Peace Processes
Peace processes involve a series of negotiated steps to end wars and build sustainable peace. The U.S. Institute of Peace works with practitioners, diplomats and officials to understand how to effectively manage or facilitate such processes. This includes how such negotiations can be structured and supported, the issues to be resolved, the trade-offs involved, and the consequences and challenges that result. From considering gender and the role of women in Colombia’s peace process to furthering a new understanding of Myanmar’s long road towards peace, USIP works to ensure that peace agreements in conflict areas are inclusive, participatory, and locally led and supported.
Featured Publications
Montana Students Take on the World
The students from Gardiner, Montana’s high school didn’t have much experience in the world beyond “little towns among farmland,” as one of them put it. So, when the mayor of the state capital, Helena, spoke to them as a 1994 refugee from Liberia’s civil war, the link between distant conflict zones and pastoral Montana took on a captivating human form.
Collaborative Design in Peacebuilding
Despite clear evidence of the effectiveness of individual peacebuilding efforts, the field as a whole often struggles to have a meaningful collective impact on broader conflict dynamics. This report, drawing on a pilot initiative in the Central African Republic—IMPACT-CAR—to develop a shared measurement and reporting system aimed at improving collaboration and shared learning across peacebuilding implementers, reflects on the results, successes, and challenges of the initiative to offer a road map for future initiatives focused on collective impact in the peacebuilding field.
Will Colombia's 2018 Elections Imperil Peace?
The April 9 arrest and extradition request of former senior Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commander and peace negotiator Jesús Santrich highlights the complex challenges Colombia faces in the implementation of the historic November 2016 peace agreement with the FARC. Over a year and a half since the signing of the agreement, Colombia finds itself in one of the most critical moments in its efforts to definitively put to rest over five decades of armed conflict that has left more than 8.5 million victims in its wake. Frustrations surrounding the mixed results in the implementation of the peace agreement are exacerbated by the natural uncertainty over the upcoming May 27 presidential elections and its policy impact.
Current Projects
Colombia Peace Forum
Established with the peace talks in 2012, the USIP-based Colombia Peace Forum produces creative analysis of Colombia’s internal armed conflict and peace initiatives that informs the thinking of policymakers and opinion leaders in the United States and Colombia. The forum convenes academics, Colombia specialists, government officials and others to provide a platform where a variety of voices, including historically marginalized groups (human rights defenders, women, ethnic minorities, etc.), c...
Mediation in Colombia
The Mediation in Colombia project is designed to generate discussion about Colombia’s past efforts to resolve its longstanding internal armed conflict.