The Delhi Policy Group’s Peace & Conflict Program - International & Globalization

Program Overview

This program, launched by the Delhi Policy Group in 2009 with the support of the Heinrich Boll Stiftung, aims to promote the development of youth and think tanks as stakeholders in peace-building policy and its implementation in Afghanistan, through developing regional cooperation and exchange between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. It conducts three types of activities:

(a) Short training programs in peace-building and student exchanges between Afghans, Indians and Pakistanis;

(b) Research and policy development on the peace process in Afghanistan, through institutional and think tank networking, conferences and joint policy papers with regional collaboration between Afghanistan-Pakistan-India; and  

(c) Professional and civil society exchanges, comprising visit-study programs in

Indiafor professional and civil society groups in Afghanistan such as the media, local government, teachers/educationists, parliamentarians, lawyers/judiciary, affirmative action and women’s self-employment organizations.

Description of context

Since the Bonn Agreement of late 2001, there has been a global effort to assist the Afghan government with security, economic revival and social-political reconstruction. While the EU countries, the UN, NATO and the US have been in the lead, countries such as India, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Pakistan have also focused on different aspects of reconstruction to help the country to stabilize and rebuild.

Nevertheless, there remain serious obstacles to stabilization and peace-building in Afghanistan. Three decades of war have left Afghanistan dilapidated especially in terms of physical, economic and social infrastructure. While there are a host of government and NGO programs, including under the Afghanistan National Development strategy and the Afghanistan Compact, think tanks remain with limited policy influence; local government is struggling to find its feet, and Afghanistan’s youth lack sufficient backing to enable them to become partners in peace, even though they make up the bulk of the population today.

After six years of international engagement in Afghanistan, it is being realized that the involvement and support of neighbors is essential to ending conflict, stabilization and reconstruction in that country. As instability continues to rise and ebb in Afghanistan, moreover, it is important to widen capacity-building programs in such a way that public stake-holding in peace and stability can grow.

With Afghanistan having recently joined the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), a new opportunity has arisen for regional cooperation to help Afghanistan. India is the largest donor to Afghanistan in South Asia; and Pakistan is its most influential neighbor. Old hostility between India and Pakistan has raised fears of their strategic enmity spilling over once again into Afghanistan, and the Kabul and Mumbai terror attacks have damaged the renewed peace processes between the three countries.

Despite the growing importance of involving its neighbors in the stabilization of Afghanistan, few peace-building programs have adopted a regional approach to the issue. This project adopts a trilateral approach – not only working on the Afghanistan-India and Afghanistan-Pakistan tracks but more importantly creating a three-way Afghanistan-India-Pakistan track.

Relevance of project

In most protracted conflicts the productive engagement of youth is critical to ending conflict and rehabilitating society. Though young people are increasingly visible in government and NGO organizations, this project aims to engage them in policy formulation as well as policy implementation (which is what they currently do).

Program Implementation

The lead partner for the program is the Delhi Policy Group’s Peace and Conflict Program. The Delhi Policy Group is an independent think tank which was founded in 1993, with four core program areas: security, peace and conflict, governance, and science and technology. It holds closed door meetings, round tables, conferences and public events, publishes a series of policy monographs and briefings, as well as issue based books, and networks with a range of think tanks, policy institutions (governmental and non-governmental) and civil society organizations in India and abroad. Its peace and conflict program focuses on comparative “lessons learned” from successful as well as unsuccessful peace processes, and between 2004-2006 it developed a course of simulations in conflict resolution and peace-building, in partnership with Queen’s University Belfast and Dublin City University, which was tested at 6 Indian universities.