PrintSteven Riskin
Senior Program Officer, Grant and Fellowships Program
Contact
Please submit all media inquiries to interviews@usip.org or call 202.429.3869.
For all other inquiries, please call 202.457.1700.
Languages: Arabic, Hebrew
Countries: Israel and the Palestinian Territories
Steven Riskin is a senior program officer in the Grant and Fellowship program and a Middle East specialist with particular expertise on Arab-Israeli affairs. He is also responsible for the Institute’s Priority Grant Competition related to Iran. He came to the Institute from the Ford Foundation, where he was a New York–based program officer and consultant on Middle East issues. He was responsible for program development and grantmaking in Israel, designing and implementing programs in the areas of human rights, social justice and conflict resolution. With the foundation’s Cairo office staff, he also engaged in program development in the Arab world. He has traveled extensively throughout the region.
Riskin has been a consultant to the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights and several foundations seeking to advance social justice and peace in the Middle East. He was a researcher at the Brookings Institution, a foreign affairs analyst at the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress and a co-founder of the International Human Rights Funders Group, an international network of over 250 foundations and other donor agencies funding in the human rights field. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Compton Foundation, a California-based philanthropy that focuses its grantmaking on peace and security, environment and sustainability, and population and reproductive health.
He holds a B.A. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. in Arab studies from Georgetown University.
Publications & Tools
 |
The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) has awarded a grant to The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to support a pathbreaking effort to systematically track attacks on health care workers and facilities in Burma—creating an analytical tool that ultimately can be used globally and that should become a foundation for efforts to prevent such attacks and promote accountability for those perpetrating them. |
 |
In an age of international conflict and crisis, active peacebuilding is underway in America to advance national security and find alternatives to violence around the world. That includes Vermont, where last week USIP’s Special Assistant to the President for Grants and Middle East specialist Steve Riskin led the USIP New England Regional Grants Development Workshop and a public discussion on developments in the Middle East. |
 |
A newly published USIP-funded study explores the relationship between Islamist extremism and the absence of democracy in the Middle East, testing the assumption that the there is a causalrelationship between the two. Issue Areas: Mediation and Facilitation, Negotiation and Diplomacy
|
 |
USIP has supported over 300 products, projects, and activities related to human rights and peacebuilding. From grants to fellowships, from training to education, from working groups to publications, the Institute strives to encourage more practice and scholarly work on the issue of human rights, and seeks to deepen understanding of the role human rights play in conflict and in peace. Issue Areas: Human Rights
|
 |
The purpose of this Peaceworks is to highlight some of the Institute-funded programs focusing on Bosnia and Herzegovina and to share some of the lessons gleaned from policy-related research covering foreign aid, human rights and rule of law, and programs devoted to reconciliation and civil society institutions in Bosnia. Countries: Bosnia-Herzegovina
|
Events
 |
December 13, 2011
Peace agreements are not just about achieving an end to violence-they can also establish significant frameworks for regulating future practice. In this context, one important goal is to address likely drivers of conflict. High on the list of conflict drivers are dishonesty and abuses of power by those who are holding or seeking positions of authority, phenomena that can persist and even become more prevalent following a transition. Webcast: This event will be webcast live beginning at 2:00pm on December 13, 2011 at www.usip.org/webcast/confronting-corruption. Join the conversation on Twitter with #USIP. Issue Areas: Conflict Analysis and Prevention
|
 |
June 16, 2011
Many conflicts on the international scene today involve extremist groups that employ violence to achieve their goals. But should states and international bodies engage entities such as the Taliban, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and if so, which ones, when, and how? Issue Areas: Conflict Analysis and Prevention, Mediation and Facilitation, Negotiation and Diplomacy
| Programs: Grant Program
|
 |
April 12, 2011
Howard and Teresita Schaffer, authors of "How Pakistan Negotiates with the United States: Riding the Roller Coaster" (USIP Press, April 2011), and panelists discussed past, present and future U.S.-Pakistan negotiations and relations.
Countries: Pakistan, United States
| Issue Areas: Negotiation and Diplomacy
| Programs: Grant Program
|
|
November 19, 2009
Join us for the launch and panel discussion of a new USIP-funded SIPRI report by Bates Gill and Chin-hao Huang entitled, China's Expanding Role in Peacekeeping: Prospects and Policy Implication. |
|
 |
February 7, 2008
|
 |
November 21, 2006
|