Karachi, the largest and most ethnically diverse city in Pakistan, is considered one of the most dangerous cities on Earth. It is also the economic hub of Pakistan and is therefore essential to the long-term stability of a country that is critical to international security. The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) has been working to expand the capacity of Pakistanis in Karachi and other areas to avert violent conflict.

In 2009, USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding began a Training of Trainers (ToT) project in collaboration with a Pakistani nongovernmental organization, the Sustainable Peace and Development Organization (SPADO). The aim was to train Pakistanis how to mediate and manage conflict nonviolently. Participants hail from Karachi and interior Sindh Province, as well as the rural Afghan-Pakistan border region (read more about the program). This is a professionally and ethnically diverse set of peacebuilders; they include journalists, teachers, activists, religious scholars and businesspersons. The network is gender-balanced, with almost half of its 95 members women.

The USIP training workshops for this initiative recently concluded, but the benefits of the program are likely to endure for some time.

The group has already conducted many conflict-resolution and peacebuilding training sessions—both for the NGOs from which the members come and in other settings in their communities. Our university-based network members are working toward incorporating peacbuilding curricula into their courses. And numerous, direct and indirect grass roots conflict-resolution interventions have prevented and mitigated violent conflicts stemming from family and land issues (read two of these stories here: "Honor" Killings Averted: How a USIP-Trained Pakistani Helped Save Lives and Fruits of Conflict: Durable Solution of a Conflict Through Series of Dialogues and Mediations). The group’s members remain active, meeting on their own to discuss their work and collaborating on peacebuilding activities in Pakistan, particularly in Karachi.

Since 2009 USIP has led five capacity-building workshops in Pakistan: three for participants from the rural Afghan-Pakistani border and two for our Karachi and interior Sindh participants. The workshops, co-trained with SPADO staff, consisted of teaching the USIP instructional frameworks of conflict analysis, communication skills, dialogue skills and process, negotiation, mediation and design of electoral violence-prevention training. In tandem with SPADO colleagues, we worked to build peacebuilding training capacity as well as direct and indirect peacebuilding intervention strategies. The successes of the group have been compiled and made available to all of the network's members, an encouragement to take on a wide range of peacebuilding work as conflicts arise.

The final USIP lead workshop brought together our most active peacebuilders from the Afghan-Pakistan border, Karachi and interior Sindh on April 20-22. The goals of the program were to build connections among the geographically and ethnically diverse participants, share lessons learned about their conflict-management activities, review the USIP conflict-management materials and frameworks and plan for sustaining the network and USIP’s role. We also taught a new module on preventing electoral violence, an addition prompted by the many violent incidents prior to Pakistan’s May 11 presidential election.

While USIP’s lead role has shifted, we will continue to support the group’s courageous activities through virtual training sessions, mentoring and curricula development. USIP will also build and support SPADO’s peacebuilding capacity through these same mechanisms. As one participant in the workshops put it, “There is a strong need for a peacebuilders’ network in Pakistan. Different people are working on this in different capacities, but they are not connected. It is important for them to have a common platform. USIP and SPADO provided this platform for us.”