Publications
Articles, publications, books, tools and multimedia features from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest news, analysis, research findings, practitioner guides and reports, all related to the conflict zones and issues that are at the center of the Institute’s work to prevent and reduce violent conflict.
'Big Data,' Text Messages Can Aid, Not Drive Conflict Prevention
New technologies can be effective tools for preventing conflicts, but they have to be part of a coordinated strategy rather than the driving factor for a prevention effort, according to findings from an examination of cases in multiple countries on three continents.
International Election Fraud Alerts May Spark Violence
Condemnations of election fraud by international monitors have become staples of global efforts to advance democratic practices and honor the will of a country’s citizens. But what if these denunciations actually make things worse? That was the finding from three years of research conducted by the winner of the U.S. Institute of Peace’s first Peace Dissertation Prize, Inken von Borzyskowski.
Q&A: Amid Kerry Visit, Kenya Braces for 2017 Elections
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s first four years in office expire next year and he has announced he’s going to run for a second term in elections scheduled for August 2017. But the competition for power already is heating up.
Can Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Be Stopped?
When she was merely a week old, Jaha Mapenzi Dukureh underwent female genital mutilation in her native Gambia. But the 26-year-old mother of three, now living in the United States, knows the procedure is not something that happens only in some far-off country. She is an outspoken advocate for ending the custom. At a daylong conference at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Dukureh and other experts and government officials detailed the difficulties—and possibilities—of ending a practice that has bee...
Summer 2014 Insights Newsletter - Resilience
Insights highlights major questions on the research and practice of peace and conflict, to more than 10,000 subscribers from around the world.
Creating Spaces for Effective CVE Approaches
Unlike other counterterrorism strategies, countering violent extremism (CVE) focuses on preventing individuals from being recruited into or joining violent extremist groups. CVE is a complex endeavor, largely because the reasons individuals become involved in extremist violence are in themselves complex and the dynamics are unique to each conflict. Using Kenya as an example, and drawing on observations from a recent visit, the author explores how promoting a more nuanced understanding of radi...
Inclusive Approaches to Community Policing and CVE
What happens when community policing—a strategy that promotes collaboration between the police and a community to ensure safety and security—is implemented in transitional societies, in marginalized communities, or to prevent violent extremism or to engage women in providing community-level security? To ensure that they are not doing more harm than good, security, gender, and peacebuilding practitioners must both expand their understanding of policing methodologies and related assumptions and...
Elections and Violent Conflict in Kenya: Making Prevention Stick
To prevent a recurrence of the widespread violence that left 1,100 dead and 650,000 displaced in the aftermath of the December 2007 Kenyan elections, Kenya and the broader international community initiated a multifaceted peacebuilding effort in the lead-up to the country’s March 2013 elections.
Aid to Civil Society: A Movement Mindset
Supporting local agents of nonviolent change is critical to preventing violent conflict and advancing democratic development. Civic campaigns are key drivers of social and political development, as is clear from issues-focused movements in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and most recently the Middle East and North Africa. Effectively aiding civic movements that are fluid, diverse, decentralized, and often loosely organized is tricky. Drawn from a review of the literature and numero...
What Works in Preventing Election Violence
Drawing on extensive field research in Kenya and Liberia around the 2017 elections in those countries, this report uses local survey data to evaluate the effectiveness of seven prevention measures thought to reduce the risk of election violence. Its recommendations, directed primarily to the international community but offering...