Armed conflicts amid changing geopolitics

The nature of war has not fundamentally changed in recent years since conflicts are still predominantly internal affairs, in which non-state armed groups play a prominent role. Declared inter-state wars remain rare.¹ What has changed is the increasingly multipolar global context in which armed conflicts are being fought.² Other powerful countries, besides the US, are now trying to resolve or influence the outcome of wars abroad to further their own national goals. Compared to the peak of its unipolarity, characterised by interventions in the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, the US has gradually become a distracted hegemon. The shift began under the administration of Barack Obama (2009–17) and continued under his successor, Donald Trump (2017–21), who expressed disdain for US involvement in foreign wars amid a general sense of war weariness in the domestic discourse. There were exceptions, including the US role in the territorial defeat of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) in the Middle East and the US military presence that accompanied efforts to broker an end to the war in Afghanistan ahead of its military withdrawal there.³ Global counter-terrorism missions remained a US priority, albeit with a smaller military footprint than previous interventions. Notwithstanding these, however, US foreign- and defence-policy priorities shifted towards ‘great-power contests’ with China and Russia, alongside the containment of Iran and North Korea. The US duly accorded prominence to conventional, nuclear and cyber deterrence, as well as alliance politics and defence diplomacy in regions of strategic contestation.

Trump was also uninterested in censuring other states’ own military interventions as long as these did not disturb his administration’s core interests, a stance that opened further space for other extrovert powers to fill. Joe Biden’s presidency has stemmed this policy drift in one instance: in February 2021, he announced the end of US support to offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales – a pointed reference to Saudi Arabia.⁴ However, censuring a country with which the US has enjoyed close relations over its military intervention is one matter, and the extent to which the US is still able and willing to assert its influence in other armed conflicts remains to be seen.

Military interventions as foreign-policy tool

The Armed Conflict Survey 2021 reports that military interventions by major geopolitical powers have taken place in armed conflicts as diverse as those in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic (CAR), Iraq, Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Sahel, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. What constitutes a ‘major geopolitical power’ is subjective, and the criterion used in this report is to include the wealthiest states (per the G20) that have mounted military interventions in armed conflicts, such as France, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. To feature balanced assessments of the wars in Yemen and Syria, military interventions by Iran and Israel are also covered in this essay.

Source: IISS analysis

Military interventions are understood here to involve sustained military operations in which the state’s armed forces fight independently, augment or fully supplant the combat power of one or more warring factions. These interventions feature expeditionary forces in declared deployments or combat operations conducted from afar with stand-off weapons and can include both declared and undeclared operations. They are distinct from dedicated training or peace-support missions, and from the sale of military equipment, although they may encompass such activities.

Implications for conflict resolution

As a broadening range of states mount armed-conflict interventions, some of them have gained significant stakes in brokering ceasefires and peace deals in pursuit of their national interests, often circumventing or ignoring both Western states and the UN.

For example, the Russian and Turkish governments have sought prominent roles in the Syrian peace processes. At the height of the Syrian civil war in January 2017, Russia convened the Astana talks with Iran, Turkey and the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Repeat sessions of the Astana talks began to overshadow the parallel UN-run Geneva process. While UN mediation teams dealt with the fractured Syrian opposition and tried to deliver progress on humanitarian issues, the Astana talks were elevated to the level of major-power diplomacy, as Russia, Iran and Turkey hashed out their spheres of influence. In February 2021 in Sochi, Russia convened the 15th meeting of the Astana process as the Syrian conflict entered its tenth year.

In the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Turkey’s military (backing Azerbaijan’s military offensive) and diplomatic interventions (subsequently playing a key role in the peace negotiations) were designed both to consolidate its role as a military partner to Azerbaijan and to increase its regional influence.¹¹ Russia also benefited from helping to broker the deal, securing a five-year peacekeeping involvement for 1,960 Russian military personnel, which will occupy observation points, including in the Lachin corridor that connects Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh. Major-power diplomacy, conducted at the behest of the warring states’ patrons, has allowed Ankara and Moscow to embed their regional influence and define their spheres of influence in the South Caucasus.

The UN is responsible for mediation efforts to resolve the war in Yemen, but the leverage to end the conflict is distributed between the fighting parties and their external sponsors. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are likely to demand concessions in a future peace deal to reflect their military and financial investment during their five-year intervention. To complicate matters further, the two powers favour different approaches to settling the conflict. The Houthis remain potential spoilers, seeing no need to compromise and receiving continued support from Iran, which is unlikely to end during attempted peace talks.

The presence of powerful intervening states has implications for multilateral bodies involved in conflict resolution. The Syrian case has highlighted the setbacks faced by the UN Security Council (UNSC) as a forum for ending armed conflicts, with Russia repeatedly using its veto to protect Assad’s regime and to continually block resolutions calling for investigations into the latter’s use of chemical weapons. Regional conflict-resolution bodies are also affected, particularly when key member states are involved in the fighting. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is a pertinent example. While it remains a platform for managing the Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine conflicts, member states Russia and Turkey can exert their influence in accordance with their national priorities. In Ukraine, Russia agreed to the remit of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM). However, Moscow would never endorse an OSCE mission that runs contrary to its national interests in the country. In Nagorno-Karabakh, although the OSCE has kept talks going for 30 years, Turkey and Russia were able to sideline the process when pursuing their 2020 ceasefire agreement.¹²

Outlook

In an era of intensifying inter-state competition, the evolution of armed-conflict interventions by powerful states is an important trend to follow. The evidence so far suggests that there is a significant expansion in the number of powerful countries that are willing and able to intervene, albeit with varying outcomes.

Intervention fatigue has set in for Saudi Arabia in Yemen due to the fracturing of its coalition, the loss of US support and the failure to secure a decisive outcome. Other intervening powers seem to have learned valuable lessons from observing the US-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, which involved large deployments on the ground. Russia has so far avoided these circumstances in its own interventions, no doubt also drawing on the wisdom of the Soviet Union’s earlier failed intervention in Afghanistan. Turkey meanwhile appears to have mounted a relatively quick intervention in the Nagorno-Karabakh war, although its Libya intervention may yet prove inconclusive given the complexity of the conflict and the involvement of multiple external players. Its interventions in Iraq and Syria mark the continuation of its long-standing and intractable war against the PKK, to which it appears committed for the long term.

The prevalent trends suggest that the geopolitical conditions could prompt yet more major geopolitical powers to become interventionist. China remains prominently absent from the list; despite its history of border wars, it lacks substantial experience in expeditionary warfare in either the modern or the imperial era, having avoided waging colonial warfare far outside its immediate environs. India is also absent: aside from fighting Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir, its only precedent is its failed intervention in Sri Lanka’s civil war in the 1980s. While China and India both contribute personnel to UN peacekeeping missions, they seem to lack a nascent appetite for mounting interventions in pursuit of national objectives. It is difficult to hypothesise credible circumstances in which this might change. For the sake of conjecture, if Chinese or Indian troops were sent to stabilise a future deterioration in the security of Afghanistan or Myanmar, current evidence would point more to involvement via a UN mission than through unilateral action. A more credible scenario involving the unilateral deployment of Chinese forces would be to protect and secure Chinese nationals and economic investments in Africa, perhaps using China’s military base in Djibouti, or possibly to assist Pakistan against future security threats to Chinese-funded infrastructure projects there.

Germany and Japan continue to face considerable domestic restraints to deploying even in multilateral missions that may face combat. Australia is engaged in a public debate over whether its military would intervene in a hypothetical war involving China, Taiwan and the US, but this discussion is worst-case speculation and scenario planning, not policy. The unofficial club of geopolitically powerful and wealthy states intervening in armed conflicts in pursuit of national goals is likely therefore to remain selective.

A final variable concerns the nature of intervention itself. The rising ubiquity of uninhabited combat vehicles on land, sea and air may change the cost calculus of interventions for militaries that can afford sufficiently sized formations of these technologies and develop practical doctrines to deploy them alongside inhabited platforms and traditional military formations. Another trend is the increasing use of state-backed private military companies to intervene in conflict-riven countries to secure political and economic influence alongside or on behalf of their client.¹³ Russia’s use of the Wagner Group to test the waters in the CAR and Libya conflicts serve as examples, and Libya’s conflict has also featured mercenaries recruited by Turkey from armed groups it supported in Syria. At the height of their interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US and UK relied extensively on private military contractors to supplement their armed forces. The ways in which contractors are used in future interventions may yet evolve in different directions. The range of powerful countries choosing to engage their services may also widen. More broadly, the changing geopolitics of inter-state competition will continue to influence both the opportunities and the stakes surrounding armed-conflict interventions.

The changing nature of armed conflict

The progressive increase in the number of armed conflicts during the Cold War came to a halt with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A cooperation momentum within the United Nations Security Council led to an intense period of conflict resolution and a parallel decline in the number of wars over the following two decades. This trend was abruptly reversed with the 2011 Arab Spring and the ensuing spread of conflicts involving the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL (see Figure 1). 2020 witnessed the highest number of conflicts since 1945. The conflict landscape also evolved: intra-state confrontations became even more predominant after 2010, especially those featuring third-party interventions, which have tripled in the last ten years.² On the other hand, inter-state conflicts have remained very limited since the end of the Cold War.

Sources: UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset version 21.1; UCDP Non-State Conflict Dataset version 21.1; Nils Petter Gleditsch et al., ‘Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 39, no. 5, September 2002, pp. 615–37; Ralph Sundberg, Kristine Eck and Joakim Kreutz, ‘Introducing the UCDP Non-State Conflict Dataset’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 49, no. 2, March 2012, pp. 351–62; Therése Pettersson et al., ‘Organized Violence 1989–2020, with a Special Emphasis on Syria’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 58, no. 4, July 2021, pp. 809–25.

Note: The graph illustrates the average duration (in years) of each armed conflict that ended between 1990 and 2020. The start date of each conflict included in the graph refers to the first year of the conflict in which 25 or more battle-related fatalities occurred, regardless of the total count of deaths before or after that year. The end date of each conflict refers to either the official end year or the year in which the last conflict episode was registered. A unique identification code was used for each conflict in order to collate the data. The information in this graph is current as of the end of 2020 but may be subject to change over time as countries potentially relapse into conflict, thereby replacing the end years which have been considered here.

Sources: IISS calculation based on UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset version 21.1; Nils Petter Gleditsch et al., ‘Armed Conflict 1946–2001: A New Dataset’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 39, no. 5, September 2002, pp. 615–37; and Therése Pettersson et al., ‘Organized Violence 1989–2020, with a Special Emphasis on Syria’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 58, no. 4, July 2021, pp. 809–25.

Today’s conflict glut is caused not only by the spike in new conflicts since 2010 and their protractedness (e.g., Libya, the Sahel, Syria, Yemen), but also by the minimal progress made in resolving old ones (Afghanistan, Africa’s Great Lakes Region, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan, among others). The time horizon of armed conflicts has also increased, with conflicts becoming more prolonged starting from the early 1970s and particularly after the Cold War. Conflict duration nearly doubled in the space of three decades: while the average duration of conflicts that ended in 1990 was approximately 16 years, in 2020 it was over 30 years (see Figure 2). In turn, the aftermath of conflict has become more protracted as the active phases of conflicts have themselves extended.

The conflict to post-conflict continuum

The intersection between conflict and post-conflict – and their seeming overlap – is primarily explained by increasing conflict recurrence. Of the conflicts that have broken out since the 1990s, a greater share have been recurrent conflicts instead of new conflicts arising in previously peaceful countries. Between 1989 and 2018, nearly half of all conflicts recurred. More than 90% of recurring conflicts concern the same or similar grievances, highlighting the failure of peacebuilding efforts to address root causes. Conflict recurrence is also explained by the fact that since the end of the Cold War negotiated settlements have become the main modality to end conflict, rather than military victory of one of the warring parties.³ Although the former have been a positive development in terms of reducing human suffering and economic hardship, they seem to have been less effective in preventing conflict relapse.

Nevertheless, conflict recurrence is not a mere repetition of past conflicts. While grievances may be the same or similar, it may be more accurate to say that armed conflicts transition rather than statically recur. If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then conflicts may manifest either violently or non-violently, and war and peace are interacting manifestations of conflict dynamics.

In this vein, the conflict to post-conflict sequence is part of a non-linear transition between war and peace, where the two may either coexist or alternate. The trajectory of armed conflicts is dotted with frequent overlaps between the pre-, during- and post-conflict phases, which are all part of the conflict cycle. While analytically useful, a division of conflict into phases should be accompanied by the concept of war-to-peace transition, if policy responses and interventions are to be well-crafted.⁴

Overlapping war-making and reconstruction efforts

The non-linear transition between war and peace, including the intersection between war-making and post-conflict measures, is typified by the armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Colombia. Civil wars of a differing nature engulfed the two countries for several decades, and both implemented peacebuilding and stabilisation measures in parallel (see Box 1). While in Afghanistan the reconstruction has been supported and largely financed by the international community to promote state legitimacy, good governance and development in the country, Colombia represented a laboratory for innovative security and development policy (e.g., disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR), and urban violence reduction) and legislation (e.g., post-conflict transitional justice) during active conflict.

As in Afghanistan and Colombia, most of the conflicts featured in The Armed Conflict Survey 2021 display some post-conflict interventions aimed at reconstruction, a fact that reinforces the evidence for the tight interactions between the active phase of conflict and its aftermath.

The aftermath of war has also become politicised and contentious, as conflict parties instrumentalise the prospect of aid and support. Reconstruction often entails competing visions of how to implement peacebuilding and how to allocate resources. Incumbent governments may use post-conflict efforts as a tool to reinforce their power and legitimacy – something that typically can fuel further violence. In addition, in many cases in sub-Saharan Africa, the nature of the state is far removed from the Westphalian model promoted by Western-sponsored reconstruction efforts: therefore, it is more a case of ‘state-building’.

The trajectory of post-conflict intervention

The current use of the label ‘post-conflict’ and its practical application derive from a particular period in history after the end of the Cold War. The end of the systemic confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union unlocked the resolution of a series of armed conflicts around the globe. Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Namibia are examples of internal armed conflicts that were inextricably tied to the bipolar international order and that, to different degrees, achieved permanent resolution after 1991.¹² This new era of UN Security Council activism also led to novel, but then standardised, approaches to rebuilding countries after war.¹³

The post-Cold War emergence of peacebuilding (led by multilateral institutions) resulted in an overarching policy focus on addressing the physical and human consequences of conflict. This focus targeted the immediate phase after violence halted, which policymakers labelled ‘post-conflict’. The term ‘reconstruction’ was added to signal the set of actions to be prioritised during this phase. ‘Post-conflict reconstruction’¹⁴ was then adopted as an overall formula for economic, social, institutional and security activities to be implemented with the support of international actors.¹⁵ While politics was purposefully left out of this equation – out of respect for sovereignty concerns – the post-conflict reconstruction approach implied that technocratic solutions and the successful execution of programmes in key areas would translate into successful and durable outcomes. The presumption that reconstruction could move forward successfully without considering the dynamics of the concluded war (and the political implications of the aftermath of war) has proven overly optimistic.

A fundamental disconnection took hold between international (i.e., Western) peacebuilding proponents and national elites in recipient conflict-affected countries, especially in Africa. While the former perceive reconstruction efforts as a new social contract, local elites see reconstruction as a discrete phase of war politics. Conflict-affected countries lack the capacity to implement peacebuilding policies and tend to perceive them as disconnected from the country’s social and political systems. Furthermore, local elites in countries with endemic state fragility (i.e., where the post-colonial state is perceived as alien and sovereignty is anchored in pre-existing and pre-colonial institutions) may see peacebuilding as just another opportunity for resource extraction and maximisation of political power.¹⁶ Notably, this has been the case for sub-Saharan African elites in conflict-affected countries, who would maintain an interest in preserving some level of state fragility or armed conflict.¹⁷

The 9/11 attacks on the US marked an inflection point. The ubiquity of transnational terrorism led to the adoption by state actors of a security paradigm anchored on counter-terrorism strategies, to which international institutions also adapted. For over a decade, the fight against al-Qaeda was the prism through which the US and its allies viewed many internal conflicts. With its emphasis on security, the war on terror overran reconstruction and development goals, grossly simplifying them with dangerous consequences. The post-conflict debacle in Iraq that followed the 2003 US-UK invasion was the tipping point of a post-conflict ‘fantasy’¹⁸ in which many post-conflict countries pursued the sudden but unrealistic establishment of pro-market-liberalisation institutions and multi-party democracy.

At the same time, multilateral actors (such as the UN and the World Bank) dedicated increasing attention to the sources of state fragility and the scope of post-conflict interventions. The progressive expansion of UN peacekeeping operations to include more robust security mandates and capacity-building functions, among others, is the clearest evidence of this trend. Other actors (including donors, development banks and civil society) spearheaded approaches to address war through integrated diplomatic, security and development efforts. While many of these initiatives are nascent, interventions to address conflict and post-conflict have become more intertwined than ever. Standard approaches that may have been considered ‘best practice’ were shown to be inadequate in particular cases, while the blurring of the line between conflict and postconflict also challenged the putative impartiality of international actors in implementing peacebuilding programmes. As a result, expectations are now at a historic low regarding what can be achieved by external actors to address the ravages of war where it has become endemic.

Whither post-conflict?

The last decade witnessed an upward trend in the number and lethality of internal armed conflicts, reaching a record high in 2020. Therefore, there is urgent need to reappraise the different types of interventions that take place in the aftermath of conflict, as well as the timing of these interventions. The current international system is characterised by US-China global competition and there are tensions in several regional theatres: the recent trend of third-party intervention in internal armed conflicts by state actors includes Russia, the US, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others. While internal conflicts become more complex, the post-war phase too is characterised by a proliferation of state actors with their own interests.

The overlapping international and domestic dimensions of civil wars – exemplified by Colombia and Afghanistan – invite further reflection on the scope of post-conflict interventions and highlight the need for a conceptual and operational clarification of the ‘post-conflict’ label. The expansion in scope and mandates of peacekeeping operations has also seen them endure for far longer periods,¹⁹ itself an indicator that the approach to peacekeeping needs to be adapted if it is to offer a proper solution to conflict.

Four factors in particular need to be considered more carefully. Firstly, timing: a prolonged and unstable conflict aftermath can be disaggregated into a short-term or immediate post-conflict phase (for example, following a peace settlement or a military victory), and a more long-term and protracted postconflict. The policy and operational implications are different for each moment, and the short- versus long-term distinction should be a guiding principle when interventions are conceived. Secondly, a taxonomy of post-conflict typologies may be based on if and how the conflict ended and what is needed next. Conflict and post-conflict phases are often simultaneous, while some conflicts have seen postconflict interventions take place only once violence definitively ceased. Thirdly, the way a conflict ends (i.e., either by military victory or by peace agreement) has profound implications for the politics of the post-conflict phase. Finally, the type of investments needed during post-conflict is a key variable for which different strategies must be implemented. For example, the geographic scope of post-conflict may be limited to specific regions or areas, or peacebuilding may need to be implemented at the national level.

Post-conflict is commonly considered a discrete phase – separate from war – in which reconstruction occurs in the absence of violence. Yet contemporary conflicts feature frequent overlap between active conflicts and post-conflict. In turn, the quest for sound policy solutions to stabilise countries and regions and promote development depends on a reassessment of the boundaries and tenets of what post-conflict is and implies. The long aftermath of war requires its own special study that does not borrow too heavily from the classic understanding of peacekeeping and reconstruction policies but instead appreciates that ‘peace’, like ‘war’, has its grey areas.

The nexus of armed conflict and people movement

Economic migrants seek to improve their livelihoods by making a voluntary choice to move to another location to match their opportunities with their skills. Forcibly displaced people seek personal safety and leave their places of residence due to conflict, violence or persecution, moving either within their own country to seek safety or crossing borders to seek asylum. Some forced and economic movement may be attributable to climate-related resource depletion, which in turn can trigger armed conflict. For instance, a major drought in Syria in 2009–10 led to massive crop failure and loss of livelihoods that, together with anti-government sentiment and a lack of government response, was among the factors leading to armed conflict and large-scale forced displacement.

As forced displacement and economic migration are governed by different frameworks, distinguishing between them is essential but complicated. Overlap, confusion and complications emerge when irregular economic migrants¹ and refugees move along the same routes (notably within and from Africa towards Europe, and from Central America towards the United States), and when these movements are mixed with climate-induced voluntary or forced movements. Another problem is the difficulties receiving countries face in understanding the difference between economically driven migration and conflict-induced forced displacement, and the fundamental differences between the terms refugee and migrant. This confusion has influenced the articulation of public discourse and ideas regarding how to reconcile the conventional rights of people on the move with national policies and priorities. Often this discourse has contributed to destination countries’ defensive and restrictive policy responses, which have involved externalising core aspects of migration management and asylum processing as part of a closed-border approach, combined with support to developing countries receiving displaced people.

Forced displacement and armed conflict are intrinsically linked. All armed conflicts generate some level of forced displacement while all refugee movements and some protracted internaldisplacement situations can be traced back to armed conflict. Therefore, solving some of the most intractable conflicts would go a long way towards ending some of the worst displacement crises. A few major conflicts (in Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan/South Sudan, Syria and Yemen) have produced the majority of the world’s forcibly displaced population, most of whom are hosted internally or in neighbouring countries.²

Dynamics and governance structures pre-COVID-19

The total number of people on the move by the end of 2019 was estimated at 327 million, of which 82m were forcibly displaced (34m refugees and asylum seekers and 48m IDPs (see Figure 1)).³ The remaining 245m were economic migrants of whom approximately 180m were of working age, with the remaining balance being children and elderly family members.⁴ Forcibly displaced populations have a smaller working-age proportion. In addition, irregular movements of economic migrants are estimated at several million, but exact numbers are difficult to document.

Sources: IDMC; UNHCR; UNRWA

While most economic-migrant workers (111.2m or 67.9%) are employed in high-income countries, recent years have seen an increasing proportion of economic migrants working in middle-income countries as compared to high-income host countries. An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-International Labour Organization (ILO) study has suggested that this change could be attributed to economic development in middle- and low-income countries, particularly those bordering countries that produce migrant workers, together with migration policies in high-income countries.⁵

The dynamics of orderly and irregular migration largely follow economic developments in both the origin and host countries, and until the coronavirus pandemic both forms of migration were on the rise amid widening inequality and record-high youth-unemployment levels in most origin countries. However, rising xenophobia and isolationist nationalistic policies in host countries, which show increasing disregard for human rights, have made irregular economic migration more difficult. This is in stark contrast to a concomitant trend to facilitate migration at regional levels (for example via the abolition of visa requirements⁶ and expansion of free movement of persons through mechanisms such as the African Union’s 2018 free-movement protocol and the new Intergovernmental Authority on Development Free Movement Protocol). Some African governments point to the fact that they have opened their borders and expanded rights while the West has done the opposite. On a more positive note, the European Union and individual member countries have begun providing development resources in support of these genuinely inclusive refugee policies in some African countries as a first step to contain and mitigate the impact of people movement within Africa.

Most European countries continue to close their borders to refugees and economic migrants, even when foreign labour could have a positive impact on domestic economies. Similar trends have been seen in the US. In the face of these dynamics, there has been growing international recognition of the need for better management of economic migration, leading to the 2018 Global Compact for Migration (GCM).

Since 1951, forced displacement has been governed by international instruments. In the years following the adoption of the Refugee Convention, many conflicts were resolved and displaced people found solutions to their plight. However, in the last three decades new armed conflicts have emerged that have not been resolved, including the long-running conflicts in Afghanistan, the Caucasus region, eastern Congo, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. This has led to the numbers of forcibly displaced persons increasing. As there are no eminent solutions, they face long-term livelihood challenges and are often hampered by exclusive and restrictive policy environments in asylum countries, leading to costly humanitarian dependency as opposed to enhanced self-sufficiency. A combination of nationalistic policies, dwindling official development assistance (ODA) resources and institutional and organisational resistance to change has meant that mitigation efforts have been insufficient, highlighting that the system is unsustainable and lacks global institutional mechanisms linking forced-displacement issues with conflict resolution.⁷ Some of these challenges began to be addressed from 2015, notably spurred by the magnitude of the Syrian crisis. Substantial development efforts by the World Bank and the EU were combined with a growing understanding of the need to broaden the governance mechanism towards a new approach, culminating in the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees (GCR).

COVID-19's impact on human mobility and armed conflict: Rethinking global governance and solutions

For people on the move, the coronavirus pandemic has created disproportionate health, economic and safety challenges by exacerbating pre-existing problems and stifling economic opportunities. The pandemic has also had a direct impact on national and international ability to provide health services, with particular impact on low-income countries that are affected by conflict and with weak capacity. The pandemic has also caused an unprecedented global economic recession, leaving 115m people in extreme poverty – the worst setback in a generation⁸ – and hampering livelihood opportunities across the globe, particularly in low- and middle-income countries and for the most vulnerable economic migrants and forcibly displaced people. In this way, COVID-19 further widened pre-existing inequality gaps. This is likely to expand mobility pressure and drive people to migrate at a greater risk, despite restrictions on movement and, at least in the short term, declining demand for migrant work. The pandemic has provided governments with a convenient reason to close borders to refugees and migrants, which has also restricted opportunities for people to seek asylum.

Regarding the pandemic’s long-term impact on economic migration, economic considerations may carry the day: irregular migration may pick up again as travel restrictions are gradually lifted. The socio-economic consequences of the pandemic have been severe in many developing countries, so it can be assumed that increasing numbers of people will seek to move. As vaccination coverage progresses (albeit with slower progress in the Global South) and the pressure from conflicts and unresolved inequality between the Global North and South persists, both forced and economic movements will increase again, likely with even higher risks. It is evident that COVID-19’s impact on conflict, violence and war will continue to be significant; so too will be the impact of conflict on forced displacement and economic migration.

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted global efforts to govern people movements, leading to reduced demand for legal migrants amid declining economic activity. As mentioned above, the demand is likely to increase in the future with calls to stimulate economic recovery. This context will emphasise the need for operationalising the GCM. The pandemic has had a negative impact on GCR implementation, with reduced political focus on its implementation and fewer ODA resources available for burden and responsibility sharing. The pandemic has shown that drastic measures to close borders, societies and economies can be taken, albeit on a temporary basis. It should then also be possible to make drastic changes in approaches to mobility, in order to effectively operationalise the full visions of the GCR and GCM, even if this calls for permanent and controversial change. An important feature of such change would be a much stronger emphasis on localisation.

The vicious cycle of people movement, socioeconomic trends, armed conflict and the coronavirus pandemic

To understand fully how the pandemic has impacted upon people movement, socio-economic trends and armed conflict, it is important to look at how these issues influence each other. Figure 2 provides an illustration of this. It highlights how the pandemic reinforces and multiplies these elements and which mitigation measures are required. The listed fragility and conflict triggers represent socio-economic and developmental trends, and are therefore impacted upon by international-aid architecture. The figure emphasises the importance of the interconnectedness of each of the individual parts and the need for forward-looking trend analysis.

The most important COVID-19-induced dynamic related to the movement of people is that while economic migration has reduced, forced displacement continues to increase as old conflicts linger and new ones emerge. This stimulates the vicious cycle by which an economic slump in the Global South generates more conflict; conflicts produce more forced displacement; and the economic slump increases the propensity for economic migration, which is stifled by border-crossing restrictions. All these factors add pressure on people movement.

Poor governance, inequality, poverty, exclusion, human-rights abuses and the slow and sudden onset of climate-related disasters are threat multipliers, key conflict drivers and root causes of forced displacement and sometimes economic migration.⁹ People movement can be both a result of conflict drivers and a trigger for more conflict. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbates conflicts by increasing social and economic vulnerability, which in turn impacts upon these conflict drivers, leading to increases in forced displacement. The pandemic-induced economic slump further incites people to migrate for economic reasons. Therefore COVID-19 also has an indirect impact on community tension and migration. The pandemic has led to a reduction in economic-migrant remittances, thereby increasing poverty in middle- and low-income countries and indirectly impacting conflict propensity. These developments risk leading to further exclusion, with forcibly displaced people facing deeper poverty (adding to grievances and tension) and conflict propensity.¹⁰

A localisation approach to aid is proposed as part of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the New Way of Working,¹¹ and indeed the GCR and GCM. There is growing international consensus – reflected in reforms to UN peace architecture – that ODA should be implemented through and by local structures.¹² A localisation approach would improve aid efficiency by supporting national ownership and local capacities and improving sustainability and protection of human rights while reducing the pressure on forced and irregular economic movements. This approach would cost less than mitigation efforts implemented in developing countries by external agencies. It could also reduce conflict drivers in some affected regions. The national and international response to COVID-19 has made it clear that localisation is crucial to achieving results. However, it has also further highlighted that international-aid architecture is incredibly resistant to such change. Localisation is indirectly linked to conflict dynamics and peacebuilding. The UN peace architecture continues to focus on armed-conflict resolution while the impact of the pandemic has inspired further emphasis on preventive efforts. These new efforts focus on national ownership and leadership, a theme that links to the SDGs given the role of inequality and exclusion as drivers of conflicts; political buy-in from member states and links to the World Bank’s new ‘fragility, conflict and violence’ approach; and conflict sensitivity in response to COVID-19’s seismic secondary impacts.¹³

The historic shock of the Second World War led to the UN Charter and other frameworks to secure global peace. The COVID-19 shock could similarly be inspiration for a new charter with a smarter multilateral approach to securing greater equality and climate solutions, preventing armed conflicts and addressing challenges faced by people on the move.

Conclusion

The main concerns for the future are how and to what extent the coronavirus pandemic will continue to exacerbate armed conflict and related forced displacement, as well as influence South-North and South-South irregular economic migration. This analysis has highlighted two interrelated narratives that are central to the future trends of people movement and armed conflict. One concerns economic development and people-movement policies in the Global North. The other concerns the need to build a new impetus for poverty alleviation and conflict prevention and resolution in the Global South.

Regarding the pandemic’s long-term impact on people movement and armed conflict, it is reasonable to conclude that COVID-19 is here to stay in one form or another, and its impact level will stabilise over the coming years. The global economy will also have to adjust to the new normal. Wealthy countries will potentially need a larger migrant workforce to regenerate their economies. While this was the case before the pandemic, it will be even more important as part of the coming economic rebound. However, this need is at odds with nationalistic-driven restrictions in the Global North. In the long term it is likely that economic considerations will take priority. The likely result is differentiated and selective economic migration along geographic and cultural-historical proximity lines, which would increase fragility, frustration and economic-migration pressure in the Global South. Countries in the Global South will need external support to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on poverty and inequality, which in turn would contribute to the prevention of new armed conflicts and to solutions for ongoing struggles.

COVID-19 is an entirely new entity as well as a multiplier of existing weaknesses and drivers, presenting new opportunities and challenges. It exposes existing economic inequalities and system deficiencies to an extent that has not been seen before, and highlights the need for fundamental corrective action, including through localisation approaches.

The centre of gravity for mitigation efforts may need to be pursued in the Global South, which is home to most armed conflicts and most of the world’s forcibly displaced people, as well as a growing destination for migrant workers. Minimising conflict-induced forced displacement and reducing the propensity for irregular economic migration will require building political will for an agreement on burden- and responsibility-sharing that addresses both forced-displacement and economic-migration challenges and opportunities. It will require a redoubling of efforts to combat inequality between the Global South and Global North. A state-led, global-systems change that improves approaches to humanitarian development, peace and armed conflict – including conflict prevention and resolution and the full implementation of global frameworks for refugees and migration – would have a positive impact on such efforts. This change is of geopolitical importance: if support to the Global South is not provided, the lasting effects of COVID-19 will lead to further conflict and war, generating additional forced displacement and irregular economic migration that will increase instability at the global, regional and national levels.