Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Spring 2006
As the research phase wound down, its findings needed to be shared in
order for successes to be replicated in other countries. Extensive dissemination
activities provided outreach to the diplomatic, business and fundraising
communities, especially the United Nations. A newsletter, The Challenge
of Peace, a bibliography on post-conflict rebuilding and several
substantive monographs had already been distributed to hundreds of individuals
and institutions involved in peacebuilding. A final Corporation grant
was provided toward costs of the concluding phase of the WSP research
and its follow-up activities; subsequent funding would come from one of
the many donor institutions supporting the project’s ongoing mission
of problem solving and recovery.
In 2001, such diverse places as East Timor, Sierra Leone,
Indonesia and the former Yugoslavia were wrestling with their histories
of political violence and questioning how perpetrators could best be held
accountable for their crimes. With a $250,000 grant from the Corporation
and support from other foundations, the International Center for Transitional
Justice was established to provide post-conflict states with strategies
for dealing with the legacies of the past. The Center was first headed
by South African activist Alexander Boraine, who, with Nobel Prize-winner
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, had co-chaired South Africa’s Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. Three years later, the Center convened a meeting
of representatives of local and international NGOs, academics and policymakers
to review human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A widely disseminated report on the workshop recommended options for the
United Nations and the Congolese government. Beginning in 2002, the Center
established its human-rights-oriented Transitional Justice Fellowships,
and now offers three programs: in Chile, Canada (dedicated to work in
the former Yugoslavia) and South Africa—where fellows are given
the opportunity to meet with Archbishop Tutu.
Understandably, human rights concerns are paramount in post-conflict and
other fragile societies, and for this reason Corporation support consistently
has gone toward the activities of Human Rights Watch. This international
nonprofit organization sends missions into more than 70 countries to assess
human rights conditions and advocate for policy changes. In 2002, for
example, a $100,000 grant was provided toward monitoring of human rights
issues related to post-September 11 antiterrorism campaigns and the war
in Afghanistan. Funding supported the following threefold program:
- On-the-ground research on the borders of Afghanistan with particular attention to the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons;
- Analysis of the potential human rights implications of changes in U.S. domestic and foreign policy;
- Promotion of a vigorous response by state and local authorities to bias crimes against Arabs, Muslims and South Asians in the United States.
In 2003, a new grant of $200,000 enabled Human Rights Watch to continue its work in Afghanistan as well as to maintain a team of researchers on the ground in Iraq, where the war was in its early stages and civilians were still facing threats from both Saddam Hussein and the forces that opposed him. At the time this grant was made, the organization had already produced a series of background documents and contacted the warring parties, and was pressing neighboring countries to accept and protect refugees. Efforts were then underway to persuade the U.S. administration that the Geneva Conventions applied to the armed conflict in Iraq and to the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Subsequent reports on the organization’s findings were handed off to influential policymakers and received extensive media coverage.
From Iraq to Haiti, in recent years collapsed states have continued to threaten regional and world security, pointing up the lack of tools available to policymakers for preventing or reversing future failures. To address this situation, in 2004 the Corporation got involved on the UN’s behalf, this time working through the Henry L. Stimson Center, a nonprofit organization that analyzes and offers practical solutions to problems of national and international security. With a grant of $350,000, the Corporation, building on previous studies of UN peace operations, sponsored an investigation into ways in which the UN and regional organizations might support restoration of security and the rule of law in states shattered by war. This ongoing project, to be completed in 2006, aims to provide a range of viable options for policymakers attempting to prevent state collapse. The Stimson Center is conducting original research and consulting with practitioners in order to recommend best practices toward the UN’s capacity to deploy civilian police and other law personnel rapidly for peace operations, and to assess programs for border security, export controls and restraint of lawless “spoiler” networks, such as illegal trade operations, which may continue to destabilize the region even after peace agreements are reached. They are also seeking strategies that discourage corruption and promote transparency and accountability within peace operations and the local governments they support.
A related grant of $300,000 will also focus on shoring up UN efforts toward post-conflict reconstruction. The nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has close ties to the United Nations, had performed the first independent assessment of Iraq reconstruction efforts in 2003. Funding supported the center’s efforts toward implementation of recommendations through interaction with the U.S. government and frontline UN agencies such as the United Nations Development Program and the World Food Program.
The Institute for International Law and Justice at New York University received a grant of $300,000 in 2004 toward its work on key legal aspects of post-conflict reconstruction:
internal governance and institution building including establishment of codes of conduct and accountability procedures; international governance involving institutions such as the UN and the World Bank, which make decisions that have major economic and political consequences in vulnerable states; and intelligence gathering and regulation of coercion with the goal of advancing consensus outside of normal political and bureaucratic confines. This grant was considered particularly timely in the aftermath of the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the secretary-general’s call for serious ideas on UN reform, which presented a unique window of opportunity to influence policy at the most basic level.