Afghanistan stands on the brink of a historic peace deal with the Taliban. However, with a peace deal comes the prospect of incorporating the Taliban into the formal structures of governance. And with a unified government, questions emerge about the impact of such governance on women’s rights. Over the past 20 years, the United States…
Niki Wood is an award-winning mixed-methods Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) expert, specialising in weaving together behavior change theory, complexity science, and systems-thinking into accessible and participatory approaches for project teams. She is currently the MEL Practice Lead at Chemonics UK. Niki has led the design and delivery of complexity-sensitive MEL for projects funded by…
Syria Regional Program II (SRP II) operated with the goal of achieving a moderate, inclusive, and stable Syria. The project maintained and increased the influence of strategic moderate entities, strengthened communities to better resist extremism, and enabled the early recovery of newly liberated areas from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) by providing…
Alejandro Ruiz-Acevedo currently serves as the chief of party on Inclusive Justice project in Colombia, after concluding his stewardship of the preceding Justice for a Sustainable Peace project in Colombia. He is an experienced chief of party and development specialist with more than 19 years of experience, including with institutional strengthening programs and local initiatives…
Global mental health experts recognize that traumatic stress can dramatically affect progress toward the same outcomes Chemonics projects work toward each day, including educational achievement, economic productivity, social cohesion, positive communal relations, and overall health and wellbeing. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many of these sources of trauma, whether it be armed conflict, natural…
When many people think of the concept of trauma, they imagine a specific and singular event that causes overwhelming stress for the person affected. In reality, trauma can be understood as an experience, a series of events, or set of circumstances that can have lasting and adverse effects on individual and community physical, social, and…
COVID-19 has forced the development community to pivot programming and innovate to bridge the physical divide that social distancing has imposed. Mohammad Youssef is the director of programs for the U.S. State Department-funded Injaz education project in Syria. In this blog, Mohammad reflects on new COVID-induced challenges, and how his background in IT has helped him…
Chemonics is pleased to announce Sahar Tabaja as its new Peace, Stability, and Transition Practice (PST) director. Ms. Tabaja is an accomplished stabilization expert with more than 10 years of experience in governance, conflict prevention, and managing capacity building programs in conflict-affected and fragile environments. Prior to this role, Ms. Tabaja served as a stabilization…
Sahar Tabaja is a conflict specialist with more than 15 years of experience designing and managing stabilization, governance, P/CVE, and peacebuilding programs in the Middle East. Her work has focused on exploring how youth, women, civil society, and local actors can positively change governance practices, alter conflict systems, and enable societal peace in fragile environments.…
On August 4, 2020, some 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored for years at the Port of Beirut exploded, emitting a mushroom cloud of pink and yellow smoke. People felt the material impact up to 100 miles away. The death toll on the second day of the explosion exceeded 100 residents, and…
Bilal Al Ayoubi is the Task Order 2 director of USAID’s Lebanon Community Support Program (CSP). He previously served as the senior program development specialist on the Chemonics-implemented Lebanon Civic Support Initiative and as senior transition advisor for the Yemen Stabilization Initiative with Development Transformations, both projects funded by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives between…