This episode features Pamela Aall, senior advisor for conflict prevention and management at USIP, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), and founding Provost of USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding. In this episode she addresses a wide variety of topics related to cross-cultural and multiparty negotiation, including negotiating techniques, regional cooperation in conflict management, cross-cultural communication, and women’s involvement in conflict resolution.

Conflict Analysis & Prevention

In the midst of a political shift where power is moving from central institutions to smaller, more distributed units in the international system, the approaches to and methodologies for peacemaking are changing. "Managing Conflict in a World Adrift" provides a sobering panorama of contemporary conflict, along with innovative thinking about how to respond now that new forces and dynamics are at play.

Education & Training

The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) and the FP Group jointly held their inaugural “PeaceGame” on December 9 at the Institute, an exercise that drew on a wide range of foreign policy specialists to examine what “the best possible peace for Syria” might look like.

Conflict Analysis & Prevention; Education & Training; Education & Training

What can we learn from other peace processes that could help ease the negotiations in Geneva this January between the Syrian government and the country's fractured opposition? Many seasoned practitioners would argue that since no two conflicts are alike, it is dangerous to assume that what worked in managing one conflict will work in another. At the risk of proving the skeptics right, however, there are a few areas in which earlier conflicts might provide useful lessons for Geneva: identity i...

Mediation, Negotiation & Dialogue

All armed groups capture or detain individuals in a variety of situations, but it is unclear what legal obligations, if any, non-state groups have when dealing with detainees. Bruce Oswald explores this question and the challenge of getting non-state groups to respect basic detention standards.

A new report by a nongovernmental coalition suggests that a “smart power” approach to international affairs is gaining traction and that there is bipartisan consensus on where to move forward. USIP, with its peacebuilding and conflict-management programs, is one form of smart power.

Conflict Analysis & Prevention; Mediation, Negotiation & Dialogue

On May 1, 2012, the Roundtable on Science, Technology, and Peacebuilding – a partnership between the U.S Institute of Peace and the National Academy of Engineering – held a workshop in Washington, DC, to explore whether and how extension activities could serve peacebuilding purposes. This summary provides a synopsis of the day’s discussion.