Participants of the 7th Asia-Europe Roundtable in discussion
The Asia-Europe Roundtable (AER) series has served as an important forum for Asia-Europe collaboration on conflict management. With ethnic issues being at the heart of most intra-state conflicts, the series had previously examined the issue of minority conflicts.
Based on the recommendations that emerged from that meeting, ASEF organised the 7th Asia-Europe Roundtable on Early Warning Systems in Minority Conflicts held on 20-21 May 2010. The Roundtable worked towards the development of a framework that could be used at the regional level to draw attention to the impending outbreak of conflict. More importantly, it could compel relevant players to prevent ethnic conflict from further escalation. The small group of experts examined the available best practices for predicting and preventing minority conflict, and drew relevant lessons that could be used to inform a regional set of policy options.
Participants included representatives from the OSCE’s High Commissioner for National Minorities, the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, the International Crisis Group, the Institute Titian Perdamaian, the European Centre of Conflict Prevention, UN University’s Institute for Sustainability and Peace, Peace Action Training and Research Institute of Romania and the European Centre for Ethnic Minorities.
The two-day Roundtable was co-organised by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.