Why was this process launched?
In early 2003, a core group of peace and security leaders brought together more than 50 leading activists, scholars and funders to participate in a collaborative process to develop a long-term vision and three- to five-year strategic plan designed to strengthen the community, increase its impact and assure its sustainability. The impetus for this effort stemmed from three sobering realities:
- The dramatic changes in national and international security following 9/11 and the end of the Cold War offer new opportunities to reframe peace and security issues and make them top policy priorities;
- Despite apparent popular support for new directions in U.S. military and foreign policy, groups supporting progressive alternatives have been increasingly marginalized by decision-makers and the media; and
- Significant reductions in foundation support for nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation efforts compel reconsideration of how to take advantage of and supplement remaining resources
What are the objectives of the Peace and Security Initiative?
By improving strategic planning, communication and fundraising, we expect that:
- Strategic priorities for both short- and long-term policy changes will guide collective activities;
- More effective campaigns -- involving all sectors of the community -- will be designed, coordinated, and implemented;
- Messages will be refined to better persuade targeted audiences, spokespeople will be trained to deliver them more effectively, and new messengers recruited to reach key constituencies;
- Capacity building tools will be deployed to help organizations develop additional skills to build their memberships, create alliances, influence policy-makers, publicize their work, and attract financial support;
- New funding sources will be identified and mobilized to support programmatic priorities
What are the issues initially being addressed?
There is broad consensus in the peace and security community on the following problems, which provide opportunities to work collaboratively:
- Preventing nuclear terrorism by locking up and safeguarding all nuclear bomb making materials (i.e., cooperative threat reduction, global clean out, etc.);
- Deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons in US security policy by stopping new nuclear weapons and testing, de-alerting and reducing nuclear stockpiles
- Promote an end to U.S. military involvement in Iraq while encouraging stability and reconstruction
- Halt and verifiably ban production of nuclear weapons material (e.g., promote Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, stop resumption of the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, etc.)
- Reprioritize national security spending in order to strengthen homeland defense and non-military alternatives
- Develop alternatives to the use of force by promoting a new and comprehensive national security strategy
- Maintain space as a weapons-free sanctuary
- Promote energy security
- Preventing acquisition of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them by terrorists or new states;
- Promote policies to control the trade in lethal conventional weapons; and
- Advance policies and institutions to promote effective peace building and to prevent genocide
What is the budget for the Peace and Security Initiative and how is it funded?
The FY2006-2007 budget for PSI is $163,540; if you would like to see the detailed version of the budget, please click here. Currently, PSI is supported primarily by the Ploughshares Fund and the Ford Foundation with additional support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Connect US. No government funding of any form is involved.
What groups have been involved with PSI?
There are over 200 groups that are currently involved with the PSI. Please click here for a list.
