The Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) through its distance learning program provides courses in peace and conflict resolution. Many of these courses are free and they can be easily accessed online. Besides, USIP offers electronic certificates for certain courses to trainees who successfully pass course exams online. Some of these courses are also available in Arabic, Farsi and Spanish.
While these courses can be relevant to students studying peace and conflict studies, they can be extremely useful for NGOs and other agencies in developing countries to understand conflict management and learn lessons from around the world and contribute their own experiences. As these courses have been developed in an interactive manner, trainees will get several opportunities to share their ideas. For those who cannot access internet continuously, the courses also provide pdf versions of the curriculum which can be downloaded and viewed offline. There are also Question & Answer sessions in the course which will help trainees to check their own progress of learning.
What more! At the end of specified courses, there will be a certificate exam, also to be conducted online. If trainees pass this exam, they will be awarded with an electronic certificate.
Currently, USIP’s Education and Training Online program has four online courses open for anyone to study for free. These courses are:
- Introduction to Conflict Analysis
- Introduction to Negotiation and Conflict Management
- Introduction to Interfaith Conflict Resolution
- Introduction to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
As you can see, three out of the currently available four courses offer certificates. So NGOs sitting in remote developing countries can avail this opportunity to learn and gain recognized certificates without paying any fee or traveling long distances. To start attending the courses, visit this link.
