The UN Security Council has the potential to play a greater direct role in crisis response and mediation not only in New York, but in the field. It has done so sporadically in the past. In its early years, the Council experimented with inter-governmental missions to investigate potential conflicts and undertake mediation in cases including the Balkans and Indonesia. In the post-Cold War period, Council missions engaged directly in crisis diplomacy in multip=le conflicts, playing an important peacemaking role in East Timor in 1999.
Exclusive: Behind the Front Lines of the Ebola Wars
A recent article about the fight against Ebola in Nature references a recent report that CIC's Congo Research Group published with Human Rights Watch. As the story notes, "around 1,900 civilians have been massacred in North and South Kivu in the past three years and another 3,300 people have been abducted," according to CRG's report, and the ongoing conflict is one of the root causes behind the continuing spread of the Ebola virus.