Can Mediation Do Harm? And, Other Stories
During this week’s online sessions in our Rotary Peace Center course (September 6th -12th 2021), our professor Roxana Cristescu introduced us the principles of mediation ethics, such as impartiality, voluntariness, confidentiality, self-determination, honesty, informed consent and the principle of “Do No Harm”. Our professor gave us a task to choose the three most important principles for...Read More
Innovative Development Program Design
Days after finishing our sessions on Innovative Development Program Design in the Rotary Peace Fellowship at Chulalongkorn University, the words of Professor Kai Brand Jacobsen came to mind over and over again. I was in Chocó, the jungle of the Colombian Pacific region. A territory historically marked by violence between guerrillas, drug trafficking, and illegal mining, but with a very...Read More
Building Your Own Wellness & Self-Care Action Plan
This week’s topic on Fostering Wellness: Transforming Stress & Trauma Through Self-Care & Resilience by Dr. Heidi Kar led the class to think deeply about how to best take care of yourself to promote mental and emotional health and wellbeing. The lectures and skill development exercises provided a wealth of information and ideas on how to build your own action that best works for...Read More
A community based approach in fighting challenges posed by COVID-19
When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic in March 2020, nations around the globe started closing their borders. In many parts of world, including New York City where I live, life for many became suddenly unrecognizable with partial to full lockdowns and restrictions of movement. The rapid spread of the virus across communities, cities, nations, made clear how...Read More
Compatibility Problem: Missing “Peace-Lens” Behind Problem of Federalization in Nepal
After ten years of violent communist insurgency, Nepal entered into a peace process in 2006 under international auspices and with domestic pressure. The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist) agreed to join peaceful competitive politics if a new set of rules, mutually agreed by key actors and endorsed by the people, were set. An alliance of seven political parties, which were in...Read More
Non-Violent Actions & Peace: Need of the Hour Inclusion in School Curriculum is Essential
As a media academic and researcher, I have travelled to few countries on various continents of the world, including Thailand, Turkey, Portugal, USA, Greece, Finland, Canada, Italy, Ethiopia, Scotland (UK), and France. During my visits, other academic’s, researchers, students and others asked me one unique question: “Are you from Gandhi’s country? Are you from India? It’s...Read More
Reimagining education in the aftermath of the pandemic
2.3 million learners are impacted by school closures and a national lockdown in Jordan due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The number includes 230,000 Syrian refugees living in Jordan. Even before the pandemic, Jordan’s education system was under great pressure to provide quality education; with poor infrastructure, low basic literacy and numeracy levels, combined with older methods of instruction,...Read More
Closed Schools Increases Vulnerability to Gang Recruitment and other Forms of Violence
It was a steaming-hot afternoon in southern Mexico. We left the final small market town and traveled nearly an hour on rutted dirt roads to reach this indigenous riverbank community of Carmen Grande, in Las Montañas del Norte. This was before the pandemic, and we had come to plan a church-based cattle co-op project. Several young boys were eager to show us around. “This is our...Read More