Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:

Advanced Professional Trainings on

Systemic Peacebuilding, Conflict Transformation & Post-War Stabilisation, Recovery, and Reconciliation (PCTR)
13^th – 17^th of June, 2011 – Cluj-Napoca

and

Designing Peacebuilding Programmes: Improving Sustainability, Impact and Effectiveness in Peacebuilding & Peace Support Operations (DPP)

20^th – 24^th of June, 2011 – Cluj-Napoca

APPLY NOW!

Programme description:

Systemic Peacebuilding, Conflict Transformation & Post-War Stabilisation, Recovery, and Reconciliation (PCTR)

June 13^th – 17^th, 2011

Cluj –Napoca, Romania

Read full outline

PCTR provides a practical, highly intensive and professional training for government officials, policy makers and practitioners working in the field. The programme gives a key policy and operational overview of the latest lessons learned, tools, and methods in peacebuilding, conflict transformation and post-war stabilization and recovery, bringing together experienced practitioners and policy makers from governments, the United Nations, EU, and national and international organisations and agencies. It has been evaluated as one of the highest quality trainings in the field by hundreds of participants from more than 70 countries. PCTR draws upon an extensive global experience base, systematically weaving together operational and policy lessons identified and good practices. The training also provides a forum for participants to share experiences and address concrete issues and challenges facing them in their work and country/community.

The PCTR includes:

• Systemic Peacebuilding, Applied Peacebuilding & Conflict Transformation
• Early Warning and Effective Operational and Structural Violence & Risk Prevention
• Developing Sustainable Peace Outcomes and Peace Processes – Local, National, Regional and International Engagement
• Scenario Development, Strategic Planning & Foresight Approaches
• Improving Practical / Operational Situation and Conflict Analysis & Intelligence and Linking it to Programme Planning and Implementation
• Strengthening and Supporting Sustainable Local, National and Regional Infrastructure and Capacities for Peace
• Reconciliation & Recovery After War and Violence

Designing Peacebuilding Programmes:
Improving Sustainability, Impact and Effectiveness
in Peacebuilding & Peace Support Operations (DPP)

June 20^th – 24^th, 2011

Cluj –Napoca, Romania

Read full outline

Designing Peacebuilding Programmes is the first fully integrated programme helping agencies, organisations and practitioners working in conflict, crisis and post-war stabilization and recovery to improve the quality, effectiveness and sustainable impact of their programs.  Experience from the field has shown that organisations and agencies often face significant gaps / challenges in the development, planning and implementation of their projects – leading work to have limited sustainable impact. The DPP programme has been offered around the world and provides the first comprehensive and in-depth training to support organisations and agencies through all levels from project development through design, planning, implementation and follow-through. Most importantly: it’s an operational programme. Participating organisations and participants bring actual projects and engagements they are working with in their organisations / agencies / governments and are supported to learn and apply improved, effective skills for designing peacebuilding programmes for impact, effectiveness and sustainability.

The DPP includes:

• An Integrated Operational Framework for Effective Design of Peacebuilding Programmes
• Design and Planning Tools drawing from the latest developments in the field – the programme incorporates methodologies developed in the peacebuilding field as well as from development work, business and elsewhere
• Program Design, Development and Implementation specifically for peacebuilding and post-war recovery programmes
• Effective ways to integrate Program Monitoring & Evaluation into your work
• Making Risk Assessment & Mitigation Effective in Programme Planning and Implementation
• Design and Implementation for Sustainable Results and Impact

For more information on course content, application procedure & deadline, please visit the IPDTC web-site:

www.patrir.ro/training or write to training@patrir.ro

Please feel free to share this information with individuals and organisations that you think would be interested in attending the IPDTC training programmes.

• News source:
• 22 March 2011
• Jerusalem Post
• By DAVID ROSENBERG

Study says growing shortages heighten political risk, may raise oil prices; “water isn’t going to be sole cause for civil unrest,” analyst says.

The Middle East and North Africa have the world’s least secure water supplies, a danger that heightens political risk in an already volatile region and may even lead to higher oil prices in the future, according to a study released on Tuesday.

The Water Risk Index, developed by the British risk consultants Maplecroft, found that out of 18 countries around the world at “extreme risk” to their water security, 15 are in the Middle East. The list numbers several key oil exporters, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Libya and Algeria, whose water woes could have global implications.

• News source:
• 22 March 2011
• Technorati
• By Lori Landau

Water is sacred. It is a basic requirement for all life. And according to experts, it is also a gender issue. According to the UN CHronicle, “In most societies women have primary responsibility for water supply, sanitation and health at the household level. This central role of women is often neglected in efforts to improve water resource management schemes and sanitation facilities. Furthermore, women suffer the largest burden when water and sanitation resources are inadequate.”

Today is International World Water Day. It is held annually on March 22nd as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. This year’s theme focuses on urban water conflicts–past years have brought awareness to water quality, water scarcity, water and disasters, ground water and other critical issues surrounding the vital stuff. But I want to take a moment to point out the connection between women and water.

• News source:
• 22 March 2011
• Winnipeg Free Press
• By Colin Perkel, CP

TORONTO – The potential for violent conflict to erupt over fresh water is rising as the global population grows against a backdrop of climate change, an experts forum heard Tuesday.

Until now, speakers said, disputes over water have typically led to co-operation between affected parties but higher demand and lower supplies could alter that pattern for the worse.

• News source:
• 22 March 2011
• UPI

GAZA — Water and sanitation problems in Gaza are compounded by the fact that building materials are restricted, the ICRC warned.

• News source:
• 22 March 2010
• Amnesty International

Amnesty International has on World Water Day urged the Israeli authorities to end discriminatory practices against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that violate their right to adequate water supplies.

Many of the Palestinians living in the West Bank and featured in the October 2009 Amnesty International report Troubled Waters – Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water – face continuing serious Israeli obstacles to accessing water.

• News source:
• 22 March 2011
• Exchange Magazine

Ottawa – A new Environics Research poll commissioned by the Council of Canadians indicates that 73% of Canadians want the Harper government to recognize the human right to clean and safe water and sanitation. In 2010, the United Nations passed a historic resolution recognizing the human right to water and sanitation. The resolution passed overwhelmingly with 122 states voting in favour. 41 countries abstained, including Canada.

• News source:
• 22 March 2011
• CNW
• By AFN (press release)

OTTAWA – Today, the Assembly of First Nations will mark World Water Day.

AFN National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo stated: “World Water Day is an opportunity to make a national commitment to ensuring that First Nations families have safe and clean drinking water. For many First Nations families, it is a daily struggle to get access to clean and adequate supplies of potable water and basic sanitation.”

The National Chief noted that the latest figures indicate there are 116 communities with Drinking Water Advisories, representing 18.4% of the First Nation communities in Canada. In addition, the number of high-risk drinking water systems has increased from 48 to 49 in the past year. As many as 62,955 First Nations citizens could be affected by these water problems, and this does not include communities that lack running water.

• News source:
• 21 March 2011
• Toronto Star
• By Thomas S. Axworthy

Water is critical to the health of citizens, communities and the economy. The IJC Report, for example, writes about “the vital ecological link between watersheds, tributaries, wetlands, groundwater and offshore waters of the Great Lakes.”…

There are many ways to assess the importance of water. But a prism that I find most useful is to view water as a national security requirement.

• News source:
• 22 March 2011
• Guardian
• Don't confuse pacifism with passivity – or forget the repeated failure of war to achieve even its short-term aims
• By Symon Hill

Millions of people across north Africa and the Middle East have been demonstrating the power of active nonviolence in recent months. But British politicians and pundits seem to have learned no lessons, falling in line behind the bombing of Libya as soon as David Cameron announced it. In the face of all the evidence, they are accepting the old assumption that violence works.

• News source:
• 20 March 2011
• Baltimore Sun
• By Jacques Kelly

Nonviolence, a potent force in the 1960s fight for civil rights, has become an “embarrassment, an instrument of the weak,” lamented Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch…

“We don’t really understand the dividends that nonviolence has paid,” he said of the strategy for social change…

He said that King and other civil rights leaders used nonviolence as a valuable and “potent tool” in the 1960s, particularly in Mississippi, during the era of the Freedom Riders and the peaceful protests. “For Martin Luther King, nonviolence was a leadership doctrine,” he said.

But by the time of King’s death in 1968, it was being discredited by others in the movement as being “old-fashioned” and “pious.” He cited Stokely Carmichael and others as deflecting attention away from the nonviolent philosophy as they advanced their own, more strident approaches.

“Stokely Carmichael became more fashionable,” said Branch. “Nonviolence became nonrespectable in the New York Review of Books.”…