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programs

programs

Program Strategies:

ICRD’s programs focus on areas where religious identity converges with challenges to stability. The programs, which are universally co-created with local communities, manifest differently in each context. ICRD collaborates with partners to generate sustainable and replicable resilience that addresses present challenges and empowers communities to effectively respond to unforeseen future crises. 

ICRD’s 25 years of peacebuilding implementation in more than two dozen nations include such activities as promoting tolerance in religious education, enhancing and spotlighting the role of women of faith peacebuilders, supporting the reintegration of former combatants, advancing reconciliation processes between former adversaries, supporting formal peace processes, interfaith collaboration on local conflict issues, preventing violent extremism, and advocating for local community concerns within policy-maker priorities.

Objectives

WOMEN PEACEBUILDERS

How do we strengthen the role of women of faith in peacebuilding?

Know How

SOCIAL RECONCILIATION

How do we facilitate constructive dialogue and promote reconciliation between adversaries?

Know How

CONFLICT RESOLUTION

How do we build the capacity of faith actors to resolve conflicts and mitigate violent extremism?

Know How

PUBLIC POLICY

How do we inform public policy about important issues of religion and conflict?

Know How

TOLERANCE IN EDUCATION

How do we enhance themes of tolerance in religious education?

Know How

RESILIENT NETWORKS

How do we build resilient networks across religious traditions and civil society?

Know How
ICRD-GyS-07

Where We Work

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ICRD-GyS-07

Where We Work

We are all over the world!

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Middle East & North Africa

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Sub-Saharan Africa

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Asia

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The Americas

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Europe

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Global Programming and Public Engagement

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UN-ECOSOC Consultative Status

ICRD holds official consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)

Letter of Approval

Organizational Report

Organizational Report

ENHANCE THE CAPACITY OF RELIGIOUS PEACEBUILDERS

Many formal and informal religious leaders are driven by their faith convictions to promote peace, understanding, and empathy within their community and beyond, but could benefit from enhanced tools to clarify and confront the current conditions that challenge stability in their community.

ICRD convenes networks of support and provides specialized training to enhance peacebuilding skills, including:

– Context Analysis.
– Facilitating Difficult Conversations. 
– Conflict Transformation. – Reconciliation.
– Transitional Justice Processes.
– Early Warning Response Mechanisms.

SOCIAL RECONCILIATION

Religious faith and spirituality can be powerful forces in helping people to transcend ego, greed, pain, hatred and other drivers of conflict. ICRD works with a wide diversity of faith actors and communities to identify and access those values within their own tradition that support forgiveness, empathy, and respect for the other.

ICRD facilitates difficult discussions between divided or adversarial communities by grounding its engagement in commonly-held values. This shared foundation in transcendent values can enable individuals to confront and overcome otherwise insurmountable barriers to reconciliation, such as historical grievances, mutual fear, or resource shortages.

This approach is not solely intended for conflicts across religions. ICRD’s model of reconciliation allows conflict-affected communities to address deeply-held hostilities that are wholly unrelated to religious identity. To ensure that this model can extend beyond the immediate beneficiaries, ICRD equips local peacebuilders with the skills and knowledge necessary to bring reconciliation efforts to scale.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION

ICRD provides expert guidance and training to faith actors, and the civil society organizations that work with them, on how to more effectively identify and analyze the local causes of conflict and extremist violence. ICRD then works with these actors to integrate conflict resolution techniques from the international field of practice with traditional methods from their respective context.

The drivers of violent extremism and other conflicts are deeply dependent upon local conditions. ICRD utilizes a participant-driven approach that allows beneficiaries to adapt the training content according to their own cultural, historical, and spiritual frames of reference. In this way, ICRD builds on the existing capacity of religious actors to serve as peacebuilders in their community.

With support and mentorship from ICRD, these peacebuilders are mobilized in their respective communities to lead new grassroots initiatives and serve as agents of change. By empowering individuals and organizations that are committed to peace, ICRD leaves behind improved local capacity to respond to existing and unforeseen social conflicts.

PUBLIC POLICY

Far too often, in the realm of international policy, religion is either overlooked or treated merely as a source of conflict and division. ICRD works to change this narrative by demonstrating and articulating the positive role that religion and religious actors can play in building peace.

ICRD has developed collaborative relationships with the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, and various national and international civil society networks to promote a more nuanced and constructive understanding of the potential role of religion in mitigating conflict.

To better inform policy-makers, ICRD produces action-oriented research and analysis on sensitive issues that serves as the basis for behind-the-scenes engagements with key national stakeholders both within the U.S. and abroad.

TOLERANCE IN EDUCATION

Education plays a critical and formative role in shaping youth attitudes toward identity differences and the use of violence. To ensure that education fosters tolerance, rather than hatred, ICRD has facilitated efforts to train religious educators, develop new teaching materials, implement critical thinking pedagogy, and petition for the removal of inflammatory content.

ICRD works to transform educational spaces that promote discriminatory beliefs by cultivating a shared interest in implementing reforms. To better prepare students to seek gainful employment or engage with a pluralist global community, educators must teach students to think critically, seek alternatives to violence, and co-exist with people that hold different or opposing religious views. ICRD frames all of its engagement with religious educators in terms that are respectful of local cultural and religious heritage. In this way, ICRD supports and enhances organic change from within the educational environment.

RESILIENT NETWORKS

Promoting sustained collaborative partnerships between otherwise disparate stakeholders is key to countering extremism and breaking cycles of violence. This means that members of different religions and sects must not only work together to achieve peace, they must also work with educators, local government officials, business leaders, legal and academic experts, and activists as one community.

ICRD facilitates the development of engaged networks of peacebuilders by using shared values to bridge different faith traditions, civil society sectors, and marginalized and majority communities. Through these networks, peacebuilders collaborate to address issues of mutual concern and, in the process, build relationships that will provide additional capacity and support to face the challenges of the future.