policies that sustain these subsidies.
• Overall, subsidies targeting producers have the most significant effect on production, and the greater trade-distorting effect. These subsidies promote domestic production and discourage imports, leading to overproduction that is largely disposed of on the international market, with the help of export subsidies. This can tend to intensify negative environmental agricultural practices, such as cultivating marginal land, unsustainable types of intensification, or incentivizing excessive pesticide and fertilizer use.
• On the other hand, producer subsidies that are not tied to output of a specific commodity (i.e. delinked) have far fewer distorting impacts and could help to deliver sustainable outcomes. For example, this type of subsidies can require crop diversification or be linked to conservation of permanent grassland.
• Subsidies that enable transfers to consumers, for example through food stamp programmes, also serve to delink production from consumption, can foster healthier diets, can play an important role in delivering food accessibility and security among low-income groups, and can represent one of the less trade-distorting subsidies.
• If subsidies are to be reformed to help promote healthier diets and encourage more sustainable production, it is essential to understand not only the type and amount of support that key countries provide, but also the domestic dynamics that can shape such policies.
• While price support, input subsidies or investment aids remain the central pillars of programmes in large developing countries such as Brazil, China or India, other economies – notably including the EU and Japan – focus on direct payments, support for general services and set-aside schemes, as well as significant border protection. The US, for its part, has tended to focus on subsidized insurance schemes and food programmes for poorer consumers.
• If subsidies are to deliver policy objectives, their design and implementation should delink production from consumption. For example, consumer subsidies designed to deliver nutrition and food security, or payments for environmental services to enable more environmentally friendly production systems, could prove to be the most effective, least trade-distorting means of achieving more sustainable and equitable agricultural production.
• The political economy of food means that the removal of subsidies is often highly sensitive, and tends to be met with significant resistance. However, reform that delinks support from production through a gradual transition process could ultimately prove successful in delivering effective subsidy schemes.
• Effective subsidy schemes must by design be truly result- and performance-based, supported by robust and objective indicators. At the same time, engaging multiple actors along key commodity value chains – including leading importing and exporting countries, traders and transporters – could lead to the development of international, commodity-specific arrangements that are able to deliver effective nutrition and sustainability goals.

AI-driven Personalization in Digital Media: Political and Societal Implications Research paper sysadmin 2 December 2019

The fallout from disinformation and online manipulation strategies have alerted Western democracies to the novel, nuanced vulnerabilities of our information society. This paper outlines the implications of the adoption of AI by the the legacy media, as well as by the new media, focusing on personalization.

Summary

• Machine learning (ML)-driven personalization is fast expanding from social media to the wider information space, encompassing legacy media, multinational conglomerates and digital-native publishers: however, this is happening within a regulatory and oversight vacuum that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.
• Mass-scale adoption of personalization in communication has serious implications for human rights, societal resilience and political security. Data protection, privacy and wrongful discrimination, as well as freedom of opinion and of expression, are some of the areas impacted by this technological transformation.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and its ML subset are novel technologies that demand novel ways of approaching oversight, monitoring and analysis. Policymakers, regulators, media professionals and engineers need to be able to conceptualize issues in an interdisciplinary way that is appropriate for sociotechnical systems.
• Funding needs to be allocated to research into human–computer interaction in information environments, data infrastructure, technology market trends, and the broader impact of ML systems within the communication sector.
• Although global, high-level ethical frameworks for AI are welcome, they are no substitute for domain- and context-specific codes of ethics. Legacy media and digital-native publishers need to overhaul their editorial codes to make them fit for purpose in a digital ecosystem transformed by ML. Journalistic principles need to be reformulated and refined in the current informational context in order to efficiently inform the ML models built for personalized communication.
• Codes of ethics will not by themselves be enough, so current regulatory and legislative frameworks as they relate to media need to be reassessed. Media regulators need to develop their in-house capacity for thorough research and monitoring into ML systems, and – when appropriate –proportionate sanctions for actors found to be employing such systems towards malign ends. Collaboration with data protection authorities, competition authorities and national electoral commissions is paramount for preserving the integrity of elections and of a political discourse grounded on democratic principles.
• Upskilling senior managers and editorial teams is fundamental if media professionals are to be able to engage meaningfully and effectively with data scientists and AI engineers.

Online Disinformation and Political Discourse: Applying a Human Rights Framework Research paper sysadmin 5 November 2019

Although some digital platforms now have an impact on more people’s lives than does any one state authority, the international community has been slow to hold to account these platforms’ activities by reference to human rights law.

This paper examines how human rights frameworks should guide digital technology.

Summary

• Online political campaigning techniques are distorting our democratic political processes. These techniques include the creation of disinformation and divisive content; exploiting digital platforms’ algorithms, and using bots, cyborgs and fake accounts to distribute this content; maximizing influence through harnessing emotional responses such as anger and disgust; and micro-targeting on the basis of collated personal data and sophisticated psychological profiling techniques. Some state authorities distort political debate by restricting, filtering, shutting down or censoring online networks.
• Such techniques have outpaced regulatory initiatives and, save in egregious cases such as shutdown of networks, there is no international consensus on how they should be tackled. Digital platforms, driven by their commercial impetus to encourage users to spend as long as possible on them and to attract advertisers, may provide an environment conducive to manipulative techniques.
• International human rights law, with its careful calibrations designed to protect individuals from abuse of power by authority, provides a normative framework that should underpin responses to online disinformation and distortion of political debate. Contrary to popular view, it does not entail that there should be no control of the online environment; rather, controls should balance the interests at stake appropriately.
• The rights to freedom of thought and opinion are critical to delimiting the appropriate boundary between legitimate influence and illegitimate manipulation. When digital platforms exploit decision-making biases in prioritizing bad news and divisive, emotion-arousing information, they may be breaching these rights. States and digital platforms should consider structural changes to digital platforms to ensure that methods of online political discourse respect personal agency and prevent the use of sophisticated manipulative techniques.
• The right to privacy includes a right to choose not to divulge your personal information, and a right to opt out of trading in and profiling on the basis of your personal data. Current practices in collecting, trading and using extensive personal data to ‘micro-target’ voters without their knowledge are not consistent with this right. Significant changes are needed.
• Data protection laws should be implemented robustly, and should not legitimate extensive harvesting of personal data on the basis of either notional ‘consent’ or the data handler’s commercial interests. The right to privacy should be embedded in technological design (such as by allowing the user to access all information held on them at the click of a button); and political parties should be transparent in their collection and use of personal data, and in their targeting of messages. Arguably, the value of personal data should be shared with the individuals from whom it derives.
• The rules on the boundaries of permissible content online should be set by states, and should be consistent with the right to freedom of expression. Digital platforms have had to rapidly develop policies on retention or removal of content, but those policies do not necessarily reflect the right to freedom of expression, and platforms are currently not well placed to take account of the public interest. Platforms should be far more transparent in their content regulation policies and decision-making, and should develop frameworks enabling efficient, fair, consistent internal complaints and content monitoring processes. Expertise on international human rights law should be integral to their systems.
• The right to participate in public affairs and to vote includes the right to engage in public debate. States and digital platforms should ensure an environment in which all can participate in debate online and are not discouraged from standing for election, from participating or from voting by online threats or abuse.

Delivering Sustainable Food and Land Use Systems: The Role of International Trade Research paper sysadmin 20 September 2019

This paper explores a set of core trade-related issues affecting the food and land use system, and proposes constructive ways forward in reconfiguring the global trading system towards delivering a more sustainable and healthy diet for all.

• Meeting future global food security requirements is not just about quantity; it is also about meeting growing needs in a way that safeguards human as well as planetary health. But national priorities and policies often remain out of sync with aspirations for more sustainable and healthy food systems.
• International trade and trade policies play an ambiguous role in the current food system. With 80 per cent of the world’s population depending on imports to meet at least part of their food and nutritional requirements, trade has a unique function in offsetting imbalances between supply and demand. However, in the absence of effective regulatory frameworks or pricing frameworks that internalize environmental, social or health costs, trade can exacerbate and globalize challenges associated with food production and land use trends such as deforestation, land degradation, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss and the shift to unhealthy diets.
• Over the last two decades, trade in agricultural products (excluding intra-EU flows) has more than tripled in value, to reach $1.33 trillion. The geography of global food trade flows has also shifted, primarily towards South–South trade, which now accounts for roughly a quarter of total agricultural trade flows. The nature of global trade has changed drastically, with traditional exports such as wheat and coffee growing slowly at around 2 per cent per year, while products such as palm oil, fruit juice, soft drinks and other processed products have grown at 8 per cent or more annually.
• This overall increase in trade in agricultural products raises questions about the growing utilization of resources, such as water or soil nutrients, that are embedded in those products through production and processing. Trade itself also causes negative environmental impacts, starting with greenhouse gas emissions associated with transport and storage. If the environmental cost associated with production and trade is not reflected in the final price of goods, trade may accelerate the depletion of resources or their unsustainable use.
• It is critical to ensure that trade policy options pursued by producing and consuming countries alike will support a transition to more sustainable and healthier food and land use systems. The first step in addressing trade-related food systems challenges must involve rebuilding trust among policy actors. There is a need for new spaces for informal dialogue among actors, and ‘soft’ governance mechanisms that can help rebuild consensus on the best ways forward. Meeting these challenges also requires an appreciation of the complex interactions between sectoral policies (e.g. on water, land, food, etc.) and their multiple interfaces with trade policies.
• Conditioning the use of subsidies on their sustainability and/or health impacts encourages the delivery of essential public goods in ways that are consistent with sustainability and health goals. A first step therefore is the removal of perverse incentives (e.g. subsidies encouraging the overuse of fertilizers or pesticides or the overproduction of certain commodities, as well as certain biofuels subsidies) and replacing them with market-correcting subsidies.
• Trade facilitation measures for fruits and vegetables that are aimed at easing transit at the border, by cutting unnecessary bureaucracy and reducing waiting times, can improve their availability, reduce costs and improve food quality and safety for consumers. Similarly, measures aimed at improving sustainable cold storage and upgrading value chains can support better diets and consumption by increasing the availability of fresh produce on markets, especially in developing countries.
• A global food stamps programme developed through the G20 and facilitated by the UN’s food agencies could address purchasing power imbalances and tackle malnutrition in developing countries. If carefully designed, such ‘safety net’ schemes can not only contribute to improving calorific intakes but also help deliver more balanced and healthier diets. Careful attention must be given to how such a scheme would work in practice, building on experience to date with similar initiatives.
• Integrating the notion of sustainable food and inputs trade in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework can help to deliver more sustainable and healthier food and land use systems. This could be achieved by likeminded countries introducing a set of goals or targets aimed at mitigating the role of trade in placing indirect pressure on biodiversity, and to encourage trade in biodiversity-based products including natural ingredients produced ethically and following sustainability principles and criteria.
• An SDG-oriented agenda for agricultural trade is needed. It could be formed by countries seeking to remove perverse incentives, guaranteeing a safe harbour for market-correcting measures, clarifying existing rules and establishing plurilateral negotiations among subsets of the WTO membership, or sectoral approaches, to address specific challenges.
• Greenhouse gas emissions resulting from trade need to be addressed. Governments could seek to achieve this through ensuring the carbon neutrality of existing and new trade deals, either by connecting carbon markets among contracting parties or by developing joint initiatives to tax international maritime and air transport emissions.

Artificial Intelligence Prediction and Counterterrorism Research paper sysadmin 6 August 2019

The use of AI in counterterrorism is not inherently wrong, and this paper suggests some necessary conditions for legitimate use of AI as part of a predictive approach to counterterrorism on the part of liberal democratic states.

Summary

• The use of predictive artificial intelligence (AI) in countering terrorism is often assumed to have a deleterious effect on human rights, generating spectres of ‘pre-crime’ punishment and surveillance states. However, the well-regulated use of new capabilities may enhance states’ abilities to protect citizens’ right to life, while at the same time improving adherence to principles intended to protect other human rights, such as transparency, proportionality and freedom from unfair discrimination. The same regulatory framework could also contribute to safeguarding against broader misuse of related technologies.
• Most states focus on preventing terrorist attacks, rather than reacting to them. As such, prediction is already central to effective counterterrorism. AI allows higher volumes of data to be analysed, and may perceive patterns in those data that would, for reasons of both volume and dimensionality, otherwise be beyond the capacity of human interpretation. The impact of this is that traditional methods of investigation that work outwards from known suspects may be supplemented by methods that analyse the activity of a broad section of an entire population to identify previously unknown threats.
• Developments in AI have amplified the ability to conduct surveillance without being constrained by resources. Facial recognition technology, for instance, may enable the complete automation of surveillance using CCTV in public places in the near future.
• The current way predictive AI capabilities are used presents a number of interrelated problems from both a human rights and a practical perspective. Where limitations and regulations do exist, they may have the effect of curtailing the utility of approaches that apply AI, while not necessarily safeguarding human rights to an adequate extent.
• The infringement of privacy associated with the automated analysis of certain types of public data is not wrong in principle, but the analysis must be conducted within a robust legal and policy framework that places sensible limitations on interventions based on its results.
• In future, broader access to less intrusive aspects of public data, direct regulation of how those data are used – including oversight of activities by private-sector actors – and the imposition of technical as well as regulatory safeguards may improve both operational performance and compliance with human rights legislation. It is important that any such measures proceed in a manner that is sensitive to the impact on other rights such as freedom of expression, and freedom of association and assembly.

Annual Review 2018-19 Other resource sysadmin 24 July 2019

Explore the institute’s output, activities and achievements from the past year examining how to make the world more stable in uncertain times, new thinking on how societies can promote prosperity, and how to contribute to a more just society.

Chair’s statement

I was delighted to be elected chair of Chatham House last year. It is an honour to lead such a remarkable institution and to have the opportunity to build on the legacy left by Stuart Popham, who stepped down last year as chair and whom I thank and pay tribute to.

My ambition is to ensure that the institute has an even better future than its illustrious past. We are living in unpredictable times, and I want us to be at the centre of the drive to guide the world to a healthier place both politically and economically.

Chatham House possesses world-leading convening power, which – when combined with our capacity to deliver leading, cross-cutting research – gives us a unique advantage in the field of international relations. I want us to harness these assets and better combine the strengths of our research teams so that we can address the big global challenges around economic growth; avoiding geopolitical tensions; and developing new governance systems (as outlined on page 7). This will enable us to improve our impact and effect more policy change.

I also want Chatham House to be an exciting place that attracts younger, more diverse, international audiences. We need to drive more engagement with the next generation of members and others to draw on their enthusiasm, energy and ideas. Our Common Futures Conversations project, for example, is engaging young people from 13 countries across Africa and Europe to identify their shared concerns, and is enabling them to work together to identify solutions via online communities.

This initiative, and indeed all of our activities, would not be possible without funding and support. As noted in more detail in the Honorary Treasurer’s report (page 32), 2018/19 was a challenging year financially, with income totalling £16,381,000, slightly below the level recorded in 2017/18.

Although total net assets at 31 March 2019 were 3 per cent down year on year, the balance sheet remain strong and there was an inflow of cash, with the level of forward income received and pledged increasing significantly.

In this context, I am delighted to note the award of the transformational £10 million grant to facilitate the creation of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Wing, which will help facilitate research, host our Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs and establish a new collaboration space – the ‘CoLab’ – for engaging our new audiences. All of Chatham House’s supporters, and not least our members, remain indispensable to our success. Without their engagement, enthusiasm and input, the institute could not fulfil its mission.

I am indebted to my colleagues on Council for their support, engagement and expertise. I can say with confidence that they are actively involved in their governance responsibilities at this time when the operational, as well as financial, pressures on all charitable institutions are more intense than ever.

I would like to pay tribute to Alistair Burnett, Martin Fraenkel and Barbara Ridpath, who step down from Council this year after a total of 15 years’ service. I would also like to thank and acknowledge Robin Niblett and his team for their dedication and hard work. Some of the outcomes of their labours are highlighted on the following pages.

Lord Jim O’Neill

The Chatham House Sustainable Laboratories Initiative: Prior Assessment Tool Other resource sysadmin 14 June 2019

Laboratories are critical for supporting effective infectious disease surveillance and outbreak response. This tool is meant to help structure a conversation between funding partners and recipient countries on how to most effectively establish or repurpose laboratories in low-resource environments.

Introduction

Laboratories are critical for supporting effective infectious disease surveillance and outbreak response, and lack of adequate laboratory capacity is a global challenge. As part of global health security initiatives, cooperative threat reduction efforts and international development programmes, sophisticated laboratories have been provided to mitigate biological threats and bolster a country’s capacity for detection, diagnosis and storage of high-consequence pathogens. Very often, these use the assumptions, standards and templates applied in high-income countries. However, it can be difficult or even impossible to sustain these facilities in low-resource environments. There can sometimes be limited local technical capacity and capability, which can result in a high reliance on imported expertise, skills, equipment and other resources. Sustainability can therefore be hard to achieve. In addition, when a funding partner withdraws, the laboratories can become disused, foundering without the trained personnel and financial resources to sustain them.

To help address this situation, a proposal gaining increasing support internationally is to adopt an approach based on a local risk assessment, whereby laboratories are appropriately and optimally tailored to the local risks and to the resources available, both in the short and longer term, without compromising biosafety and biosecurity.

A Chatham House workshop was convened in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2018 to explore what West African countries would find most appropriate in terms of building laboratory capacity, what the main challenges have been so far, and what needs to be done to improve the sustainability of laboratories in the region. It emerged that there was a need for a more structured conversation between the funding partner and recipient country early in the process – prior to embarking on the detailed planning phase for the establishment or repurposing of a laboratory. This should involve careful consideration and an assessment of existing and planned capacity, needs and contextual issues, together with proposals for how to address the issues revealed, so that any ensuing laboratory demonstrably supports the national strategy and therefore flourishes.

Tectonic Politics: Global Political Risk in an Age of Transformation Book sysadmin 7 May 2019

Political risk now affects more markets and countries than ever before and that risk will continue to rise. But traditional methods of managing political risk are no longer legitimate or effective.

In Tectonic Politics, Nigel Gould-Davies explores the complex, shifting landscape of political risk and how to navigate it. He analyses trends in each form of political risk: the power to destroy, seize, regulate, and tax.

He shows how each of these forms reflects a deeper transformation of the global political economy that is reordering the relationship between power, wealth, and values. In a world where everything is political, the craft of engagement is as important as the science of production and the art of the deal.

The successful company must integrate that craft—the engager’s way of seeing and doing—into strategy and culture.

Drawing on a career in academia, business, and diplomacy, Gould-Davies provides corporate leaders, scholars, and engaged citizens with a groundbreaking study of the fastest-rising political risk today. ‘As tectonic plates shape the earth,’ he writes, ‘so tectonic politics forges its governance.’

The book is published as part of the Insights series.

Praise for Tectonic Politics

About the author

Nigel Gould-Davies was an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House.

Purchase

• UK (via Amazon)
• Rest of world (via Brookings Institution Press)
• Students (via Browns Books)

Infrastructure Management Contracts: Improving Energy Asset Management in Displacement Settings Research paper sysadmin 17 April 2019

This paper highlights a number of options for managing electricity infrastructure in refugee camps and outlines the challenges, opportunities and operational implications associated with them. It takes the Kalobeyei settlement in Kenya as a case study.

• Building and maintaining electricity infrastructure to power offices, businesses, households and other operations in displacement settings is difficult. It is especially challenging for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its partner agencies, because supplying electricity is not their core business.
• Private-sector companies exist that are willing and able to develop infrastructure management contracts to provide energy as a service in displacement settings. However, institutional barriers within humanitarian agencies persist, with short budgeting cycles in particular preventing humanitarian agencies from entering into the sorts of long-term service agreements required by the private sector.
• A number of options exist to leverage the expertise of the private sector through ‘public–private partnership’ (P3) structures. Such mechanisms can promote more efficient management of infrastructure by drawing on private-sector experience and expertise, incentivizing appropriate risk-sharing and providing options to leverage private capital in project development.
• Field work from the Kalobeyei settlement in Kenya suggests that a solar/diesel hybrid mini-grid solution was the most economical option to power camp services and infrastructure there. Compared to distributed diesel generation, the annual savings in operating costs were estimated at $49,880, with the additional investment paid back within 3.6 years.
• Humanitarian agencies need to be willing to change their policies to enable long-term service agreements. Alternatively (or, more likely, in conjunction with this option), financial mechanisms such as partial risk guarantees need to be developed to offset some of the risks. This change will need high-level support from donors and humanitarian agencies.
• Once the first infrastructure management contracts can be signed and tested in displacement locations (through the use of donor funding or otherwise) and associated data collected, it will ease the way for future investments in these types of projects.

Moving Energy Initiative Learning Briefs Research paper sysadmin 29 March 2019

Drawing on experiences from Phase II of the MEI in Burkina Faso, Kenya and Jordan, these learning briefs highlight MEI’s approach to innovation, engagement with the private-sector and host communities, and gender-sensitive energy projects. The four learning papers are intended for practitioners and policymakers working in the humanitarian sector and host-country governments.

Findings from Phase I of the Moving Energy Initiative (MEI) in 2015, published in the Chatham House research paper Heat, Light and Power for Refugees: Saving Lives, Reducing Costs, highlight the negative impacts of limited sustainable energy provision on the security of displaced populations. The paper also identified some of the challenges for energy programmes in this sector, such as the lack of robust data on energy access and the priorities of refugee populations.

In Phase II of the MEI, Practical Action led detailed research into the energy needs of refugees in Burkina Faso and Kenya. Chatham House analysed data on global refugee energy use in displacement contexts and produced an interactive map. Energy 4 Impact explored sustainable funding options, private-sector contract models and non-wood cooking concessions. The market development and low-carbon energy initiatives in Burkina Faso, Jordan and Kenya were managed by Practical Action and Energy 4 Impact, with the support of local partners. These partners represented the MEI at multiple conferences and events to share findings and advocate for the inclusion of displaced people in the sustainable energy agenda.

Drawing on experiences from Phase II of the MEI in Burkina Faso, Kenya and Jordan, these learning briefs highlight MEI’s approach to innovation, engagement with the private-sector and host communities, and gender-sensitive energy projects. The four learning papers are intended for practitioners and policymakers working in the humanitarian sector and host-country governments.

Adopting a Market-based Approach to Boost Energy Access in Displaced Contexts Research paper sysadmin 25 March 2019

This paper evaluates the market-based approaches adopted in the MEI projects in Kenya and Burkina Faso. It articulates how such commercial strategies can be applied to the delivery of energy in displacement settings and compares this to real world examples.

• Development of long-term energy solutions in displacement settings tends to be perceived as investment that falls outside the remit of emergency responses. In addition, when emergency energy supply measures are implemented they often result in expensive, unreliable and unhealthy energy provision for those in protracted or recurrent crises.
• There is widespread agreement among humanitarian and development experts that an effective refugee response should include long-term development solutions as well as emergency relief.
• The energy access imperative is more pronounced when considering the need for effective energy distribution in practically all camp activities and basic necessities: pumping and treatment of clean water; heating and cooling for food storage and cooking; energy for livelihood activities; and provision of light for schooling, hospitals and the prevention of violence against women and children.
• Minor shifts in household energy use to basic solar lighting options and non-wood fuels would save $303 million annually on refugee fuel costs.
• Within refugee contexts in Kenya and Burkina Faso, the MEI sought to examine opportunities to use market interventions, rather than in-kind distributions, to improve clean energy access over the long-term and test the delivery of market-based approaches.

Innovative Financing for Humanitarian Energy Interventions Research paper sysadmin 28 February 2019

This paper explores the increase in resources and funding needed to improve the access of displaced people to modern and sustainable energy services.

Summary

• In settings that host displaced and refugee communities, energy can act as an enabler for improved healthcare, education and access to clean water. More efficient sources of energy can also save money that can be reinvested in life-saving interventions. A range of challenges exist that inhibit the uptake and effective management of cleaner energy solutions in displacement settings. These are magnified by a lack of available and appropriate funding.
• The current funding gap is significant. In many cases, involving the private sector (both enterprises and investors) is viewed as a way to accelerate delivery of sustainable energy solutions, leverage additional capital, efficiency and expertise, and adopt more sustainable and market-based approaches.
• Displacement settings are an extreme example of complex and unpredictable operating environments. Traditional approaches to the financing of energy access will not be supported by the risk/return characteristics of this market opportunity, so alternative structures are needed.
• Such structures can include mechanisms such as grants, guarantees, ‘results-based financing’ and ‘impact bonds’. These blended financial instruments should aim to leverage first losses – whereby, in the case of default, the first loss is taken by the ‘impact-first’ investors, or guarantors, thereby fully or partially protecting ‘finance-first’ investors.
• Given the specific constraints of displacement settings, any financing mechanisms at present are likely to fall between the categories of providing ‘more efficient aid’ and ‘more efficient aid through markets’. They are likely to constitute a transitional step from grant-making towards the use of commercial investment vehicles.
• While a number of financial mechanisms could be applied to attract private-sector engagement, most remain theoretical, with few being implemented extensively or at scale. Where such financial mechanisms have already been used, access to relevant data is poor, especially in circumstances where the desired outcomes were not achieved.
• The Moving Energy Initiative (MEI) completed feasibility work into the concept of an energy humanitarian fund and found that, while a need for this type of facility has emerged, it sits in a difficult position between energy access, climate and humanitarian funding sources. Key donors are needed to drive forward innovative financing vehicles and further testing of these mechanisms, in order to generate market data and evidence for further iterations and additional investments.