Culture And Conflict Resolution
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Session Description
The panellists in this session have all made powerful contributions to post-conflict societies. Their presentations will cover topics such as state-building, gender, the role of the media, and of corporations and social businesses. They will debate how these and other approaches can contribute to rebuilding societies and developing national and international cultures of post-conflict engagement which invite peace alongside effective political and economic participation.
Time & Location
Time:
14:00 - 16:00, Thursday, March 27, 2008
BST
Speakers
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Speaker
CEO, ClearlySo
Rodney Schwartz is CEO of ClearlySo (
www.clearlyso.com) the world’s first marketplace for social business & enterprise (SBEs), commerce and investment, which connects more than 2,000 SBEs with capital and other key resources. Schwartz advises leading UK social enterprises, such as the HCT Group, lectures at the Saïd Business School, Oxford, and is on the board of the Ethical Property Company and The Green Thing (Chairman). He is former Chairman of Justgiving and Shelter. Schwartz’s background is investment banking and venture capital.
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Speaker
Head of Research, UnLtd
Lea’s background as a methodologist, researcher and evaluator spans work in the public, private and third sectors in South Africa, Bosnia and the UK and has focused substantively on state-sponsored violence and genocide as well as issues relating to refugees and asylum. She has taught in the social sciences at universities in South Africa and in the UK and has conducted research and evaluations across a range of sectors, including national evaluations of the then newly introduced post-apartheid education initiative (Outcomes-Based Education) in South Africa and the Home Office sponsored refugee mentoring scheme (Time Together) in the UK. She has also worked in Bosnia on her doctoral research which focused on the role of nostalgia in different formulations of blame, and continues her work on using culture to encourage intergroup engagement amongst teenagers in the tense environment of Prijedor in the North West. She is now Head of Research at UnLtd: The Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs.
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Speaker
John Marks is the founder and Managing Director of Confluence International, an Amsterdam-based NGO that specializes in Track II diplomacy and TV production to promote social change. Until 2014, he was President of Search for Common Ground (SFCG), the world’s largest peacebuilding NGO, which he founded in 1982. SFCG was nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. John also founded Common Ground Productions (CGP) and has produced or executive-produced TV series in more than 20 countries. He is a Visiting Scholar in Peacebuilding and Social Entrepreneurship at Leiden University in the Netherlands. With his wife, Susan Collin Marks, he is a Skoll Awardee in Social Entrepreneurship, and, additionally, he is an Ashoka Senior Fellow. A best-selling, award-winning author, he graduated from Cornell University and was a Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School. He has an honorary PhD from the UN’s University of Peace in Costa Rica.
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Speaker
Founder, Nobel Women’s Initiative
Jody Williams served as the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines until February 1998. Beginning in early 1992 with two non-governmental organisations and a staff of one – Jody Williams – she oversaw its growth to over 1,300 organisations in 95 countries working to eliminate antipersonnel landmines. In an unprecedented cooperative effort with governments, UN bodies and the International Committee of the Red Cross, the organisation dramatically achieved its goal of an international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines during a diplomatic conference held in Oslo in 1997. Three weeks later, Jody Williams and the ICBL were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2006, along with sister Laureate Shirin Ebadi, Jody Williams established the “Nobel Women’s Initiative,” which uses the prestige and access afforded by the Nobel Prize to promote the efforts of women’s rights activists, researchers and organisations working to advance peace, justice and equality for women.
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Speaker
President of Afghanistan,
Ashraf Ghani is the former finance minister of Afghanistan and Chancellor of Kabul University. An Afghan citizen, he became chief adviser to President Karzai during the Interim Administration and then Finance Minister for the duration of the Transitional Administration. He is widely credited with the design of Afghanistan’s integrated political, economic and security strategy between 2001 and 2005. Ghani is founder chairman of the Washington-based Institute for State Effectiveness
www.effectivestates.org which advises countries, international organisations and corporations on the role of the state and the market in a globalised world. The ISE’s Ghani-Lockhart Framework focuses on the relationship between citizens, the state and the market, and provides an integrated system for state and market-building, particularly applicable to failed and recovering states.
