Peacebuilding

Complex factors drive threats to global peace and security. From growing economic inequality to breakdowns in trust between states and citizens, from environmental destruction to pandemics, the magnitude of today’s challenges reflects growing global interdependencies. Conflicts are becoming increasingly entrenched, fed by geopolitical rivalries, weapons flows, growing authoritarianism, and xenophobic nationalism. The impact on communities is devastating, contributing to the displacement of people on a scale not seen since World War II. These challenges require systemic and multifaceted responses.

Creating the conditions for sustainable peace requires nonviolent confrontation as well as courageous compromise. It requires challenging entrenched political and economic structures. It requires a new generation of leaders, dynamic social movements, and civil society networks to reshape existing frameworks for conflict transformation by connecting advocacy, legal approaches, human rights protections, negotiations, and policy.

The Peacebuilding program aspires to advance peacebuilding through support for policy analysis, collaborative approaches and networks, and constituency building, as well as by defending civil society actors who are working to end conflict. By engaging a diverse array of actors—especially communities affected by conflict—in solutions that address drivers of violence and instability, the program seeks to advance policy change that improves security for all. The program prioritizes efforts that advance the values of human security and dignity, pluralism and engagement, justice and accountability, equity and inclusivity, and environmental stewardship.

The Fund supports the role of women, youth, local communities, and marginalized groups in peacebuilding processes. It focuses on conflicts that have a disproportionate influence on global insecurity and violence and in which the United States has a significant involvement. In this way, it seeks to encourage broader shifts in the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy.

The Fund pursues the above interrelated strategies with respect to conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia, focusing on conflicts in Afghanistan and Israel/Palestine, as well as on reducing geopolitical tensions, including between the United States and Iran. Grantmaking also seeks to address the dynamics that drive and result from violence, including forced migration.