The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) must be a committed learning organization to achieve its mission to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict around the world. The complexity of conflict contexts and ever-changing patterns of violence means that peacebuilding work must be iterative to make a difference. With each new investment, we must draw lessons from our past successes and failures and apply them to our future work for greater impact.

The Policy, Learning, and Strategy (PLS) Center works to capture, organize, and disseminate evidence and learning from the Institute’s work for the purposes of informing better peacebuilding programs, policy and strategy. Four PLS teams work to accomplish these goals: Gender Policy and Strategy; Global Policy; Learning, Evaluation, and Research; and Program Development and Operations.

Key PLS activities include:

  • Serving as USIP’s hub for institutional standards on project design, monitoring and evaluation, learning, gender integration, and applied research.
  • Strengthening the institutions and practices for capturing, sharing, and leveraging knowledge across USIP to enable learning and improve decision-making.
  • Integrating gender perspectives into the policies and strategies of the Institute by enabling learning across USIP programming centers, convening communities of global experts, and providing thought leadership on gender-sensitive peacebuilding.
  • Forging external partnerships to shape global policy on conflict prevention and peacebuilding.
  • Engaging with peer U.S. Government interagency partners, on behalf of the USIP centers to maximize the impact and effectiveness of USIP’s country and theme based programming to prevent violent conflict.
  • Guiding the annual and strategic planning processes of USIP.

For more information on how PLS operates, including information on all four teams, please see the section below.

Gender Policy and Strategy

The Gender Policy and Strategy (GPS) team oversees the systematic integration of gender considerations into the policies and strategies of the Institute. The team focuses its efforts through the USIP Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory and offers technical support in the planning, design, implementation and evaluation of USIP’s programs and projects. GPS also takes an active role in USIP’s external outreach as an international thought leader on gender, peace, and security topics. The team does this by contributing to policy-shaping processes in Washington and by facilitating global partnerships among gender experts, practitioners, government organizations, civil society, and academia.  All of these efforts help ensure a cross-sectoral approach to gender in peacebuilding, which in turn helps USIP achieve its mission.

International Partnerships

The International Partnerships (IP) team leads the Institute’s policy engagements with international actors to enable foresight, insight and action on the most pressing global challenges to building and sustaining peace. Through the development of a virtuous circle of timely, policy-relevant thought-leadership and collaborative partnerships with major international policy actors and dialogue forums, the IP team works to expand USIP’s global policy influence and advance USIP’s mission to prevent and mitigate violent conflict.

Learning, Evaluation, and Research

The mission of the Learning, Evaluation, and Research (LER) team is to make USIP a more committed and dynamic learning organization by serving as the Institute’s hub for project design, monitoring and evaluation (M&E), knowledge management, research, and learning. LER defines a learning organization as one where staff at all levels continuously gather feedback and results, turn these results into lessons learned, and ensure lessons are disseminated and incorporated into the next generation of activities.

At the project and programmatic levels, LER provides direct technical assistance to USIP programs to strengthen research, design, M&E, and learning. At the organizational level, LER manages the Institute’s knowledge management systems and tools for learning at USIP so that evidence and learning are used to inform strategic-level decision-making. These activities help ensure that USIP is producing and leveraging stronger evidence so that staff can learn from that evidence and apply it to their work moving forward.

U.S. Government Partnerships, Policy, and Strategy

The U.S. Government Partnerships, Policy, and Strategy (USG-PPS) team supports USIP’s mission by advancing the Institute’s ongoing partnerships with the Executive Branch and its agencies. The team ensures that USIP is operating in partnership with those working for sustainable peace across the U.S. government and helps to raise the profile and relevance of the Institute on key foreign policy challenges. Internally, USG-PPS works closely with centers and programs to foster effective collaboration and enable coordination on Interagency Agreements (IAAs) and cross-Institute policy initiatives to maximize the Institute’s relevance and impact.

Current Projects

Missing Peace Initiative on Preventing Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Missing Peace Initiative on Preventing Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Initiated in 2012, the Missing Peace Initiative is a partnership bringing together policymakers, practitioners and junior and senior scholars who are working on the issue of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. Together, these individuals identify gaps in knowledge and reporting and explore how to increase the effectiveness of current responses to such violence. Since 2013, the Missing Peace Scholars Network has ensured that this research is communicated cogently to policymakers by producing annual special reports intended to produce meaningful change regarding acts of conflict-related sexual violence.

GenderHuman RightsJustice, Security & Rule of Law

Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory (GIFT)

Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory (GIFT)

The Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory (The GIFT) is a conceptual guide that facilitates the integration of gender analysis into project design. It does this by putting forward a three-pronged approach to gender analysis of conflict that addresses: Women, Peace and Security, Peaceful Masculinities, and Intersecting Identities. Each analytical component sheds light on the gender dynamics in the given environment to support the design of peacebuilding projects that are more inclusive, resilient, and attuned to the local context.

Gender

International Partnerships

International Partnerships

The International Partnerships team leads the Institute’s policy engagements with international actors to enable foresight, insight and action on the most pressing global challenges to building and sustaining peace. Through the development of a virtuous circle of timely, policy-relevant thought-leadership and collaborative partnerships with major international policy actors and dialogue forums, the IP team works to expand USIP’s global policy influence and advance USIP’s mission to prevent and mitigate violent conflict.

Fragility & ResilienceGlobal PolicyPeace Processes

Interorganizational Global Forum

Interorganizational Global Forum

The Interorganizational Global Forum (IGF) conducted in partnership with the Joint Staff J-7 serves as a platform for diverse stakeholders to consider a complex global security challenge of key importance to U.S. national security and global peace and stability. The IGF brings together civilian and military representatives from the U.S. government, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, academia, think tanks, and the private sector to explore different approaches to these challenges. Ultimately, the IGF seeks to improve coordination, communication and effectiveness in global responses to prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflict.

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Featured Publications

Sexual Violence Is Not an Inevitable Cost of War

Sexual Violence Is Not an Inevitable Cost of War

Thursday, December 7, 2023

By: Kathleen Kuehnast, Ph.D.

The ever-growing list of conflict zones in which sexual violence has been reported globally this year, including in Israel, Ethiopia, Sudan, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Haiti, underscores the persistent horror of this scourge. Acts of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) violate not only the physical and mental integrity of the victims but also breach international humanitarian law and human rights principles.

Type: Analysis and Commentary

GenderHuman Rights

Five Gains and Gaps in the Campaign to End Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Five Gains and Gaps in the Campaign to End Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

By: Chantal de Jonge Oudraat;  Kathleen Kuehnast, Ph.D.

The wars of the 1990s — particularly in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — saw the devastating use of sexual violence not only by individual subordinate soldiers, but as deliberate tactics of war by state and non-state armed actors. In response, a wave of strong advocacy from women’s civil society organizations called for an end to these acts of violence, and their vision was eventually incorporated into U.N. Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 and what is now known as the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in 2000.

Type: Analysis and Commentary

Gender

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