CMM - About the Office
The Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM) is
organized within USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and
Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA). See organization
chart for details.
Vision and Mission
DCHA/CMM envisions an agency that effectively prevents, mitigates and manages the causes and consequences of violent conflict, instability and extremism.
DCHA/CMM leads USAID's efforts to identify and analyze sources of conflict; supports early responses to address the causes and consequences of instability and violent conflict; and seeks to integrate conflict mitigation and management into USAID's analysis, strategies and programs.
What We Do
DCHA/CMM provides analytical and operational tools to USAID Overseas Missions, development officers and program partners to enable the Agency to better address the causes and consequences of conflict through its development assistance programming.
Conducting Conflict Assessments
DCHA/CMM works with USAID’s missions to perform in-depth conflict assessments, which produce comprehensive reports that map out destabilizing patterns and trends in specific developing countries and recommend changes in development programs so that they can be structured to better address these trends.
Developing Cutting-Edge “Toolkits”
DCHA/CMM continues to develop practical technical assistance guides in a number of critical focus areas that have been shown to be contributing causes of conflict, including youth, land, local governance, water, natural resources, livelihoods, human rights and gender. These "toolkits" provide USAID missions with access to concrete, practical program options, lessons learned, and options for partners, mechanisms and monitoring and evaluation tools for implementing more effective conflict programs.
Supporting Conflict-Management Programs
DCHA/CMM has provided direct support for innovative conflict management programs in a number of countries. These programs are meant to serve as models for how development assistance can be more effectively targeted at the causes of violence. These include support for youth and local governance activities in Caucasus, efforts to engage the private sector in conflict management in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and peace-building through religious dialogue in Malawi.
Outreach and Training
A key part of DCHA/CMM's mandate is to act as a “change agent” for USAID, to help develop a new generation of development officers who are comfortable responding to conflict, who are willing to take risks, who can think in new ways about old problems, and who are willing to question whether the Agency is using its assistance as strategically as possible. Training in conflict analysis and conflict-sensitive programming for both development officers and USAID’s partners is, therefore, an important part of the Office’s portfolio.
DCHA/CMM also reaches out to Washington-based USAID staff and the partner community by organizing numerous knowledge sharing events, which include a groundbreaking speaker series on counter-insurgency.
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