This online clearinghouse provides a central site where educators, students, organisations, and the community of practitioners working in the conflict management field can access multimedia materials that support conflict analysis and prevention, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. It was developed as a joint project of the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) and Georgetown University's Conflict Resolution Program. These collaborators hope that the Clearinghouse can aid professionals in training and educational settings as well as in various communities around the world. For example, these media can be used to highlight examples of peacemaking, as tools to apply conflict analysis frameworks, or to enhance the understanding of conflict regions.

The materials in the database range from free online videos to feature-length radio programmes and documentary films about conflict zones. It also includes a variety of other multimedia like computer games, poster campaigns, songs, and theatre. The system allows users to search by media type, subject area, and country. The clearinghouse items are drawn from conflict related-media from around the world, and have been developed by personnel from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academia, and the private sector. Some were developed with a peacemaking goal in mind, while others are simply explorations of conflicts and related issues. They can be useful to those trying to understand or manage conflict.

The clearinghouse includes a section for "teaching guides" that have been developed to show people how to use the films in a training context. In addition, organisers hope that increased dialogue on how to create and use multimedia will allow for a distillation of lessons learned and development of best practices so as to advance the professionalism of this new field.

As of May 2009, the site is a Beta version. The new version of the Clearinghouse is expected to include access to best practices and lessons learned in the use of conflict-related multimedia and to project resources, such as training opportunities, funds, and prizes/competitions. The site will also foster discussion and experience-sharing on the implementation of these media resources in conflict management by:

• supporting direct interaction within and between practitioners and content developers,
• collecting suggestions on further materials (multimedia, best practice documents, etc.),
• seeking evaluative feedback (comments and rankings) on materials in the database,
• including key multimedia producers, who serve as site contributors/co-sponsors, and
• supporting user profiles in order to highlight the user-centred character of the site.

Email from Dr. Craig Zelizer to The Communication Initiative on April 27 2009.