Day three of the International Peace-Builders’ Forum (IPF) opened this morning with three workshops. Ajsa Hadzibegovig’s workshop focused on understanding the disempowering factors that prevent the participation of young people in peace-building activism. Simon Fisher led a workshop in which he asked participants to reflect on the question: do we see ourselves more as technicians, doing a professional job, or as transformers, aiming to bring about deep change, or neither? Jean Brown and Shoshana Faire’s workshop encouraged participants to examine their own hearts to understand the stories that they are transforming and passing on to future generations.

In the afternoon, Tanja Mirabile led participants in an exercise to better understand effective dialogue as a tool for non-violent conflict transformation and the role of the moderator. One participant took initiative to lead a workshop about dignity as a form of Gandhian “power of goodness.”

Jonathan Dudding concluded the afternoon with a group exercise making sense of the work over the course of the forum thus far.  He asked participants to discuss two questions in small groups: What are the key insights you have had so far? How can we best apply these insights in our practice?

Day 3

The third day of the seminar allowed participants to deepen their understanding of common values and work towards concrete steps to implement them.

The morning session gave one member of each working group the opportunity to share with the wider audience the progress that was made the day before in smaller groups. Our Young Ambassador from France reported that discrimination against minorities often stems from ignorance and proposals to address the issue thus necessarily need to include ways of empowering cultural minorities. The Young Ambassador from Bosnia and Herzegovina added that the manipulation of the masses and the lack of empathy create a hostile environment that often leads to conflict. Hence, the importance to promote dialogue and abolish the rhetoric of hatred as proposed by the speaker of another working group.

In the afternoon, the public lecture by Margaret Smith was an additional highlight of the AEUB seminar. The very personal and moving speech stroke a subtle balance between more theoretical questions of building a common European narrative and practical ways of transforming tensions through social change. Finally, the open space event in the evening allowed everyone to share personal interests as varied as the exhibition ‘Within Our walls and Beyond’ by Undine Groeger, tango dancing and spiral dynamics (a method of understanding value systems and creating formulas for change).

Day 2

Friday 17 July was an opportunity to report back on the first working group discussions and continue our conversations throughout the day.

Our young ambassador from Italy read comments from Leoluca Orlando, Mayor of Palermo. Mr Orlando called for recognition of the right to international human mobility. In his Charter of International Human Mobility, Mr Orlando demands that ‘mobility must be recognized as an inalienable human right’. He argues that nobody makes the choice where they are born, but they have the choice to decide where they want to live and die. He underlines that EU has made great strives for this right. It must, however, expand beyond the Schengen Area. The full Charter can be downloaded as a PDF here. 

Each working group reported on key hopes, concerns and proposals that had emerged from their discussions the previous day. A key idea was that “ordinary citizens” should be involved in shaping Europe.  Several people also mentioned the role the media play in sustaining negative feelings between and within nations. This could be counteracted with positive media campaigns.

In the afternoon, some participants enjoyed a treasure hunt, exploring the history of Caux Palace and Caux’s connection with European history. Others attended a lecture on the 60^th anniversary of the Bonn-Copenhagen Declarations, which ended a long conflict between Denmark and Germany. Some of those who worked on the declarations were inspired by Caux. The end of the day was marked with a “Sharing our Cultures” event. Here, participants were invited to share something from their culture, be it food, music, poetry or national dress. It was a great evening of sharing and laughing, and exploring cultures.

Day 2

The morning’s session featured a panel of peace-builders who discussed their experiences implementing dignity, participation, and inclusion in their work.

Koenraad von Brabant of Interpeace explained that it is important to include all stakeholders of a conflict, not just the government and big corporations. If a population is affected by a conflict, they need to be involved in the peace-building process, even if they come from a remote village.

Ajsa Hadzibegovic from Civic Alliance explained the difficulties of an after-war situation and how they must be careful with the way they package peace-building activities. Because the government has not changed since the war, they cannot undertake peacebuilding activities openly, but need to present them as cultural or educational activities, for example.

Catriona Gourlay of PeaceNexus asked this question: do peace-building organisations respect the values they defend inside the organization? She admitted that it can be very difficult to have an inclusive leadership and explored some of the challenges that she faces in her organisation.

Lastly, Daphrose Ntarataze Barampama, President of Creators of Peace International, explained the values and methods of the peace circles, including the practice of silence and introspection as a first step in creating peaceful environments.

In the afternoon Abbas Aroua, Director of the Cordoba Foundation of Geneva, presented Islam/Arab perspectives on non-violent conflict transformation. He drew on Qruanic verses, Hadith, and Arabic linguistics to highlight the roots of peace (slim), love (rahma), and human dignity (karāma) within the Islamic tradition.

The evening programme gave the opportunity to participants to relax and to bond thanks to ice-breakers that allowed them to be more aware of themselves, mind and body, and of others. 

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.