Almost 20 million people died between 1914 and 1918 in the worst war the world had ever known. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and others reacted to the carnage by embracing the idea of a “league of nations” which would settle conflicts before they escalated into wars. Wilson told a joint session of the U.S. Congress in 1919 that such a league would be a “guaranty against the things which have just come near bringing the whole structure of civilization into ruin.” This league would not merely “secure the peace of the world,” it would be “used for cooperation in any international matter,” said Wilson.

Narrow, national politics intervened – as they would henceforth – and the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Versailles peace treaty that founded the League of Nations.

In the absence of U.S. cooperation and that of other key players in the following years, the League’s impact was limited. It nevertheless took some actions from its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, that showed the possibilities for its post WWII successor, the United Nations. It settled territorial disputes between Finland and Sweden, Germany and Poland, and Iraq and Turkey. It dealt with a refugee crisis in Russia. It gave rise to the Permanent Court of International Justice.

But the League had an imbalanced structure that continues to plague today’s UN – decision-making was dominated by certain nations, namely the victors from WWI (with the exception of the United States). And the League had no power of its own to stop aggressor-nations, whether by agreed-upon economic sanctions or by military means. The outbreak of World War II marked the utter failure of the League.

In the aftermath of the Second World War

If WWI was terrible, WWII was horrifically worse, claiming the lives of more than three times the number of military and civilian people as WWI.

Again, it was a U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pushed for the creation of an international organization to be, in fact and not just in words, a guarantor of peace.

[A]s earlier, the basic dilemmas and conundrums had not changed: How to balance national sovereignty and international idealism? How to reconcile the imbalances between countries over power and influence, over resources and commitments? How, in other words, could one draft a charter that would recognize and effectively deal with the sheer fact that some countries were, in effect more equal than others? (Hanhimäki, 15)*

The answer was to entice the then-most-powerful nations into being players in the proposed organization – and into staying in the game –��by giving them permanent seats at the top of the organization, with each having veto power over decisions.

To this day, 68 years since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, the five victorious powers from WWII – China, France, Great Britain, the United States and Russia – occupy permanent seats on the UN’s , with each being able to block a decision by exercising a veto that cannot be overridden. For example, the inability of key players on the Security Council to agree on ways to support peace in Syria has blocked any effective UN role in Syria, except for chemical weapons dismantling. Similarly the UN was helpless when the United States ignored France’s, Russia’s and China’s dismay and unilaterally led an invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Security Council is now enlarged by 10 members, elected by the general UN membership to two-year terms, but these 10 do not have the veto power or staying power of the “Permanent Five,” dubbed the P-5.

Which part does what in the UN system?

There’s no simple way of explaining the complexity of the United Nations and its “system” or “family of organizations,” but in the next couple of dozen paragraphs we’ll make a try. The UN began in 1945 with these six components (all beginning with “The”):

1.��, consisting of representatives from the UN’s member nations who deliberate policies, then make recommendations and decisions. Basically, it’s the UN version of the U.S. Congress or British-style parliaments, but with less legislative impact since the UN is a voluntary association.

2.��, as described above.

3.�� (or ), responsible today for some 70% of the human and financial resources of the UN system, including 14 specialized agencies, nine “functional” commissions, and five regional commissions.

4.��, today made up of 43,000 civil servants who staff duty stations around the world and perform the day-to-day work of the United Nations, including administering peacekeeping operations, surveying economic and social trends, and preparing studies on human rights. Basically, the Secretariat services the four other organs on this list (not counting the Trusteeship Council) and administers the programs and policies invoked by them.

5.��.

6.��Trusteeship Council, whose historical reason for existence has disappeared, leaving it without a purpose.

The UN system has grown exponentially beyond the 1940s-era United Nations to encompass more than 50 affiliated organizations – known as programs, funds, and specialized agencies – with their own memberships, leaderships, and budget processes. For example, the – almost always simply called UNESCO – is a legally independent organization that is affiliated with the United Nations through a negotiated agreement. Its chief executive meets twice a year with the executives of 28 other UN-affiliated organizations, including the , and . This group is called the Chief Executives Board for Coordination and is chaired by the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

In contrast to the “specialized agencies” like UNESCO with its structural independence, the “funds,” “programs,” “departments,” and “commissions” (among other descriptors) of the United Nations are usually an integral part of the mother organization headquartered in New York City. They carry out the policies established by the General Assembly and Security Council.

For a visual overview, locate the eight-color, 14-box chart titled “. Another handy resource is . It outlines the better-known components of the UN system. A word to those who might wish to work within this system: there isn’t a centralized application process; you’ll need to search for each unit’s specific hiring requirements and procedures and be prepared to compete against many – perhaps hundreds – who are multilingual with graduate degrees.

The UN system performs work that almost everyone would agree is laudable – from supporting basic research aimed at improving food production to raising literacy levels around the world – but the United Nations’ foundational purpose of maintaining international peace resides largely with the Security Council. No use of international sanctions, no peacekeeping operation, no significant steps for peaceful resolution of a major conflict, can be undertaken without Security Council approval.

Stemming the flood of suffering��and dying people

When massive loss of life looms, whether from natural disasters or war, the UN system is positioned to intervene, if welcomed (or at least permitted) by the host state. For natural disasters, the aid typically comes quickly. For massive deaths due to human conflict, United Nations intervention gets stymied by political considerations, resulting in ineffectiveness and delay, as occurred in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

typically get funded by developed nations, using personnel drawn from less-developed nations. This is why the UN’s “blue helmets” or “blue berets” are disproportionately from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Jordan and countries making up the African Union.

The Security Council also largely shapes the work of the General Assembly, which is supposed to be where democracy comes to the fore on the international level. Yes, all 193 members of the UN have one vote in the General Assembly. But, no, they can’t override any Security Council decisions. Only the Security Council can pass binding resolutions, though the General Assembly can, and does regularly, pass non-binding resolutions that at least have a moral impact.

The entire UN system is coordinated by its , currently Ban Ki-Moon of South Korea, who gets into that position only if recommended by the Security Council.

Money flows into the UN system in two ways, via: (1) an assessment, like a tax, based on a country’s gross national income relative to other countries and (2) voluntary contributions. The UN’s peacekeeping operations are funded through the assessment, with a surcharge paid by members of the P-5 group.

Voluntary contributions from nations and other sources (e.g., the European Union and development banks) make up at least part of the budgets of many important organs, such as the , , and , as well as , , and .

Nine countries account for roughly three-quarters of the operating budget of the United Nations: the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Spain and China. The United States is the single largest contributor at 22%, but collectively, the European Union countries contribute the lion’s share of the UN’s budget, roughly 35%.

In 2011, the (UNHCR) said it needed $3.5 billion – its largest request ever – to meet the needs of the world’s growing numbers of refugees and displaced persons. It received $2.18 billion.

The biggest forced movements of humans today are in Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan (and South Sudan), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Colombia, and Mali. The world has 15.4 million recognized refugees – equivalent to everyone living in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco becoming refugees simultaneously – plus twice that many displaced within their own countries.

“These truly are alarming numbers,” said UNHCR head António Guterres, upon releasing a report in June 2013. “They reflect individual suffering on a huge scale and they reflect the difficulties of the international community in preventing conflicts [author’s emphasis] and promoting timely solutions for them.”

In mid-2013, nearly 97,000 uniformed UN personnel were conducting peacekeeping, truce supervision, or stabilization work in 16 areas, including Afghanistan, Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur, Sudan, Liberia, Haiti, Lebanon, and the border of India and Pakistan, Their budget was $7.57 billion, the largest single outflow of UN dollars for anything. (Yet this is miniscule, relative to the military budgets of developed nations like France and the United States.)

Dramatic jump in peacekeeping

A��dramatic increase in UN peacekeeping operations followed a 1992 “,” nurtured by then-Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The policy document was endorsed at a meeting of heads of state convened by the Security Council. It defined four consecutive stages to prevent or control conflicts: preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding (i.e., identifying and supporting ways to help strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid future conflict).

For the first time ever, the Agenda for Peace implied that the UN did not necessarily require the consent of all parties in the conflict to intervene.

One of the early success cases of the Agenda for Peace was in Mozambique, where between 1992 and 1994, about 6,000 UN peacekeepers helped oversee its transition from a state of civil war to democratic elections.

The balance sheet for UN peacekeeping in the 1990s, however, was mostly negative, with its disastrous failure to stabilize Somalia – festering to this day – and to prevent ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda.

Obviously, the foundational reason for the United Nations – being a guarantor of peace – is far from being achieved.

“The basic problems for the UN as the overseer of international security was and remains simple: how to deal with conflicts – be they between or within states – without offending the national sovereignty of its member states [editor’s emphasis],” writes Jussi M. Hanhimäki, a native of Finland who is professor of international history and politics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

From the beginning the UN recognized the economic roots of much violent conflict, putting these words in its charter: “to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples.”

This statement reflected awareness that the global Great Depression after WWI, coupled with the punitive reparations imposed on WWI’s losers, incubated the aggressive ultra-nationalism that resulted in the next world war.

Efforts to alleviate poverty around the world, however, have been confounded (in part) by different nations’ political and economic ideologies. The United States, for instance, has always promoted global capitalism as the best way for all countries in the world to develop. But is it? If other modes of development were better in certain situations, would the UN system have room to explore them under its current funding and leadership system?

Doug Hostetter, a 1966 graduate of 91����Ƶ who directs , has observed over the last five years growing involvement by global corporations in UN discussions.

Viewed in the most positive light, this corporate involvement – often in the form of underwriting the costs of conferences and participating in them – shows private-public cooperation to address some of the world’s most intractable problems. Viewed in terms of vested interests, however (as Hostetter says he views matters), the corporations are mainly interested in maximizing their profits, regardless of the impact on the most vulnerable in the world.

Impact of unwieldy structure on functioning

As mentioned earlier, the UN system consists of more than 50 organizations and entities, labeled by dozens of acronyms, with the majority beginning with “UN” or “W” for “World,” plus ones like ECOSOC, FAO, GATT, IAEA, ICJ, ILO, IMF, ITU, MSC, OHCHR and ONUC.

Excluding the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the UN system has about 83,000 on its payroll, most of them working out of offices or “duty stations” around the globe. The single largest chunk of employees is within the , headquartered in New York City. Secretariat employees also work from office centers in Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Beirut, Geneva, Nairobi, Santiago and Vienna.

Annual expenditures in the entire UN system, excluding the banking entities, topped $41.5 billion in 2011, according to the UN Chief Executives Board for Coordination.

Compensation varies within the system, but at the United Nations itself, salary scales (found at the ) for two sample locations in the fall of 2013 – New York City and Addis Abba, Ethiopia – ranged from a minimum of $77,338 for entry-level professionals to a maximum of $203,620 for senior-level professionals, including cost of living adjustments for these locations. Rent subsidies, allowances for dependents, grants for children’s schooling, extra pay for hardship and hazardous work are routinely granted in addition to salaries.

In 2005, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan sought to strengthen the Secretariat’s office of internal oversight in order “to review all mandates older than five years to see whether the activities concerned are still genuinely needed or whether the resources assigned to them can be reallocated in response to new and emerging challenges.” This is just one example of many initiatives in recent decades aimed at streamlining the United Nations, some of them successful.

“There is no point in mincing words,” writes Jussi M. Hanhimäki. “The UN is a structural monstrosity, a conglomeration of organizations, divisions, bodies and secretariats, all with their distinctive acronyms that few can ever imagine being able to master.” He notes that “the UN has a tendency not to reform but to build new structures on top of already existing ones,” causing limited resources to be “squandered due to lack of operational coherence.”

Development aid in particular is subject to “duplication and overlap [that] have reduced efficiency and increased administrative costs within the UN and its sister organizations,” such as the World Bank, says Hanhimäki.

Everett Ressler, a 1970 graduate of 91����Ƶ, draws a different conclusion from his 40 years in international development and humanitarian work. “The UN functions as a crucible in which people from all countries strive to work together for the common good, including the resolution of differences,” he says. “What has surprised me is not that there are challenges and disappointments but that so much continues to be achieved despite them. The limited but unique role of the UN is often wrongly portrayed, and its contributions are undervalued.” (Ressler retired from UNICEF in 2008 after 14 years of what he describes as “ building capacities to prepare and respond more effectively in crisis situations.”)

Peace is central, ongoing focus

Turning to the peace field: building a peaceful world has been at the UN’s heart since it was founded, garnering its agencies or people Nobel Peace Prizes in 1945, 1954, 1957, 1961, 1965, 1969, 1981, 1988, 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2013. The 1992 Agenda for Peace was endorsed at the Security Council level.

In the summer of 2005, the first “people building peace” conference was held at the UN headquarters in New York City. This conference attracted about 1,000 delegates from 119 countries, including 15 CJP students and several who are currently CJP professors, Catherine Barnes, Barry Hart, and Lisa Schirch. Sitting together in the majestic Grand Assembly room, Hart and Schirch reported being thrilled to see many CJP graduates, partners and colleagues from around the world.

In 2006 the UN formed a , charged with coordinating the efforts of multiple actors, including UN agencies and international donors, in stabilizing post-conflict countries. Currently on the stabilization list are Burundi, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and the Central African Republic. The Commission has a budget titled the from which it disperses about $100 million annually for activities and projects aimed at preventing these countries from relapsing into conflict.

Burundi, for example, was one of the first countries receiving support from the Peacebuilding Fund, with an initial allocation of $35 million in 2007 aimed at “making the hard-won peace in Burundi irreversible,” said Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, referring to the end of a decade of civil war in the mid-2000s. The UN has remained in Burundi ever since, supporting security sector and justice system reforms, radical improvement in governance and human rights, and improved living conditions.

Yet the path to peace remains perilous in Burundi, as Peacebuilder magazine recently learned from Jean-Claude Nkundwa, a CJP graduate student who did research in his home country in the summer of 2013. As a teenager in Burundi in the early 1990s, Nkundwa witnessed genocidal killings and lost family members to ethnic cleansing.

In an article posted atdescribed what he saw during his recent visit: muzzled dissent, the fostering of militant youth groups by the ruling regime, and discrimination against out-of-power ethnic and regional groups. He said President Nkurunziza, serving a second five-year term after being elected in 2005 and re-elected in 2010, has disregarded human rights and rule of law (including, it appears, the law barring him from running for election again).

But the last thing Nkundwa wants is for the UN to give up, as if Burundi were hopeless. On the contrary, he says:

The international community needs to play a more proactive role right now. It must assert itself and pressure the Burundian government to create political space to allow the opposition to operate without intimidation and harassment. The international indifference to the war in Rwanda in 1994 led to the genocide of one million people. Surely, there are some lessons learned, and the international community should not repeat the same mistakes in Burundi.

Realize, though, that the UN is operating in Burundi with the permission of its ruling regime. This long-standing dilemma of the UN’s – i.e., that it is supposed to be a servant of its member-nations, almost regardless of what the leadership of a particular nation is doing – began to be addressed in the early 2000s with a series of formal discussions on whether each state has a “responsibility to protect” its people.

In 2005, the UN members agreed that each of them has a their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. (It’s dubbed the “” principle.) And, when states fail to do this, the international community has the right and responsibility to act in a “timely and decisive manner” – through the UN Security Council and in accordance with the – to protect the people facing these crimes.

This principle has since been invoked in the cases of Libya (controversially), Côte d’Ivoire, South Sudan, and Yemen.

The goals are worthy,��but how to implement them?

Activities that the UN system undertakes without fail, year in and year out, are convene conferences, issue reports, and make heartfelt declarations on what the world needs to do to move closer to most people’s desire for justice, peace, and prosperity (or at least a chance at decent survival) for all.

Terminology has changed over the years at the United Nations. “Human security” is the latest term referring to the right of people to live in safety and dignity and earn their livelihood – which, of course, is what long-standing UN units concerned with poverty reduction, education, health, agriculture, peace, and so forth have been trying to do for decades.

The , declared under former Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000 to guide the UN through 2015, called for eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, gender equality, better health, environmental sustainability, and “a global partnership for development.”

“We have to connect the dots [between] climate change, [the] food crisis, water scarcity, energy shortages and women’s empowerment as well as global health issues,” says Annan’s successor, Ban Ki-Moon. “These are all interconnected issues.”

Except for the emphasis on environmental sustainability, Annan’s and Ban’s stated aspirations for a better world can be found in the 1945 , its 1948 , and its supplemental 1966 .

It’s the implementation of these grand goals that continues to bedevil the UN system.

Look at the work of the Office of the , for example. In a given week, it may hold meetings on: who is using torture for what purposes; the rights of indigenous people in the face of gold prospecting, lumbering, ranching, and drilling for oil; abuses endured by women in the Middle East and Africa; and legal protections that developed countries should extend to their migrant workers. Yet, to the dismay of its staff no doubt, the human rights commission is basically toothless. It can make recommendations; it can try to shame entities into making changes. But it lacks implementation tools.

As for peace work, when is the Security Council going to respond to early signs of an impending conflict and authorize preventive measures before it’s a full-fledged crisis, with tens- or hundreds-of-thousands or millions dead?

Why we need the UN system

Despite the weaknesses of the UN system, it is the place in which the world places its hopes when the going gets really tough. Every day the UN system directly helps millions of people, at the comparatively modest cost of about $6 annually for each of the world’s inhabitants.

A found that a strong majority of Americans support the UN system and its efforts to end global poverty, provide humanitarian relief after disasters, and lay the groundwork for peace around the world. Specifically, the UN system:

1.��Articulates important objectives for the world. It thus raises consciousness everywhere on issues like the abuse of girls and women and the rights of indigenous peoples.

2.��Feeds the hungry and houses the homeless when they are recognized as groups of displaced people or refugees from conflict, abuse, or natural disaster. Tries to get them back to their homeplaces whenever it can.

3.��Dispatches well-qualified advisors – in almost any humanitarian, educational, cultural, security, governance, or developmental field you can name –��in response to invitations by governments. Designates UNESCO World Heritage sites.

4.��Issues educational materials and underwrites trainings that are especially valued by governments that have few resources.

5.��Acts as a moral counterweight to reprehensible acts around the world, calling individuals and governments to be accountable.

6.��Sponsors cross-national biomedical, environmental, and scientific initiatives aimed at reducing preventable diseases and improving living standards.

7.��Remains the only globally recognized organization that aspires to recognize and uphold the rights and needs of one and all, mediating between those who come into conflict. As such, it is an essential instrument for global peace.

In a June 2013 interview, UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said:**

My answer to those who criticize the UN is that the UN is as strong as the member states want it to be. The UN is a reflection of the world as it is, whether you like it or not. Democracy is not everywhere, human rights violations take place, wars and huge inequalities exist. But if we forget the UN Charter, if we forget the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, if we forget what our work and the world should be, then we have failed. My job as well as yours at the Alliance for Peacebuilding is to reduce the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be. It is relevant for the UN and for the Alliance for Peacebuilding. This is what we are fighting for, every day.

# # # #

• Zehr is “distinguished professor” of restorative justice, a pioneer in international restorative justice field; author, co-author or editor of about 22 books pertaining to restorative justice
• Zehr’s bestselling Little Book of Restorative Justice (over 110,000 sold) was cited as a reference in Handbook on Restorative Justice Programmes, published in 2006 by UN Office on Drugs and Crime following UN conferences in 2000, 2002 and 2005.
• Former CJP director Vernon Jantzi served on Working Party of Restorative Justice, a major resource at UN Congresses on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in 2000 and 2005. WPRJ drafted basic principles on restorative justice adopted by UN Economic and Social Council.
• ��Jantzi, professor emeritus of sociology, now works for Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR).

Carl Stauffer, PhD��

• ��Assistant professor of justice studies and co-director of 91����Ƶ’s Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice
• As regional peace adviser in Southern Africa for Mennonite Central Committee, 2000-09, Stauffer was associated with peace accords, community-police forums, truth and reconciliation initiatives, and local community development structures, often interacting with UN agencies involved with post-conflict stability.
• The UN Secretary General’s 2004 Report on The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-conflict Societies defines transitional justice as “the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation.”
• ��Stauffer elaborated on this theme in his “Restorative Interventions for Postwar Nations,” a chapter published in Restorative Justice Today – Practical Applications (Sage Publications, 2012).

Barry Hart, PhD��

• ��Professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies, former CJP academic dean
• Has conducted workshops on psychosocial trauma recovery and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Burundi and among Rwandan refugees in Tanzania.
• Lived and worked for years in Balkans, launching trauma and conflict transformation programs for schools, communities, religious leaders.
• Collaborated with UNICEF personnel in Liberia to create the Kukatonen (We Are One) Peace Theatre, along with a manual of the same title, centered on these themes: understanding conflict, active listening, conflict resolution, reconciliation and trauma healing.
• Developed a training manual Za Damire I Nemire (For Peace and Not for Peace: Opening the Door to Nonviolence) for UNICEF while in Croatia.
• Collaborated with UN humanitarian and relief agencies when working in Liberia, Tanzania and the Balkans.

��Lisa Schirch, PhD��

• Research professor
• Director of human security at the Alliance for Peacebuilding
• Senior advisor to “People Building Peace” conference held at UN headquarters in 2005, encompassing about 1,000 civil society peacebuilding delegates from 119 countries.
• Evaluator for the UN Peacebuilding Support Office to advise on grantmaking to support women in peacebuilding in 2011.
• Facilitated UNDP meeting in Fiji between military, government and civil society groups.
• Consultant to UNDP in 2012 to develop strategy for UNDP to fit into new UN Peacebuilding Architecture
• “The UN is central to the success of peacebuilding in many countries. UNDP has an opportunity to provide the link between short-term humanitarian response in the midst of a crisis and longer term support for building the foundations of peace. UNDP is also one of the few institutions that is positioned to bring together civil society, governments, international NGOs and donors to work together to support strategic peacebuilding.”

��Ron Kraybill, PhD��

• ��Founding faculty member of CJP (’76 graduate of sister college, Goshen), current Senior Advisor on Peacebuilding and Development United Nations, assigned by UNDP to Philippines, previously assigned to Lesotho
• ��Supports peace process in Mindanao.
• Worked behind scenes, 2009-13, to nurture peaceful elections in Lesotho.
• Supported process led by Lesotho heads of churches, working with gridlocked parliament to negotiate electoral agreement among political parties to pursue free and fair elections.
• Effort yielded Lesotho’s first free, fair and peaceful election since independence in 1966.
• Facilitated visit to Lesotho of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who oversaw signing of political pledge that committed parties to respect laws and accept outcome of election.
• “Mediation, facilitation and process design lie at the heart of almost all that I do; I strengthen human capacities to respond constructively to conflict.”

David Brubaker, MBA, PhD��

• ��Associate professor of organizational studies, co-author of The Little Book of Healthy Organizations.��
• Hired by UNICEF-Mozambique for peace education and conflict resolution trainings immediately after peace accord signed in 1992.
• On joint project of Mennonite Central Committee and World Council of Churches, interacted with UNHCR staff at Benako refugee camp in Tanzania in 1994.
• ��Applauds UN for work on human development, women’s rights, indigenous rights, and awareness of environmental perils. But adds: “The UN’s basic structure hasn’t changed since it was founded 68 years ago. Healthy organizations need to undergo a structural review process every three to five years to ensure that their structure is still meeting their mission and objectives.”
• “My main issue is with the UN Security Council, where the veto power of the five permanent members often blocks meaningful international action, as seen in the cases of Israel and Syria.”

Catherine Barnes, PhD��

• Associate professor of strategic peacebuilding and public policy
• Has been engaged with UN since the early 1990s, when helped conduct trainings in conflict analysis and resolution for diplomats and staff.
• Regularly involved in policy dialogue in the UN on peace processes, especially how to increase public participation for inclusive and comprehensive settlements and effective use of sanctions, incentives and conditionality.
• Served as advisor during 2002-05 to Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict and participated in UN discussions on roles of civil society in preventing armed conflict and building peace.
• ��Helped design and facilitate 2005 conference on this theme at UN headquarters in NYC, which involved about 1,000 people from civil society, governments and IGOs from around the world, including CJP alumni, faculty, staff, and partners.

Paulette Moore, MA ’09��

• Associate professor of the practice of media arts and peacebuilding
• As MA student, did practicum with Community Development Gender Equality and Children, an agency within UNHCR. There created a blog – itbeginswithme.wordpress.com – launched on International Women’s Day in March 2009.
• Next, as UNHCR consultant, worked on films in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, along with a blog, in collaboration with a young woman filmmaker in that camp named Kate Ofwano, who is now in film school in Geneva.
• Moore recalls leaving career in corporate media to become more invested in community. “I didn’t want to keep being the kind of person who would helicopter in somewhere, do something, and helicopter back out,” as she thought UN personnel often did.
• ��Experience at UNHCR made her aware of a third way: “To partner with people who I really, really trust. Big organizations and community-based work aren’t necessarily exclusive.”

Amy Knorr, MA ’ 09��

• ��CJP practice coordinator
• Worked and lived in Haiti for 7.5 years total
• Worked with UNDP “disarmament, demobilization and reintegration”program 2006-07, on team to reintegrate gang members into society, often using stipends, vocational training, and cash to start small businesses.
• Didn’t work – community members were fearful; program heightened conflict rather than transformed it – i.e., it was not “conflict sensitive.”
• UN workers were required to wear bullet-proof vests and helmets, circulating with armed escorts when in dangerous urban areas. “This sent an uncomfortable message – were the UN workers’ lives more important than the Haitians’?’’
• With the UNDP at that time, “relationship-building and trust weren’t really there. There were civil society groups in existence in the communities where this project was working. But the UNDP didn’t work directly with these groups. They created new ones that conformed to the vision they’d dreamed up for the project – without the input of local groups that knew what things were really like.”
• The UNDP had $14 million to spend in this Haitian case: “The UN has a huge potential to reach many stakeholders, but attention must be given to conflict analysis.”

Ali Gohar, MA ’02

• Founding director Just Peace Initiatives (JPI) in Pakistan
• Was commissioner, 1987-2001, on UNHCR-funded project for 258 Afghan refugee camps, concentrating on community development, peacebuilding, drug use and HIV/AIDS, the plight of street children.
• Has partnered with UNDP, UNICEF, UNHCR and UNFPA to address humanitarian situations – when much of Pakistan was affected by devastating flooding; when 50 primary schools in Bajur Tribal Agency needed clean water and sanitation facilities; when four areas were assisted in restoring their livelihoods, building community-based infrastructure, and improving their governance.
• With UNICEF funding, JPI now working on two unprecedented projects on social cohesion and resilience in three areas – SWAT, DIR, and Bajur.
• With UNFPA funding, JPI addressing gender-based violence cases through alternative dispute resolution in camps housing large numbers of host-community and internally displaced peoples.

Manas Ghanem, MA’06��

• ��Project Development Officer, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), now based in London, England
• Native of Syria employed by UNHCR, 2006-11, delivering direct support to refugees and displaced peoples due to violent conflict in such countries as Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen.
• “My work now [beginning in 2012] is more of coordination of private sector fundraising in support of various operations around the world, because most of the operations are underfunded, and refugees and displaced are in dire need of every support, even if little.”
• “UNHCR is present in every conflict area to help, with dedicated and passionate staff.”
• “The agency does not have a political mandate to influence political peacemaking. But I see it as one of the most effective peacemakers on the ground, with its efforts to reduce the suffering and to call the international community to show compassion and participate in sharing the burden of helping.”
• “Often when I am in the middle of something problematic, I find myself recalling CJP classes or a discussion with a CJP professor regarding organizations, theory, human rights, practices in conflict transformation, mediation and restorative justice.”
• “Most importantly, I remember STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) – I try to always find ways to take care of myself and to recall that self-care is important, if I am to help others.”

Amy Rebecca Marsico, MA ’09

• Manager of NYC-based stage productions; conflict and peacebuilding consultant
• Presented arts-based approaches to peacebuilding to UN Interagency Framework Team for Preventive Action
• Did practicum for her MA at UNHCR in the Community Development, Gender Equality and Children section.
• Promoted AGDM (age, gender and diversity mainstreaming), whereby refugee women, men, boys and girls contribute to the design and implementation of programs, identify own protection risks, and participate in finding sustainable solutions.
• Helped develop the Heightened Risk Identification Tool, a field tool used to identify refugees at risk.
• “To be part of work that was engaging in long-term change processes – seeing refugees as active partners instead of passively waiting for a handout – was incredibly meaningful.”

As with so many aspects of U.S. society and culture, the disaster relief community has its clear “pre-” and “post-9/11” periods. Back in the pre-days, the mentality and capabilities of organizations like FEMA and the Red Cross revolved around the physical needs of disaster victims: food, shelter and clothing. Within days of entering post-era, it became clear that the September 11 attacks pointed to the need for psychological support, not just physical assistance.

Within a week of September 11, 2001, Rick Augsburger contacted 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP). Then working in Manhattan as the director of emergency programs for Church World Service – one of the relief organizations facing a challenge it wasn’t well equipped to handle – Augsburger knew about the pioneering work that had been done at CJP of connecting trauma healing to the theory and practice of peacebuilding. Three days after the attacks, he placed a call to CJP to ask for help.

“We were the only conflict transformation program that had any trauma studies in the curriculum,” remembers Jan Jenner, who was director of the Practice Institute at CJP. Through Jenner, Augsburger invited CJP to develop a trauma-healing program in response to the terrorist attacks and pledged full funding for the initiative.

Two weeks after 9/11, CJP professor Barry Hart was in New York City meeting with Augsburger and his staff about a programmatic response to the tragedy. When Jenner and Hart shared the concept with other faculty members and staff at CJP, the group collectively developed an outline of what was to become Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience, or STAR.

“I knew we would get strong commitment, high quality work and an ability to think outside of the box,” says Augsburger, a ’91 graduate of 91����Ƶ who had previously worked with CJP on several trauma-related projects. “9/11 was something that none of us had experienced before, and we needed something different.”

In Augsburger’s eyes, CJP’s close institutional ties to the Mennonite church strengthened its ability to provide leadership in meeting the needs of traumatized groups. Religion, after all, was perceived as a major player in the events of 9/11, and leaders from a wide variety of religious traditions found themselves on the front lines of response within their own communities.

Putting together the pieces

“We had the pieces – trauma healing, restorative justice, a spiritual center – that we could put in place for the program that is now known as STAR,” says Jayne Docherty, a CJP professor of leadership and public policy who was involved in the program from its earliest planning stages. “Tapping the expertise of all the faculty members here, we were able to develop a holistic, integrative approach to the 9/11 crisis and its aftermath.”

The first STAR workshop was held in February of 2002. As STAR’s founding director, Carolyn Yoder had woven the strands of CJP’s work and her own trauma-counseling expertise into a viable short-term program. While the format and materials have constantly been tweaked and revised, the major elements of that initial workshop have remained largely the same. Later that spring, Yoder adapted and expanded the diagrams used by Barry Hart and psychologist Olga Botcharova – who had worked together in the war-torn Balkans – into a three-part model of trauma healing. This model, including an easy-to-remember snail diagram (see below), remains central to the STAR curriculum.

From the beginning, the intensive, one-week STAR courses have included an exploration of the nature and effects of trauma on individuals and communities as well as study and discussion on the relationship of trauma-healing to the other key pieces of CJP’s peacebuilding framework, including restorative justice, security, mediation and conflict transformation.

A decade prior to all this, Hart was in Liberia helping lead trauma healing and reconciliation workshops for people affected by that country’s civil war. Hart, then pursuing a doctorate in conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University, was working with the Christian Health Association of Liberia, which was very interested in addressing the psychological wounds suffered by so many people in the country.

“I was coming in not as a psychologist but as a conflict transformation person,” says Hart. “It became very clear to me that these so-called ‘ethnic wars’ not only had an identity aspect, but a significant psychological one.”

Pioneer in linking trauma to conflict

Hart ended up spending two years in Liberia. He used the dozens of trauma-healing workshops he conducted there as field research for a dissertation that was one of the first academic works to draw clear links between the fields of conflict transformation and trauma healing.

In the summer of 1994, Hart gave a presentation on his work at a peacebuilding conference at 91����Ƶ (the forerunner of today’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute). It struck a nerve, leading to a class on trauma healing and ultimately to the subject becoming integral to the MA curriculum.

Over the next five years, Hart continued to integrate trauma healing and conflict resolution while working in war-ravaged areas of the Balkans. He returned to 91����Ƶ’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute each year to teach on the subject. Hart usually co-taught the course with Nancy Good, a clinical social worker and trauma expert who was a member of the CJP faculty from its early years and who also played a key role in pioneering a connection between trauma healing on the individual level with peacebuilding on a larger scale.

“CJP takes a very interdisciplinary approach to peacebuilding,” says Lisa Schirch, a research professor at 91����Ƶ and the director of 3P Human Security. “We recognize that people’s personal and emotional wounds need to be addressed in addition to the structural, economic and political changes that are required for peacebuilding.”

“Psychosocial trauma and peacebuilding” is now one of the five academic concentrations offered to graduate students at CJP, overseen by Hart, who joined the faculty full time after leaving the Balkans in 1999. Even today, CJP remains one of a very few graduate-level peace programs in the United States that places such an emphasis on trauma healing.

Pushing edges of field

“In the 1990s, it was pushing the edges of the field to say ‘trauma matters,’ and it still is, as a matter of fact,” says Docherty. An important aspect of CJP’s trauma work is the recognition that “many of our students arrive traumatized, sometimes directly from ‘killing fields,’” adds Docherty, CJP’s new program director. “We have asked ourselves, ‘How can we support them?’ Giving them an education in trauma awareness and resilience is one way.”

Shortly after the inaugural STAR training, the program began to adapt its curriculum for different audiences. In 2002, Elaine Zook Barge interned with STAR as a graduate student to develop a Spanish-language version of the training. She helped lead the first Spanish STAR in November 2002 in Colombia; the first Spanish STAR at 91����Ƶ was held the next month.

Another early adaptation was Youth STAR, designed by an international team of youth workers and intended to teach trauma skills to young people. (This effort was led by Vesna Hart, a native of Croatia who holds an MA in education from 91����Ƶ.)

Grant funding from Church World Service supported the STAR program through 2005, by which time nearly 800 people from 38 states and 63 countries had participated in seminars on 91����Ƶ’s campus, including the first sessions of Level II STAR. This advanced training prepares Level I graduates to themselves become practitioners, leading their own trauma-resilience workshops based on the STAR curriculum.

Given that the program had run longer and grown larger than many had expected at the beginning, CJP decided to continue STAR using a fee-for-service model. In 2006, as STAR grappled with the challenges of sustaining itself financially, Barge became the second director of the STAR program.

Adaptation, new directions and new partnerships have characterized STAR in the years since. Barge helped develop a Village STAR curriculum for use in settings where pictures tend to work better than lots of written words. Coming to the Table – now an associate organization of CJP that uses the STAR trauma-healing framework to address the legacy of slavery in the United States –��also grew directly out STAR’s work at 91����Ƶ.

Coming to the Table’s history-rooted twist on STAR led to Transforming Historical Harms, which looks at “historic traumas” that continue to inflict pain decades or centuries after a traumatic event or circumstance has ended (see article).

Global attention to trauma

From 2002 to 2007, STAR workshops were held in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Uganda, Burundi and South Sudan. In 2008, CJP graduates working in Myanmar requested STAR assistance following a devastating cyclone. Also upon request, STAR went to Mexico in 2009, and Northern Ireland, Bolivia and Haiti in 2010 (for more on the work in Haiti, see this article).

The geographic spread of STAR has also occurred domestically. In Massachusetts, Beverly Prestwood-Taylor, a United Church of Christ minister and trauma-specialist who has taken courses at CJP, adapted STAR for veterans and their supporters into a two-day program called the Journey Home from War (see article). Donna Minter, a STAR alumna from Minnesota, returned home to found the Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Academy, which has hosted six STAR trainings since 2010 (see article).

Since she took over as director, Barge estimates that one-third of STAR trainings have taken place at 91����Ƶ, one-third have been held elsewhere in the United States, and one-third have happened overseas. The total number people who’ve taken STAR trainings over the past 11 years is difficult to determine, given the proliferation of off-site trainings. What is certain is this: hundreds of individual STAR trainings have taken place on five continents, reaching thousands of people directly and rippling out far more broadly yet, as participants use the trauma-awareness and resilience principles in their personal and professional lives.

Rick Augsburger, whose phone call to CJP days after 9/11 led to the creation of STAR, says the disaster-relief community today is far better prepared to recognize and address the psychological impacts of disasters. While STAR can’t take full credit for that, it played an early and important role in introducing trauma awareness to these groups, says Augsburger, now the managing director of the KonTerra group, a consulting firm based in Washington D.C. that focuses on improving clarity, resilience and learning in domestic and international organizations. Growing awareness of and interest in trauma-related issues extends beyond disaster-relief agencies (see article).

“Because of the work we’ve done over the last 18 years here, people have started to pay attention to trauma,” says Barry Hart. “The major funders out there are becoming more and more aware of the need to incorporate trauma elements into the larger peacebuilding framework.”

Looking ahead, this new, wider interest in trauma awareness represents an opportunity for STAR to provide consultation, trainings and workshops to equip organizations with staff who are able to do trauma-sensitive programming (. “As more individuals want to share STAR with others, the program is facing the challenge of making sure that what others call STAR includes the complex mix of psychosocial trauma healing, restorative justice and conflict transformation components that make STAR unique,” says Jayne Docherty, incoming program director for CJP. “We’re working on a process for certifying STAR trainers and practitioners that will be available to students in the MA program as well as to other individuals.”

“There’s been a lot of documentation that interventions from the outside can do more harm than good,” says Lisa Schirch, the director of 3P Human Security and a research professor at 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP). “Good intentions aren’t enough.”

With that awareness in mind, many humanitarian and development organizations do trainings to develop “sensitivities” – conflict sensitivity, gender sensitivity, environmental sensitivity – to influence the way their staff design and implement projects. Joining the list recently is “trauma sensitivity,” as articulated by former STAR director Carolyn Yoder in an first published in Monthly Developments magazine.

“[International] agencies were often very, very eager to rush into communities that had been deeply affected by violence without having any real understanding of how [their work] could re-traumatize people,” says Lauren Van Metre, dean of students with the Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

STAR is being tapped to provide trauma-sensitivity training and develop other projects in Washington D.C. In addition to helping participants avoid unintentionally doing harm, STAR helps people rotating through field work to manage their own traumatic responses to extremely difficult work situations.

“The NGOs and the military are looking for trauma programs, and we’ve got one that’s 12 years old, and it’s proven,” says Elaine Zook Barge, current STAR director.

As an example, USIP found that its rule-of-law assessment teams working overseas began to report back that their investigations into traumatic events were causing fresh pain for the people they interviewed. STAR and USIP collaborated for a first training in September 2012, with another scheduled nine months later at USIP headquarters in D.C.

Van Metre says the STAR training at USIP has been particularly valuable for people who have been affected by their extended stints in conflict zones. Through its peacebuilding academy, USIP has also developed its own two-day training based on the STAR methodology.

In a 2009 interview with the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs, former CJP trauma studies professor Nancy Good said all relief and development workers can benefit from trauma training.

“I don’t think we’re doing our jobs if we’re sending people out to do this really important work and are only training them on things like how to work with building houses and acquiring clean water and sanitation,” said Good, now a wellness consultant with the Washington D.C.-based KonTerra group. “We need to [provide] workers [with] basic knowledge and skills for stress management, trauma healing and resilience.”

1. The U.S. response to 9/11 has cost thousands more people their lives
2. The global economic crisis is in part due to the U.S. response to 9/11
3. The U.S. is still on a path of “Domination” not “Partnership” in the family of nations
4. Americans lost their freedom to ask the legitimate question, “Why Do They Hate Us?”
5. The U.S.’s Global War on Terror has made the world less safe, more hostile
6. The U.S. is still not investing in a realistic security strategy

(This post also appeared on the Huffington Post on .)

[Lisa Schirch, PhD, is research professor at 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and director of .]

Who would come from half-way around the world to enroll in a program at 91����Ƶ that was so new, no college catalog listed it? Sam Gbaydee Doe did. From Liberia.

Initially, the plump squirrels running around campus dismayed him: They could be food for very hungry people in his war-torn homeland. He himself would have welcomed eating a scrap from a squirrel not long before.

Today [November 2010] Doe is a “development and reconciliation advisor” with the United Nations Development Programme in Sri Lanka, thanks in part to his master’s degree in conflict transformation from 91����Ƶ.

Herein we explore the lives and reflections of the first group of students to complete 91����Ƶ’s Conflict Transformation Program (CTP), now called graduate studies in conflict transformation under the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP). In this series of articles, the acronyms “CTP” and “CJP” will appear somewhat interchangeably, depending on the interviewee and the years referenced.

CJP’s first MA students

CJP’s first non-credit students, 40 of them, enrolled in the 1994 Frontiers of International Peacebuilding, the earliest version of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute.

The first for-credit students were two US-born Mennonites: Jonathan Bartsch, raised in Pennsylvania, and Jim Hershberger, raised in Kansas. In the fall of 1994, both men began graduate classes, hoping that their MA in conflict transformation program would be accredited by the time they finished. (The program became accredited in the fall of 1996; the men graduated the following spring.) The first courses taken by Bartsch and Hershberger were done mainly as a combination of independent study and one-on-one sessions with the founding director of CJP, John Paul Lederach, and sociologist Vernon Jantzi, author of CJP’s first curriculum.

CJP’s first MA students came with extensive experience beyond the United States. Bartsch had studied at the University of Cairo and Birzeit University near Ramallah in Palestine and could speak Arabic. Hershberger had lived for eight years in Nicaragua as a Mennonite Central Committee volunteer and could speak Spanish.

In January of 1995, they were joined by [student whose name has been redacted for security purposes.]

Ron Kraybill, who helped shape the new program while finishing his PhD in religion in South Africa, also came aboard that January as CJP’s first professor hired exclusively for the program. Hizkias Assefa, an internationally renowned mediator based in Kenya, taught each summer from the beginning.

By the summer and fall of 1995, word had spread, mostly via circles frequented by Lederach, Jantzi and Kraybill. The program grew exponentially, enabling 91����Ƶ to hire Howard Zehr to teach restorative justice in 1996, soon followed by the hiring of two more faculty members, Lisa Schirch and Nancy Good.

Bartsch, Hershberger, and the third student were joined in the fall of 1995 by 12 more students, including four women. By the fall of 2000, six years after CJP first opened its doors, 37 people had earned master’s degrees or graduate certificates and more than 900 had attended its Summer Peacebuilding Institute.

CJP’s first several dozen graduate students now have had 10 to 13 years to gauge the impact of their studies on their lives and work. For the fall/winter 2010-11, Peacebuilder staff sought to contact each of the 37 to collect their reflections. We succeeded in locating 36 of them, 21 men and 15 women.

Without exception, the 36 felt positive about what they “got” from CJP. Many spoke about how their studies influenced their interpersonal relationships, including those within their immediate family. Those who came directly from conflict-ridden situations also spoke about the need for respite, for recharging their inner batteries.

Gilberto Peréz Jr., who completed a graduate certificate in 1999, recalls the ever-present physical violence in south Texas, where he grew up. Even in his family, it was no surprise when he hit his sister. Today, he and his wife Denise, a 1992 91����Ƶ alumna who majored in Spanish and elementary education, “work hard at having a non-violent household.” They use such techniques as paraphrasing what someone has said and reframing things.

Says Pérez: “My [12-year-old] daughter will stand there and tell her [younger] brother, ‘I’m mad at you.’ That’s not what I would have done when I was her age – I would have belted him.”

Babu Ayindo, MA ’98, says when he was growing up in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, he experienced violence every day of his life. He feels he carries the potential for violence within him, as he thinks most of us do. He and his wife Miriam have taught their children that reacting violently is a short-term act with long-term repercussions. Babu explains:

Momentarily it gives you a good feeling. You’re annoyed, so you kick a chair, or you punch the wall or punch someone. You project on someone else, someone you can easily blame. But if you take your time and reflect on it then you realize that it’s not the best way out. It’s an easy way out, it feels good, but you also live with the trauma you are inflicting on others. You also become a traumatized person.

Sandra Dunsmore began courses at 91����Ƶ while living in El Salvador, where her early Quaker-sponsored peace work involved (in part) listening to people linked to death squads. “I needed some space to think through what I had been involved in, to reflect in a guided way. I hadn’t done a particularly good job of taking care of myself. I couldn’t continue as I had been living.”

On the professional level, 33 of the 36 respondents (92%) mentioned specific ways they have carried their CJP studies into their work as non-profit administrators, mediators, trainers, social service workers, teachers, and other roles.

Jim Bernat, who studied at CJP while working as a mental health specialist in a region 90 minutes from Harrisonburg, says his graduate education helped him “refocus his being, thinking and practice around the principles of justice and nonviolence.”

Bernat is in his 25th year of working for the same government-supported community services board as he did in his CJP days, though he is now an administrator. From his CJP-influenced perspective, Bernat sees justice as “not just what one sees in a court of law, but as an everyday matter: How do we treat our employees here? Do our clients feel valued, and our staff too? How am I contributing to our sense of community?”

In fact, the most enduring trait acquired at CJP, said a majority of the respondents, is viewing the world through distinctive lens. This has proved to be personally transformative.

Daagya Dick, MA ’00, who fostered a network of peacebuilders in Central America from 2000 to 2003, said CJP taught her about shifting “from destructive dynamics to positive dynamics.” She said she gained an “understanding of how people work and what human needs are and how to respond to those needs in a way that people can be positively engaged.” She liked the way the program encouraged “balance and wholeness in life in order to be an effective peacemaker.”

Dick, who now teaches Spanish in a public high school in Kansas, added: “You can call on these skills anywhere you work.”

Christine Poulson, MA ’98, used similar words: “What I learned at CTP would be useful to anybody doing anything. It gave me a better

understanding of the world and of myself. I became a more reflective person. I am better at prioritizing what is really important to me.”

Experiences from 33 countries

That first group of 21 men and 15 women brought rich experience to CTP. They were diverse in almost every respect – age, nationality, ethnicity, and motivation for coming to the then-new program. They were not diverse in religion, however. Most of them were Mennonite-style Christians – eight arrived directly from service with Mennonite Central Committee – though there were also Catholics and mainstream Protestants. One student was exploring Native American religions. But there were no practicing Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or Jews. These arrived in later years.

In addition to the United States, the 36 students had lived in 33 places: Angola, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Britain, Burundi, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Karen territory (officially part of Burma/Myanmar), Kenya, Liberia, Mexico, Mozambique, Nagaland (officially part of India), Nicaragua, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Vietnam.

91����Ƶ 60% of these graduate students had survived civil wars or other society-wide violence.

Sam Gbaydee Doe of Liberia, one of the 12 students entering CJP in its second year, told this story in When You Are the Peacebuilder, a spiral-bound book published by CJP in 2001:

In December of 1989, I was only two semesters away from achieving my dream [to finish a degree in economics and accounting and become a banker] when the Liberian civil war began. By May of 1990, the rebels had captured every part of the country except the executive mansion where the president was hiding.

By July, 1990, we had gone without food for nearly three months and were hiding under beds and between concrete corners most of the day. One day there was a temporary cease-fire and I decided to take a walk, just to flex my muscles. While walking around this slum community, I came across a young boy, lying under the eaves of a public school. I remember his face like it was yesterday. He was just skin and bones.

I stood over him for quite a while. His mouth was open. Flies were feeding on his saliva. In a surreal moment, I raced to a nearby community to find something edible. I found some popcorn being sold for fifty cents. I bought some and dashed back to this child. I stooped over him, slipped a few pieces of the popcorn into his mouth, and waited anxiously to see him chew the popcorn and regain his strength. ‘Chew your popcorn, you innocent child,’ I said to myself, ‘God has answered your prayer.’

91����Ƶ ten minutes passed by but his little mouth remained frozen. It must have been half an hour later when, with a last rush of energy, he opened his eyes wide and looked at me. Our eyes locked. He shook his head, and closed his eyes. After several minutes, his movements slowed and eventually stopped. The child had given up the ghost. I began to cry profusely. I asked myself, “How many children like you are dying right now throughout this country? How many have been swallowed in the madness of adults?’

I made a pledge to that boy: I would work for peace so that children could live… I have never turned my back on the promise I made to that nameless and faceless child.

From one success to another

Doe went on to earn his master’s and doctoral degrees in the field of peace, co-found what is now the largest peace organization in Africa (WANEP), join the staff of the United Nations, and spend several years in Sri Lanka, helping that country emerge from 30 years of civil war. In the long term, he sees himself working in Africa once again.

Periodically, Doe teaches at 91����Ƶ’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI). He will teach “conflict-sensitive development” at SPI 2011. He will also attend 91����Ƶ’s graduation ceremony in the late spring, proudly watching as his daughter, Samfee Doe, receives her bachelor’s degree.

— Bonnie Price Lofton, MA ’04 (conflict transformation)

Editor and writer of Peacebuilder

Harrisonburg, Virginia

Jan Jenner is outranked only by Howard Zehr for being the longest-serving full-time employee currently at CJP. Over the last 13 years, she has been a student, grant writer, administrator, book author, and teacher at CJP.

She and her husband Hadley formerly served with Mennonite Central Committee in Kenya.

Books she co-authored – When You are the Peacebuilder: Stories and Reflections on Peacebuilding from Africa (2001) and A Handbook of International Peacebuilding: Into the Eye of the Storm (2002) – continue to be widely referenced. Most issues of Peacebuilder, for instance, cite at least one of these books.

“CJP is certainly more rigorous than it was when I was a student,” Jan says. “It is larger, more structured.” She notes that the CTP graduate program began in the 1990s with professors drawn from other fields, such as sociology, religion, social work and history (of crime). By 2001, however, CJP had three professors with PhDs in the field: professors Lisa Schirch, Barry Hart and Jayne Docherty had all earned their doctorates at George Mason University’s Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

CJP’s evolution reflected a trend, says Jan: “The field has professionalized over time. It depends more on bureaucracies than individual people. It is less led by Westerners. People know a lot more about what they are doing and why. We have moved from working on an anecdotal basis to evidence-based work.”

She expresses concern, though, that the field may become “too professional.” She doesn’t want people to think “they can’t do anything unless they have the right [academic] degrees. I don’t think we should be dis-empowering ‘Joe on the street’ from working for peace.”

She is also concerned by the disconnection she sees between “the short-term orientation of most of the funding and the long-term commitment necessary to stabilize communities.”

Jan is the behind-the-scenes administrator responsible for launching STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) after the events of 9/11 and for the founding of Coming to the Table, an initiative to deal with the legacy of slavery in the United States.

“Many people in peacebuilding are naïve or unaware of how to engage policymakers. They are clueless about the kind of impact they can have. They are intimidated by the idea of meeting with a member of Congress,” says Eric Ham.

Ham is changing that.

As policy director for 91����Ƶ’s 3D Security Initiative, Ham spends most of his week organizing and leading delegations of concerned individuals, often straight from their grassroots organizations around the world, to Congress. He thinks the elected representatives of the United States need to hear fresh insights into policy matters, based on real-life experiences, often supplemented by extensive study. And he seems to be right, judging by the growing numbers of Congressional offices opening their doors to Ham, as well as to the woman he reports to, 3D Security Director Lisa Schirch.

Since Labor Day (9/07/09), Ham has taken three delegations to the Hill, focusing sequentially on Burma, global health issues, and Pakistan. On Oct. 2, 2009, Ham’s Congressional visitors – Azhar Hussain of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy and Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution – advocated more support for the establishment of an educational infrastructure in Pakistan to fill the space now occupied by militant religious groups, who are cultivating violent extremism in the schools they run.

This type of aid – for educational rather than military purposes – typifies the core argument of the 3D Security Initiative that the United States needs to have a more even-handed approach to the three “Ds” of foreign policy – development, diplomacy and defense – instead of relying mainly on the “hard-power” approach of funding military might.

Hired by Schirch in April 2008, Ham heads up the Washington office of 3D Security Initiative. When Washington policymakers were debating whether to send more troops to Afghanistan in the summer of 2008, the Inititative took Afghan and Pakistani students and alumni from 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) to speak to Congressional staffers about the need to shift funding toward civil society organizations in their countries. These visitors offered a preview of the findings Schirch reported in an article distributed by Common Ground News Service on Feb. 3, 2009.

Citing a survey of nearly three dozen civil society leaders from Afghanistan and Pakistan, Schirch found that they “want a shift in military strategy. They warn a troop surge alone will result in more civilian casualties, more village raids, further alienation of the local population and growing local resistance to foreign troops. The leaders also fear that the Taliban could use a troop surge as an opportunity to recruit local people to their cause.”

Those surveyed also criticized the funding of “highly paid experts who know little of local culture and design projects with minimal long-term impact.” Instead they recommended “direct support for Afghan organizations that understand local languages, cultures and religious dynamics. There are many Afghans doing frontline work in economic development, human rights, good governance and independent media. Yet they receive little recognition or financial support for their work.”

Eight months after Schirch made her report, validated by CJP students and alumni from that area of the world, her warnings seemed prescient. With matters going from bad to worse in Afghanistan as of October 2009, certain military leaders sought a massive increase in U.S. troops there, while key elected representatives questioned the wisdom of that course of action.

“We’re trying to alter the foreign policy landscape,” says Ham. Though the 3D Security Initiative is only four years old, Ham sees signs that it is succeeding, little by little. For one thing, the language used in Congress is shifting, with more references to “building civilian capacity” and funding “conflict-prevention” efforts. For another, an amendment offered by Senators Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) was passed restoring $3 billion for development to the foreign aid budget, as advocated by 3D Security.

For Ham, working in a David-sized organization to address a Goliath-sized U.S government is exciting and downright inspiring. He’s been on the other side of the meeting table as a Congressional staffer himself in the office of U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). One of his best memories from that period is finding himself next to then U.S. Senator Barack Obama at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Obama’s first day in the Senate in January 2005. To Ham’s delight, Obama recognized Ham, who (as a graduate student in public policy) had audited then-professor Obama’s constitutional law class at the University of Chicago in 2002. “He was absolutely phenomenal as a teacher, earth shattering,” recalls Ham. “He was funny, engaging, articulate, brilliant.”

Ham, who is a native of Detroit, previously worked for two much larger non-profits: the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. When Schirch sat down with him to talk about the mission, vision and goals of the 3D Security Initiative, Ham was surprised at how closely it meshed with his own hopes for his country, especially since he had never heard of the philosophy or programs of 91����Ƶ, where Schirch teaches graduate students.

“91����Ƶ is one of this country’s best-kept secrets,” Ham said after attending the 2009 session of 91����Ƶ’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute. “I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being there. You’ve got this small, religious, Christian university neatly tucked away in the Shenandoah Valley, and it brings in people from all over the world and many religions and puts them in classrooms together. It was like being at the United Nations.

“You’re talking to a doctor from Afghanistan and he is talking about how the U.S.-led war has ravaged his country and then you talk to a deputy mayor from Jerusalem… It was a phenomenal experience.

“I kept thinking, ‘Washington policy makers just need to come here.’ It would help them to see all the problems they face through new lens.”

Note: In 2011, the 3D Security Initiative became 3P Human Security.��For more information on 3P, visit . At time of publication, the Initiative is supported by the Ploughshares Fund, the Compton Foundation, the Colombe Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and private donors.

From Queen Noor to Congress

When CJP professor launched the 3D Security Initiative in November 2006, she had no way of knowing how long it might take for 3D to gain the attention of top decisionmakers in this country.

Regardless of the months, years or even decades that might be required, Schirch committed herself to advocating for a different approach to national security – one which doesn’t rely on simply one “D” in the “3D toolkit,” the tool of Defense. Real security, Schirch argued, rests on a foundation of two more “D” tools: Diplomacy and Development.

“I felt I owed it to the students I teach, who often come from war zones in foreign countries,” she told Peacebuilder. “They’d say, ‘It is great you’re teaching us about peacebuilding, but what is 91����Ƶ doing to change U.S. foreign policy?’ I came to feel that I had a duty to work directly at influencing the policies and actions of the United States.”

Surprisingly, Schirch’s campaign on behalf of diplomacy and development garnered attention almost immediately. Six months after 3D Security was launched, Schirch was named “Modern Mother of Peace” by the Ploughshares Foundation, one of seven women in the world to receive this recognition. (One of the others recognized was Susan Granada, .)

Major Foundation Honors Schirch

Announcing the honor on the occasion of “Rediscover Mothers Day,” the Ploughshares Foundation noted: “Starting when she was a 20-year-old college student volunteering in a Costa Rican refugee camp for Nicaraguans, Lisa has worked to end conflict and build security, applying her commitment and skills to projects in Lebanon, Taiwan, Ghana and other countries.”

Queen Noor of Jordan, the honorary chair of the “Rediscover Mothers Day” campaign, praised Schirch on CNN for her efforts to use “development projects, like building schools and water wells, to disarm conflicts from Lebanon to Ghana.” Schirch and her husband William Goldberg have two children, a 7-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son.

Schirch directs the program from her base at 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in Harrisonburg, Va., while 3D Policy Director Lynn Kunkle is based in Washington D.C. “Some of my students have been a great help in this effort, as have my academic colleagues, whose advice I particularly welcome,” says Schirch. The 3D Security Initiative has collaborated with respected thinktanks to persuade policymakers to work with other countries to solve problems diplomatically. The Initiative also urges leaders to address the economic roots of many conflicts.

In a letter published December 5, 2007, in the Congressional newspaper The Hill, Schirch argued for aid programs to receive more federal dollars, noting that “USAID programs in good governance, economic development, education and healthcare are a humanitarian imperative, but they also create an architecture that grows security from the ground up.”

Growing List of Accomplishments

With funding from the Ploughshares Foundation and Compton Foundation, over the last year, the 3D Security Initiative:

• ��Issued seven policy briefs on topics ranging from conflict prevention with Iran, to the security implications of climate change. The most recent brief calls for the federal government’s new African initiative to be lodged under the State Department rather then the Defense Department because “Africa’s security challenges share a common denominator – poverty” and thus development solutions rather than military ones will yield the most long-term results.
• Held meetings with 50 lawmakers or their aides on Capitol Hill to recommend improved strategies on Iraq and Iran that would lead to more security.
• Arranged for conflict-prevention experts from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uganda, Kosovo and other countries to visit Congressional offices to argue for more emphasis on development and diplomacy in U.S. foreign policy.
• Helped design a national survey on public attitudes toward security, which found that “most Americans believe the military should only be used as a last resort,” says Schirch. “There is a broad consensus that first we should use nonviolent ways of engaging the world through economic development and robust diplomacy.”
• Hosted or co-hosted several meetings of coalitions and advocacy groups that have complementary ideas on ways to address global conflicts; the meetings were designed to foster partnership in approaching policy- and decision-makers, making alternative solutions more likely to be heard, appreciated and acted upon.
• Conferred with military leaders at the National Defense University, the Army War College and the Joint Forces Command on practical, effective alternatives to military force in conflict zones.
• Accepted an invitation to participate in developing conflict analysis tools and peacebuilding frameworks with Department of Defense and State Department analysts and policy-shapers.
• Received broadcast coverage on more than 20 radio and TV outlets, including an appearance by Schirch on Heartland with John Kasich, aired nationally by Fox.
• Gave 16 public presentations before nearly 3,000 people.
• Launched the website www.3Dsecurity.org, which carries more details on all of the above.

Sidebar:

Signs of New Tide

The tide is beginning to turn. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is now calling for a dramatic increase in U.S. foreign aid. Opinion-writers Richard L. Armitage and Joseph S. Nye Jr. called for “smart security” and “smart power” in a December 9, 2007 article in The Washington Post. The United States should become “a smarter power by once again investing in the global good, by providing things that people and governments want but cannot attain without U.S. leadership,” they wrote. “By complementing U.S. military and economic strength with greater investments in soft power, Washington can build the framework to tackle tough global challenges.”

In support of the calls for new approaches to foreign policy, the 3D Security Initiative brings the experiences and wisdom of people working at the frontlines of peacebuilding around the world to our nation’s leaders.

“When I took three persons working in Iraq and one Afghani to Congressional offices last summer, U.S. officials were very interested in hearing about what worked – and didn’t work – on the ground in conflict zones,” said Schirch. “It is very unusual for Congressional officials to meet someone like Hero Anwar, a courageous woman who works for an Iraqi community development organization. She knew first-hand what it takes to prevent violence and build security, which gave her great credibility.”

[Note: In 2011, the 3D Security Initiative became .]

1. Engage in immediate direct talks without preconditions.
2. Support regional diplomatic efforts to lay the necessary groundwork for addressing the root causes.
3. Take a “carrot” – rather than punitive “stick” – approach approach to negotiation. Coercive diplomacy and sanctions will not solve the deeper issues.
4. Understand that cultural, historical, psychological and political factors require the U.S. to demonstrate “respectful engagement,” or risk heightening Iranian fears for their sovereignty and security (which have played a role in the larger nuclear security question).
5. Move focus from Iran’s nuclear program to the promotion of regional security.
6. Recognize and address Iranian concerns about national sovereignty.
7. Take regime-change off the table. Due to past U.S. intervention in Iranian politics, the focus on regime-change actually strengthens the Iranian leadership.
8. Focus on trust-building measures to prepare the soil for more substantial negotiations and to undermine antagonistic leaders.