Jake Sherman is IPI’s Senior Director for Programs and Director of the Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations.
Prior to joining IPI in November 2017, he served at the United States Mission to the United Nations, where he focused on strengthening the effectiveness of peace operations, including as a delegate to Fifth Committee of the General Assembly and the Special Committee on Peacekeeping (C-34). He previously worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development Office of Transition Initiatives as the Regional Team Leader for Afghanistan and Pakistan, overseeing stabilization and countering violent extremism programs, and as USAID’s coordinator for the 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.
He has worked on peace and security-related policy issues for the New York University Center on International Cooperation and the International Peace Institute, served as a Political Affairs Officer for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, consulted on peacebuilding for non-governmental organizations in Cambodia, and worked for Physicians for Human Rights in the former Yugoslavia.
United Nations peace operations are increasingly recognizing strategic communications as essential to implementing their mandates and managing expectations about what they can and cannot achieve. This has led them to ramp up their communications capabilities and shift their approach away from the traditional top-down, one-way model of communication. Nonetheless, missions continue to face obstacles in […]
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Climate change and the associated climate-related security risks increase instability and have significant adverse effects on peacebuilding. Within the UN, however, there is a lack of consensus on which organs are most appropriate to respond to climate-related security risks. Most of the bodies addressing climate change do not address its intersection with peace and security, […]
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The effectiveness of UN peace operations depends on the “operational readiness” of their personnel, which refers to the knowledge, expertise, training, equipment, and mindset needed to carry out mandated tasks. While the need to improve the operational readiness of peacekeepers has been increasingly recognized over the past few years, the concept of “human rights readiness”—the […]
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In September 2018, more than 100 UN member states signed a Declaration of Shared Commitments as part of the secretary-general’s Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative. The declaration was intended to rally member states to address urgent challenges facing contemporary peacekeeping operations. But one year later, the declaration has not yet translated into concrete action by […]
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Secretary-General António Guterres launched the Action for Peacekeeping initiative (A4P) in March 2018 to galvanize member states to commit to peacekeeping and to translate statements of high-level political support into concrete actions. Since then, member states have signed a “Declaration of Shared Commitments on UN Peacekeeping Operations” in which they agree to adapt peacekeeping operations […]
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Globalization, suggest the authors of this collection, is creating new opportunities—some legal, some illicit—for armed factions to pursue their agendas in civil war.Within this context, they analyze the key dynamics of war economies and the challenges posed for conflict resolution and sustainable peace. Thematic chapters consider key issues in the political economy of internal wars, […]
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A report of the Working Group on The Role of Private Sector in Armed Conflict, held April 5, 2002, at the Mission of Luxembourg to the United Nations, to examine private sector actors perceptions of and experiences with certain key existing and prospective measures, both voluntary and regulatory, to manage their behavior in conflict zones.Download
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Background Paper for the Conference on Policies and Practices for Regulating Resource Flows to Armed Conflicts, co-sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study and Conference Center, May 20 to 24, 2002, Bellagio, Italy.Download
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A conference report summarizing discussions at the Conference on Policies and Practices for Regulating Resource Flows to Armed Conflicts, co-sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study and Conference Center, May 20-24, 2002, Bellagio, Italy.Download
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A conference report summarizing panel discussions held on September 10, 2001, and co-organized by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the International Peace Academy [now International Peace Institute] on the intersection between the economic dimensions of conflict and prospects for developing policy approaches to address the political economy of violent conflict.Download
Read moreThe UN Security Council does not have the luxury of choosing between normative imperatives associated with preventing…
Despite the instability it faces, Guinea-Bissau—alongside countries like Madagascar, Chad, or the…
There are a number of reasons why it is difficult for…
Without a corresponding political process, UN protection activities are an ineffective bandaid in situations of…
The UN, in its implementation of A4P+, must address the heavily masculine, exclusionary, and militarized structures which often preclude women (and anyone outside of a very…
Facing its most difficult period since its inception in April 2013, MINUSMA, and…
Amid mounting pressure to…
The complex, and not always coordinated, ecosystem of military operations across the Sahel has been aptly labeled a security traffic jam. Why are external forces in the Sahel?…
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The International Peace Institute is an independent, international not-for-profit think tank with a staff representing more than 20 nationalities, located in New York across from United Nations headquarters. IPI is dedicated to promoting the prevention and resolution of conflicts between and within states by strengthening international peace and security institutions. To achieve its purpose, IPI employs a mix of policy research, convening, publishing and outreach.
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