3D Security Initiative

3D's Background

The 3D Security Initiative grows out of the development and diplomacy work of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding of Eastern Mennonite University. We work closely with the Alliance for Peacebuilding and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict.

The Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) is a U.S.-based network of non-governmental organizations working in applied conflict prevention and resolution around the world. The AfP supports collaborative action among governmental, nongovernmental, and intergovernmental organizations to prevent and resolve destructive conflicts.

The Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) is a world-wide civil society-led network aiming to build a new international consensus on peacebuilding and the prevention of violent conflict. GPPAC works on strengthening civil society networks by linking local, national, regional, and global levels of action and effective engagement with governments, the U.N. system and regional organizations.

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; 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 thirteen years we have trained over 9000 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.