Published: 2 October 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Known as Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM) grants, this money is part of a worldwide effort to bring together individuals of different backgrounds from areas of conflict in people-to-people reconciliation activities.
These programs provide opportunities to address issues, reconcile differences, and promote greater understanding and mutual trust by working on common goals such as economic development, environment, health, education, sport, music, and information technology. Since they began in 2004, the US has invested in 113 CMM grants.
These grants have helped end conflicts, with Northern Ireland being one of the best examples. More than two decades before the 1998 landmark Good Friday Agreement, US president Jimmy Carter said the US "wholeheartedly supports [a] peaceful means for finding a just solution that involves both parts of the community of Northern Ireland.”
In 1986, president Ronald Reagan's commitment was realised when the US agreed to provide assistance to a newly created International Fund for Ireland (IFI) that would support civil society NGOs and economic and social development in those areas of Northern Ireland and the border counties of Ireland that had been most affected by the conflict.
Research by British academic Maria Power has demonstrated that the churches, integrated Catholic-Protestant schools, and women’s groups funded through the IFI played a significant role in breaking down the psychological factors that were at the heart of the conflict.
Twenty-five years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, one of the reasons this process failed to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians was that too many people were not ready to make compromises.
The lack of trust on both sides led to gross generalisations that still feature all too frequently in media about the essential nature of Jews and Muslims. The idea that the other seeks peace as much as I do, and that the majority on both sides seek a life free of conflict and oppression remains absent from Israel today.
Robi Damelin, whose son David was killed by a Palestinian sniper in 2002, is an active member of and spokesperson for The Parents Circle - Families Forum. This group has benefited from US funding for many years. Responding to the announcement that its funding would be cut, Damelin implored the US administration to reconsider.
“It makes no sense to alienate those who wish to meet from both sides. Cutting off contact creates fear and hatred. To create peace, the people must be at peace with themselves. We who have lost our beloved children, parents, brothers and sisters in this conflict, which should have ended long ago, understand the consequence of violence better than anyone.
“No matter how difficult and dark it gets, we will not give up our desire for reconciliation, nonviolence and (dare I say it) peace,” Damelin wrote in Haaretz.
A few days before the announcement to put all CMM funding on hold, I began working at Kids4Peace, a grassroots interfaith youth movement dedicated to ending conflict and inspiring hope in Jerusalem and other divided societies around the world.
While not immediately affected by the cuts, the support provided by the US to Kids4Peace over the past four years has allowed the organisation to grow substantially to a point where it now engages over 300 youth every year in meaningful dialogue and action programs.
Kids4Peace is the only cross-border youth movement for Israelis and Palestinians that facilitates regular meetings over the formative six-year period of high school. The impact of Kids4Peace in planting seeds of hope for a better future in the hearts and minds of Jerusalem teens cannot be underestimated.
In between the often violent and extreme strategies various actors on both sides of the conflict employ, face-to-face interactions are one of the most powerful non-violent tools available to those who seek a better reality from the present.
One can only hope that more decision makers within the US administration come to see Kids4Peace in action in order to realise that peace is possible, and with the right support, can continue to move and inspire the leaders of tomorrow.
WATCH:: Eighteen teenagers from Kids4Peace visit Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Photo: Jewish, Muslim and Christian Youth at the Kids4Peace camp on Kibbutz Ketura, August 2018.
