Strategies for Achieving the Objective
The United States will convene stakeholders, marginalize spoilers, and catalyze local efforts aimed at preventing and responding to crisis and conflict. U.S. diplomacy will support peace and reconciliation efforts at the
national, regional, and local levels; and it will encourage parties to negotiate solutions, to manage peaceful transitions, and to hold accountable perpetrators of mass atrocities. To strengthen fragile states, U.S. diplomacy and development will promote inclusive economic growth, job creation, and the sound policies needed for sustainable private sector expansion and stable employment. The U.S. will direct resources to support local initiatives and to build the capacity of civil society actors so they can successfully advocate for peaceful change.
The U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security (NAP) demonstrates that integrating women and gender considerations into peacebuilding processes promotes democratic governance and long-term stability.
As such, we will strengthen women's rights, leadership, and substantive participation in peace processes, conflict prevention, peacebuilding, transitional processes, and decision-making institutions in conflict-affected settings. Finally, we will multiply the impact of our efforts by engaging the UN and partner governments, and will strengthen partnerships with the private sector and experts outside of government.
The United States will expand and improve U.S. government activities that lead to effective strategies, policies, diplomacy, and development programs that avoid negative impacts ("do no harm") on conflict dynamics, and create the potential to manage and mitigate sources of violent conflict. The United States will promote learning agendas, and share lessons learned and best practices. And through interagency collaboration, policy
development, enhanced professional training, and evaluation, the United States will institutionalize a gender-sensitive approach to our diplomatic and development activities in conflict-affected environments.
UN peacekeeping operations represent the international collective will to promote peace and reconciliation.
The United States will continue as the largest financial contributor to UN peacekeeping operations. The United States will use its contributions to promote effective operations, including strengthening mandates to address the needs and vulnerabilities of women and children in conflict and post-conflict zones. The United States will also continue to support regional and sub-regional organizations and their member states as they seek to provide a cost-effective regional capacity for conflict management and crisis response.
The U.S. government will support country transitions out of fragility and political instability by fostering more inclusive, responsive, accountable, and democratic institutions. The United States will support and strengthen institutions, especially those relating to safety and justice, to manage and mitigate sources of violent conflict, including gender-based violence. The United States will support civil society actors that advocate and work toward greater civilian security.
The U.S. government will advocate policies and norms that prevent violence and protect vulnerable populations.
The United States will press to strengthen norms concerning the protection of civilians, to prevent, mitigate, and
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redress mass atrocities, to prevent and respond to gender-based violence, and to empower women's participation in political transitions and peace processes.
The U.S. government will provide needs-based humanitarian assistance through flexible and timely funding for persons affected by crises, conflicts, and natural disasters. Through collaboration with other donors and host countries, the United States will find solutions to displacement, promote disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, and will foster resilience. In line with the NAP, the United States will respond to the needs of women and children in conflict-affected disasters and crises, including by providing safe, equitable access to humanitarian assistance.
The U.S. government will promote rapid and well-planned humanitarian responses through support to the United Nations, Red Cross organizations, and Non-governmental organizations; mobilize and partner with other donors and host governments; and engage the international humanitarian community to maximize the
effectiveness of humanitarian aid.
Factors beyond U.S. government control that may affect our efforts include shocks to the global economic system; political, social, or economic instability; long-standing ethnic, religious or other societal group tensions;
sovereignty issues that lead governments to restrict humanitarian operations within their borders; reluctance of foreign partners to share information, regulations on protection of national security information, and privacy concerns; and natural disasters and extreme weather. Factors the United States seeks to influence include endemic or institutionalized corruption; inadequate or nonexistent control of borders and sovereign territory;
actors (state and non-state) with violent and/or destabilizing agendas; weak or dysfunctional national, regional, or local civil and military institutions; mismatches between the span of transnational criminal activity and the applicability of national laws and enforcement systems; partners' resources, capabilities, quality of their laws, and strength of their judicial/legal institutions; insufficient institutional capacity for economic development, environmental regulation and oversight; persistent gender inequality and gender-based violence; and allies and/or partners' views on the need to act on security issues.
Strategic Objective Progress Update
Strong USAID-Department of State collaboration resulted in the formulation of objectives related to conflict and fragility for the Joint Strategic Plan. This success was due to several factors, including a shared understanding of the fundamental factors that contribute to conflict vulnerability and fragility, ability to maintain regular
communication about recent activities, and a strong historical relationship.
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development:
USAID and the Department of State co-chaired the Interagency Working Group on Conflict and Fragility which focused on developing a “post-2015” framework to replace the Millennium Development Goals. As a result, the Department, USAID, and the United States Mission to the United Nations successfully collaborated on
development of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including Goal 16 --- focusing on Peace, Justice and Inclusive Societies.
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The Agenda, signed by 193 heads of state at the UN General Assembly in September 2015, is a global call to action, reflecting that there cannot be development without peace, and there cannot be peace without development. The Department and USAID will continue working together to support implementation of the agenda.
Atrocity Prevention and Response:
The Department and USAID collaborate on several atrocity prevention efforts, including developing an analytical framework for understanding mass atrocity risks, exploring joint training efforts, and lessons learned. These include undertaking a Kenya lessons learned symposium with the United States Institute of Peace, drafting
“Helping Prevent Mass Atrocities” guidance for USAID Missions, and developing an innovative concept for a public-private partnership for atrocity prevention and peacebuilding in the Central African Republic.
National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security:
The Department is committed to supporting the United States’ unqualified commitment to protect and empower women in countries threatened and affected by war and conflict, violence, and insecurity.
Throughout its second year implementing the National Action Plan (NAP), the Department built on longstanding efforts to integrate women’s views and perspectives into its diplomatic, security, and development efforts. In order to bolster the impact of its Women, Peace and Security (WPS) initiatives, the Department continued to invest in staff capacity and enhanced its internal and external coordination activities. Additionally, new initiatives, built on ongoing activities, yielded positive outcomes in bilateral, multilateral and civil society engagements elevating the Department’s commitment to WPS issues. Recognizing the influential role women can play in conflict prevention, stabilization and recovery, as outlined in UNSCR 1325 and its successor
resolutions, we are committed to supporting the implementation of the U.S. NAP on WPS.
Staff Exchanges:
The Department and USAID support developmental assignments for staff. Opportunity for deeper collaboration exists in further socializing the analytic tools and partnership initiatives that the Department and USAID have been developing for understanding, analyzing, programming, and partnering to address fragility and mitigating conflict. This includes the Conflict Assessment Framework, Theories of Change, and the New Deal; and
discussing how to maximize the contributions of both development and diplomacy in policy, programming, and partnership. This will also be important in the context of the JSP where having a common vision across agencies will be important in realizing the fragility objective. The Department and USAID will more deeply assess
resource requests and allocations, particularly under the Peace and Security objective.
Additional Progress Updates on Objective 2.3 Include:
Over the past three fiscal years, the number of refugees resettled in the United States has steadily increased.
The United States resettled 58,238 in FY 2012, 69,926 in FY 2013, and 69,987 in 2014. The Department is on track to meet the target that, by September 30, 2017, the percentage of refugees admitted to the United States against the regional ceilings established by Presidential Determination will increase from an average of 90 percent from 2008 – 2013 to 100 percent. In 2014 the percentage was 99.98 percent.
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In FY 2015, numerous large-scale crises around the world strained the capacity of the international humanitarian system. Four concurrent system-wide Level three emergencies—the humanitarian community’s most severe crisis designation—continued to stretch the human and financial resources of relief agencies, non-governmental organizations, and international donors worldwide. During FY 2015, USAID maintained Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DART) responding to complex emergencies in the Middle East (Iraq and Syria) and South Sudan, and the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. In April 2015, USAID provided emergency life-saving assistance following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal that claimed over 9,000 lives and left an estimated 2.8 million Nepalese in need of humanitarian assistance. The outbreak of violence in Yemen in FY 2015 put additional strain on the humanitarian community, and it is expected that conflict will continue and humanitarian needs will increase in 2016. Finally, USAID's response to El Nino - which triggered the worst drought in 35 years in Central America, and the driest period on record for parts of the Horn of Africa, especially Northeastern Ethiopia - was early and robust. During FY 15, the Office of Food for Peace mobilized
$155,980,300 and 196,160 metric tons of food to mitigate the impact of droughts and floods, and accelerate recovery in Ethiopia and Central America.
In FY 2014, USAID provided nearly $1.1 billion in non-food humanitarian assistance in response to emergencies and protracted crises. In addition, in FY 2015, USAID provided more than $2.1 billion in emergency food assistance. This assistance benefited over 33.8 million people in 53 countries, including 30 countries in Africa, 17 in Asia and the Near East, and six in Latin America and the Caribbean.