Free Essay with the Analysis of the Current Situation with Montreaux Initiative

Since 2008, the government of Switzerland has maintained strong support for the Montreaux Initiative and wishes to see rapid results. However, one of the most important problems facing the initiative is that Switzerland has not succeeded in getting any major partner to join the initiative. Thus, Switzerland remains the only country solidly behind the Montreaux Initiative. No other European country seems to be willing to take part in future Montreaux deliberations. However, most European countries have developed joint frameworks for enhancing capacity building throughout the European Union. On its side, the United States does not seem to be ready to support the initiative. It argues that there are a number of grey areas that needs to be polished to make the Montreaux Initiative capable of withstanding international standards. Several Middle East countries have given a green light, meaning that they are likely to join the initiative. However, they will have to be assured that the initiative cannot be used to advance other interest such as foreign surveillance and information espionage (Jonathan, 2008).

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Besides lack of support from governments across the world, the Montreaux initiative has been hampered by several risks. Some of these risks have made it difficult for the initiative to register any positive results despite having been in existence for a considerably long period of time. The most important of these factors is failure to raise enough funds to support its activities and programs. Since its inception, the Montreaux mainly depends on limited funding from the Swiss government. Attempts to diversify funding sources have not been successful. Another impeding factor has been failure to appoint a suitable board of trustees to push the Montreaux Initiative and its agenda forward. Third, the initiative has been taken aback due to low participation of Islamic charities. As already explained, many Islamic charities fear that the initiative could be used for intelligence gathering services especially by Western countries. As such, most of the Islamic charities have given the initiative a wide berth.

The foregoing risk analysis was the subject of a 2009 meeting in Doha, Qatar by the core team. During the meeting, it became clear that the Montreaux initiative was not making the expected progress, at least in view of its original recommendations. Delegates in the Doha meeting took note of the immediate consequences of the low participation rate by Islamic charities. The risk of the low participation was considered to be important to the extent of making it impossible for the Montreaux Initiative to move forward with its agenda. The core team agreed to engage in high level meetings with some of the leading charities to solicit their support for the Montreaux initiative. If a large number of the Islamic charities were to sign up to the process, the subsequent setbacks could be significantly reduced.