Middle East

A hub of best practice, we bring together international experts, who share our philosophy, to participate in dialogue and contribute to our influential research and policy reports. These encourage a deeper appreciation of the causes and drivers of conflict in the Middle East and challenge established ways of thinking through creative approaches to conflict resolution.

Our work provides spaces in which groups who disagree may begin to build dialogue and find common interests. For example, our work in the occupied Palestinian territories brings together representatives within a divided group, while our work in Lebanon brings together opposing groups. Our guiding principles for the resolution of conflict are:

• We need to understand not just the symptoms of a conflict - including violence, but where the root causes lie and whether there are legitimate grievances which can be addressed to bring an end to violence.
• Political solutions which exclude significant constituencies are doomed to fail.
• Whenever relevant we liaise with governments at the highest political level to increase their awareness of the root causes on conflict and how this needs to shape their policy.
• We need a better understanding of why groups resort to violence to establish the incentives for non-violent behaviour and peaceful coexistence.
• We advocate non-military options to resolve conflict.
• We seek to understand when citizens feel protected and will invest in the state and when they turn to non-state actors.
• We do this with a small core team who are ambitious for change; we leverage our impact by working closely with international consultants, advisers with deep experience of the region to make a contribution to the reduction of conflict in the region. Our recent work has been generously supported by the European Union, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, CORDAID, Ploughshares, JAC Trust, Network for Social Change, Zinian Trust, Amberstone Trust, Polden-Puckham Trust and the Rifkind-Levy Trust.