The U.S Institute of Peace’s Center for Applied Conflict Transformation (ACT) is built on the premise that there are common tools and approaches to peacebuilding that are adaptive, but applicable to peacebuilding globally. We serve as the hub of the Institute’s common resources for governments, organizations, and individuals seeking to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict worldwide. ACT prioritizes evaluation and learning from our programs to adapt and improve our work. As of 2017, ACT is actively engaged in more than 40 fragile and conflict-affected countries around the world.

The Center leads the Institute’s long-standing engagements on:

  • Justice, security, rule of law: ACT’s Justice and Security Dialogue (JSD) program, which brings together police and local communities to build trust and facilitate collective problem-solving, is currently being implemented in several countries across West Africa, including Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, and Tunisia. USIP also spearheads the International Network to Promote the Rule of Law (INPROL), a global online community of practice, comprised of over 3,000 rule-of-law practitioners from 120 countries.
  • Inclusive societies – particularly engagement with religious actors and youth: ACT currently focuses on mapping of religious actors at the intersection of peace and conflict in Libya, Pakistan, and South Sudan. Across Africa and the Middle East, and now in Colombia, the Center’s Generation Change Fellows Program works to equip young peacebuilders with the skills needed to manage conflict nonviolently.

ACT houses and convenes USIP’s experts on current challenges to peace, including: 

  • Preventing electoral violence: ACT has played a pioneering role in broadening the understanding of election violence. In 2017, USIP published Electing Peace, a seminal research volume that examines the effectiveness of common practices to prevent election violence—paving the way for further research in Liberia and Kenya and evidence-based prevention in Pakistan, Burma and other USIP priority countries.
  • Addressing violent extremism: ACT leverages and integrates the learning on violent extremism from research and projects across the Institute, including those of the RESOLVE Network, which launched its first local observatory on conflict and extremism in Bangladesh in 2017.
  • Assessing the implications of resource scarcity: ACT views resource scarcity and abundance as a significant challenge to fragile and conflict-affected communities worldwide.

ACT continues to identify, design, and pilot the next generation of peacebuilding approaches and tools for effective negotiation, mediation, and dialogue; nonviolent movements; reconciliation; and promoting inclusive peace processes.

The Center brings strategic coherence and consistency to USIP’s core capabilities – research, grant-making, fellowships, publishing, education and training, and field practice – to maximize our impact.

USIP’s Global Campus

The Global Campus, part of the Academy, leverages the latest modern communication technologies to extend online education and training opportunities to individuals across the world. Now, from almost anywhere, professionals can increase their knowledge and skills to prevent violent and transform violent conflict through accessible, engaging online training opportunities.

USIP’s Conflict Management Training for Peacekeepers

We are excited to announce that USIP’s Conflict Management Training for Peacekeepers (CMTP) program training-of-trainers application (version Française) has been extended until August 9, 2020!

Since 2008, USIP has provided training on conflict management skills to more than 7,000 peacekeepers from 21 troop contributing countries (TCCs) deploying to 8 United Nations and African Union peacekeeping missions. The CMTP program provides a five-day training that strengthens the capacity of peacekeepers to protect civilians through the nonviolent resolution of conflicts. This training provides peacekeepers with knowledge and skills in the areas of conflict analysis, communication, negotiation, and mediation through a protection of civilian lens in order to improve their interactions with local populations and mission actors and more effectively carry out their mandate.

Additionally, the training equips peacekeepers with a range of skills and knowledge to strengthen their capacity to think deeply about culture, human rights, and gender. The Protecting Civilians through Conflict Transformation curriculum is rooted in principles of adult learning and thus builds on peacekeepers’ existing experiences and knowledge.

Given a recent revision of the training curriculum, the CMTP program is expanding its existing cadre of civilian trainers and mentors to deliver the Protecting Civilians through Conflict Transformation training and to mentor and coach TCC instructor cadres to deliver the training. You can find more details about, and submit your application for the program, here. For questions about the application or the process, please email Peacekeepertraining@usip.org.

Current Projects

People-to-People Reconciliation Model

People-to-People Reconciliation Model

The People-to-People Reconciliation Model is a tool that models the potential for success of people-to-people reconciliation interventions using game theory. The model focuses on interventions that attempt to influence small collections of individuals — with the expectation that changes among such small groups can spread through populations and create widespread change.

Conflict Analysis & PreventionReconciliation

Religion and Conflict Country Profiles

Religion and Conflict Country Profiles

USIP’s Religion, Peace and Conflict Country Profiles (RPACCs) are concise analytic overviews of the religious landscape in countries at risk of, currently experiencing or recovering from violent conflict. RPACCs are intended to be used primarily by policymakers and practitioners looking to develop rapid familiarity with the nature and status of religion in a given country of interest as well as to understand how religion intersects with conflict and peace dynamics. The RPACC series is an outgrowth of USIP’s previous work on Religious Landscape Mapping in Conflict-Affected States.

Religion

Religious Literacy and Peacebuilding

Religious Literacy and Peacebuilding

Peacebuilders and policymakers are engaged and involved with religious actors in almost every aspect of their work. Even where religion is not an explicit presence, it is a cultural undercurrent that is immutably present — and one that is often vastly underestimated by policymakers. As USIP’s three decades of experience working at the intersection of religion, peace and conflict has shown, the teachings of various religious traditions, the lived experience of those who practice them and the knowledge of how to engage with people of faith are all essential elements of effective peacebuilding.

Religion

Civic Mobilization in Civil Resistance Transitions Dataset

Civic Mobilization in Civil Resistance Transitions Dataset

Since January 2021, USIP has been collecting data on the frequency and characteristics of civic mobilization in 83 political transitions initiated through civil resistance from 1945 to the present to help understand when challenges to democratic progress have been successfully overcome and provide practical lessons learned for activists, policymakers and academics interested in nonviolent action and democratization.

Conflict Analysis & PreventionDemocracy & GovernanceNonviolent Action

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Featured Publications

In Religious Conflicts, Bolstering the Role of Military Chaplains

In Religious Conflicts, Bolstering the Role of Military Chaplains

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

By: Melissa Nozell;  Knox Thames

In the 2020s, how urgently should the U.S. military prepare to address religious facets of armed conflicts? Violence from Beirut to the Red Sea this month threatens to spread the Israel-Hamas war regionwide. Violence fueled through religious identities and extremisms also afflicts Asia and Africa. Russia manipulates religion to justify its invasion of Ukraine. However, simultaneously, religious ideas can help resolve conflicts. The United States should seize a current opportunity to improve its ability to navigate the religious terrain of conflicts with enhanced training and roles for an often under-appreciated resource: military chaplains.

Type: Analysis

Religion

At COP28, Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, But No Deal on a Phase Out

At COP28, Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, But No Deal on a Phase Out

Thursday, December 14, 2023

By: Tegan Blaine, Ph.D.

Few people expected much progress at the 2023 U.N. Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP28) following contentious discussions around the development of a new Loss and Damage Fund, a grim Global Stocktake report detailing exactly how far away the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement still are and questions about the intentions of the conference chair who came from the oil and gas industry. However, the agreement signed on December 13 makes surprising progress in a few key areas, while still leaving much to be desired.

Type: Analysis

Environment

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