2024 is off to a glum start, with wars raging on multiple continents and little hope for diplomatic breakthroughs. Every January in Foreign Policy, the International Crisis Group’s Comfort Ero and Richard Atwood list out 10 conflicts to watch in the year ahead. Their list includes Ukraine, Gaza, a wider Middle East war, and Sudan, of course, but it also details tensions in Ethiopia, the Sahel, Myanmar, Haiti, Armenia-Azerbaijan, and the possibility of conflict between the United States and China.
Is the world confronting more conflicts than usual? If so, then why? And what can be done about it?
The International Crisis Group is an independent organization that speaks to all sides in conflicts and seeks diplomatic avenues to solve them. FP’s Ravi Agrawal spoke with the group’s president and CEO, Comfort Ero, on FP Live.
Comfort Ero
President & CEO, International Crisis Group
Comfort Ero is the president and CEO of the International Crisis Group. She joined the organization as West Africa project director in 2001 and rose to become Africa program director and then, in January 2021, interim vice president. Ero has spent her entire career working on or in conflict-affected countries. In between her two tenures at Crisis Group, she served as deputy Africa program director for the International Center for Transitional Justice (2008-2010) and political affairs officer and policy advisor to the special representative of the U.N. secretary-general at the U.N. Mission in Liberia (2004-2007).
Host
Ravi Agrawal
Editor in chief, Foreign Policy
Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy, the host of FP Live, and a regular world affairs analyst on TV and radio. Before joining FP in 2018, Agrawal worked at CNN for more than a decade in full-time roles spanning three continents, including as the network’s New Delhi bureau chief and correspondent. He is the author of India Connected: How the Smartphone Is Transforming the World’s Largest Democracy.