The Forum on Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER)

The Forum on Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER) was established in 1997 as a non-profit and in response to the Rwandan genocide (1994). Focusing on conflict early warning

Conflict early warning

The field of conflict early warning seeks to forecast the outbreak of armed conflict, or, at minimum, to detect the early escalation of violence, with the objective of preventing the outbreak or the further escalation of violence in order to save lives....

, the brainchild of Kumar Rupesinghe, Howard Adelman, and Sharon Rusu, became a network of 35 organisations worldwide and catalysed the creation of early warning and response networks in the Caucasus (led by EAWARN/Russian Academy of Sciences http://www.eawarn.ru), Great Lakes Region of Africa (led by the Africa Peace Forum http://www.amaniafrika.org), and West Africa (led by WANEP http://www.wanep.org.

FEWER and its network members publish regular early warning reports from these regions, host strategic roundtables for integrated responses to conflict, and implemented a conflict-sensitive development research programme with Saferworld, International Alert, Africa Peace Forum, Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, and Center for Conflict Resolution http://www.conflictsensitivity.org/node/8.

The FEWER Secretariat was first hosted by International Alert http://www.international-alert.org in London with funding from the Winston Foundation for World Peace and Swedish Foreign Ministry. It then moved to independent premises on Brick Lane and was headed till May 2003 by David Nyheim

David Nyheim

David Nyheim is a peace-making strategist. His work over the last 15 years has focused on conflict early warning, dialogue process design and implementation, as well as forecasting and strategy.-Career history:...

http://www.incasconsulting.com, followed by Georg Frerks and Marcel Smits. In June 2004, the FEWER Board oversaw the closure of the London Secretariat and the decentralisation of early warning activities to FEWER's Moscow and Nairobi offices (see FEWER-International).