CeaseFire in Action: International Partners

Interpersonal violence accounts for more than 1,500 deaths a day worldwide…

That is an estimated 547,500 total victims a year globally. Many of these conflicts— while superficially attributed to cultural, tribal, or ethnic divisions— arise out of personal grievances. Petty disputes, bad business transactions, geographical boundaries, threats over minor personal affairs often gain momentum encompassing family, friends, tribal members and other affiliations that escalate these clashes into larger scale feuds. Beyond the international headlines the nature of violence globally stems more from interpersonal conflict than traditional, organized combat.

…but it doesn’t have to be this way.

CeaseFire is a unique, interdisciplinary, public health approach to international violence prevention. Rather than viewing violence through the conventional human rights or criminal justice lens, CeaseFire maintains that violence is a learned behavior that can be prevented using disease control methods. The greatest predictors of violent “events,” regardless of the specific political, religious, social, or economic motivations for violence or how it manifests (tribal conflict, militia warfare, street gangs) are prior events. This is as true of the genocidal violence among tribal groups in Rwanda as it is of gang violence in American communities. Recognizing this has profound global implications, if violence is re-envisioned as a disease and regarded as a reversible epidemic, it can be stopped.

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS

IRAQ:

In 2008, CeaseFire partnered with the American Islamic Congress to launch its first international site in Basrah, Iraq. That program, which successfully intervened in over 112 violent incidents in its first year, has since been expanded to four additional sites in Iraq. Learn more: http://www.aicongress.org/prog/iraq/BasrahAntiViolence.html

Ashoka, a social change engine and promoter of innovation, elected Dr. Gary Slutkin, Founder & Executive Director of CeaseFire as an Ashoka Fellow in 2009. CeaseFire was chosen as 1 of 25 programs to be part of Globalizer, an Ashoka initiative aimed at expanding the projects international reach in 2010.

COLLABORATORS

LONDON:

The Chaos Theory, a UK-based violence prevention program modeled after CeaseFire, has been working with the program for more than a year. Members of The Chaos Theory have received hands-on training from CeaseFire at the street-level and on various curriculum modules.

Read more about the London replication here:

Chaos Theory Part I | Chaos Theory Part II | Chaos Theory Part III

SOUTH AFRICA:

South Africa continues to have one of the highest homicide rates in the world with nearly 50 murders a day. In September 2010, Dr. Slutkin and Jalon Arthur, a Project Coordinator for CeaseFire toured across Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban, & Cape Town for a fifteen day/ four city visit with government representatives, NGOs, community and religious leaders to discuss what can be done about violence in these disproportionately impacting these communities.

Read more of their visit here:

Will CeaseFire work in Cape Town? | US Embassy News

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO:

From 2000 to 2008 the number of murders skyrocketed by 336% to 550. The following year (2009) the homicide rate was at 42 per 100,000, double the 18.1 per 100,000 homicide average for the rest of the Caribbean. The Citizen Security Programme (CSP) is working to change this fact. In 2009, CSP reached out to CeaseFire to help shape their violence prevention programme.