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.
Too often, peace processes only include dueling parties—leaving women; religious, indigenous, and ethnic groups; youth; and survivors of violence excluded from critical discussions that shape the future landscape of a country. Yet, sidelining their voices often results in a resurgence of conflict and fails to achieve comprehensive or sustainable peace.
Specialists in peace processes have understood in recent years that a vital element for ending or preventing warfare is inclusion—ensuring that all groups in a society have their voices heard and their critical concerns met. But what are we learning about how to do that, and do it better? On January 31, veterans of peace processes from Nepal to South Sudan to El Salvador to Turkey discussed the lessons offered by their recent experiences.
The April 2015 earthquake in Nepal killed almost 9,000 people and posed serious challenges to the country’s still-tenuous recovery from years of civil war amid an ambitious renegotiation of its constitution. On the first anniversary of the disaster, the U.S. Institute of Peace hosted Nepal’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Kamal Thapa for a discussion of the earthquake’s aftermath, the nation’s political transition and ways forward.
From Iraq to Burma, from Peru to Yemen, from Nicaragua to Nepal, the personal stories of widows, children, workers, and soldiers often are lost in the cacophony of war. The U.S. Institute of Peace hosted a discussion and launch of "Speaking Their Peace: Personal Stories from the Frontlines of War and Peace," a book that tells the extraordinary stories of "ordinary" people from eleven conflict zones. This event included a moderated discussion with the book's author, Colette Rausch, and two members of the team that captured these memorable interviews, followed by a reception and book-signing session.
On September 25, 2013, the U.S. Institute of Peace celebrated the publication of A Crucial Link: Local Peace Committees and National Peacebuilding by Andries Odendaal, former Jennings Randolph senior fellow. The author was joined in discussion by Christopher Mitchell, Jacqueline Wilson, and Virginia Bouvier to discuss community peacebuilding and its relationship to national peace agreements.
Today’s international conflicts typically involve multiple actors, interests, and drivers that have sparked long, violent histories. Ending these conflicts relies more and more on facilitated dialogue, a process in which a neutral third party helps a broad spectrum of conflicting parties overcome the many barriers to effective communication.
The United States Institute of Peace held a public event on trauma and its effects on rule of law in conflict-affected societies. This two-panel event examined trauma from the panelists' experiences in post-conflict zones, shared new and innovative approaches to building trauma resilience, and focused on Libya as a case study to examine the trauma phenomenon among the general population. Read the event coverage, Trauma Resilience as a Keystone to Building the Rule of Law in Conflict-Affect...
How are the roles of "soldier" and "victim" defined by post-conflict programs? Most disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs are limited in the ways in which issues specific to female combatants are addressed. At this public event panelists examined the particular challenges faced by female ex-combatants in post-conflict environments, and ways in which reintegration agencies and post-conflict programs can integrate gender into their work.
In the aftermath of violent conflict in countries such as Nepal, public distrust of the police can undermine justice and security sector reform efforts and weaken the rule of law. How can justice and security sector reform be approached in a way that strengthens the rule of law?