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.
Boundary Disputes in Latin America
Since the start of 2000, five Latin American boundary disputes between neighboring states have resulted in the use of force, and two others in its deployment. These incidents involved ten of the nineteen independent countries of South and Central America.
The Road Ahead: Lessons in Nation Building from Japan, Germany, and Afghanistan for Postwar Iraq
With the war in Iraq has come the responsibility to win the peace. In military campaigns, enormous resources may be marshaled at a moment's notice, including professionally trained soldiers supported by the latest technology and an intricate and elaborate global infrastructure specifically designed to fight and win wars.
Healing the Holy Land: Interreligious Peacebuilding in Israel/Palestine
This publication documents faith-based efforts by Muslim, Jewish, and Christians to achieve a just peace in the Arab/Israeli conflict. The publication argues forcefully that religious leaders and interests must be engaged in the peace process in order to assure a sustainable, inclusive, and comprehensive settlement. The report includes the perspectives of clergy, lay, facilitators of inter-faith dialogue, religious educators, and participants in the historic Alexandria Summit in January 2002,...
The Palestinian Reform Agenda
The Oslo Accords reached by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel in 1993-95 ushered into existence the Palestinian Authority and inspired efforts to build autonomous structures for Palestinian self-rule. Since the earliest days of the Palestinian Authority, a varied group of Palestinians has sought to lay the practical foundation for Palestinian statehood through the construction of strong institutions with clear (and generally liberal) legal bases.
The Israeli Military and Israel's Palestinian Policy: From Oslo to the Al Aqsa Intifada
Peri’s account of Israel’s travails is the broader lesson about what can happen to a democratic political system over decades of constant warfare of greater or lesser intensity. Perhaps inevitably, military leaders, active or retired, acquire great public prominence, while civilian politicians, nominally their superiors shrink in perceived stature. In Israel it has become more and more difficult for either major political party to achieve political success without having a bevy of retired gen...
The Chaplain's Evolving Role in Peace and Humanitarian Relief Operations
To determine what role a chaplain could play in the civil-military and humanitarian assistance operations centers and teams present in an intervention, and at what point in the intervention a chaplain should be called upon to be an active participant.
The Ethics of Armed Humanitarian Intervention
At the very beginning of the twenty-first century, two concerns ranked high on the military-political agenda of the Western world: humanitarian intervention and terrorism. This is an essay on the ethical issues surrounding the former.
Democratic Values, Political Structures, and Alternative Politics in Greater China
This study addresses the relationship among popular attitudes toward democracy, a state's political structures--parties, elections, and the government bodies to which candidates in these societies are elected--and the ways in which people participate in politics. It argues that high levels of popular democratic consciousness and strong demands for participation, in the absence of legitimate democratic institutions, lead citizens to resort to nonformal political strategies, including civil dis...
Training for Peace and Humanitarian Relief Operations: Advancing Best Practices
While the four communities in peace operations--governmental and non- governmental organizations (NGOs), the military, and international civilian police--frequently find themselves sharing the same field of operation, their approaches to and structures for training for that interaction and the articulation of training needs are quite different.
The Role of International Financial Institutions in International Humanitarian Law
This project focuses on the innovative role that new groups and established international organizations can play in stemming the tide of atrocities and promoting adherence to international humanitarian law in regions whose inhabitants cannot count on the mature institutions of civil society to handle their grievances.