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.
Exploring the Nexus of Religion and Gender and Sexual Minorities
Peacebuilders and practitioners have long recognized that knowledge of local contexts leads to more practical and effective programming. However, knowledge of unique gender and sexual identities, as well as cultural practices, has been mostly absent from the long list of cultural dynamics that are assessed when looking at local peacebuilding contexts — despite often holding deeply important symbolic, religious and political meanings.
Examining Women’s Critical Role in Peacebuilding in the Southern Philippines
Peace is the new battle cry for the island of Mindanao. Situated in the southern Philippines, the region is among the poorest in the nation despite natural resources and promising agrarian assets. Mindanao is also prone to calamities, from clashes between the military and armed groups and violent clan feuds to seasonal natural disasters, that regularly displace entire communities. These unrelenting disruptions to our social, political and economic lives have impacted generations.
Myanmar’s Ongoing War Against Women
When the United Nations began its annual campaign to end violence against women 30 years ago, no one had Myanmar on their radar. But in recent years, Myanmar’s military has escalated its use of sexual and gender-based violence to terrorize women and girls — most infamously against ethnic minorities, notably the Rohingya. Confronted by these atrocities, the international community has issued widespread demands for accountability and justice that have yet to come to fruition.
Gender-Based Violence and COVID-19 in Fragile Settings: A Syndemic Model
The long-standing pandemic of gender-based violence has been worsened by COVID-19 and related containment measures, particularly in fragile settings marked by conflict, poverty, and weak infrastructure. At the same time, the implementation of gender-insensitive COVID-19 control policies can exacerbate the community transmission of COVID-19. These interactions form a syndemic—two or more pandemics whose interactions compound the severity of each. This report identifies the key avenues through which these two pandemics have synergistic effects and offers recommendations for mitigating their impact.
Why Gender and Sexual Minority Inclusion in Peacebuilding Matters
A society cannot be considered peaceful when certain groups within it experience targeted and ongoing forms of violence and discrimination. Despite this recognized importance of inclusivity, gender and sexual minorities (GSM) remain largely invisible in peacebuilding. Even in the international Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, which has become a significant entry point for addressing gender dynamics in peacebuilding, GSM rights, protection and participation are also inadequately addressed. The absence of established norms for and approaches to GSM inclusion means that it is incumbent on peacebuilders to think more intentionally about why and how GSM can be included.
Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory (Hausa)
Daftarin da ke bada kulawa ga jinsi kundi ne da akayi nazari a tsanake wajen samar da shi da zai saukaka yadda za’a rika bada kulawa tare da amfani da al’amuran da suka shafi jinsi yayin tsara wani shiri ko aiki. Saboda aikin samar da zaman lafiya ya dogara da nazartan al’amarin da yake dubawa, daftarin da ke bada kulawa ga jinsi ya gabatar da hanyoyi uku na nazartan al’amuran da suka shafi jinsi-mata, zaman lafiya da tsaro; halaye da dabi’un maza na kwarai; da asali ko alamomi da suka hadu da juna-an samar da su da nufin fuskantar al’amuarn jinsi dan kyautata tsara shirye-shiryen jaddada zaman lafiya.
Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory (Dari)
(Dari) The Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory (GIFT) guide is an approachable and thorough tool that facilitates the integration of gender analysis into project design. Because peacebuilding work is context dependent, the GIFT puts forth three approaches to gender analysis – the Women, Peace and Security Approach; the Peaceful Masculinities Approach; and the Intersecting Identities Approach – that each illuminate the gender dynamics in a given environment to better shape peacebuilding projects.
Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory (Burmese)
အားလုံးပါဝင်မှုရှိသော ကျားမရေးရာ မူဘောင်နှင့် သဘောတရားလမ်းညွှန် (GIFT) သည် စီမံကိန်းဒီဇိုင်းများရေးဆွဲရာတွင် ကျားမရေးရာဆန်းစစ်လေ့လာမှုကို ထည့်သွင်းဆောင်ရွက်နိုင်ရန် ထောက်ပံ့ပေးသော၊ လုပ်ဆောင်ရလွယ်ကူပြီး စေ့စပ်သေချာသော စနစ်တစ်ခုဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးတည်ဆောက်ခြင်းသည် အခြေအနေအပေါ် မူတည်နေသည့်အတွက် အမျိုးသမီး၊ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးနှင့် လုံခြုံရေးနည်းလမ်း၊ ငြိမ်းချမ်းသောဖိုဆန်သည့်နည်းလမ်း၊ ဝိသေသလက္ခဏာများကို ဆက်နွယ် ပိုင်းခြားသတ်မှတ်ခြင်းနည်းလမ်း စသည်ဖြင့် ကျားမဆန်းစစ်လေ့လာမှု ဆိုင်ရာ နည်းလမ်း (၃) မျိုးကို ဤလမ်းညွှန်တွင် ဖော်ပြထားပြီး ပိုမိုကောင်းမွန်သော ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးတည်ဆောက်မှုစီမံကိန်းများကို ဖော်ဆောင်နိုင်ရန်အတွက် ပေးထား သော အခြေအနေပတ်ဝန်းကျင်တစ်ရပ်တွင် ကျားမရေးရာအခြေပြုတွန်းအားများကို ယင်းနည်းလမ်းတစ်ခုစီက ပိုမိုဖော်ဆောင်ပေးနိုင်သည်။
Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory (Swahili)
Mwongozo wa Nadharia na Mfumo wa Kujumuisha Jinsia Zote (GIFT) ni njia rahisi na zana ya kina inayowezesha kujumuisha uchambuzi wa kijinsia katika uundaji wa mradi. Kwa sababu kazi ya kudumisha amani inategemea muktadha, GIFT inaweka mbele njia tatu za uchambuzi wa kijinsia-mtazamo wa Wanawake, Amani na Usalama; mtazamo wa Uume wenye Amani; na mtazamo wa Utambulisho Ingiliani-ambazo zote zinaangizia mabadiliko ya kijinsia katika mazingira fulani ili kutengeneza vyema miradi ya kudumisha amani.
Democracy Is the Afghan Government’s Best Defense Against the Taliban
The Biden administration’s announcement last week that U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan by September 11 came as a blow to the current peace talks and many Afghan citizens who appreciate the rights and freedoms that international forces have helped to defend against the Taliban. Still, President Biden made clear that the United States continues to support the Afghan government and democratic system, and, to that end, the administration has indicated it would request $300 million from Congress in additional civilian aid. But Biden explicitly de-linked U.S. troops from that equation — stating that they would not be “a bargaining chip between warring parties.”