The Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation (CMM) was founded in 2002 to lead USAID’s efforts to address the sources of instability and violent conflict.

DCHA/CMM provides analytical and operational support to USAID overseas missions, development officers and program partners to enable the Agency to better address the causes and consequences of violent conflict. DCHA/CMM's portfolio of publications offers cutting edge research to the Agency and its partners on a variety of conflict-related topics, while its people-to-people reconciliation fund supports peacebuilding programs carried out through a host of US and local organizations. DCHA/CMM also serves as a liaison between USAID and the broader conflict resolution and peacebuilding community, convening events at the Agency and representing USAID in the academic, interagency, and international donor communities.

Our Work

Violent conflict destroys infrastructure and development investments, imposes huge economic costs on conflict countries, neighbors and the international community, undermines political development, and creates humanitarian crises. DCHA/CMM analyzes the causes and consequences of violent conflict, supports early warning and early response to violent conflict, and integrates conflict mitigation and management into USAID's analysis, strategies and programs. Recognizing that development and humanitarian assistance itself is vulnerable to exploitation in situations of violence and extremism, DCHA/CMM also leads USAID's efforts to ensure all its activities are sensitive to local conflict and security dynamics.  

Technical Leadership

A core component of DCHA/CMM‘s programming is devoted to advancing applied research in topics pertinent to conflict, security, and development. Through technical leadership, DCHA/CMM seeks to distill practical lessons from scholarship, evaluation, and experience to improve the quality of development programming and policy-making. DCHA/CMM engages in research areas such as countering violent extremism and insurgency, program effectiveness, natural resource management and gender. DCHA/CMM also tracks and measures trends in fragility and instability risk to support early warning and early response to conflict.

DCHA/CMM has participated in more than 85 conflict-related assessments, published 11 annual Alert List reports and produced more than 10 Conflict Toolkits. These toolkits provide USAID missions with access to concrete, practical program options, lessons learned, and and monitoring and evaluation tools for implementing more effective conflict programs. DCHA/CMM has also awarded grants to leading universities and research teams and commissioned original analysis on cross-cutting and emerging topics such as urbanization, food security, resilience to climate change, and transnational crime.

People to People Reconciliation Fund

DCHA/CMM supports peacebuilding through a $26 million “people-to-people” reconciliation fund. This fund supports conflict mitigation and reconciliation programs and activities which bring together individuals of different ethnic, religious or political backgrounds from areas of civil conflict and war. These programs provide opportunities for adversaries to address issues, reconcile differences, promote greater understanding and mutual trust, and work on common goals with regard to potential, ongoing, or recent conflict.

DCHA/CMM has supported nearly 330 peacebuilding projects in 42 countries, resulting in the award of more than $230 million in grants for “people-to-people” reconciliation programs since 2004.

Field Support and Technical Assistance

DCHA/CMM provides technical assistance to USAID field missions, regional bureaus, and other operating units to enable them to identify and better respond to conflict dynamics. DCHA/CMM works with missions to develop conflict management and mitigation programs and provides conflict sensitive guidance throughout the Country Development and Cooperation Strategy process. DCHA/CMM provides field support through conflict assessments, program design, training, strategic facilitation and grant monitoring.

Using the Conflict Assessment Framework, DCHA/CMM leads USAID conflict assessments and routinely participates in interagency conflict assessments. Conflict assessment is the first step in designing programs that effectively address the causes and consequences of violent conflict to promote international peace and development.

Training and Outreach

A key part of DCHA/CMM's mandate is to act as a change agent for USAID. One way we do this is by helping foster a new generation of development officers who are knowledgeable about conflict dynamics and have the required skills to guide Agency investments in conflict-prone environments. Training both USAID development officers and partners in conflict analysis and conflict-sensitive programming is, therefore, an important part DCHA/CMM’s portfolio. DCHA/CMM also reaches out to Washington-based USAID staff and the partner community by organizing knowledge sharing events, including a recent groundbreaking speaker series on counter-insurgency.

Since 2012 DCHA/CMM has trained more than 900 U.S. Government, interagency and non-government partners in the necessary tools to design programs and ensure a peacebuilding approach in conflict-affected environments