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.
Four Takeaways on the Intersection of Nonviolent Action and Peace Processes
How can nonviolent action and peacebuilding work together? And how can they be brought together to promote positive long-term political change? Although mass nonviolent action movements are taking place at an increasingly rapid rate, they are succeeding in achieving their goals less frequently, and where initially peaceful demonstrations have been met by state violence from Myanmar to Colombia, better understanding these questions is crucial.
The Evolution and Potential Resurgence of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan
Following its formation in 2007, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) emerged as one of Pakistan’s deadliest militant organizations. Military efforts severely curtailed the TTP’s ability to launch attacks by 2016, but recent signs—including a deadly attack in Quetta on April 21—suggest the group is attempting to rebuild its operational capacity. This report charts the rise and decline of the TTP and explores options for the Pakistani state, with cooperation and support from the United States, to stifle its resurgence.
Three Ways to Make Communities Count in Combatting Violent Extremism in Africa
Nearly 20 years since the 9/11 attacks, the global community continues to struggle with violent extremism and terrorism. While much of the focus in the immediate aftermath was on the Middle East and Afghanistan, sub-Saharan Africa has drawn increasing attention in the last decade. Seven of the world’s top 10 countries facing the greatest violent extremist threat are in Africa, with the expansion of the Islamic State group (ISIS) and al-Qaida-affiliated groups on the continent. Efforts to combat violent extremism in Africa are now at a critical juncture. But this presents an opportunity to rethink these efforts. A tailored focus on local communities will be key in building better approaches to deal with the violent extremist scourge.
What Sparked the Latest Israeli-Palestinian Confrontations?
For weeks, tensions have been building between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem, with a confluence of recent events and longer-term trends leading to the latest violence. Israeli restrictions around holy sites during Ramadan; increasingly intense protests and violence on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, with each side blaming the other for initiating; and a court decision, now under higher court review, to remove Palestinian families from an East Jerusalem neighborhood preceded this latest round of conflict — the most violent since the 2014 Gaza war. More broadly though, sclerotic Israeli and Palestinian internal politics not only made this conflagration more likely, but also mean that finding a path to de-escalation will be more difficult.
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။
Where Is Iraq a Year After Prime Minister Kadhimi Took Office?
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi came to power a year ago today after a protest movement toppled the previous government and successive attempts to establish a new one failed. Inheriting a country deep in the midst of political and economic crises, Kadhimi has spent the last year trying to put Iraq back on the path toward stability all while navigating U.S.-Iran tensions playing out on Iraqi soil. USIP’s Elie Abouaoun and Sarhang Hamasaeed look at what Kadhimi has done to attempt to placate protesters, the importance of Iraq’s October national elections and how the prime minister has dealt with U.S.-Iran tensions.
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.
The Evolving U.S.-China Tech Rivalry in Africa
A battle is unfolding between United States and Chinese tech firms over who will control what millions of people in Africa can see, hear, read and say.
Border Clash Between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Risks Spinning Out of Control
A dispute over irrigation water triggered a clash between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan last week that quickly spread along the border, resulting in the death of more than 40 people and displacing 30,000 on the Kyrgyz side — the worst such incident in the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While such flare-ups, albeit less deadly, are a regular occurrence in the region, this time the situation could get out of hand as the leaders of both countries are incentivized to stoke a crisis that distracts from the domestic unrest caused by their mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Can India Escape its Devastating Second COVID Wave?
India’s second wave of COVID has quickly turned into one of the worst outbreaks in the world. Since early March, official cases and deaths have skyrocketed, recently breaking world records on an almost daily basis. Meanwhile, Indian officials are warning the country’s health care system cannot keep up with the deluge of patients as supplies run thin, exposing India’s ailing health infrastructure. USIP’s Tamanna Salikuddin and Vikram Singh look at the origins of India’s second wave, its far-reaching consequences in the global fight against COVID and what the international community can and should do to help India weather the storm.