David R. Smock

In coordination with the United Nations Mediation Support Unit and in collaboration with a number of other mediation institutes and experts, USIP is developing a series of "best practices" handbooks on key aspects of mediation and peacemaking.

USIP's David Smock explores the factors underlying and perpetuating the militancy in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. In this report, based on an 11-day trip to Nigeria in late August 2009, Smock analyzes the prospects for the amnesty process, and why stronger political processes and economic development could help address the roots of the conflict there.

Muslims in general and Muslim leaders particularly have often been severely criticized for not more energetically condemning the violent acts of Muslim extremists. The uninformed often assume that extremists represent Islam’s mainstream.

Managing a Mediaiton Process is the first handbook of the Peacemaker’s Toolkit series. This handbook provides a methodology for mediating interstate and intrastate conflicts. Each of the six chapters covers a different step in the process, identifying what needs to be done at that step and how best to accomplish it.

While the humanitarian and security crises continue in Darfur, there have been some improvements in recent weeks, including the decrease in civilian casualties. However, in the first two months of 2007, 80,000 people were forced from their homes because of violence. How can the international community help enhance peacekeeping in Darfur?

The current crisis in Somalia is much more complicated than simply a conflict between Islamic extremists and moderates. U.S. policy toward Somalia must be more all-encompassing.

In this volume, Jews, Muslims, and Christians with very diverse views address such issues as the just war doctrine, explaining their differences and finding often surprising common ground.

On January 16, 1997, the United States Institute of Peace and the U.S. Department of State cosponsored a one-day roundtable discussion of diplomats, scholars, and nongovernmental organization specialists on the unfolding crises in Zaire-both the complex humanitarian emergency and civil war in eastern Zaire and the ongoing crisis of governmental legitimacy and capacity stemming from a lagging transition to multiparty democracy.

Testimony of David Smock before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus

The good work of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in recent conflicts in such countries as Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia is well known—providing food, shelter, medicine, and a host of other materials and services under extremely difficult conditions. But does humanitarian assistance in some cases actually exacerbate conflict?

Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Views on Nonviolence and International Conflict

The purpose of the meeting was to see if this diverse gathering of Somali professionals could develop consensusre commendations about how to promote more effective relief efforts in Somalia and how to advance toward political reconciliation and reconstruction  Given their divergent perspectives, the group was able to achieve an impressive degree of consensus on key points. The purpose of this report is to summarize these points of consensus.