Working with officials of government and intergovernmental agencies, as well as corporate and civil society leaders, the Center seeks to clarify the political, legal and institutional foundations of effective international cooperation, including the appropriateness and feasibility of alternative sources of finaning. We intend these efforts to produce practical policy recommendations and to increase the public understanding necessary to implement and sustain essential multilateral activities.



Projects:

New Dimensions of Multilateralism

The Center`s work on New Dimensions of Multilateralism focuses on a set of cross-cutting themes that increasingly dominate discussions of international cooperation. These include the changing nature of the international architecture for managing transnational and global affairs; the roles of non-governmental actors in international governance and service delivery; and the singular role of the United States in promoting and sometimes constraining multilateral cooperation. Underlying each of these lines of work is a continuing effort to clarify the political, legal, financial, and operational aspects of effective multilateral cooperation.



International Justice

The Project on International Courts and Tribunals [PICT] was jointly established in 1997 by the Center on International Cooperation and the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development at University of London to address the legal, institutional, and financial issues arising from the multiplication of international courts and tribunals and other dispute settlement bodies as well as from the increased willingness of members of the international community to have recourse to them. These two factors distinguish the 1990s as a fundamental decade in the development of international justice.



Mobilizing Resources for Humanitarian Assistance

CIC initiated the project on "Resources for Humanitarian Assistance" in 1996, in cooperation with multilateral and non-governmental leaders in the field. The project examines issues in the management, coordination, and financing of humanitarian assistance, with the goal of improving aid delivery to victims of war and disaster.



Economic and Social Development

Sound investment in social and economic development must be a key element of any international efforts to secure sustainable peace and stability. Yet, despite the UN`s and World Bank`s clarion calls for a measurable set of "millennial goals" to promote education, health, well-being, and livelihoods, the rationale for and effectiveness of such investments continue to be hotly debated, reflected in [until recently at least] stagnating or declining levels of international aid.



Conflict Prevention, Recovery, and Peacebuilding

CIC`s program on the Regionalization of Conflict studies the transformation of conflict and response resulting from the transnational character of most current conflicts. Most contemporary "civil" wars are comprised of interlinked regional networks. Through comparative study of the Great Lakes region and Southern Central Asia, this project provides both an analytic template and policy prescriptions for taking regional factors into account in conflict management.