Appendix: Related USIP Grantmaking
In this report, Kimberly heidon and Kelly Phenicie examine the historical events, landmark decisions, and trends in policymaking, practice, and research that have brought the field of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding to its present state, and offer recommendations for the future. heir analysis provides a useful lens through which to reflect on USIP's related grantmaking. Since 1986, the Grant Program has awarded a total of roughly $86 million in support of more than 2,100 projects. Gender has been an explicit consideration in at least 109 of these projects, representing 5.2 percent of grants. this appendix identifies patterns among those projects, describes noteworthy examples, and considers the broad impact of this area of grantmaking with reference to the insights the report provides.
General Patterns
Sixty-two projects have emphasized gender, and forty-seven others have incorporated gender as a secondary theme. In terms of geographic distribution, Iraqi civil society organizations have been awarded a disproportionate share of the grants, including fully half (thirty-one) of those emphasizing gender. his particular pattern is a by-product of the structure of grantmaking activity.189 Among the other grants that emphasize gender, there is a modest concentration in Africa (ten projects) and a conspicuous absence in East Asia. he remainder is distributed across the rest of the Middle East and North Africa outside Iraq (six), Europe (four), Latin America (three), and South Asia (one), or else cross-regional (six). he vast majority of these projects (fifty) are oriented primarily toward practice; relatively few (twelve) are research studies. the topics and goals of the projects are enormously varied but can be roughly grouped into three major categories: the relationship between gender identities and the dynamics of conflict and peacebuilding (twenty-five), sexual violence in conflict (ten), and promoting women's equality or building women's capacity (forty-five). At least twenty of the grants are for multifaceted projects and thus fall into multiple categories. Such grants, when highlighted, are discussed within the category that most clearly captures the core of the project.
The following sections highlight grants in each of these gender-emphasis categories and briefly discuss the grants in which gender is secondary and those made to organizations that focus on women.
Grant-Funded Projects that Emphasize Gender
The projects with an emphasis on gender are roughly distributed into one of three categories: gender identities, sexual violence, and promoting women's equality or developing women's capacity.
Gender Identities
A central theme of a number of the grants that focus on the ways gender identities can have an impact on conflict and peacebuilding is the role of women as peacebuilders. Addressing this angle is warranted given the historical exclusion of women from peace processes, which this report describes. Yet heidon and Phenicie caution that women-centric approaches may obscure the fact that femininities and masculinities interact to influence conflict and peace. As a result, they conclude by recommending a shift towards work "involving men and boys in gender-sensitive endeavors"(31).
To an extent,the trends in USIP grantmaking reflect such a reorientation. A number of the earlier awards, such as one to Herbert Kelman and Eileen Babbitt (Harvard University) and several others to the Fund for Peace, were devoted to women as peacebuilders. Several more recent awards, however, adopt a more nuanced view of the role of both genders in building peace and igniting conflict. In particular, Lorraine Bayard de Yolo (University of Kansas), Michael Kimmel (State University of New York-Stony Brook), and the IANSA Women's Network (Nigeria) stand out for their novel approaches.
Kelman and Babbitt received a grant in 1992 for the project Transforming the Israeli Palestinian Relationship to Assure a Stable Peace: A Proposal !or a Women's Workshop (SG-155-92). his activity was not explicitly aimed at rectifying women's exclusion from peace processes, but rather took the practical view that "women's special capacity to build relationships across lines of conflict" could be harnessed to "create a political environment conducive to strengthening the peace negotiation process." he burgeoning socio-biological literature on women's proclivity toward peaceful, collaborative interactions, which heidon and Phenicie discuss (17), clearly influenced the design of the project. Babbitt, with Tamra Pearson d'Estree, ultimately furthered scholarship on this topic by publishing a journal article concerning the methodology and results of this workshop and several similar initiatives. In follow-up interviews, the women reported no direct political consequences of their participation, but did cite improved networks between Palestinians and Israelis, as well as increased ability to understand the other's perspective.190
The Fund for Peace received three grants for work conducted in Somalia and Somaliland in 1995 (USIP-170-94F),1996 (USIP-018-95F),and 1997 (USIP-018-95F).he common objective was "to strengthen the capacity of Somali women leaders and women's organizations to participate effectively in the establishment of peace and security in Somalia. “The participants received training on conflict resolution and then were asked to transfer their newly acquired skills to local community members and lead discussions on women's involvement in peace processes. These projects did not necessarily introduce a novel perspective to the field of gender and peacebuilding. By addressing the historical exclusion of women from decision-making in Somalia, they did broaden the spectrum of the population involved in peace initiatives in Somalia. In addition, they capitalized on the female participants' unique access to networks in their home communities, thereby expanding the conflict resolution capacity in a war-torn environment with few formal opportunities for intensive, sustained education.
In the past decade, USIP's grantmaking has gone beyond a focus on women as peacebuilders to include research projects that explore the underappreciated ways that both masculinities and femininities can influence conflict and peacebuilding.
A case in point is the grant Bayard de Yolo received in 2003 for the project Women's NonViolent Action in Latin America (SG-229-02S). Drawing primarily on the case of Nicaraguan women who were mobilized by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, she explored organizations of mothers of fallen soldiers and their consequences for the women who participate and for society at large. She cites a collective maternal solidarity as one of the nonmaterial gains for the female participants, explaining how they perceive themselves as having acquired through the trials of motherhood the strength necessary to endure war and loss.191 he centrality of motherhood in their self-conception renders them highly traditional in one sense, but they are also nontraditional in that they effectively transcend victimhood as they channel their responses to losses into political action. In addition, Bayard de Yolo examines the use of maternal imagery and maternal framing to mobilize support for conflict.192
Meanwhile, Kimmel, who received support in 2001 for the project The Gender of Ethnic Nationalism: A Comparative Study (USIP-048-01S), is one of the few grantees to examine the interplay between masculinity and conflict. His research examined how unrealized expectations of manhood can contribute to the rise of extremist groups. He found that extremist groups in the United States, Sweden, and the Muslim world were drawn in large part from "downwardly mobile" young men whose goals of being able to support themselves and their families were frustrated by globalization and changing gender norms. In this context, extremist groups that assert male domination in the process of denigrating the enemy are attractive to men who seek to reclaim the prominent role they consider to be theirs in society.193 Although Kimmel's research does not necessarily challenge the dominant narrative of men as aggressive and women as peaceful, his results were significant in documenting how societal expectations of masculinity can indirectly contribute to violent behavior.
The support for Bayard de Yolo and Kimmel's projects resulted in contributions to the empirical research literature that advanced understandings of gender identities in conflict. An evolution, perhaps more subtle, is likewise evident in grant-funded practitioner work, which incorporates recent trends, albeit without dramatically breaking conventions.
One example is a project of the IANSA Women's Network, funded in 2010, on Enhancing Women's Participation in Peacebuilding in the Niger Delta (SG-221-10). his initiative seeks to build the conflict resolution capacity of women, who "by virtue of their customary role as caregiver and the respect they command . . . are well-placed to act as change agents and lead efforts to restore peace and security in the region."194 he training curriculum, developed by IANSA, brings a gender perspective to a number of different issues, including early warning systems and small arms control. The curriculum also includes a Gender Dialogue for Peacemakers, during which male and female participants engage each other and discuss the gendered effects of conflict, the different ways men's and women's organizations engage in peacebuilding, and how peacebuilding initiatives can contribute to gender equity.
Sexual Violence
All of the grants for work on the analysis, prevention, and reporting of sexual violence have been made in the past fifteen years. his situation is not surprising because the time frame coincides with increased international attention to the subject following the mass rapes in and subsequent ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which the report describes (8). Although the Grant Program has supported some recent work that broadens the spectrum of approaches to sexual violence, the majority of the funded projects concern female victims, seeking either to provide services to victims or to understand the scope of rape in particular contexts. Three noteworthy examples of women-centered work are grants to Opportunities Industrialization Centers International, the Jerusalem Rape Crisis Center, and an Iraqi organization.195
Opportunities Industrialization Centers International received funding in 2002 for the project Emergency Response to Support Women and Girl Survivors of Sexual Violence in Sierra Leone (SG-156-00).he primary purpose was to train counselors, who then provided psychosocial support to seventy-five female victims of sexual violence. After the trainings, the project team compiled a guide on the phenomenon of sexual violence in Sierra Leone and specific strategies for helping women and girls overcome trauma. he initiative reached only a tiny fraction of those who had been victimized. Thus, whether the project made an appreciable impact on the ground is open to interpretation. Regardless, this project deserves praise for having provided a much-needed response, however limited, in the context of an embryonic transition, a fragile peace, and a severe humanitarian crisis.
Sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war far less frequently in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the abuse of women is nonetheless a persistent social problem in this setting. Responding to the concern, the Jerusalem Rape Crisis Center initiated ]oint Forces for Social Change with USIP funding in 2006 (USIP-141-05S).he project aimed to "create and train a cadre of Palestinian and Israeli student volunteers who will sustain long-term professional contact following their participation in a comprehensive educational project addressing sexual violence." A group of twenty Jewish and twenty Arab youth-all students at Hebrew University-participated in a year-long course on human rights, women's rights, and the relationship between conflict and sexual violence, and subsequently collaborated on a campaign to raise awareness about sexual violence in more than fifty youth clubs and high schools in Jerusalem. Although the project addressed rape in the context of everyday life rather than as a weapon of war, the macro context-a protracted conflict with intermittent episodes of serious violence-may conceivably have contributed to a higher incidence of rape. he domestication of violence following armed conflict discussed in the report (6) could logically be observed in the Israel-Palestine context, where young men who are mobilized for conflict return to their families during the calmer interludes. In addition to addressing a concrete social problem that is plausibly exacerbated by the conflict context, this grant project served as a medium for people-to-people peacebuilding by bringing together Palestinians and Israelis to work on a problem of common interest.
Another example of USIP funding of women-centered projects on sexual violence is a current grant to an Iraqi organization that is working with female prisoners, a relatively small population in Iraq that until recently had not received much attention. In response to reported rapes in a particular facility, the grantee organization is carrying out a campaign to educate 600 local police officers on the proper treatment of women in prisons, and has formed a team of practitioners to visit the women, monitor their treatment, and report instances of abuse. he project team is also seeking to mitigate the practice of shunning rape victims, a common problem in Iraq, by facilitating family visits to the women detainees.
These three grants, all thoughtful projects that responded to real needs on the ground, concentrate on female victims of sexual violence. heidon and Phenicie (24), although acknowledging the importance of continued research and practice in this vein, encourage more attention to some of the less-explored areas of gender-based violence, namely temporal and geographic variation in the prevalence of sexual violence, women as agents of violence, and male rape victims. hey point out how female perpetrators and male victims can tend to challenge societal gender roles.he typical result is not long-term change but rather a backlash, reflected in the extreme stigmatization of male rape victims, as well as disbelief or disgust regarding women who inflict violence. Two recent USIP grants in particular, to Elisabeth Wood (Yale University) and Colombia's Historical Memory Commission, have yielded research that broadens our understanding of sexual violence and provides promising avenues for future work.
Theidon and Phenicie acknowledge Wood's USIP grant (USIP-070-06F) for the project Sexual Violence During War: Understanding Variation and stress the importance of her work in dispelling the myth that wartime rape is inevitable and universal. They review some of her hypotheses on variation in sexual violence (21), and Wood's work also merits recognition for her attention to male rape victims and her discussion of the numerous forms of sexual violence other than rape. These two facts, which historically have not received sufficient recognition, are crucial considerations in providing appropriate services for victims and adequate justice for perpetrators.
Whereas Wood's work spans numerous conflicts, a recent grant (SG-147-08) supports a detailed inquiry by Colombia's Historical Memory Commission into gender-based violence in one specific context: Northern Colombia between 1995 and 2008. The first stage consisted of historical memory workshops, led by a team of professionals, for several groups of women who had been victimized in some of most brutal and notorious cases in the region. he testimonies from the workshops will be included in a forthcoming report, which discusses a number of less-explored elements of the Colombian conflict, including women's participation in armed groups and variation in the type and extent of sexual violence inflicted by individual, paramilitary, and guerilla units. Another important contribution of this project is a toolkit for conducting historical memory workshops, which the commission has distributed to other Colombian organizations that work with victims. Although testimonies gathered during this project are not intended for official truth and justice proceedings in Colombia, the more private nature of the historical memory workshops could hold promise as an alternative to traditional court proceedings that may risk retraumatizing victims, a concern that Theidon and Phenicie also isolate (28).
Women's Rights and Empowerment
The grants in this category are especially eclectic, with varied goals, methods, and target beneficiaries that reflect the diversity Theidon and Phenicie identify among the work on women's advancement, where definitional clarity and agreement on approaches are still largely absent in spite of consensus on the importance of empowering women. USIP has funded projects on women's empowerment that seem to have been influenced as much by local political and cultural contexts as they were by internationally accepted norms. The different reference points are evident in three grants to the League of Women Voters for projects in Europe, a grant to Human Rights Education Associates to research gender equity in Moroccan textbooks, two grants to Iraqi organizations for work with war widows and disabled women, a current grant to the Hunt Alternatives Fund to empower women leaders to moderate extremism in Pakistan, and a grant to Isobel Coleman (Council on Foreign Relations) to investigate the role of women in rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan.
The grants to the League of Women Voters were made during the early 1990s, amid democratization in Eastern Europe and the conflict and subsequent peace processes in the Balkans. A pair of the grants supported similar projects in Poland in 1992-1993 (USIP-057-91F) and Hungary in 1994-1995 (USIP-014-93F), which sought to offer "emerging women leaders ...opportunities to learn the various techniques of citizen participation in a democratic system. “These initiatives responded to an unusual opening to increase women's participation that was created by rapid changes to the political arena as these countries transitioned from communism to democracy. A third grant in 1998 (USIP-031-98S) funded a project to strengthen a newly established chapter in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to enable its members to take a more active and equal role in both the peace process and upcoming elections by building the capacity of women leaders to articulate a gender perspective.
Whereas these projects were motivated by new spaces resulting from transitions to democracy and away from an armed conflict accompanying the creation of a new state, the 2004 grant (SG-187-04S) to Human Rights Education Associates was spurred by liberalizing reforms in Morocco. In particular, a new family code that afforded women increased social, political, and economic rights had passed amid significant controversy, with little agreement about how it should be implemented. his project, therefore, sought to assess gender inequality in school curricula and textbooks, with an eye toward improving tolerance and respect for women's equality in the educational system. he findings of the study were in keeping with what one would expect in a society that had not historically prioritized women's rights: among other things, men constituted 86 percent of textbook writers and 95 percent of the writers referenced within textbooks, and 29 percent of the images of women and girls in textbooks depicted them performing household chores, versus a scant 3 percent of the images of men and boys.196 Ultimately, the findings and a series of recommendations on promoting gender equity were shared with the Moroccan Ministry of Education. Although this study yielded useful information on gender equity, its link to USIP's mandate is less direct and obvious than in most other funded projects.
The same cannot be said of a recent grant (SG-135-10) to Hunt Alternatives Fund's Institute for Inclusive Security, which has worked to stimulate women's leadership in a variety of active conflict zones in Pakistan and is now partnering with PAIMAN,a local NGO,to empower women to moderate extremist violence. Fifteen female civil society leaders are receiving training in leadership and advocacy, at the conclusion of which they are expected to establish a coalition to develop and pursue a concrete agenda on reducing extremism. In the process, the project aims to leverage mothers’ unique ability to influence their sons’ receptiveness to extremist ideologies, which Theidon and Phenicie cite as an emerging trend in gender studies (17).
Some of USIP's grantmaking in Iraq embraces a similar theory of change. In particular, two Iraqi organizations have recently received funding to work with disadvantaged groups whose ranks have expanded rapidly as a result of war and sectarian strife. One organization is providing literacy training to war widows and their families to help them participate more effectively in the national Iraqi reconciliation process.he widows are also receiving legal guidance in reclaiming lost property and accessing other benefits provided by the Iraqi government. A final element of this project is community-level dialogues that seek to mitigate the sectarian divides that tend to affect widows disproportionately. he other organization is carrying out an equally multifaceted project focusing on disabled women. Four hundred women are being trained to advocate for their equal rights as citizens in a society where they have traditionally been treated only as objects in need of protection and assistance. he organization is also holding conferences to raise disability awareness among other NGOs and the general public. he project will culminate in facilitated meetings between the disabled women trainees and Iraqi legislators. By providing the women the opportunity to meet with lawmakers and advocate for themselves, the project team is cementing participants' learning and undertaking a key step in changing perceptions of disabled women. More significant for the purpose of USIP's mandate, given disability affects society at large and is therefore a unifying issue, are the relationships formed among the participants that can help reduce sectarian tensions.
International trends in practice likely influenced these two projects, as the grantees are well-networked organizations run by individuals with broad experience. At the same time, both arose from the particularities of a violence-ravaged Iraq where marginalized women saw their rights even further imperiled by the rise of conservative religious thought. This context is ably documented in Coleman's project, supported by a grant in 2005 (USIP-155-04S), to examine the history of women's rights in Iraq and discuss the prospects for empowering women in light of reforms that followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. She points to positive developments for gender equality, such as a quota system allotting 25 percent of the seats in the legislature to women. Yet she also underlines the challenges of guaranteeing freedoms for women in a setting where opposing factions in government hold different interpretations of the Iraqi family code.197
Grant-Funded Projects for Which Gender Is Secondary
Additional projects overtly incorporated women into broader initiatives on themes other than gender. In most of these instances, women were listed as one of a number of constituencies (for example, religious leaders, human rights activists) whose voices should be heard or who could play some sort of role in peacebuilding efforts. Women also appear in certain grants as one of several groups (for example, children, orphans, refugees) deemed to be uniquely vulnerable in armed conflict. An argument in favor of projects having a secondary gender focus is that it achieves a degree of gender mainstreaming, which remains the conventional model of advancing the status of women and girls. Yet Theidon and Phenicie (31) oppose treating gender in such a simplistic fashion, warning that "the insights that gender studies offer policymakers, scholars, and practitioners working on the issues of conflict and peacebuilding are impoverished when gender is reduced to women." he inclusion of women in relatively crude ways tends to ignore their differences, as well as how conflict dynamics are a function of both men and women, the roles assigned to them by society, and the manner in which they interact. In particular, one-dimensional portrayals of women as victims, with a homogenous perspective, obscure their individual agency in exacerbating violence or promoting peace.
Grants to Organizations that Focus on Women
Thirteen grants have been made to organizations for which women are central to their mandate. Gender was a primary emphasis in only five of the funded projects, and a secondary element in eight. The distribution suggests that a majority of these grantees have pursued and been successful in building a more diverse portfolio of work. This transition can be challenging, because organizations with a focus on women often encounter questions about their desire and capability to work on other thematic areas.
Conclusion
his appendix has summarized and given illustrative highlights of USIP's grantmaking in the field of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding. he review, considered in conjunction with the body of the report, leads to several final reflections and, in turn, to a series of recommendations for the Grant Program.
To begin with, it is immediately apparent that the profile of funded projects is not entirely in keeping with what heidon and Phenicie advocate. hese discrepancies do not necessarily constitute cause for major concern, however. In part, they arise because the grants were awarded over twenty-five years, during which time both the field and USIP's grant competitions evolved significantly. herefore, the potential is inherent that the overall orientation of USIP grantmaking and the individual grants could appear outdated and off base when viewed in retrospect,even if at the time they made reasonable sense in light of the state of the field and institutional parameters.
At least some evidence actually suggests a different, more favorable picture: certain projects supported by USIP funding provided impetus for advances in research and practice that are important to the development of the field and to real-world engagement with central issues that heidon and Phenicie discuss. In particular, grantees have made noteworthy contributions concerning gender identities, sexual violence, and women's empowerment. In these ways, grantmaking to date has proven to be a catalyst for novel and cutting-edge work rather than merely a mirror for current or obsolete conventions.
Yet the structure of the grant competitions and the high fraction of grants supporting practice-oriented projects constrain efforts to improve the standardization of the field and move it forward in a precise way.he awards in the Annual Grant Competition are given to a small set of the best projects from the large pool of unsolicited applications that are received each year. In any given year, there is no guarantee that a substantial share of the applications, let alone the projects USIP ultimately funds, will include significant gender aspects and plans to advance the field in new directions. he arrangements afford little opportunity for pursuing specific applicants and allow relatively modest input by program staff into grantees' goals, underlying theories, and methods. Instead, this sort of targeting, intensive interaction, and strategic guidance is largely restricted to the Priority Grant Competitions,where staff regularly communicate with prospective applicants from the earliest stages of conceptualizing a project. Meanwhile, the grants for practice work are often made in response to urgent situations on the ground. Under these circumstances, addressing the intersection of gender and conflict in a sophisticated, nuanced way is not always a consideration or even feasible. In sum, the Grant Program has limited scope for making gender a point of emphasis, much less for defining specific courses of action and research, aside from responding favorably to proposed projects that happen to integrate this angle constructively and creatively.
Looking ahead to the future, the Grant Program can realistically aim to take account of heidon and Phenicie's observations and support work at the leading edge of the field of gender, conflict, and peacebuilding and still operate within the confines of the existing grantmaking structure and of USIP's mandate. With these goals in mind, I recommend that the Grant Program should move forward on the following efforts: