Want Women at Peace Talks? Mandate It

Want Women at Peace Talks? Mandate It

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

By: Carla Koppell

The evidence on ending violent conflict is clear: when women participate in negotiations it helps achieve peace. A study of 182 signed peace accords over two decades showed these accords were 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years when women were involved. Yet 17 years after the United Nations first called for including women in all peace talks globally, women remain sidelined. The lack of structural incentives for change is the key—until we get the incentives right, exclusion will rule.

Type: Analysis

GenderMediation, Negotiation & DialoguePeace Processes

Fostering Diplomatic-Defense-Development (3D) Cooperation in Responding to Complex Crises

Fostering Diplomatic-Defense-Development (3D) Cooperation in Responding to Complex Crises

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

By: Beth Cole;  Carla Koppell

The US diplomatic, defense, and development communities (known as the “3Ds”) increasingly find themselves working together to tackle complex crises. This collaboration has already proved its worth, but how can it be made even more effective? A recent USIP research project sought to...

Type: Peace Brief

Global PolicyCivilian-Military Relations

What it Takes: Youth Working for Peace and Equality

What it Takes: Youth Working for Peace and Equality

Friday, August 12, 2016

By: Carla Koppell ;  Alison Milofsky, Ph.D.

It was a startling discovery five years ago that prompted then 21-year-old Shubey Nantege of Uganda to found Go Girl Africa. The organization has provided financial literacy skills to 2,500 girls and young women, helping them make positive changes in their lives. Leaders like Shubey illustrate how young people are essential partners in promoting peacebuilding and gender equality, a point worth highlighting today on International Youth Day. The occasion also provides an opportunity to spotlight gaps in international assistance that can be filled to strengthen the role of young people in advancing peace and equality.

Type: Analysis

GenderYouthNonviolent Action

How Women Drive Nonviolent Movements for Change

How Women Drive Nonviolent Movements for Change

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

By: Fred Strasser

In 2004, when Iraqi political and religious leaders tried to roll back a longstanding law asserting broad rights for women, thousands of Iraqi women mobilized to defend it and to enshrine their rights in the constitution. They marched, wrote protest letters and lobbied the U.S.-led coalition then ruling the country. Carla Koppell, then with the Institute for Inclusive Security, suggested to political analysts evaluating Iraq’s spreading insurgencies that the women’s campaign was a type of activism that U.S. policy should support. But the analysts were dismissive, Koppell recalled in a discussion last week at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “They said, ‘Oh, that’s just women who haven’t taken up arms yet,’” Koppell said. “Yeah. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? And women were the majority of the country.”

Type: Analysis

Conflict Analysis & PreventionGenderNonviolent Action

Women and Peace: A Special Role in Violent Conflict

Women and Peace: A Special Role in Violent Conflict

Friday, March 18, 2016

By: Fred Strasser

In Liberia, women, excluded from talks to end the country’s civil war, besieged negotiators until they signed a deal. In Guatemala, where insurgents and the government each had a female delegate in talks, pressure from women put indigenous, gender and labor rights into an accord. In Northern Ireland, women placed the needs of victims and political prisoners on the agenda after winning a role in peace negotiations. Wherever there’s an effort to settle violent conflict, women’s involvement impr...

Conflict Analysis & PreventionViolent ExtremismGenderPeace Processes

Foreign Policy Priorities for the Trump Administration

Foreign Policy Priorities for the Trump Administration

Thursday, January 5, 2017

By: USIP Staff

As Donald J. Trump prepares for his inauguration as president on Jan. 20, he and his incoming foreign policy team face the full array of global challenges confronting the United States. They’ll have to determine what should demand their immediate attention and where strategic investments might pay big dividends. In this series of brief video interviews, four U.S. Institute of Peace experts offer their recommendations. They spoke ahead of USIP’s Passing the Baton conference, which will convene Cabinet-level and other senior foreign policy and national security figures from the outgoing and incoming administrations for meetings on January 9 and 10. 

Type: Analysis

Global Policy

World Bank Seeks Crisis Flexibility for Long-Term Impact

World Bank Seeks Crisis Flexibility for Long-Term Impact

Thursday, November 17, 2016

By: Fred Strasser

The World Bank Group generally reserves its cheapest loans for the world’s poorest countries. But as protracted conflicts have swelled the number of global refugees, the bank in September unveiled a new, more flexible crisis program that allows, for example, middle-income Jordan and Lebanon, both inundated with uprooted Syrians, to borrow on the bank’s most favorable terms. The shift reflects a growing consensus that traditional distinctions among relief, reconstruction and development work a...

Type: Analysis

Conflict Analysis & PreventionViolent Extremism

Women and Violent Extremism: A Growing Threat Demands Concerted Action

Women and Violent Extremism: A Growing Threat Demands Concerted Action

Monday, August 3, 2015

By: Fred Strasser

The extremist organization ISIS manipulates gender dynamics far better than its opponents often understand. It recruits young men with promises of control over women and uses mass rape as a form of cohesion. At the same time, it lures isolated women with appeals to enlarge their lives by joining a cause. Policymakers seeking to address the role of women in countering violent extremism must take an equally layered, multi-pronged approach to gender, according to experts from government, the Uni...

Type: Analysis

Violent ExtremismGender