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.
Advancing Global Peace and Security through Religious Engagement: Lessons to Improve U.S. Policy
Since 2001, when the Bush administration created a unit within the White House to work on faith-based initiatives, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have sought to engage religious actors worldwide in support of their diplomatic, development, and defense initiatives. This report, based on the authors’ decades of experience working within and outside government, offers specific suggestions for steps the U.S. government can take to clarify the nature of its religious engagement mission and to better coordinate that mission in relation to its other peacebuilding and national security priorities.
Ambassador Makila James on Secretary Blinken’s Trip to Africa
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent trip to Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal was a major step toward re-establishing U.S. engagement on the continent, says USIP’s Makila James: “Showing up matters in Africa … it’s important to demonstrate to Africans that Africa is vital to U.S. national interests.”
Knox Thames on the State of Global Religious Freedom
It’s been 40 years since the U.N. adopted a resolution to end persecution based on faith and defend religious minorities. USIP’s Knox Thames says decades later, “It’s a work in progress … While the situation is bleak, there is a global movement that is starting to build and trying to meet this challenge.”
Joseph Sany on President Biden’s Democracy Summit
Amid a global democratic recession, USIP’s Joseph Sany says President Biden’s Summit for Democracy is an important “statement of solidarity,” but that “if [democracies] want to regain or strengthen their legitimacy,” they must deliver for their people, adding: “If you lose the citizens’ trust, you lose everything.”
Guinea’s Lesson for Strengthening Democracy: Use ‘Peer Power’
As dozens of nations seek to strengthen democracy at this week’s White House summit, indicators for effective methods can be found in Guinea, one of five nations that this year suffered a coup by its military. An overarching lesson is for the United States and other more distant governments and institutions to recognize the greater efficacy of putting regional communities in the lead. For Guinea, this will mean supporting a stronger role by neighboring countries and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)—a 15 nation grouping that has shown real promise as a promoter of democracy.
Conflict and Crisis in South Sudan’s Equatoria
South Sudan’s civil war expanded into Equatoria, the country’s southernmost region, in 2016, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee into neighboring Uganda in what has been called Africa’s largest refugee exodus since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Equatoria is now the last major hot spot in the civil war. If lasting peace is to come to South Sudan, writes Alan Boswell, it will require a peace effort that more fully reckons with the long-held grievances of Equatorians.
Enhancing U.S.-China Strategic Stability in an Era of Strategic Competition
As strategic competition between the United States and China intensifies, preventing a destabilizing arms race and lowering the risk of military, especially nuclear, confrontation is critical. The essays in this volume—based on a series of workshops convened by USIP’s Asia Center in late 2020—highlight both the striking differences and the commonalities between U.S. and Chinese assessments of the root causes of instability and the drivers of conflict in the nuclear, conventional missile and missile defense, space, cyberspace and artificial intelligence realms.
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.
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။
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.