Publications & Tools

Countries transitioning to democracy must change old models of organizing the police, armed services, and intelligence services, which typically were characterized by mistreatment of the public, for models that stress transparency, accountability, and citizen involvement. Yet each new government in the Middle East and North Africa must tailor its reforms carefully and patiently in order to avoid backlash among security services.

The USIP Baghdad Office (BDO) earlier this month hosted a meeting between USIP President- select Jim Marshall, Senior Vice President of the Center for Conflict Management Abiodun Williams, and members from the Network of Iraqi Facilitators (NIF) and Alliance of Iraqi Minorities (AIM).

On August 27, 2012, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed that he had authorized secret peace talks in Havana, Cuba between government authorities and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC). USIP’s Virginia Bouvier looks at the state of the peace process and what might happen next.

USIP's Sudan program director, Jon Temin, discusses the recent oil deal between Sudan and South Sudan.

When USIP’s Alison Milofsky traveled to Togo in early July to provide negotiation training to the country’s military for upcoming peacekeeping missions, she armed herself with a 1994 New York Times article about Rwanda. This marked the second Togo visit for Milofsky, who works for USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding, which trains African security personnel as part of the State Department’s African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program, or ACOTA, that USIP has worked with for the last few years.