Projects

Violent Extremist Disengagement and Reconciliation (VEDR) is the peacebuilding contribution to disengagement from violent extremism and reconciliation with local communities. It de-exceptionalizes violent extremism from other challenges that result from similar sets of risk factors and social environments by emphasizing peacebuilding and public health.

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, the omission of local approaches addressing the growing spread of violence and extremism from national and regional processes has often led to unsustainable and non-credible peace.  In addition, the role of women in local peacebuilding has not been well analyzed or articulated in development or diplomacy outcomes, despite its primacy in the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda.

RESOLVE’s research toolkits and trainings for researcher and non-researcher audiences seek to provide participants with instructive resources, tools, and avenues for the exchange of knowledge, experiences, and best practices for those conducting and using research to address violent extremism. RESOLVE facilitates two separate toolkits and trainings: 

While Islamist violent extremism and the threat from al-Qa’ida, Islamic State, and their associates received most of the focus since 2001, more recently, threats and attacks by nationalist and xenophobic VE (particularly white supremacists) has raised serious concerns that this type of VE will destabilize societies.

To inform local and global audiences of violent extremist dynamics in South East Asia, the RESOLVE Network partners with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) to conduct a series of analytical and capacity building activities focused on the region in 2020-21.

RESOLVE’s Researching Violent Extremism Series and Edited Volume seeks to build the capacity of researchers, develop higher research standards, and promote ethical processes for conducting research on violent extremism, informed by the experience of fellow researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.&nbsp

In November 2018, RESOLVE launched a new research and convening project to identify solutions to violent extremism in the Western Balkans. In partnership with the Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations of the U.S. Department of State and through collaboration with regional organizations, the Western Balkans Initiative will provide stakeholders new insights from the expanse of existing research and from new locally sourced analysis on the dynamics of violent extremism.

Launched in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development Africa Bureau, the RESOLVE Network initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa aims to provide key stakeholders with contextual information on the dynamics of community-based armed groups (CBAGs) and current, prospective, and past approaches to engage, manage, and transform them.

In 2017 the RESOLVE Network partnered with the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, and the Center for Genocide Studies at Dhaka University to implement a mixed-methods research project aimed at understanding the relationships and linkages between religious narratives, political and social identity, and government institutional legitimacy.

In July 2017, the RESOLVE Network launched a research project in the Lake Chad Basin to assess the role of the state, civil society, and other non-state actors in shaping the political divides over the role of religion in education and community and state responses to extremism in Chad, Nigeria, and Cameroon. The RESOLVE Network offers an innovative means of helping USAID and other U.S. government partners interested in testing assumptions embedded in their theories of change about the effectiveness of P/CVE interventions in the educational arena.