| Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have emerged alongside states and intergovernmental organizations as important actors in human rights, refugee work, humanitarian aid, and other global issues. One less noticed role is that of NGOs in peacebuilding. With the changing nature of war in the past decade, NGOS are increasingly purposeful about their impact in conflict zones and are afforded new opportunities with the failure of governmental actors to manage violent conflict.; In the NGO literature, claims are made that NGOs' unofficial status, impartiality, and long grassroots presence are important resources for international peacebuilding. The same claims are made of religious actors in an emerging literature on the resources that religion and religious actors bring to international peacebuilding. This study combines these two evolving research areas, asking whether these two separate literatures examine the same phenomenon of unofficial actors in peacebuilding, or if and how faith-basis is relevant.; The answer is sought by comparing secular and faith-based (Christian) NGOs involved in peacebuilding. A descriptive and quantitative overview of the population of secular and faith-based globally operative US peacebuilding NGOs is used as a context for case studies of six representative organizations: Catholic Relief Services, Mennonite Central Committee, World Vision, Conflict Management Group, Institute for Multi-track Diplomacy, and Search for Common Ground. Data for the case studies was collected via documentary analysis and interviews. It is hypothesized that faith-based peacebuilding NGOs are different from secular NGOs in their motivations, moral power, organizational structure and management, and organizational mission and programming.; It is found that faith-based NGOs are different in their motivations and in organizational structure and management; they have distinctive organizational cultures, constituencies, and networks. Faith-basis has less influence on an organization's mission and programs; these were influenced more by the fact that faith-based organizations in the data set are mostly relief and development organizations while the secular organizations work exclusively in conflict resolution.; These findings contribute toward broader goals of providing empirical research on NGO peacebuilders, differentiating types of NGOs, and giving insights into cooperation within the NGO world and with NGOs and governmental actors. |
