The United Nations development system stands at a crossroads. It can either embrace the deep reform required to remain relevant to development in today’s global economy, or face the prospect of continued marginalization. Bruce Jenks and Bruce Jones explore the profound effects of twenty years of dramatic global shifts on development cooperation and the necessary changes required for the UN to adapt.

In ‘Mediating criminal violence: Lessons from the gang truce in El Salvador’, CIC Senior Advisor and Fellow Teresa Whitfield, examines a controversial truce reached between rival gangs in El Salvador in March 2012 and its implications for mediation. The Salvadoran truce, and the arrival in Mexico of a government determined to address the country’s spiraling violence, have placed new emphasis on alternative methods of pacification across the region.