Background
Scarce resources, competing values and interests and constant changes in the physical environment elicit different responses from people at different times. Such responses may be cooperative or conflictual. In many places around the world, the competition among people for resources or values and interests has led to violent conflicts that have plunged many countries into a downward spiral of instability and even desolation.
Ghana has been a relatively peaceful country but for a few isolated incidents of violent conflict. This reality, however, should encourage stakeholders to be more proactive in identifying and managing latent issues of competing interests so they do not lead to full-blown violent conflict.
It is in this spirit that the Legon Centre for International Affairs presents the Conflict Watch, which is a part of its larger Conflict Management Database as an Early Warning Tool. It is based on information already in the public domain and aims to provide a one-stop starting point from which stakeholders can anticipate conflict issues and explore proactive ways of managing them. It further provides content for the national conversation on conflict and conflict management by identifying and documenting some of the typologies of conflict persisting in the country. Finally, it identifies and provides some basic analysis of the most topical case of conflict quarterly.