
Gerrit KurtzDeutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik
Gerrit Kurtz
Doctor of Philosophy
About
24
Publications
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Introduction
I am a peace and conflict researcher who just defended his PhD at King's College London. My research interests include the prevention, management, and transformation of armed conflict, diplomacy, the work of the United Nations, peace operations, German and European foreign policy, as well as South Asia (India, Sri Lanka) and East Africa (in particular South Sudan).
Publications
Publications (24)
„There’s no glory in prevention“, heißt es in der Debatte um die Eindämmung der Corona-Pandemie oft: Mit Katastrophen, die nicht stattfinden, gewinnt man keine Wahlen. Nicht das einzige Problem, das auch denjenigen zu schaffen macht, die bewaffnete Konflikte verhindern wollen. Doch die Flucht in die Phrase wird da nicht helfen.
In conflict-prone countries, diplomats must employ a special skill-set that allows them to escape from biased conventional wisdoms and balance the personal and the professional in negotiations. Ministries and international organizations should foster mechanisms such as structured spaces for reflection and frequent exchange with fellow diplomats fro...
In the current wave of renewed interest in conflict prevention, we argue that key lessons from 20 years of practice and research have not been learned yet. Official documents and parts of the literature are too often confined to a technocratic understanding of conflict prevention drawing on positivist conflict forecasting (science) and toolbox appr...
Germany brings diplomatic weight to the UN Security Council, to which it was elected on 8th June. The German government should use this advantage to support mediation and peace processes as priorities of its two-year membership. It should focus on three central instruments in this regard: refining sanctions, accountability of troop contributing cou...
Today marks the end of the fourth year of civil war in the youngest state on earth, South Sudan. Over the years, attempts to build a lasting peace agreement have faltered. The Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS)—facilitated by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)—was signed by President Salva Kiir May...
Welche Rolle sollen Regierungen und in-ternationale Akteure bei der Verhinderung schwerster Menschenrechtsverletzungen spie len? Das Konzept der Schutzverantwor-tung (englisch: Responsibility to Protect, kurz R2P) soll Antworten auf diese Frage geben. 2005 von den Staats-und Regierungs-chefs der Mitgliedstaaten der Vereinten Na-tionen verabschiedet...
Die Bundesregierung braucht mehr Diplomaten in Krisenländern. In krisengeschüttelten Staaten kommt diesen eine Schlüsselrolle zu, um die häufig beklagte Lücke zwischen Frühwarnung und entschiedenem Handeln zu überbrücken. Das deutsche Botschaftspersonal braucht eine bessere Vorbereitung, zusätzliche Ressourcen und ein offenes Ohr in der Zentrale.
With conflict causing much political instability and human suffering in parts of the world, there is a need for preventive diplomacy which stops the outbreak, relapse or escalation of organized violence. Frontline diplomats have potentially crucial roles to play in early preventive efforts.
Five lessons from the Human Rights Up Front initiative
Durch Hartnäckigkeit gelang es den wenigen weiblichen Delegierten der Gründungskonferenz der Vereinten Nationen (UN), gleich an mehreren Stellen der UN-Charta das Gebot der Gleichstellung von Mann und Frau zu verankern.
Das Engagement für die Sache der Frau erfolgte zunächst unter dem Aspekt der Verwirklichung der Menschenrechte. Seit den siebzige...
Global expectations for protecting populations from mass atrocities have significantly expanded. This special issue analyses the debates about a “responsibility to protect” (R2P) that resulted from this normative change. At specific events throughout the past decade (the 2005 World Summit and the 2011 proposal for “responsibility while protecting”...
There is often tension between counterterrorism and human rights compliance. This particularly applies to international engagement aimed at the protection of fundamental human rights in armed conflicts. This article traces international diplomacy and disputed issues regarding norms of protection in Sri Lanka in 2009. It shows how the Sri Lankan gov...
The 2005 World Summit's endorsement of a responsibility to protect people from atrocity crimes, widely hailed as a landmark agreement, became possible through a discursive shift in the negotiations leading up to the summit, where a normative approach of international solidarity started to replace bitter debates about the legitimacy of military inte...
The Human Rights up Front initiative has made important strides towards fostering a more activist organizational culture in the UN system. The UN has streamlined its early warning and crisis management system. With greater vigor, UN officials engage with governments on crisis situations such as that in South Sudan. For an activist organizational cu...
The debate about a responsibility to protect (R2P) people from mass atrocities goes to the heart of current changes in the world. Coinciding with the shift of power and influence away from the West, its nascent and contested evolution as a norm has become a crucial arena in which fundamental conflicts about the future global order play out—far beyo...
European governments, parliaments and civil societies belong to the most important supporters of a ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). However, despite a shared positive attitude towards R2P and co-ordinated diplomatic efforts, major European governments and therefore the European Union (EU) have never reached a consensual position on R2P. Based on...
With an ostensible commitment to sovereignty and non-intervention and a long standing involvement in United Nations peacekeeping operations, India's position on R2P seems puzzling. Still, despite the rhetoric about India being an 'emerging power', it often abstains from diplomatic engagement beyond its region, including in R2P situations. What expl...
Im Mai 2009 endete der 27 Jahre dauernde Bürger-krieg in Sri Lanka durch die militärische Niederlage der tamilischen Rebellen. Die Reaktion der Vereinten Nationen während der letzten Monate dieses Krieges war unangemessen und hat unzählige Zivilisten nicht vor Tod, Vertreibung und Menschenrechtsverletzungen schützen können. Wie ein UN-interner Unte...
The debate about climate change and security in the United Nations main organs provides a practical example of the strategic use of discursive strategies such as rhetorical entrapment and forum-switching in the securitization of non-traditional threats. By relying on a revised theory of securitization, this chapter argues that the dominant storylin...