Distribution by Region

Distribution by Organisation Type, Document Type, Region and Year

Diplomacy occurs mostly in documents published in Europe, followed by North America, Asia, Africa and Mena. Overall, the top five contributors in terms of occurrences are RC, Found, State, IGO and NGO organisations.

RC, Found, IGO and NGO documents provide the greatest number of occurrences, primarily from activity reports published in Europe. Occurrences from State were mostly obtained from activity reports published in North America.

Diplomacy...

• is a/an

  • area, field

  • tool, instrument, mechanism

  • policy, strategy

  • component of national security strategy

  • element of foreign policy

  • multi-directional effort

• is conducted by

  • diplomats

  • authorities

  • humanitarians

  • groups & states

• has target areas & objectives

• has modes of operation

• operates on scales/levels

• has other qualities

• includes various activities when conducted by humanitarians

  • involvement in peace processes

  • seeking the release of captives & detainees

  • participating in events & engaging with other actors

  • coordination with other offices

  • supporting specific treaties

  • raising issues, concerns

  • working with incoming administrations

  • consensus building

  • advocacy campaigns

  • internal & external training, including

    • skills

• • • thematic knowledge

• is sometimes combined with advocacy by humanitarians

• should be expanded & improved

  • especially to prevent & end conflicts

  • having seen insufficient progress so far

• suffers from

  • challenging political environments

  • over-reliance on state-based responses

• must evolve with the times, focusing on

  • the effects of climate change

  • the influence of technological advances

  • the transnational nature of modern conflict

Third, the Department of State Evaluation CoP will help guide implementation of a study in FY 2013 on the evaluation of "diplomacy" (defined as the art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations).

They are written by senior and junior scholars from all over the world, and they have a clearly defined focus on diplomacy as the mechanism of communication, negotiation and representation among states and other international actors.

Humanitarian Diplomacy is a multi-directional effort that highlights the needs and rights of the vulnerable people, whilst striving to give them a strong voice in all negotiation process.

Increased government support was critical, and participants said there was a need to find tools and instruments that could be used to apply pressure on governments, referring to this as 'humanitarian diplomacy'.

Humanitarian Diplomacy is persuading decision makers and opinion leaders to act, at all times, in the interests of vulnerable people, and with full respect for fundamental humanitarian principles.

Public diplomacy is used these days to describe the very fashionable diplomatic exposures of people as expressed in the media and by non-political leaders including religious leaders, social movements, artists etc. We have seen the effects of public diplomacy in the war against Iraq where the streets of Europe were full of people demanding their leaders to stop the war.

Private diplomacy is what we refer to as a professional – but non-governmental – approach to diplomacy.

As the Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General, he would continue the new approach consisting of undertaking "shuttle diplomacy", whereby he would consult privately with each of the parties and neighbouring States in an attempt to make progress on elements of a possible compromise or consensual solution.

Mitigating measures to enhance access to populations are incomplete if not complemented with 'tea shop diplomacy ' – engaging with communities through their own channels of communication.

'In order to maintain the confidence of those whose cooperation is essential for us to function, we focus on raising concerns face to face and through confidential communications rather than publicly chiding governments and officials.' 'Where all avenues of quiet diplomacy are exhausted, however, we reserve the right to speak out in the interests of vulnerable people.

At IHH, we ensure that in regions where the effects of war, disasters and crises are felt, the civilian population is protected, lost individuals are found, captives are rescued and necessary steps are taken to end the crisis. Under such circumstances, we play an active role and are involved in humanitarian diplomacy when intergovernmental diplomacy is inadequate to resolve the issues.

Red Cross advocacy (or humanitarian diplomacy), is aimed at persuading and influencing decision makers and opinion leaders to act at all times in the interests of vulnerable people, and with full respect for fundamental humanitarian principles.

Advocacy and public education and trainings (Humanitarian Diplomacy): We engage in policy dialogue on all levels with decision makers and opinion leaders on behalf of the vulnerable.

There was significant discussion around the value of humanitarian diplomacy/advocacy during this session–which underscored the need for that to be one of the core IASC priorities (per earlier in the day).

Humanitarian Diplomacy emphasizes that advocacy is a process of constructive and honest dialogue and a process of persuasion rather than confrontation and denunciation.

• thematic knowledge

  • EU negotiation with Russia and China

  • technical background on issues (the environment, security, etc.)

  • institutional & international environments

  • IHL and the role of diplomats

• humanitarian issues and activities

• skills

  • negotiation

  • practical skills

• area, field

  • political economy

  • security

  • energy issues

  • human rights

• component of a national security strategy

  • development

  • defense

• element of foreign policy

  • trade

  • investment

• tool, instrument, mechanism

  • foreign assistance

  • public-private partnerships

• policy

  • defense

• strategy

• multi-directional effort

The chart below represents the distribution of diplomacy between 2005 and 2019 in terms of the number of occurrences and relative frequency of occurrences. It also allows you to view the distribution across Regions, Organisations and Document types.

Without a significant "surge in diplomacy for peace" as called for by the UN Secretary-General,9 matched with adequate and sustained resources, the enormous human and economic cost of conflicts will go unabated.

The Secretary-General participated in the meeting, and introduced his report on preventive diplomacy (S/2011/552). He emphasized that political will was fundamental for preventive diplomacy to deliver results, and that the United Nations had always sought to strengthen preventive diplomacy. He explained how United Nations missions were carrying out preventive diplomacy daily in different parts of the world, and proposed that the Council could do much to address emerging threats, even if such threats were not on the Council's agenda. He concluded that better preventive diplomacy was not an option but rather a necessity.

While shifting the focus of the international community from crisis response to prevention will take time and noting that such efforts are often through ''quiet diplomacy'', few self-reports indicated a stepping up of efforts to resolve or prevent conflicts, with most stakeholders reporting on work that was ongoing prior to the Summit.

The tools for managing armed conflict remain overwhelmingly dominated by states; and they are failing. Which leaves diplomacy, including mediation. Those who dislike its transactional nature enjoy referring to diplomacy as "the world's second-oldest profession". It is indeed an old profession–there is not a lot that modern diplomats could teach the Warring States' emissaries of Sima Qian's Histories, while Krishna's epic mediation in the Mahabharata has never been surpassed. But the failure of contemporary diplomacy to provide a framework for preventing and managing armed conflict–and its failure to manage a slew of violent crises–is not a failure of its distant past. Current diplomacy around violent conflict is a prisoner of its recent past–it is excessively wedded to the interactions between states at a time when fewer and fewer conflicts can be resolved exclusively within that matrix.

However, the political environment for achieving more active preventive diplomacy by the Council remains very challenging, in particular because of concerns among a number of states that prevention will lead to interference by the UN in domestic political affairs of the states concerned.

New trends in diplomacy were also reflected in the training programmes, with the organization of a master-class for the municipality of Rotterdam (reflecting the theories of ''city diplomacy'') and the establishment of an extensive training programme in ''water diplomacy'' for the Arab Water Academy in Abu Dhabi.

A second core theme in the 2014 agenda was the impact of the digital revolution on diplomacy. Whereas it seems obvious that there may be consequences, it is not yet clear how the digital revolution will affect traditional diplomacy. A project was started in 2014, with an increasing number of EU governments as clients, with the aim to evaluate these effects and implications for the way forward.

At the same time, these events highlighted the important role of diplomatic solutions to the world's problems. Faced with multifaceted challenges, foreign ministries and a growing group of disparate public and private actors are engaged in a process of continuous diplomatic innovation. New tools and mechanisms, such as economic instruments and social media, come to the fore and require scrutiny.

Yet, the increasing fluidity and diversity of agendas in the international system explain in part the growing obstacles to effective humanitarian diplomacy [....] The ICRC will need to strengthen the policy and planning capacity of its operations beyond national contexts to respond to the increasingly transnational impact of crisis situations, with the goal of participating and engaging more actively in professional and diplomatic exchanges on emerging challenges in major regional humanitarian hubs including Geneva, Amman, Nairobi, Bangkok, and New York.

Despite the popularity of the theoretical idea of disaster-induced reconciliation, especially in the media, experience suggests that it is rarely robust in practice, and has yet to form a strong basis for reducing enmity. Disaster diplomacy has significant potential, but that potential is rarely fulfilled.