John T. Shaw: Comfort Ero is tireless in her work to prevent tensions from exploding into international crises |
We sometimes think of statesmanship as requiring bold action on a large stage with dramatic consequences.
However, statesmanship can also involve quiet steps to prevent conflicts, halt them if they arise, and craft sustainable arrangements that bring security and relief to troubled places.
Comfort Ero, president of the International Crisis Group, has been active in, and committed to, conflict prevention around the world for her entire professional career.
For her, conflict prevention is not abstract. Rather, it is the practice and discipline of identifying emerging tensions, developing creative solutions, and urging policymakers to implement concrete plans to head off crises and avoid suffering.
“There are always moments,” she says, “in which you can shift the needle, in which you can find an avenue, in which you can create avenues for mediation, for a negotiated settlement.”
It’s important, she adds, “to help stave off the worst, identify opportunities to calm and avert violence, and, ideally, develop ideas for what global or regional orders might emerge from today’s tumult.”
With a doctorate from the London School of Economics, Ero is precise and scholarly. She is also soft-spoken, unflappable and determined. She can more than hold her own at the global gatherings she regularly attends such as the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Munich Security Conference. However, her primary passion is directed at those places where violence threatens and disorder beckons. She has devoted her career to studying conflict by visiting war zones, interviewing those in danger and devising plans to prevent war or injury.
Ero was born in London to Nigerian parents who........