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Jon Bellish
September 14, 2021

Blurring the Lines of Separation; Localizing Ourselves for Peace

The recent presence of military coups covered in the news may lead people to believe that coups are more prevalent in 2021 than they have been in recent years, however, this perception may warrant further questions pertaining to what qualifies an event as a coup, and how loosely should the term be u...
September 01, 2021

Military Coups in 2021

The recent presence of military coups covered in the news may lead people to believe that coups are more prevalent in 2021 than they have been in recent years, however, this perception may warrant further questions pertaining to what qualifies an event as a coup, and how loosely should the term be u...
July 22, 2021

Getting to Peace Using Open Source Data

The world is complex enough when everyone is operating with the same set of underlying facts on any given topic. When those facts are hidden or manipulated, overcoming intractable conflict becomes nearly impossible. Sharing open source data among adversarial governments, within governments, and betw...
July 09, 2021

Celebrating Diversity & Inclusion

June is Pride Month and in the U.S. we also commemorate “Juneteenth” on June 19th, the marking of the end of slavery in the U.S. Already widely recognized, we applaud the U.S. House of Reps for recently voting overwhelmingly to formalize Juneteenth as a national federal holiday. OEF wants to extend ...
diversity inclusion equity gender equality
June 17, 2021

Peace Field Peers Agree: Evidence-Based Practice Is Key

OEF and Alliance for Peacebuilding released a report last month detailing the findings of a survey of professional peacebuilders on their ideas about evidence-based practice in peacebuilding. The results suggest that despite the debate, the field has a pretty developed understanding of what evidence...
evidence based practice peacebuilding
May 14, 2021

Using Coordination as a Key to Peacebuilding

The challenges of peacebuilding involve maximizing the contribution of multiple technical experts in an often quickly changing environment, and one where participants may not always trust all other participants or where they may be concerned about maintaining their individual authority to make decis...
networked coordination an effective approach to peacebuilding
April 20, 2021

How Do We Get to an Earth Without War?

OEF’s Executive Director and Chief Operating Office, Jon Bellish talks about OEF’s commitment to Relentless Empiricism as core to its belief in and support of iterative problem-solving and careful, analytical design. He discusses how OEF relies on evidence to cut through complexities in order to sol...
the important of using evidence to make decisions in peacebuilding
April 08, 2021

Why Do People Choose to Rebel?

Answering the question of why people rebel is central to understanding civil war. Research shows that civil wars and rebellion are neither driven by ancient hatreds between ethnic groups nor simply by opportunistic greed.
April 07, 2021

Is the World Getting More Peaceful?

This blog post briefly reviews the current state of research on armed conflict, discusses the predictors of peace, and addresses the opportunities for OEF, dedicated to fostering sustainable peace.
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