Grant Highlights

The subtropical seaport of Karachi is an exploding population bomb, the world’s fastest-growing mega-city. More than 1,000 migrants pile out of buses and trains each day, ratcheting up the population of 22 million. “They leave bombed-out villages in the tribal north or parched hamlets in South Punjab  to come settle at the edge of sewers in unplanned slums,” seeking survival as laborers, Karachi novelist Muhammad Hanif wrote this summer.

To hear voices of peace challenged by a surge of violence, simply listen to a conference call held by Arab and Jewish parents in Jerusalem who are involved in the program Kids4Peace. The bonds formed over the years their children attended the group’s dialogues and camps are at once strained and sturdy, resolute and despairing and frayed by fear. For the program’s staff, one posted message reflects their defiance at this moment in the Arab-Israeli conflict: “We will not be defeated. Nothing is cancelled.”

Governments and rebels alike are readily using – and often abusing – standard justice mechanisms like trials or amnesties during conflicts, even as part of their military strategy. And because they’re using the terminology of Western-style rule of law, the international community generally has failed to carefully examine these practices for their longer-term impact. New research, supported in part by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace, documents the trend and explores its potentially devastating effect on efforts to rebuild societies after war.

More than 3 million Iraqis have been forced from their homes in the sweep of the “Islamic State” extremist movement across northern Iraq in the past 18 months. As the group systematically targets other Muslims and minority religions, the massive displacement creates not only a humanitarian disaster but also the prospect that Iraqis may never be able to reconcile and rebuild. The Baghdad Women’s Association (BWA), with a USIP grant, is working with Iraqis in the capital who fled Nineveh Province to help them cope with their trauma and build skills to avoid a dangerous cycle of violence.

A generation after the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia and exterminated an estimated 2 million of its people, that brutal history is largely hidden from young Cambodians. While the country remains heavily scarred by this legacy, the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s is still largely unacknowledged in the nation’s schools.

On the heels of last summer’s Israel-Gaza war, tensions between Jewish and Arab citizens within Israel have escalated significantly. In such a context of deep divisions, the extent to which police internalize fair and effective policing—and that citizens see that as a reality—are crucial factors in preventing a downward spiral of violence. Supported by a USIP grant, The Abraham Fund Initiatives (TAFI) has been tackling this issue through its Arab Society-Police Relations Initiative. 

In the summer of 2012, tensions rose between citizens and local authorities in Al-Muthanna Province, a largely tribal and conservative governorate in southwest Iraq. Frequent disputes over poor public services and funding for development projects, as well as corruption allegations, had stalled important initiatives such as a water-and-sewer upgrade and an effort to clear roads of trash. Similar frustrations had led to clashes, deaths and burning of government buildings in neighboring Wasit and Basra provinces.

If the youth are the seeds of our future, then education is the light which helps them grow – and in this case, the United States Institute of Peace's (USIP) grantees are the greenhouse, ensuring that the roots of peace begin to develop early and deeply in the communities that need it the most. Right now, USIP's grant program is supporting youth peace education in Uganda, Sudan and Somalia. 

When Indian River State College identified a lack of adequate training among humanitarian aid and peace operations practitioners, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) offered grant funding to a project that develops sustainable simulation platforms to conduct peace and humanitarian operations training.