This presentation was given by mediatEUr Berlin Representative Dr Juan Díaz at the 'The EU as Peacemaker - Enhancing Mediation Capacities' conference in Sofia, 17 May 2013, organised by the European Policy Centre (EPC) and the Sofia Office of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
This week, I had the opportunity to participate as a trainer and facilitator in a workshop on 'Dealing with Election-Related Violence' organized by the European Centre for Electoral Support and the Leadership Beyond Boundaries, supported by the Osservatoria di Pavia, and convened by the Barcelona Peace Centre. It all started with the film ‘An African Election’ directed by Jarreth Merz, a great inspiration for the attendees.
This blog entry is a transcript of a presentation given by mediatEUr Senior Associate Brendan McAllister at the conference ‘Conflict Resolution: Peace, Practice, Perspectives - Celebrating Women as ADR Leaders’ on International Women's Day, 8 March 2013.
In Ukraine, several initiatives are using dialogue to build options to address some of the country’s most difficult challenges. Visualising them may help strengthen their impact and learn from each other.
Europe is speechless with racing rhetoric, opinion-making, hasty declarations, reactions, and helpless gestures, some promoting understanding and some preventing tolerance and openness. Today, as for the last three days, Brussels is frozen with fear and the whole city has stopped functioning the way it used to. In a way, we find ourselves confused and marginalized in the heart of our beloved Europe.
Antje Herrberg, mediatEUr’s CEO, recently took part in the panel discussion “Post-conflict Syria: Which EU civilian capabilities for reconstruction?” The event explored what role the EU might play in a future peace-building effort in Syria. Here, her reflections on Syria's war; the EU's prospects as a stabilising actor; and the importance of learning from the past.
mediatEUr was invited to give input on the Roundtable on Uses of ICTs for EU Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding. Miguel Varela, our Dialogue and Innovation Officer, shared our view from the work we have been doing in the last two years.
Still hungover from the recent “Brexit” vote, the world attends with a mix of anticipation and anxiety the nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican candidate in the US. Two economic and political powerhouses taking a turn inwards, looking for easy answers to some of our globalised world’s most difficult questions. Where does dialogue fit in all of this? Wearing both his hats as a dialogue practitioner and a British citizen, mediatEUr’s Martin Leng explores the implications of Brexit and reflects on what the rise of populist politics says about our capacity to listen to each other.
When I recently interviewed several experts on stabilisation approaches for a research project mediatEUr was requested to carry out for the EEAS, one definition of the term stuck with me for a very long time:
“Stabilisaton is about people regaining harmony; it is about societies being able to reorganise their lives together”
When I first started working on dialogue in Ukraine, I sat down with two think-tankers from Kyiv. It was back in 2014, when the war in the East was fresh and European media was reporting on it on the daily. They walked me through the many conflicts they saw in their country, from corruption to a Soviet heritage of authoritarian rule; we drank tea and chatted for about an hour.
