to 1981 she became a consultant on women's issues to UNESCO and it was during this time she researched and wrote UNESCO's contribution to the 1980 United Nations Mid-decade Conference on Women: "The role of women in peace research, peace education and the improvement of relations between nations". In 1982 she founded the Oxford Research Group (ORG) an NGO which independently researched decision-making on security in the five major nuclear nations during and after the Cold War and brought together policy-makers, academics, the military and civil society to engage in dialogue with their critics. For this work she was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2003 was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize. She remained the executive director of ORG until 2003. In 2003 Elworthy stepped down as executive director of ORG to found a new charity, Peace Direct, which supports local peace-builders in conflict areas. Peace Direct was named "Best New Charity" at the London Charity Awards 2005 and, although she is not involved in the day-to-day running, Elworthy remains an Ambassador for Peace Direct. In 2002 she launched a production at the Royal Opera House theatre in London entitled Transforming 11 September. In 2004 she provided the basic material for Max Stafford-Clark's production of Talking to Terrorists at the Royal Court Theatre in London; and in 2007 her case study on the siege of Fallujah in Iraq was used as the basis for Jonathan Holmes' production of Fallujah at the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane. Her work for the World Peace Festival in 2011 included building seven achievable goals for the Global Peace Building Strategy, adopted by the World Peace Partnership. Dr Elworthy designed the programme for an international two-day conference on peacebuilding, the first day entitled "Peace is your business!" followed by a conference on the "Global Peace Building Strategy" including a morning of workshops entitled "Self Knowledge and Global Responsibility" featuring Dr Deepak Chopra. She and colleagues produced a booklet for the Festival entitled "Tools for Peace", with an accompanying video produced by TalkWorks in association with Different Films Ltd, presenting a seven-step process anyone can use to resolve conflict in the family, workplace or community. In autumn 2007 Elworthy joined the EastWest Institute's International Task Force on Preventive Diplomacy; in 2009 was featured in the project Soldiers of Peace – Stories from 14 countries around the world – a documentary film