Opinion & Insights

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March 30, 2021

Building Community

Community work involves more than physical presence and specialized expertise. Join Oregon State University graduate student, Ashley Peiffer, in exploring what it means to build meaningful relationships that inspire community-led projects and how research with Secure Fisheries illuminates both perso...
March 18, 2021

Peacebuilding Requires a Coordinated Effort

OEF’s goal is ultimately the elimination of war. In order to achieve this admittedly lofty goal, we need to have a working theory of the causes of war and how we can help to disrupt them. Fortunately, there is a large body of research in “peace science” and, more broadly, political science. In devel...
March 12, 2021

African Actors Leading the Way

Southern African regions are increasingly shaping global norms around security. A recent blog series by OEF Research explores these.
Marcel Arsenault
Conor Seyle
February 24, 2021

Balancing long-term thinking, short-term metrics, and flexible project planning

Over the past several decades, a number of different critiques of nonprofit work have emerged. Inevitably, these critiques have a strong basis — they identify real and specific issues in how nonprofits work — but collectively they may present a problem by calling for approaches that aren’t easily r...
February 04, 2021

A Deep-Dive into OEF's Theory of Peace

Peacebuilding organizations like OEF face a surprising problem: deciding what we mean by peace. In developing our theories of impact and articulating how we do our work, we start with our end goal: the elimination of war and large-scale organized political violence.
January 10, 2021

The Future of Fishing: The Greatest Challenges Facing Somali Fishers

When fisheries are managed effectively and fairly, there is less competition over resources, less food waste, more economic opportunity, and therefore, fewer drivers of conflict. Secure Fisheries is working to combat the challenges surrounding the fishing industry, from overfishing and illegal fishi...
January 08, 2021

Statement on the Ongoing Risk of Political Violence in the United States

OEF calls for the United States government, civil society in the US, and our population as a whole to commit to an awareness of all of the multiple pressures leading to violence and the need for all of them to be addressed as part of a systemic response. Failing this, it is our genuine fear that the...
Conor Seyle
January 07, 2021

Will the US Take Heed of Recent Lessons To Address US Conflict Drivers?

The violence the world witnessed at the US Capitol on January 6 is no exception to what we have observed internationally for more than a decade in terms of drivers of political violence and conflict. In this issue, OEF Senior Strategic Advisor Conor Seyle dives into what we can learn about moving fo...