Today marks the opening of the 2015 International Peace-Builders’ Forum (IPF), which is organized in cooperation with the Institute for Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding (ICP) at the Caux Palace! The forum aims to provide a platform for the exchange of information, experiences, challenges, and best practices in order to increase interagency and inter-sector coordination. Over the next three days leading peace-builders will speak on the theme “Non-violent conflict transformation: dignity, inclusion and participation.”

Tomorrow morning will open with a panel discussion featuring Catriona Gourlay of PeaceNexus, Ajsa Hadzibegovic of Civic Alliance, Daphrose Ntarataze Baramapama of Creators of Peace, and Koenraad Van Braband of Interpeace. The panelists will discuss their experiences of current practices in non-violent conflict transformation and the implementation of the principles of dignity, participation, and inclusion. 

The afternoon session will hear Abbas Aroua of the Cordoba Foundation speak about Islamic and Arab perspectives on non-violent conflict transformation, leading participants into an interactive session to discuss how they bring their own backgrounds into their work in peace-building.

Saturday’s programme will open with four workshops, each addressing a different aspect of applying the principles of dignity, participation, and inclusion in the practice of non-violent conflict transformation. Tanja Mirabile of the Institute for Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding will lead a workshop on effective dialogue processes on women’s participation in Egypt. Ajsa Hadzibegovic of Civic Alliance will lead a workshop titled “The implications of identified ‘enemy’ on the (dis)empowerment of youth.” Simon Fisher of Oxford Brookes University will lead a workshop titled “Values and our practice: whose peace are we working for?” Jean Brown and Shoshana Faire of Creators of Peace will lead a workshop about the international experience of Creators of Peace Circles as an approach to peace creation.

The afternoon session on Saturday will create a space for interaction among participants to discuss how they can develop and improve active non-violence in their own work.

The forum will conclude on Sunday after a morning of active reflection about the insights that have emerged as a result of the conference and how the participants can incorporate these insights in their future work.

Each morning of the conference will open with a meditative activity, and each evening will conclude with a group activity, creating further opportunities for participants to get acquainted with one another. Additionally, every afternoon includes a block of time for participants to visit exhibition stands, network with fellow actors in the peace-building field, and hold informal discussions among themselves.

We look forward to an exciting three days of peace-building dialogue at IPF 215!

Addressing Europe’s Unfinished Business started on 16 July 2015. The day included discussions of what is meant when we say “Europe” and reflection on the many small but important steps that were made towards European unification in the course of the 20^th Century.

Throughout the day, we had the opportunity to explore the lives of two founding fathers of Europe - Monnet and Schuman - in the morning at the Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe in Lausanne and again in the evening with talks from Gilles Grin, the director of the foundation, and Jeff Fountain from the Schuman Centre for European Studies. Monnet took small but concrete steps that contributed to European unification.

In the opening plenary, Stephanie Hofmann highlighted that European progress has been a gradual process. Ahmet Shala, Kosovo’s ambassador to Japan, and Leoluca Orlando, Mayor of Palermo, discussed the importance of not allowing borders to hold Europe back. Mr Orlando also underlined the urgent need to protect the human rights of migrants to Europe. Cathy Nobles advocated forgiveness as a key tool in effecting change in Europe. We hope to build on these ideas in the coming days as we look to address the current issues affecting Europe.

The third ‘Caux Dialogue on Land and Security’ conference came to an end this past Tuesday, 14 July, after five days of serious questioning filled with lively conversations, intelligent solutions, personal stories and introspective insights.

The dialogue adopted a traditional yet complex triple bottom line approach with days focusing on the environment, economic and social aspects respectively, enabling a productive horizontal and vertical exchange between specialists, policymakers and civil society. On day two, participants dived into scalable solutions for sustainable land management; day three looked at trade within the globalised market context with an emphasis on water use; day four delved into the trust-building aspects, and finally the conclusion on day five was a call for action. The conference programme also included a book launch, a ‘fireside conversation’, a musical, a movie premiere and over a dozen afternoon workshops.

One conclusion of the dialogue is that in order to move forward, there needs to be, in terms of governance, a top-down as well as a bottom-up approach. Small-scale farmers need to unite and talk to each other, particularly in dry lands, in order to exchange expertise and also to increase the value of their production at their farm gates. It was said that this could be done either by bringing in processing, canning and agro alimentary stages to their supply chains but also by bringing organic and ecological methods to their productions. It was also agreed that land restoration could only be achieved with a combined approach using climate change mitigation practices to produce and also sequestrate carbon.

Water management, questions of leadership and governance also came out as key factors. During the final plenary, Guillaume Benoit, from the French Water Partnership group on water and food security at the Ministry for Agriculture presented the 4/1000 Initiative, a framework which combines all three Rio Conventions; the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). These conventions work with the CFS (Committee for Food Security), which aims to incorporate biodiversity and climate considerations in addressing the problems surrounding global food security. An annual 4 per 1000^th growth rate of the global carbon soil would store 75% of greenhouse gas emissions, whilst preserving levels of biodiversity and feeding human populations. This structure aims to increase collaboration with NGOs, farmers associations, research institutions and also the private sector.

Brendan Bromwich, Initiatives for Land, Lives and Peace and CDLS convenor of the dialogue, spoke of the duality of the land restoration issue: facing both a ‘virtuous circle as well as a vicious cycle’. We are forced to look at a complex, scientific technical issue through a human magnifying glass. A common theme throughout the dialogue was the idea of ‘breaking silos’. It is increasingly being recognized that government, NGOs and businesses can only make significant breakthroughs if we work collaboratively across sectors with a tripartite vision

While the international community is waiting for the United Nations to deliver a clear set of goals (the 17 Sustainable Development Goals), and a climate negotiations happening this December in Paris, the overall message of the CDLS is clear:  now is the time to act. Louise Baker from the UNCCD insisted on the upcoming implementation agenda, as land degradation neutrality is the objective of the international community. We need to be more ambitious, we should not be afraid of technology and ‘everybody needs to take responsibility’.

During the dialogue, A Kenyan delegation, including Gabriel Lagat, Deputy Governor of the Elgeyo Marakwet County in Kenya, met with several others from other Kenyan counties and they agreed to work together on a land-peace axis. For the organizers as well as for the participants, this could mean there is a strong chance the next ‘Dialogue on Land and Security’ will take place in Kenya.

The 3rd Caux Dialogue on Land and Security began on Friday evening 10 July. Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, the former UK Climate and Energy security envoy from 2009-13, spoke to the participants on the importance of issues to be addressed in the conference. He stated that ‘increasingly the security community is […] recognising that environmental risk is as much a threat to national security as [it is] to human security’. Dr Michael Schluter, Chairman and CEO of Relational Research, and Ron Lawler, a member of the International Council of Initiatives of Change International also contributed by emphasising the importance of relationships in land management. Louise Baker, Policy and Advocacy Coordinator of the UNCCD, not only moderated this conversation, but also emphasized the ‘emotional’ nature of the issues being addressed.

On the second day, the morning panel presented practical solutions of land restoration, in which human and relational issues were foregrounded. Deputy Governor Gabriel Lagat, from Elgeyo Markwet County in Kenya said the following about relationships: ‘It is possible, if you unite people, to reach economic prosperity and peace in the drylands’. Rolf Shenton, Director of the Grassroots Trust NGO joined the plenary over Skype from Zambia and gave concrete examples of holistic management approaches that use both cattle and different varieties of crops. He reinforced the importance of sustainable land management techniques by saying that ‘we can’t just address social and economic issues, we must also tackle the environment problem holistically as well to achieve results’.

Other panelists included George ‘Miti Mingi, a.k.a Mr Trees’ Kamau Kiiru, forester and grassroots farmer in Kenya, who spoke of the importance of communities and livelihoods. Furthermore, Niguse Hagazi from the World Agroforestry Centre presented his agriculture and water management work in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Tony Rinaudo spoke on behalf of World Vision Australia about the now famous ‘Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration’ (FMNR) process, and finally Michael Ben Eli, Founder of The Sustainability Lab presented the Wadi Attir project, a groundbreaking initiative set in the Bedouin Negev desert of Israël that is working with different crops and attempting to improve biodiversity levels.

After an interesting round of Q+As in which participants questioned issues of governance, Luc Gnacadja concluded the session by establishing the importance of dual approaches: ‘Often concepts are build top-down, but there is a strong value in bottom-up approaches’. He also reinforced the value of acting now: ‘it doesn’t take 10 or 20 years for land restoration. There is action to be taken today’. The first afternoon workshops explored rainwater harvesting, land tenure and migration aspects, as well as relational issues while the second session looked at questions of leadership, gender balance and scaling up opportunities. The evening welcomed an eclectic crowd of NGOs and participants for a lively initiatives fair of ideas.

The focus of the fourth day of the 2015 Caux Dialogue on Land and Security was on the theme of “Building trust for collaboration – a precondition for scaling up land restoration.” The main question addressed during the plenary was “What can be achieved in strengthening relationships essential for governance and peace-building?” The plenary speaker and panelists shone the spotlight on the social dimension of the issues of land restoration and sustainable land management.

The keynote speaker was Joseph Montville, Director of the Program on Healing Historical Memory at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. He spoke on the uses of political psychology in dealing with relationship questions in land and security issues. He stated that “one of the great advantages for different groups who have a history of loss is that by working collaboratively on land, water, and food projects that have clear material benefits for all the people, including their children, they have a real incentive to succeed, psychologically, spiritually, and financially.” (Joseph Montville's speech can be downloaded here.)

The keynote was followed by a panel discussion. Youssif El Tayib, Executive Director of the Darfur Development and Reconstruction Agency (DDRA) shared how in Darfur, “many communities formed local environmental committees. They built support for their role and they are now moving beyond environmental affairs.” Daphrose Ntaratazi of Creators of Peace International, and Jeremy Ive, Church of England Pastor, meanwhile shared examples of community centered peacebuilding initiatives in Burundi and in South Africa. Suhas Wani, Director of the ICRISAT Development Centre concluded the panel discussion by emphasizing that trust needs to be built up between all areas.

The morning plenary was concluded with a book launch. Ilan Chabay from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam, presented a new book entitled Land Restoration: Reclaiming Landscapes for a Sustainable Future. The book was born out of discussions from previous Caux Dialogue on Land and Security conferences, and members of the organizing team contributed to the editing of this volume.

The evening program was a double bill. The Caux Dialogue on Land and Security and the Caux Artists Program staged a musical The Apple Tree, which was a humorous retelling of the story of Adam and Eve that ended on a sentimental note. The musical was followed by the world premiere of the film Ethiopia Rising. The screening coincided with the 30^th anniversary of the Live Aid concert to raise funds for the Ethiopian famine relief. The film was well received by the audience, which was demonstrated by the enthusiasm for the DVD sales to show support to the filmmakers.

The third day of the “Caux Dialogue on Land and Security” focussed on the question of how we can ensure food is traded in a system that gives incentives to farmers to manage their land and water sustainably. Tony Allan, Emeritus Professor from the Department of Geography at King’s College, London, and first speaker to present, emphasised the role of the consumer driven market. He stated that ‘we need to understand the role played by the demand for cheap food. If we can get consumers to value farmer services, [….] we can achieve sustainably secure food supply chains’. Dominic Waughray, the Head of Environmental Initiative at the World Economic Forum, then moved the discussion to focus on the importance of public-private relationships in supply chains. These could allow countries to address the challenges, which appear alongside development.

A panel with Louise Baker, the Policy and Advocacy Coordinator of the UNCCD, Dr Muhammad Swazuri, the Chair of the Kenya Land Commission and Tony Colman, a water and trade specialist from the University of East Anglia later discussed these presentations. Dr Muhammad Swazuri contributed by highlighting the problem in which ‘multi-nationals and companies are coming to Africa to grow food, but not to feed Africa. The food is grown to take to the Middle East and other areas’. Tony Colman concluded the discussion on an optimistic note, stating that ‘farmers of the world must unite. We are weak individually, but together we can be strong’.

This plenary was followed by a special workshop. Martin Frick, Director of the Energy, Climate Change and Tenure Division of the FAO, first expressed to the participants that ‘250 million Americans could nourish another 250 million people, based on the current levels of food production’ to highlight fundamental problems in the supply chain. John Schluter, CEO of Café Africa International, returned to the question of public-private partnerships, and the significance of ‘trust and mutual accountability’, whilst Martin Keulertz, Research Fellow of the Environmental Governance Research Group, Humboldt University, Berlin, discussed how value could be attached to water.

During the evening programme, environmental leaders and young participants engaged in a unique ‘fireside conversation’ dialogue. Luc Gnacadja, former UNCCD Executive Secretary, Julia Marton-Lefèvre, former IUCN Director-General and Geoffrey Lean, environment journalist from The Daily Telegraph formed a ‘sensational trio’ that responded to and challenged the audience. In the face of climate change and conflict, the questions of leadership, attitude and decision-making were primary concerns of the ‘fireside conversations’. Julia Marton-Lefèvre insisted that leaders must focus on ‘walking the talk’ to maintain close contact with the people. Luc Gnacadja emphasised that mainstreaming environmental issues was the only way to move forward on tackling global challenges. Geoffrey Lean closed the dialogue with optimism, as he believes that 2015 will be the year the environmental battle will be won, as both the Sustainable Development Goals and climate negotiations are being decided and coming to global attention.

Photo Exhibition: Within My Walls and Beyond

15 July 2015 to 31 March 2016

Undine Groeger’s travelling photo exhibition, Within My Walls and Beyond, represents a personal journey towards understanding Germany’s past. It includes 3 generations that experienced the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, and, in parallel, opens a window onto life in a place that can be reminiscent of former East Germany, Transnistria, a post-Soviet frozen conflict zone between Moldova and Ukraine.

Within My Walls and Beyond was first exhibited in November, 2014 to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was initially made possible through the support of the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Geneva, private sponsors, and collaborators. As of July 15, 2015, it will be exhibited at Caux Expo to engage Caux visitors and conference participants in a project, Within Our Walls and Beyond, which includes a dialogue on walls that persist in ourselves and our communities.

www.undinegroeger.photography
www.facebook.com/withinourwallsandbeyond

Michael Møller, Director General of the UN Office at Geneva, spoke this week at the Caux conference on Just Governance for Human Security. ‘It is our joint responsibility to close the gap, to work outside the box, to transform talk into action and to create new structures,’ he told the 250 participants.

During his visit he heard about initiatives which are helping recovery among Burundians traumatised by conflict, building understanding between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, creating platforms for women to contribute to Mali’s national affairs. On return to Geneva Mr Møller tweeted his network, saying the conference ‘highlighted the enormous potential of civil society.’

The five-day conference brought people to Caux from 44 countries. Together they sought creative responses to challenges confronting their nations.

Bedan Mbugua of Kenya’s Fountain Media Group said that he had founded the Group because Kenya needed a media organisation with a strong social purpose. Their TV station has enlisted 500 businesses who have pledged to outlaw bribery. They are publicising the massive ‘Mothers Against Drug Abuse’ campaign. On the day Bedan spoke, the BBC carried news that, following this campaign, the police were cracking down on the illegal alcohol which kills hundreds of Kenyans each year.

The Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs sponsored 25 leaders, government and civic, from Mali, Chad and Niger.  Many of them are involved in mediation initiatives in their countries, and a workshop led by UN mediation experts from Northern Ireland and Italy attracted a large audience. They also took part in workshops on responses to violent extremism, where they were joined by Somali Members of Parliament, a senior official from Nigeria, and NGO leaders from many regions of Africa and the Middle East. They heard Neil Buhne, Director of the UN Development Programme in Geneva, on the Sustainable Development Goals, and agricultural scientist Ian Robertson from Zimbabwe on ‘Freedom and Food Security’.

Armenians and Turks came to search for how to overcome the hostility resulting from their brutal history. The dialogue was intense, and they plan the next meeting in Turkey. The screening of a film on the war in Eastern Ukraine inspired a moving apology to the Ukrainian participants from eminent Russian historian Andrei Zubov. Professor Zubov was dismissed from Moscow’s Institute of International Relations when he wrote an article condemning Russia’s occupation of Crimea.

Later, in a plenary on ‘The qualities of a change-maker’, Zubov spoke of his faith, as an Orthodox Christian, and his sense of duty as a historian, which compelled him to speak out despite the consequences. He also joined Alexander Zinchenko, Deputy Director of Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory, in a workshop on ‘dealing with the past’ which focused on tragic events in the history of both countries, and explored steps towards healing.

All these issues are crucial to the development of just governance and human security. At the final meeting, a stream of participants told of new insights and approaches on the challenges they face in their home situations.

INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY AND FORUM ON PEACE MEDIATION AND NATIONAL DIALOGUE - CAUX 2015

With the theme “North Africa and Sahel”, the International Summer Academy and Forum 2015 of the Institute for Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding offers its participants  from 20 - 25 July 2015 an overview of mediation and dialogue within the North Africa and Sahel region.

Find out more about the programme here.

2015 is being quoted as one of the most important years yet in international governance, as the World meets twice, first in September in New York to agree on the newly proposed UN Sustainable Development Goals and then during the United Nations Convention Framework on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) 21st conference of the parties (COP21) in December in Paris where countries will establish a binding climate agreement, limiting countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. Both these international summits have Sustainable Development at their heart and share the idea that combatting poverty and climate change must be dealt with together. In the added context of the Food and Agriculture Organizations’ (FAO) International Year of Soils, land degradation is therefore considered one of the most important issues of the 21st century, providing food security and also carbon sequestration. In 2011, Luc Gnacadja former UNCCD Executive Secretary said that only “six to ten inches of top soil separate mankind from extinction”. Today, this is relevant more than ever.

Indeed, while the World is tackling three crises at once, economic, social and environmental and with the world population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, there is a much greater risk. Resource scarcity is becoming a driver of migration and conflict, and thus restoring land provides not only food security, but has been proved to also prevent war. In a more dangerous geopolitical context, building trust between communities is therefore of utmost importance. Since 2011, restoring land to build peace has been the message of the Initiatives for Land, Lives, and Peace (ILLP), working together with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCDD) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Through an international forum, the Caux Dialogue on Land and Security (CDLS), ILLP has been successful at gathering stakeholders to tackle desertification in a holistic and inclusive manner, to address sustainable land management, and to prevent conflicts, simultaneously, under the same framework.

The CDLS welcomes a wide mix of individuals from different United Nations organizations, from several dozen NGOs, from civil society at large, with the exclusive participation of governments, students, farmers, policymakers, finance and business communities. By adopting a wide approach, combining the environment, development and humanitarian agendas, the message of this year’s edition of the Caux Dialogue on Land and Security is clear: to place land as high as possible on the SDG and climate agendas, in order to ‘ground’ sustainable development and root it firmly in the soil, in the literal and true sense of the word.

This year, there will be a strong emphasis on the importance of a relationship-based approach to scaling up land restoration. Building bridges across fields of expertise and otherwise closed silos is a concept very much rooted in the Initiatives of Change and ILLP approach and is being increasingly recognized as relevant. The event will begin on the evening of the 10th July and will extend over five days until the morning of the 14th, with panels taking place in the morning and a selection of workshops in the afternoon with a wide range of individuals with technical knowledge of sustainable land management, water, agriculture, policy, trade and economics, and organizations who will present solutions.

The conference will also have an exciting evening programme: an initiatives fair of NGOs on the 11th, a fireside conversation with youth and environmental leaders on the 12th, the book launch of ‘Land Restoration: Reclaiming Landscapes for a Sustainable Future’ and the exclusive world premiere of the film ‘Ethiopia Rising’ by Mark Dodd (author of The Man who Stopped the Desert) on the 13th.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=143&v=Jbw85rcKr_c

 Buy the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Land-Restoration-Reclaiming-Landscapes-Sustainable/dp/0128012315

 Read more about SDGs here: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/focussdgs.html