Investing in Sustainable Security
An Introduction to The Fund for Peace
THE FUND FOR PEACE
Copyright Š 2011 The Fund for Peace This program description is proprietary to The Fund for Peace. All rights reserved. The Fund for Peace 1720 I Street NW 7th Floor Washington, D.C. 20006 T: +1 202 223 7940 F: +1 202 223 7947 www.fundforpeace.org The Fund for Peace Publication PD-11-07-FP (11-03G) Circulation: PUBLIC
About The Fund for Peace
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he Fund for Peace is an independent, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) non-profit research and educational organization that works to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security.
We promote sustainable security through research, training and education, engagement of civil society, building bridges across diverse sectors, and developing innovative technologies and tools for policy makers. A leader in the conflict assessment and early warning field, the Fund for Peace focuses on the problems of weak and failing states. Our objective is to create practical tools and approaches for conflict mitigation that are useful to decision-makers.
patented Conflict Assessment System Tool (CAST), a content analysis software product that provides a conceptual framework and a data gathering technique for measuring conflict risk.
What Makes Us Unique • •
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The Fund for Peace adopts a holistic approach to the issues stemming from weak and failing states. We work at both the grassroots level with civil society actors and at policy levels with key decision makers.
Our Approach The Fund for Peace offers a wide range of initiatives focused on our central objective of promoting sustainable security, the ability of a state to solve its own problems peacefully without an external military or administrative presence. Our activities relate to three interconnected themes:
The Fund for Peace has worked in over 50 countries with a wide range of partners in all sectors: governments, international organizations, the military, nongovernmental organizations, academics, journalists, civil society networks, and the private sector. Combining social science techniques with information technology, we have produced the
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We produce The Failed States Index, an annual ranking of 177 countries across 12 indicators, that is published by Foreign Policy magazine.
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Transnational Threats
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Conflict Early Warning and Assessment
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Sustainable Development, Sustainable Security
The Fund for Peace
An Overview of Our Programs
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he Fund for Peace boasts a broad portfolio of programs, experience and expertise. Though diverse, all of our programs share a common denominator of seeking to prevent war and alleviate the conditions that
cause conflict, ultimately resulting in sustainable security for all.
With a wide variety of current—and former— programs, The Fund for Peace is able to leverage its considerable experience in numerous fields of expertise. Beyond our active programs, The Fund for Peace has also focused on issues such as genocide prevention, peacekeeping reform, small arms and light weapons trafficking, the rule of law in transitioning societies, and civil-military cooperation, and has facilitated national dialogues and town hall meetings on a range of pertinent foreign policy issues.
Our programs fall into three primary thematic areas:
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Conflict Early Warning and Assessment
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Transnational Threats
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Sustainable Development, Sustainable Security
Conflict Early Warning and Assessment
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The Failed States Index Content Analysis Universal Network of Local Knowledge (UNLocK) Military Training Peace and Stability Operations
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Sustainable Development, Sustainable Security
Transnational Threats
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Threat Convergence Prevention of Identity-Based Violence Identifying Hotspots for Political Violence and Radicalization
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Better Business for Better Communities Human Rights & Business Roundtable Voluntary Principles on Security & Human Rights Private Security and Human Rights
The Fund for Peace
Where We Partner and Operate
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he Fund for Peace has conducted programs in over 50 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, Central Asia, East and South-East Asia and Africa. From Timor to Tblisi, from Brazil to Bangkok, The
Fund for Peace staff have conducted conflict assessments and field research, implemented projects, engaged with civil society and established comprehensive programs for the benefit of local populations. This also means that as The Fund for
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Peace takes on new projects, it is able to draw upon a wealth of internal country-specific expertise, not to mention our content analysis programs, which cover every corner of the globe.
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The Fund for Peace
Who Are Our Partners?
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he Fund for Peace believes fundamentally in comprehensive stakeholder engagement. This core value is reflected in the manner in which we design our projects and the broad variety of organizations and
institutions with whom we partner.
in stability operations for the U.S. military;
The Fund for Peace has extensive experience in partnering with offices within international organizations and governments. Some noteworthy partnerships have included The Fund for Peace:
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producing country case studies and alert memos for the United Nations Special Representative for the Prevention of Genocide;
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assisting the World Bank to develop a set of Peace and Stability Indicators to analyze progress on Millennium Development Goals in the context of fragile states;
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creating tools and training for assessing progress
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working with the African Union to develop a comprehensive early warning mechanism for anticipating violent conflict;
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partnering with NATO to reduce global stockpiles of small arms and light weapons; and
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providing key data and analysis for USAID’s Country Compass web site.
The Fund for Peace has also been highly active in partnering with both corporations and the NGO community in assessing and assisting with the implementation of international frameworks, such as the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.
International Organizations
Government Agencies
The Private Sector
The NGO Community
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The Fund for Peace
Conflict Early Warning and Assessment
The Failed States Index
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eak and failing states pose a serious threat to international security, stability and prosperity. In today’s highly globalized society, the actions of, or developments in, one weak or failed state can have
Failed States Index 2010
Alert
Warning
Moderate
serious repercussions not only in that state itself, but also on its neighbors and on states halfway across the globe. Given these dynamics, it is of vital importance that the international community understand the conditions that create weak and failed states and be prepared to help a state deal with those issues or take the necessary actions to mitigate their effects.
gauging when those pressures are pushing a state towards the brink. The Failed States Index is an important resource in fueling constructive discourse and informing the actions and decisions of governments, NGOs and civil society the world over. The Failed States Index ranks 177 of the world’s countries based on an analysis of risk and pressures. The analysis is based on thousands of articles and reports that are processed by our own software from electronically available sources. The Failed States Index
The Failed States Index, produced by The Fund for Peace, is a critical tool for highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states experience, but also for
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Sustainable
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The Fund for Peace
Conflict Early Warning and Assessment: The Failed States Index
Every year, Foreign Policy magazine publishes a list of the worst 60 countries in the Failed States Index. The special feature attracts some of Foreign Policy’s highest readership figures and traffic to foreignpolicy.com. The special feature also includes concurrent analysis from leading experts
such as Paul Collier, Mo Ibrahim, Paul Wolfowitz, Senator Benjamin Cardin, Robert Kaplan, Peter Galbraith and General Roméo Dallaire.
spurs conversations, encourages debate, and most importantly, helps guide strategies for sustainable security. Currently published annually by Foreign Policy magazine, the Failed States Index is widely read by a broad worldwide audience. Government leaders, countless academics, NGO experts and journalists use and refer to the Failed States Index because it is empirically-based and has proven to be objective and relevant. Perhaps the most telling barometer of its credibility is the steady increase in the number of governments that respond to it, by seeking ways to improve their standing in the Failed States Index or using it as a component in making decisions related to foreign aid assistance. The Failed States Index utilizes The Fund for Peace’s proprietary Conflict Assessment Software Tool (CAST) software platform. Based on comprehensive social science methodology, the software triangulates data from three primary sources and subjects them to critical review to obtain final scores for the Failed States Index. The strength of the Failed States Index is its ability to distill those millions of pieces of information into a form that is easily digestible and informative.
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In June, 2010, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the IAEA and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, said “Egypt's presence near the top of The Failed States Index is a disaster that demands the urgent attention of the Egyptian people.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ presentation of the Defense Department’s “Quadrennial Defense Review” earlier in 2010 contained material based on the Failed States Index.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s November 2010 presentation to Congress of her strategic planning initiative for the State Department included a slide drawn from the Failed States Index.
In response to his country’s position in the 2007 Failed States Index, Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tarleve formed a task force to study the causes for Moldova’s scores.
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The Fund for Peace
Conflict Early Warning and Assessment
Content Analysis
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he Failed States Index itself is just one of the many capabilities of The Fund for Peace’s content analysis software. The software has many other applications including specific risk assessment, and in-depth national-,
regional- and provincial-level analysis.
Regional Analysis: Sindh Province, Pakistan
Along with the Failed States Index, The Fund for Peace’s Conflict Assessment Software Tool (CAST) has been the foundation of the Fund for Peace’s Country Assessments Reports Service and Country Profiles Program, using the content analysis to provide indepth assessments country-by-country.
Below: Demographic pressures differentiated regionally throughout Pakistan, pre-flood (left) and post-flood (right).
CAST has been used to perform analysis at a subregional level, from providing an assessment following the floods in Pakistan’s Sindh province to demonstrating how the situations in Mindanao in the south of the Philippines and Luzon in the north can be significantly different. Such regional-level analysis is critical in properly understanding state instability. As nations vary greatly from one another, often the regions within countries will also vary greatly. A country with a significant amount of instability in one region may be perceived as itself unstable overall, although the rest of the country is not experiencing instability. Instances such as these may include countries like Colombia (where although the FARC insurgency continues deep in the jungles and along the frontiers, the major cities such as Bogota, Medillin, Cali and Cartagena enjoy relative calm) or the Philippines (where the situation in the capital Manila is significantly different to that experienced in the southern island of Mindanao). This regional analysis can not only further expand the understanding of a country’s situation, but can also be used to highlight precisely where the pressure points exist for a country,
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Above: An analysis of various indicators applying to Sindh province, pre-flood (left) and post-flood (right)
and under precisely what conditions. This analysis, coupled with regional contextualization, provides a unique informational tool for policy-makers to identify serious pressures and to enact sensible, wellinformed policies.
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The Fund for Peace
Conflict Early Warning and Assessment
The UNLocK Project
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ne of the ever-present challenges in conflict early warning and postconflict reconstruction is obtaining relevant and reliable data. Too often, data used by governments, NGOs, international organizations, The UNLocK project serves many purposes. First, it provides local civil society as well as the international community with a way to obtain more immediate early warning and conflict prevention information. Second, it is used to resolve disputes and build local capacity. Third, it is useful for governments and external parties as well as local civil society to identify priority issues at the community level for resource allocation and investment for economic and social development projects in conflict-affected areas.
and the private sector are dated, uneven or questionable. The most persistent shortcoming is the absence of input from populations living in conflict zones, whose perspectives are vital for accurate analysis. To address this challenge, The Fund for Peace has developed UNLocK, a project that links global information technologies with local social networks for the benefit of all stakeholders. From 2007-2010, The Fund for Peace has been conducting workshops in the conflict-affected countries of Liberia, Uganda, and Nigeria, training local participants in our Conflict Assessment System Tool (CAST). They, in turn, train others at the community level, including traditional leaders, local political leaders, youths, women, school teachers, religious leaders, and others. Data collected from the field by participants are passed up the communications chain to The Fund for Peace for analysis and shared on a dedicated website for the network as a whole.
This top-down, bottom-up methodology for data collection and analysis also strengthens communications among civil society organizations in different parts of the at-risk countries. Participating organizations develop a big-picture view of the conflict environment while learning practical ways to manage conflict, utilize best practices, and adapt lessons learned from others in similar situations. The UNLocK project represents a unique approach to strengthen the ability of all stakeholders to take appropriate steps to protect civilians, achieve sustainable security, and improve development.
Aggregated data are made available in the form of meaningful reports and graphical representations of social, economic, and political pressures that can drive conflict. Findings presented at both the community and national levels warn of potential flashpoints and advocate for responsible action by all stakeholders. Working with local networks, The Fund for Peace disseminates the findings, creates alerts, and offers policy recommendations to protect civilians and promote sustainable security.
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The Fund for Peace
Transnational Threats
Threat Convergence
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he proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), global terrorism, and problems emanating from weak and failing states constitute the main threats to global security in our time. No longer
bound by the rules of a system of states, new international criminal and terrorist networks flourish in the facilitative environments of weak and failing states, cultural enclaves in strong states, and ungoverned spaces. These networks of criminals and traffickers, terrorists and radicals, and the volatile environments that enable their activities, represent an entirely different threat from that envisioned by the crafters of today’s policies and institutions meant to secure and safeguard weapons of mass destruction. The Fund for Peace’s Threat Convergence program explores the linkages among the three biggest threats to global security: fragile states, the proliferation of WMD, and terrorism. The Fund for Peace aims to:
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raise the profile of the challenges in vulnerable, fragile and ungoverned regions on the nonproliferation agenda;
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explore how these regions may serve as enabling environments for nuclear terrorism;
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promote more coherent and strategic policy approaches to prevent nuclear terrorism and illicit nuclear trafficking; and
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become a hub for threat convergence-related analysis.
To meet these objectives, Fund for Peace staff has conducted field research and workshops throughout the world, including the South Caucasus and Black Sea region, Eastern Europe, the Tri-Border region of Latin America, East and the Horn of Africa, and Southeast Asia. A critical component of the our work centers on
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The Fund for Peace
Transnational Threats: Threat Convergence
engaging local actors in each region to develop action plans for preventing nuclear terrorism using a broad range of holistic and regionally-appropriate tools. Through engaging local civil society groups, we hope to raise awareness of the threats to both the international and human security that weak and failed states and WMD terrorism represent, and also shape U.S. and international policy on the issue.
organizations, national governments, and civil society in Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Europe to examine the most critical ongoing and potential conflicts confronting their regions and develop concrete strategies to mitigate these conflicts.
To that end, the Fund for Peace has also worked closely with regional and subregional organizations around the world to develop and improve their capacities for undertaking humanitarian interventions to protect civilians caught in conflict. Our work included research and advocacy on the development and deployment of regional peacekeeping forces and the creation of regional peacekeeping training centers. We have also examined how U.S. military-to-military training initiatives have impacted the capacity and performance of other national militaries in peacekeeping operations, specifically in respecting human rights.
In addition to working to find solutions to transnational threats posed by the confluence of weak states, WMD proliferation and terrorism, the Fund for Peace also works globally to explore ways in which regional organizations and their member states can better protect local populations caught in conflict zones. Building upon the landmark, UN-endorsed, document, The Responsibility to Protect, the Fund for Peace has brought together hundreds of representatives from regional and subregional
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The Fund for Peace
Sustainable Development, Sustainable Security
Better Business for Better Communities
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he Fund for Peace has long recognized that companies are an essential part of creating sustainable societies. Companies provide infrastructure development beyond their immediate operations and support local
economies beyo nd direct em p l o y m e n t opportunities. When operating in tense social and political environments, however, companies can easily be seen as part of the problem instead of part of the solution. To operate effectively in areas lacking strong government institutions and a respect for the rule of law, companies need partners. We have spent more than a decade analyzing the best practices and lessons learned from companies and their partners through their efforts to increase a company’s ability to operate with the highest standards despite local obstacles. Combining that experience, our extensive global networks, and proprietary software based on our conflict assessment framework (CAST), FfP has developed a suite of tools to help companies operate in the most sensitive environments. Our tools can assist companies to navigate through complex situations. By turning challenges into opportunities, companies can become known as a good neighbor in the communities where they operate and a preferred investor or supplier. FfP frequently supports companies development of the following activities:
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Human Rights & Security Polices
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Monitoring and Reporting Mechanisms
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Conflict and Human Rights Assessments Community Engagement
Relations
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Stakeholder
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The Fund for Peace
Sustainable Development, Sustainable Security: Better Business for Better Communities
There is no better protection for business and communities than a strong relationship.
developed human rights and Voluntary Principles training materials.
The work of The Fund for Peace places a heavy emphasis on implementation. We aim to not only pursue policy research and dialogue, but to also follow through with implementation in the field.
In Indonesia, working with local institutions we have helped develop one of the most active national working groups to encourage adoption of the Voluntary Principles in Indonesia by companies and the Indonesian government.
Human Rights and Business Roundtable
In 2010, we produced with our partner, International Alert, a Guidance Note on Implementation of the VPs at the National Level, which is being applied in Indonesia, Iraq and D.R. Congo.
A sustained dialogue begun in 1997, the Roundtable promotes understanding between actors operating in conflict-prone environments to increase collaboration to promote the rule of law and open societies. The Roundtable model allows actors from different sectors the opportunity to build the trust and relationships needed for collaboration.
Health and Business Roundtable With our partner Public Health Institute, we have replicated the Roundtable model in Indonesia to support partnership development to increase availability of resources to improve health. Over 80 companies and NGOs have joined the Roundtable in Indonesia.
Today, the Roundtable focuses exclusively on the extractive industry, although the lessons learned and case studies of the Roundtable provide value to all sectors. The Roundtable is an invaluable resource for corporations, NGOs, governments and international financial institutions to work together to promote sustainable development.
Private Security and Human Rights Private contractors are an important component of various governments’ defense and foreign affairs strategies. But the behavior of private security personnel can also negatively affect local communities, undermine nation-building and thus national security goals. It is therefore important that a mechanism exists for contractors to be properly accountable and overseen.
Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights Initially conceived at a Fund for Peace Human Rights & Business Roundtable meeting, the Fund for Peace is an active participant in the Voluntary Principles on Security & Human Rights.
The purpose of the Private Security and Human Rights program is to promote better oversight and accountability of private security contractors in contingency operations. By engaging with government, NGOs, the private sector, and local communities, the program seeks to better facilitate understanding of and adherence to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security among all stakeholders.
Through partnerships, we support Voluntary Principles implementation by companies. Working with both oil/gas and mining companies, we have helped draft human rights policies, created assessment capabilities related to security and human rights, undertaken conflict and human rights assessments, and
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The Fund for Peace
Investing in Sustainable Security
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s a nonprofit educational and research organization, The Fund for Peace relies on support from foundations, corporations, governments and individuals for specific projects and its general operating budget.
If you would like more information about how to support The Fund for Peace and invest in its mission to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security, please contact our senior professional staff. We also invite you to visit us online at www.fundforpeace.org.
Organizational Leadership Ken Brill
Krista Hendry
PRESIDENT
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
T: E:
+1 202 223 7947 ext. 207 kenbrill@fundforpeace.org
T: E:
+1 202 223 7947 ext. 212 khendry@fundforpeace.org
Senior Programmatic Staff Conflict Early Warning and Assessment
Sustainable Development, Sustainable Security
Transnational Threats
J. J. Messner
Patricia Taft
Krista Hendry
SENIOR ASSOCIATE
SENIOR ASSOCIATE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
T: E:
+1 202 223 7947 ext. 206 jmessner@fundforpeace.org
T: E:
+1 202 223 7947 ext. 203 ptaft@fundforpeace.org
T: E:
+1 202 223 7947 ext. 212 khendry@fundforpeace.org
Nate Haken
J. J. Messner
SENIOR ASSOCIATE
SENIOR ASSOCIATE
T: E:
+1 202 223 7947 ext. 221 nhaken@fundforpeace.org
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T: E:
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+1 202 223 7947 ext. 206 jmessner@fundforpeace.org
The Fund for Peace
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PD-11-07-FP