What is the 3D Security Initiative?

The 3D Security Initiative promotes a new vision for US and global security. Our work includes:

• Increasing public and private investments in development and diplomacy as preventive security strategies.
• Offering specific policy options developed in conjunction with our global partnership of conflict prevention experts.
• Engaging in civil-military dialogue to determine best practices in 3D coordination in conflict zones.
• Fostering civic engagement in US foreign policy to reduce the gap between the public will and public policy.
• Encouraging sustainable lifestyles and business practices in the US that recognize the links between human and environmental security.

Funded by the Ploughshares Fund, the Compton Foundation and private individual donors, the 3D Security Initiative builds consensus for a shared vision of how to increase U.S. and global security.

Who Are We?

Lisa Schirch is the Program Director for the 3D Security Initiative, based in Harrisonburg, Virginia. schirchl@emu.edu

Lynn Kunkle is the Policy Director for the 3D Security Initiative, based in Washington, DC.

Jayne Docherty is a 3D consultant strategist. jayne.docherty@emu.edu

Tom Brenneman is a Policy Associate for the 3D Security Initiative, focussing on a 3D approach to Immigration.

Helen Rubeiz is an intern with the 3D Security Initiative and a graduate student at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.

Valerie Serrels is an intern with the 3D Security Intiative and a graduate student at the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University.

Kathy Smith administrates funds for the 3D Security Initiative.

Our Work

Our vision is for a U.S. security policy that provides more security for the U.S. and the global community. The 3D Security Initiative seeks policies that are faithful to our values, invest in our communities, protects the environment, and spends tax dollars wisely. We seek to transcend ideological and partisan differences to build support for common sense reforms.

The 3D Security Initiative builds public support for 3D security, educates Members of Congress on effective development and diplomacy strategies for increasing human security, and builds bridges between the diplomacy, development, and defense communities. Click these links to read about our Constituency Outreach, Congressional Outreach, and Coordination programs between between Civil-Military, US government, and NGOs.

The 3D Security Initiative explores which Development, Diplomacy, and Defense initiatives are most likely to be effective and faithful to values important to the U.S. public. The 3D Security Initiative is a broadly-based effort to encourage a more balanced approach to U.S. security policy.

Our Concern

The world feels less safe each day. Reports of war and rumors of war fill the daily news alongside stories of suffering from global-warming-induced climate changes, escalating poverty, and struggling communities here in the U.S. and around the world.

Five years after 9/11, reports from the Pentagon and other government agencies report that there are more Al Qaeda members today than in 2001.

Our History

The 3D Security Initiative grows out of the development and diplomacy work of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding of Eastern Mennonite University. Many of the perspectives contained in our website come from a variety of other constituencies. Therefore, the opinions in these pages do not necessarily represent the official position of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite University, or the Mennonite Church (USA).

While we approach security from a development and diplomatic perspective given our background, this website seeks to lay out a full range of opinions about a new vision for U.S. and global security including a discussion of defense using insights from military experts. We invite readers to consider how development and diplomacy are security strategies and how our understanding of defense may need to change in our globalized world.

Eastern Mennonite University is a national leader in cross-cultural education. EMU aims to be a learning community marked by academic excellence, creative process, professional competence, and Christian faith, offering healing and hope in our diverse world.

EMU educates students to live in a global context. Our Anabaptist Christian community challenges students of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds to pursue their life calling through scholarly inquiry, artistic creation, guided practice, and life-changing cross-cultural encounter. EMU instills the enduring values of our Anabaptist tradition in each generation: discipleship, community, service, and peacebuilding.

The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding has three components: the Masters of Conflict Transformation Program which is also identified as a State Department sponsored Fulbright Conflict Resolution Program; the Practice Institute that conducts development, community-level diplomacy, peacebuilding, and conflict prevention work around the world in partnership with local organizations, and the renowned Summer Peacebuilding Institute that brings hundreds of community leaders around the world together for study and reflection on conflict prevention each May-June.

The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) was founded in 1994 to further the personal and professional development of individuals as peacebuilders and to strengthen the peacebuilding capacities of the institutions they serve. The program is committed to supporting conflict prevention efforts at all levels of society in situations of complex, protracted, violent or potentially violent, social conflict in the United States and around the world.

While CJP builds upon EMU's Christian/Anabaptist faith commitments and strengths, it is intentionally open and supportive of people of all faiths or beliefs. Currently, a significant number of our students are Muslim and Hindu. The program also builds upon Mennonite experience in disaster response, humanitarian relief, restorative justice, and socioeconomic development. It is the premise of CJP that conflict prevention and peacebuilding must address root causes of conflict, must be developed strategically, and must promote healing of relationships and restoration of the torn fabric of communities.

Accomplishments of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding

• Over the last ten years we have attracted over 1750 community and government leaders from over 100 countries to our Summer Peacebuilding Institute and our Masters in Conflict Transformation Program. Each year our program grows, with long waiting lists for the 20 or more courses we offer in conflict prevention and peacebuilding during the Summer Peacebuilding Institute.
• Our Masters program in Conflict Transformation was chosen by the U.S. State Department from among a pool of much larger universities to serve as the designated Fulbright Conflict Resolution Masters Program for students from the Middle East and South Asia. Each year, we receive eight to ten of the best and brightest community leaders identified by Fulbright offices from those two regions and approximately three to five Fulbright Students from other areas of the world to study in our Masters program.
• Since September 11, 2001, we have run a multi-million dollar training program for over 1000 religious and lay leaders to examine the link between 9/11 trauma and security through our Practice Institute. The STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) program has an extensive network of civil society leaders in the U.S. and around the world who have identified the need for a broader security framework in response to the tragic and traumatic events of September 11, 2001.

Other Projects

The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding has also been the home for a wide variety of other projects that we conduct with local partner organizations around the world, including:

• Negotiation training for diplomats in Jordan at the Jordan Institute for Diplomacy.
• Conflict-sensitive development and peacebuilding workshop with local development organization in northern Iraq.
• Development of a conflict reporting handbook for journalists in Nepal.
• Development of a handbook on the Jirga decision-making process in Pashtun areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• Workshops in reconciliation for an international development organization in Sri Lanka.
• Consulting with UN Development Program in Sri Lanka on integrating post-tsunami and post-conflict reconstruction efforts in ways that include community based organizations.
• Training for the "Down and Dromore Think Again Project" in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
• Training program on trauma recovery in southern Sudan for tribal and religious leaders.

A special thank you to Mennonite Central Committee for photos in the header.