Fund for Peace
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Fund for Peace is an independent Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research and educational organization. Since its founding in 1957 by investment banker Randolph Compton, The Fund for Peace has been dedicated to preventing war and alleviating the conditions that cause war. Recently, research at The Fund for Peace has focused predominantly on identifying and reducing conflict stemming from weak or failed states.
[edit] Programs
The Fund for Peace publishes The Failed States Index, which rates nations' relative stability based on social, economic, and political indicators such as demographic pressures, presence of refugees, uneven economic development or severe economic decline, and rise of factionalized elites, among others.
The Fund for Peace also considers "Threat Convergence," or the idea that weak and failing states may contribute to global security threats such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.
Another ongoing project is the Fund for Peace's Regional Responses to Internal War Program. This project is meant to enrich the international debate on humanitarian and military intervention in internal state conflicts. The program attempts to bring regional leaders together to discuss regional values in the hopes of reaching a consensus on how to handle regional humanitarian crises should they arise. The program's focus is on four geographic regions: Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.
[edit] People
Since 1996, Dr. Pauline H. Baker has been President of The Fund for Peace. Dr. Baker developed the methodology on which the Failed States Index is based. Her analytical model, the Conflict Assessment System Tool, furnishes early warning of internal state conflicts and assists in assessing post-conflict policies. Before coming to the Fund for Peace, Dr. Baker taught at the University of Lagos in Nigeria, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, as well as serving as a staff member of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
