Stability, responding to crises & threats

I have authored and edited numerous studies on stabilisation, state-building, security assistance, counter-terrorism, countering and preventing violent extremism and migration responses. From 2001-2010, I spent a decade serving in international missions and programmes in fragile and post-conflict contexts, including working with the OSCE and UN in the Balkans (Kosovo, Serbia and the wider region), the Pacific (Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the wider region) and Africa (Sudan and South Sudan), as well as leading Saferworld field programmes in South Asia (Sri Lanka and Nepal). I have detailed knowledge of DDR with specialism in reintegration and the role community security processes can play in support, and support training in this area. From 2014 I was the architect of Saferworld’s peacebuilding responses to crises and threats programme, which generated case studies of experiences in over 15 conflict prevention and stabilisation settings, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, the Sahel, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. This body of research has fed into influential synthesis and lessons learned reports commissioned by the UN Department of Peace Operations and the UK FCDO as well as numerous requests for briefings, presentations and policy-practice workshops for the UK, Germany, Sweden, the Stabilisation Leaders Forum, the US National Security Council, the UN and many others. These inputs have helped to shape the peace and stabilisation guidelines, mandates and operations of actors such as Germany, Sweden, the UK and the UN.

Expertise and experience:

• Member of the UK Government’s Civilian Stabilisation Group roster as a Conflict Prevention expert

• Practice guide: ‘Towards principled peacemaking: a playbook for security actors,’ Principles for Peace Foundation (forthcoming)

• Podcast guest: 'Episode 2: How Conflict Environments Complicate Countering Violent Extremism,' with Dr Jessica White, Raffaello Pantucci and Christory Hockey, RUSI's Decoding Counterterrorism (27 Feb 2023)

• Podcast guest: ‘New perspectives on stabilisation,’ with Rachel Kleinfeld, Andrei Gomez-Suarez, Warpod (29 June 2022)

• Led and co-authored two strands of research for the FCDO-funded project ‘Stabilisation and resilience strategies: what works to address threats posed by violent criminal or proscribed groups?’ (2021-22)

• Report with Abigail Watson: ‘How guns fall silent: Analysing examples of relative success in integrated stabilisation,’ (Saferworld/FCDO funded, May 2022)

• Report with Jordan Street: ‘No shortcuts to security: learning from responses to armed conflicts involving proscribed groups,’ (Saferworld/FCDO funded, May 2022)

• Provided strategic and operational advice to the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency in response to requests to the Saferworld, Bradford University and Stockholm Policy Group helpdesks on peace, human rights, rule of law and conflict sensitivity, including authoring a number of written reports from 2010 onwards

• Podcast series - researched, scripted, co-hosted and produced: Reckoning with 9/11, 8-part special series of Saferworld’s Warpod, September-November 2021, with Pulitzer-prize winning journalists and experts from affected countries

• Led Saferworld’s research and advocacy on peace and rights-based responses to crises and threats from 2014 to 2021 – looking at counter-terror, Countering/Preventing Violent Extremism (C/PVE), stabilisation, statebuilding and counter-migration policies and approaches

• Developed a global civil society Security Policy Alternatives Network from 2017 to promote peace, human rights and civic space within international security interventions, comprised of over 100 civil society organisations and experts, leading to multiple collaborative research and advocacy initiatives

• ‘Biden’s Global Priority No. 1: Turn the Authoritarian Tide,’ (Just Security, 8 Dec 2020)

• Report with Jordan Street: ‘Conflict sensitivity assessment of UNDP’s "Preventing and Responding to Violent Extremism in Africa: A Development Approach”,’ (Saferworld helpdesk task for Sida, November 2020)

• Article with Jordan Street: ‘Incompatible Bedfellows: UN Peace Operations and Counterterrorism,’ IPI Global Observatory, Sept 2020

• Article with Jordan Street: ‘Redefining a UN peace doctrine to avoid regime protection operations,’ (Saferworld/UN DPO think piece paper, 2020)

• Project managed and edited, report by Jordan Street & Ali Altiok: ‘A fourth pillar for the United Nations? The rise of counter-terrorism,’ (Saferworld, June 2020)

• Project managed and edited report by Jo Crouch: ‘Counter-terror and the logic of violence in Somalia’s civil war: time for a new approach,’ (Saferworld, Dec 2018)

• Attree L & Street J, ‘Why U.N. Peacekeeping Operations Must Not Become Counterterrorism Missions,’ World Politics Review (Sept 2018)

• Attree L, Street J, ‘U.N. Peace Operations Should Get Off the Counter-Terror Bandwagon,’ Just Security (Sept 2018)

• Report with Jordan Street & Luca Venchiarutti: ‘UN peace operations in complex environments: charting the right course,’ (Saferworld, 2018)

• Policy brief: 'Building peace into refugee responses: Syrian refugees in Lebanon,' (Saferworld, 2018)

• Report with Saleem Haddad & Lola Aliaga: ‘Building peace into refugee responses: Syrian refugees in Lebanon,’ (Saferworld, 2018)

• Attree L, ‘Counter-terrorism: new UK strategy must learn obvious lessons,' (Open Democracy, 2018)

• Advisory inputs provided into Thematic Overview by Sida: 'Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) through development,' (Sida, 2017)

• Project managed and edited) report by David Keen: ‘Syria: Playing into their hands: regime and international roles in fuelling violence and fundamentalism in the Syrian war,’ (Saferworld, 2017)

• Project managed and edited report: ‘We need to talk about Egypt: how brutal counter-terrorism is failing Egypt and its allies,’ (Saferworld, 2017)

• Project managed and edited report by Lola Aliaga & Kloe O’Farrell: ‘Counter-terror in Tunisia: a road paved with good intentions?’ (Saferworld, 2017)

• Long-read article: ‘Shouldn’t YOU be Countering Violent Extremism,’ (Saferworld, 2017)

• Report with Thomas Nyagah: ‘Inside Kenya’s war on terror: the case of Lamu,’ (Saferworld, 2017)

• Report with Chris Wakube: ‘Inside Kenya’s war on terror: breaking the cycle of violence in Garissa,’ (Saferworld, 2017)

• Article with Farea Al-Muslimi: ‘US Counterterror Strategy Has Crashed and Burned,’ (Lobelog, 2016)

• Article: ‘You can’t bomb your way to peace,’ (Open Society Foundations, 2016)

• Policy brief with Sunil Suri: ‘A new war on terror or a new search for peace: lessons from Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen,’ (Saferworld, 2016)

• Project managed and edited report by Sunil Suri: ‘Barbed wire on our heads: lessons from counter-terror, stabilisation and statebuilding in Somalia,’ (Saferworld, 2016)

• (Project managed and edited) report by Hesta Groenewald: ‘Hammering the bread and the nail: lessons from counter-terror, stabilisation and statebuilding in Afghanistan,’ (Saferworld, 2016)

• Report: ‘Blown back: lessons from counter-terror, stabilisation and statebuilding in Yemen,’ (Saferworld, 2016)

• Policy brief: ‘What lessons should be learnt from 15 years of counter-terror and stabilisation?’ (Saferworld, 2016)

• Article: ‘The UK and extremism: understanding the problem and owning our values,’ (Saferworld, 2015)

• Report with David Keen: ‘Dilemmas of counterterror, stabilisation and statebuilding,’ (Saferworld, 2015)

• Policy brief with David Keen: ‘Envisaging More Constructive Alternatives To The Counter-Terror Paradigm,’ (Saferworld, 2015)

• Report chapter with David Keen: ‘Envisaging More Constructive Alternatives To The Counter-Terror Paradigm,’ in Institute for Economics & Peace, Global Terrorism Index 2014: measuring and understanding the impact of terrorism, (IEP, 2014)

• Report with Tim Midgley, Ivan Briscoe et al: ‘Identifying approaches and measuring impacts of programmes focused on Transnational Organised Crime,’ (Saferworld/Small Arms Survey for DFID, 2014)