Violence Prevention.

Youth in Conflict-Affected Areas

The USAID Human Rights Activity increases the capacity of governments and local organizations to promote human rights and protect vulnerable populations. Chief of Party Kelly Brooks shares insights on youth development in Colombia.

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Specialists
Resources

Enrique Betancourt

Director, Citizen Security Initiative

Enrique Rivas

Project Management Director, Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Business Unit

Raúl Soto

Chief of Party, USAID Violence Prevention and Reduction Activity (PREVI)

Ariana Szepesi-Colmenares

Director, New Business Development, Latin America and the Caribbean

Luke Waggoner

Senior Democracy and Governance Specialist

What Works to Prevent Violence Among Youth?

Projects
News and Blog

Reducing Crime and Restoring Trust in Mexico

Addressing root causes of violence in Mexico is key to reducing crime and restoring citizens’ trust.

Photograph taken at the exhibition "Huellas de la Memoria," where 220 pairs of hanging shoes and footprints engraved with the names of missing people speaks of disappearances in a country with more than 73,000 cases.

Countering Human Rights Violations in Mexico

Cycles of violence in Mexico continue to take a toll on civilians, necessitating greater accountability in Mexico’s human rights system.

Restoring Essential Services in Syria

Electricity, schools, roads, and other essential services are out of reach for many of Syria’s conflict-affected communities, magnifying the instability of their recovery efforts.

Creating A Safer Honduras

To reduce crime and violence in Honduras, communities need resources and governmental support that ensure citizen security in the areas of greatest need.

Preventing Crime and Violence in Mexico

With better partnerships across the government and civil society organizations, Mexico can improve the way it targets crime and violence in vulnerable communities.

Strengthening Human Rights in Colombia

To keep the peace following its 52-year armed conflict, Colombia must protect vulnerable populations’ human rights and prevent human rights violations from recurring.

Improving the Dominican Republic’s Justice System

The Dominican Republic needs a stronger criminal justice system to provide high-quality legal services and cultivate public trust.

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For Holistic Violence Prevention, Consider the Local Systems Framework

Community violence manifests in myriad forms, from gang violence to organized crime. The gamut of ways in which violence materializes implies a litany of societal cleavages, weak governance, and discordant agendas. Too often, efforts to prevent violence either diagnose the causes of violence too narrowly or fail to connect violence prevention on the individual level…

3 Questions with Cecilia Barraza on Leveraging Mobile Apps for Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Response During COVID-19

Colombia, like other countries, implemented stay-at-home measures and restricted certain social services to limit the spread of COVID-19 beginning in mid-March 2020. Women and girls have disproportionately faced increased risks of experiencing gender-based violence (GBV) due to the socioeconomic fallout, and women in Colombia often lack consistent and reliable pathways to report violence. In response,…

For the Women of Afghanistan, Peace with the Taliban May Not End the War

This post originally appeared on Devex. On August 14, while traveling back to Kabul from a meeting in Afghanistan’s northern Parwan province, Fawzia Koofi was the target of an assassination attempt. Though she was not seriously wounded and though the Taliban denied responsibility, the attack demonstrated what is at stake for Afghanistan’s women as peace…

Trauma-Informed Approaches to Development

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…

3 Questions with Fred Kasongo on Expanding Early Grade Literacy in Crisis-Affected Communities

1) Why do you think it is important to expand activities to Beni and Butembo? As a Congolese citizen, I’m aware of the challenges in various parts of my country, and in particular, in Beni and Butembo in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Approximately 1 million inhabitants of these cities face heightened insecurity from…

Making the Future Accessible: Safeguarding Women with Disabilities in the Workplace

Girls and women with disabilities experience up to 10 times more gender-based violence than those without disabilities (United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) global study). This can include physical or sexual violence, often perpetrated by family members or neighbors who know they are alone at home. To compound the situation further, women with disabilities have a…

3 Questions with Todd Diamond on Countering Violent Extremism and Preventing Gang Violence

This post was adapted from an interview between Elisabeth Dallas, Chemonics’ Peace, Stability and Transition Practice director, and Todd Diamond, a conflict, stability, and security director in Chemonics’ U.K. Division. For the full interview, watch the video below. How are violent extremism and gang violence — and the development community’s approaches to them — similar?…

A New Solution for Advancing Criminal Justice in Latin America

Nearly half of Latin American countries rank among the nations with the highest impunity scores worldwide, suggesting that criminal justice systems lack resources to prosecute and try crimes effectively in a context of widespread crime and violence. Yet, Latin America has the partners, the resources, and the interest to tap one promising solution to the…

People standing in front of mural of child's face

Stop, Look, and Listen! Preventing Recruitment of Youth into Illicit Activities in Southern Colombia

This post originally appeared on Harvard’s Center for International Development’s Building State Capability program’s blog. The authors successfully completed the 15-week Practice of Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation online course. This is their story. As development practitioners, we tend to rush in with solutions to deal with complex problems. We impose so-called best practices without digging…

Harnessing Technology to Address Gross Human Rights Violations

For the past decade, Mexico has faced a serious human rights crisis. More than 35,000 people have gone missing since 2006, their whereabouts still unknown. The National Commission of Human Rights has documented several alarming, unlawful killings of civilians by Mexican security forces without any authorities being charged. And torture continues to be a common…

Taking Those First Steps into Citizen Security Programming

In response to increasing security challenges worldwide, the international donor community is placing greater emphasis on citizen security programming. Citizen security can be defined as “the process of establishing, strengthening and protecting democratic civic order, eliminating threats of violence in a population and allowing for safe and peaceful coexistence.” As one example, the U.S. government strategy for…

A group of teenagers practice self-defense

Don’t Fight the System: 3 Steps to Apply the Local Systems Framework

Imagine you are in a neighborhood. In this neighborhood, there is a corner where young people gather every night to drink. We would call them “at-risk youth.” These are young guys who have dropped out of school, and the local priest decides that he is worried about them. The priest forms a basketball team that…

4 Best Practices to Counter and Prevent Violent Extremism Through Governance

Despite the recent weakening of violent extremist groups such as the Islamic State and Boko Haram, these threats continue to be a pressing global issue. In the development sector, countering violent extremism (CVE) and preventing violent extremism (PVE) are increasingly high priorities for government agencies and donors. As USAID, the State Department, and others grapple…

Of Banks and Barrios: Engaging Local Partners to Reduce and Prevent Violence

Decades of work to disrupt cycles of violence in developing countries has resulted in some promising, replicable approaches. Yet, to get to a “best-fit” approach within a particular country, we know that we cannot simply cut and paste strategies and tools from one context to the next. Considering this, what can market research conducted by…

Target Interventions to Reduce Homicides in Mexico

Homicides in Mexico had been steadily falling since hitting their peak between 2010 and 2011, but sudden spikes in 2015 and 2016 are causing the international community to look around for answers. October 2016 was the most violent month in nearly four years, appearing to wipe out recent progress. The good news is that based…

New Tool Developed to Bring Scientific Rigor to Crime Prevention in Mexico

Imagine it’s your job to prevent crime and violence in Guerrero, the second most violent state in Mexico, with 46 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. What would your prevention program look like? What sort of information would you want access to before you designed your program? Much like actual policy-makers, you would probably want to know…

News: Evaluation Meets Design: Presenting at #Eval16

During the American Evaluation Association’s (AEA’s) annual conference, monitoring, evaluation, learning, and research experts convene to explore the latest practices, methods, and findings defining their field. At Evaluation 2016, attendees are discussing evaluation through the lens of design — from data visualization to systematic approaches to designing programs. To contribute to the intersection between evaluation…

Predicting Human Rights Violations Before They Happen

In 2000, Colombia was besieged by what had been one of the most violent decades in the history of its armed internal conflict. The rise and consolidation of paramilitary groups throughout the country that had begun as a self-protection movement against the guerrillas were out of control, and Colombia saw some of the worst human…

3 Questions with Lainie Reisman: Preventing Crime and Violence in Mexico’s Roughest Places

Your program is working in Juarez, Monterrey, and Tijuana, and other areas selected in part because of their astronomical crime and violence rates. Juarez was once the “murder capital” of the world. What’s the key to preventing crime and violence these areas? We need reliable data and information and the willingness of officials at all…

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