International Crisis Group

Founded in 1995, the International Crisis Group  is a non-governmental organization formed to alert world policymakers about impending crises. Its founders were motivated by the humanitarian disasters in Rwanda and Somalia. The current president and chief executive is Louise Arbour, Former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who took office in July 2009.

That founding group included Morton Abramowitz (former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Thailand, then President of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace), Mark Malloch Brown (later head of the UN Development Programme, UN Deputy Secretary-General and UK Minister); the first chair was George Mitchell. It has a worldwide staff of 130, of 46 nationalities.