International Crisis Group - New York

The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict.

• 1995, the year Crisis Group was founded
• U.S.$ 20.5 million, annual budget for 2012
• Some 130 permanent staff worldwide, from 53 nationalities speaking 50 languages
• Over 50 conflict and potential conflict situations covered by field analysts
• Over 120 issues of the CrisisWatch bulletin published since 2003, sent monthly to some 132,000 subscribers
• Over 1,000 full-length reports and briefings published since 1995
• Over 159,000 people subscribing online to receive reports
• President and CEO: Louise Arbour, Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (since July 2009)
• Over 26,000 people like our Facebook page, while there are over 56,000 followers of Crisis Group on twitter.

Every year, Crisis Group:

• Publishes around 90 reports and briefings, containing between them some 800 separate policy recommendations
• Conducts some 5,000 advocacy meetings with policymakers and other decision-makers
• Has almost 2 million website visits
• Authors more than 200 opinion pieces in major international newspapers, with nearly half in languages other than English
• Garners more than 5,000 media mentions in print and electronic media
• Creates some 30 podcasts on select conflict situations, in multiple languages

Crisis Group’s international headquarters is in Brussels, and the organisation has offices or representation in 34 locations: Abuja, Bangkok, Beijing, Beirut, Bishkek, Bogotá, Bujumbura, Cairo, Dakar, Damascus, Dubai, Gaza, Guatemala City, Islamabad, Istanbul, Jakarta, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Kabul, Kathmandu, London, Moscow, Nairobi, New York, Port-au-Prince, Pristina, Rabat, Sanaa, Sarajevo, Seoul, Tbilisi, Tripoli, Tunis and Washington DC.

Crisis Group’s annual budget for 2012-2013 is $20.6 million. Our funding comes from governments (49%), institutional foundations (20%), and individual and corporate donors (31%), mostly in the welcome form of core funding (over 70%) rather than being earmarked for specific programs.

Crisis Group was founded in 1995 as an international non-governmental organisation on the initiative of a group of well-known transatlantic figures who despaired at the international community’s failure to anticipate and respond effectively to the tragedies in the early 1990s of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. They were led by Morton Abramowitz (former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Thailand, then President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Mark Malloch-Brown (former head of the UN Development Programme, then UN Deputy Secretary-General and UK Minister), and its first Chairman, Senator George Mitchell. The idea was to create a new organisation – unlike any other – with a highly professional staff acting as the world’s eyes and ears for impending conflicts, and with a highly influential board that could mobilise effective action from the world’s policymakers.