For the safety of our guests and staff, USIP event formats are being considered on a case-by-case basis. Please, check this website for information on each event.
As a national, nonpartisan, independent Institute, the U.S. Institute of Peace draws on our exceptional convening power to create opportunities for diverse audiences to exchange knowledge, experiences, and ideas necessary for creative solutions to difficult challenges. We serve as an important, neutral platform for bringing together government and nongovernment, diplomacy, security, and development actors, and participants across political views. The Institute’s events help shape public policy and priorities to advance peaceful solutions to conflict and strengthen international security.
As a part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ ongoing project on Civil Wars, Violence and International Responses, the second volume of a special issue of the journal Dædalus was released in January 2018 to explore trends in civil wars and solutions moving forward. Join us as experts discuss their findings and recommendations on how the United States can better respond to intrastate conflict and promote both development and stability to create lasting peace.
U.S. Administration and military leaders, senior Iraqi representatives, and regional experts explored one of the most complex and consequential conflicts of our time. This event included a keynote panel with Stephen J. Hadley, General Joseph L. Votel, Ambassador Mark Green and Brett McGurk. USIP and guest experts navigated the key themes and provided insight on the terrain ahead in Iraq and Syria.
Women are struggling every day for peace and security in their communities, whether as parliamentarians seeking to preserve the constitutional rights of marginalized groups or as filmmakers prompting change through challenging community discourse. To amplify these voices, the U.S. Institute of Peace, with the U.S. Department of State, hosted an event featuring three of the 2018 Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage awardees.
Ten years ago, the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Documentary for its powerful depiction of the nonviolent women’s movement that helped bring an end to Liberia’s bloody civil war. Since its release, producers and directors have taken up the challenge to tell the stories of the often-invisible lives of women in conflict – producing stories in countries like Bosnia, Libya, Afghanistan, Colombia, Pakistan and Rwanda. These films have brought forward women’s critical voices to the stories of war and peace, and amplified the global agenda of Women, Peace and Security.
Experts at the U.S. Institute of Peace discussed how the international community can promote better policies and programs to pave the way forward to peace. Now watch or listen to the recorded event.
United Nations peacekeeping operations are vital to global stability, with over 100,000 troops and police deployed to 15 missions, serving 125 million people across the world. On Dec. 6, the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, Jean Pierre Lacroix, and a group of experts discussed what reforms are planned, and what obstacles they face.
The European Union recently has added a new priority to its foreign and defense policies: Help countries vulnerable to crisis build their resilience against catastrophic events, notably violent conflict, which has uprooted 65 million people worldwide. On November 30, USIP gathered U.S., European and World Bank officials to discuss how governments and international organizations can better coordinate the implementation of this broad new approach to halting violent conflicts.
Six million Somalis are at risk of famine due to drought, and the looming drawdown of the regional peacekeeping force, AMISOM, threatens to derail the country’s fragile transition if the training of Somali forces is not expedited. Former Somali Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Abdirahman Yusuf Ali Aynte (Abdi Aynte) and U.S. Institute of Peace President Nancy Lindborg discussed the challenges and potential solutions in a webcast conversation.
The U.S. and other donors spend billions each year to improve governance in the name of development for war-torn or fragile countries. But good government is crucial for another reason: its capacity to reduce violence that undermines the very development the international community seeks. On July 12, the U.S. Institute of Peace and the World Bank discussed this vital element of the Bank’s “World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law.”
On June 26, the U.S. Institute of Peace and the organization Inclusive Security held a discussion on Rwanda’s transition from genocide to a country at peace, where women hold 64 percent of seats in parliament.