Past Events

As the world marks the first year of South Sudan’s independence, the new state has made important progress on some fronts but still faces daunting challenges ahead, including continuing instability, security sector reform, budget shortfalls and corruption. In this event, senior representatives from the government of South Sudan and the US government reflected on the year since independence and discussed South Sudan’s road ahead, including how the international community can be of greatest assistance.

The United States Institute of Peace, together with the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, will host six distinguished Iran analysts on June 27, 2012. Drawn from USIP’s Internal Iran Study Group co-chaired by Daniel Brumberg and Farideh Farhi, these scholars will consider a diverse range of political struggles now unfolding in Iran. Chairing this event will be Haleh Esfandiari, director of Middle East Programs at the Woodrow Wilson Center, who will also be joined by visiting Woodrow Wilson scholar Bernard Hourcade.

Webcast: This event is now full and we are no longer accepting RSVPs. However, you can still participate by watching the live webcast of the event beginning at 9:30am EST on June 27, 2012 at www.usip.org/webcast. If you have already RSVP'd, you may still attend the event.

Former President Mohamed Nasheed of the Republic of Maldives will speak at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) on June 25.

This third meeting of the Roundtable solicited views from the membership on the direction of each of the four initiatives launched by the Roundtable in December 2011: using data-sharing to improve coordination, sensing emerging conflicts, adapting agricultural extension to peacebuilding, and harnessing systems engineering to peacebuilding.

Members of the steering committee for each initiative described activities undertaken since the last Roundtable meeting and activities proposed for the coming six months.  Moderated discussion followed enabling each group to receive guidance on follow-on activities, such as follow-on workshops, technology demonstrations, or pilot projects in the field.  Staff also described to members a vision for peacebuilding in the future organized around the "PeaceTech Laboratory," an incubator for innovative technologies and applications that support the work of peacebuilders in the field.

Pakistan's media has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last decade, from being largely state-run to being saturated with satellite television channels, newspapers and radio stations. On June 19, 2012, USIP hosted an event that featured a panel discussion among a number of prestigious media figures from Pakistan and U.S. experts that focused on the complex role that the new Pakistani media plays in shaping both domestic and international policies.

After Secretary of State Hillary Clinton introduced the QDDR as a major step in elevating development alongside diplomacy as a key pillar of American foreign policy, many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) welcomed the QDDR as the beginning of a better coordinated and more effective approach to global development.  USIP and Webster University will host a day of discussion about how the QDDR complements NGO efforts in development, humanitarian relief and conflict management as well as the current challenges and opportunities that result from the QDDR.

The U.S. Institute of Peace, in collaboration with Vital Voices Global Partnership and the Royal Norwegian Embassy, explored the kinds of leadership that are most effective in societies undergoing upheaval and/or transition. Women leaders from Liberia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Samoa and Mexico offered compelling accounts of their innovative leadership approaches in two sessions at USIP on June 5. These women, who have just been recognized as the 2012 honorees of the annual Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards, are leading change in their transitioning societies through civil society, political activities, and private business.

This Workshop brought together experts in peacebuilding, information technology, and interagency coordination to identify the needs a data sharing system must address to secure widespread adoption by both government and non-government organizations for use in managing peacebuilding activities.

To understand why coordination is so challenging, Workshop participants discussed the principal technological, ethical and organizational challenges faced by peacebuilers as they attempt to cooperate in building peace. A session on how to improve the impact of shared data examined technologies to improve NGO monitoring and evaluation processes. Finally, participants learned about UNITY, software developed to make visible the scope and scale of humanitarian and peacebuilding activity in a conflict zone.

In recent decades, civil wars have caused more deaths than any other form of organized mass violence. Between 2000 and 2010, an extraordinary 90 percent of civil wars were recurrences of earlier wars, according to the World Bank’s 2011 World Development Report. This event will bring together experts on civil war, the success of post-war peace agreements, and deeply divided societies to discuss the key elements that contribute to the success or failure of post-civil war peace.

On May 22 USIP hosted a special screening of the Oscar-winning documentary “Saving Face,” followed by a conversation with filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy on the documentary, and more broadly on the state of Pakistan’s women and how acid attack violence presents an opportunity for a greater role for women in addressing Pakistan’s challenges.

USIP’s Center for Gender and Peacebuilding, in collaboration with Kate Spade New York and Women for Women International, convened experts to explore the impact of private business and civil society partnerships on women's empowerment in the post-conflict contexts of Afghanistan, Bosnia and Rwanda.

The United States Institute of Peace held a public event on trauma and its effects on rule of law in conflict-affected societies. This two-panel event examined trauma from the panelists' experiences in post-conflict zones, shared new and innovative approaches to building trauma resilience, and focused on Libya as a case study to examine the trauma phenomenon among the general population.

Among regional actors, Pakistan is always highlighted as the most critical player in a sustainable peace in Afghanistan, yet prolonged tensions in the Pakistan-U.S. relationship and Pakistan’s worries about India’s role in Afghanistan make this a challenging issue to resolve. On May 18, USIP hosted a debate among eminent South Asia experts on Pakistani and Indian interests and strategies toward Afghanistan. The participants focused on how Islamabad and New Delhi are viewing developments in Afghanistan, the state of the Pakistan-India relationship, the impact of Pakistan-U.S. tensions on regional strategic outlooks, and how political changes within Pakistan and India may affect their strategies.

On May 11, USIP hosted a series of discussions ranging from managing conflict in complex environments to lessons learned from USIP-funded projects. The sessions were part of the 2012 Alliance for Peacebuilding's Annual Conference which focused on new models for peacebuilding that works across disciplines in chaotic, fragile environments.

On May 10, 2012, the USIP Center of Innovation for Security Sector Governance held its third annual conference. For the second year running, the conference focused on the pressing question of security sector reform in North Africa and the Middle East.