Our 2022 Impact

Amplify women’s voices and gender perspectives

Strengthen the global network of Women, Peace and Security stakeholders

Promote action by multiple stakeholders to turn policy into practice

Connect women peacebuilders to the larger policy and practitioner community

Collect opensource data

Analyze information and produce actionable briefs

Engage decisionmakers through trusted networks

Improve dialogue and de-escalate nuclear threat

Catalyze, coach, and connect BB3 teams

Practice BB3 through interactive exercises, practical application, discussion, and feedback

Women, Peace, and Security

The inclusion of a gender perspective improves security for everyone. However, women make up just a quarter of legislative bodies around the world. Unsurprisingly, a recent study by OEF’s Our Secure Future program found that more than half of the women surveyed said that their views were not represented in security discussions; 71 percent said they disagreed with the security priorities set by the state.

Through our Our Secure Future program, OEF has engaged with 38 national governments to further progress on the UN’s Women, Peace, and Security Agenda national action plans and is concentrating on three avenues to achieve these goals: amplifying women’s voices, strengthening the global network of women peacebuilders, and promoting committed action by stakeholders to turn policy into practice. OEF provides the U.S. Congress and Departments of State and Defense with ongoing strategic advice on program design and security cooperation. The U.S. IndoPacific Command has used OEF’s analyses to advise other countries, such as Australia, on maritime and technology security issues.

Nuclear Escalation and Risk Reduction

In a time of escalating conflict and international tensions, there is a risk that nuclear weapons could be deployed as a result of uncertainty, misdirection—or even error. Through its Open Nuclear Network program, OEF is working to reduce this risk by collecting and analyzing data, producing actionable briefs, engaging decision-makers, and de-escalating tensions through improved dialogue.

OEF builds relationships across national and alliance boundaries using transparently non-aligned, datadriven analysis and outreach to key actors. It produced some 30 publications in 2022 that have reached critical decision-makers and has been used and referred to in multilateral initiatives and bodies such as The Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation and the Panel of Experts for the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea.

Peace Mediation, Negotiation, and Reconciliation

“Who could do what tomorrow to avert war?” Peace negotiator William Ury posed this question, and OEF has taken up the charge to try to find the answer. The eXperimental Negotiation Initiative (xNI) has distilled Ury’s 45 years of learning and practice with impossible conflicts into a transformative mindset called Possibilism, examining political strife around the world—from North Korea to Venezuela to Afghanistan and beyond.

To achieve measurable results, xNI has employed its powerful BB3 method to participants from 115 organizations studying more than 40 different conflicts. Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, OEF convened a panel of high-level experts which generated two papers that outlined a framework for negotiation on mitigation. The ideas have been circulated at the highest levels in Ukraine, Russia, the United States, China, and other countries.

High-level government officials have said that BB3 fills a significant gap in training.

The Balcony

A place of calm and perspective that allows actors to envision goals

The Bridge

A way to reach across the chasm of conflict

The

Third Side

The surrounding community that can help the parties achieve their goals