COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course will focus on the interactions between the UN, with its focus on human rights, and the world of economics and business, as epitomized in the WTO. All member States of the WTO have signed at least one core human rights convention under the auspices of the UN.  States must therefore follow policies that, at the very least, do not infringe upon their human rights obligations.  However, some WTO agreements and policies have arguably undermined human rights considerations. This has resulted in a fragmentation of international law on human rights, on the one hand, and international trade on the other. States find themselves in an ambivalent position where WTO trade obligations may undercut their human rights commitments. The clarity of the fundamental responsibility of states for human rights is compromised, while the private sector is left without a clear sense of its responsibilities. This course will examine these complex linkages, and ways to reconcile the apparent contradictions. Focus will be on aspects of international law, the role of the state, and relevant theories of economic development.

This basic course in Peace and Conflict Studies is designed to provide a wide spectrum of professionals with the "must know" elements of this field.  The course provides analytical tools and terminology for conflict analysis, and possible approaches for promoting peace in today’s world.   A strong emphasis of the course is on social, cultural, psychological and communication dynamics of conflict escalation and de-escalation.  This is followed by a practical component to provide participants with effective skills in conflict management, resolution and transformation, using hands-on activities related to communication, negotiation and mediation. 

These skills are relevant for professionals in every field, and can be used to manage and resolve disputes of all kinds – whether in international or professional settings.
 

The course aims at critically examining key issues in economics, globalization, employment from a gender perspective, and to understand the connections between gender and development approaches, and various aspects of globalization, to  Apply a gender perspective analysis to global and national policy issues including demographic change macroeconomic policies, industrialization and employment.

The course will introduce the student to: The key analytical perspectives and debates in gender economics, globalization and development, and develop a critical perspective on these issues, while encouraging students to take a regional and contextualized perspective on global gender issues.

This two-credit course is designed for professionals who are concerned about climate change issues and want to improve their skills in convincing others about the urgency and opportunities raised by this global process. At the end of the course, the participants will have acquired: a) a fuller understanding of the physical, ecological, social, cultural and political factors that drive the climate change dialogue; and b) improved skills to influence specific audiences on these issues. The theoretical part of the course will address the forces driving climate change (physical and ecological processes); will clarify the risk, vulnerability, resilience, mitigation and adaptation concepts, as well as their human security impacts (social and political processes); and will analyse the main factors behind the resistance to taking concrete actions.  The more practical part of the course will improve the participants' skills in creating and combining web-based tools such as facebook, twitter, blogs, and short documentaries, to influence on-line audiences. One of the products of the course will be a web-page with articles created by course participants.

Arms control and disarmament issues are back on the world agenda after years of neglect.  Work is underway on a new US-Russian START treaty to continue reducing nuclear arms, the Conference on Disarmament may soon begin negotiations on a treaty to end production of fissile materials used in nuclear weapons, and new negotiations are underway in other disarmament areas such as conventional weapons and nuclear non-proliferation.  This two-week course will cover the current spectrum of arms control and disarmament issues.  Students will receive a full grounding in key disarmament subjects facing the international community and how they affect international security problems.  The course will also cover the interaction between technical/political/diplomatic factors and international security requirements in each nation’s approach to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, conventional and outer space arms control, landmines, cluster munitions and weapons of mass destruction.

Governmental and non-governmental organizations around the world, as well as the United Nations, increasingly see sport as a tool for conflict prevention, peace building and development. The Millennium Development Goals cite sport as a “beacon of hope” for peace building and development efforts throughout the world, in international settings as well as underprivileged regions and neighborhoods. In this context, the course examines the potential role and use of sport as a local and global tool for conflict prevention, social transformation, community development, communication with underprivileged youth, and peace building. With a strong developmental and cross-cultural emphasis, the course aims at promoting an educational process which will generate greater awareness and understanding of the opportunities and complexities of using sport as a vehicle for such developmental and peace building efforts.

The world faces the accelerating challenge of migration, which currently involves about 200 million international migrants, or about 3% of global population. The phenomenon of migration is complex, and includes labour migration, family reunification, refugees, human trafficking, etc.  It has varied effects in different countries, often igniting profound political crises, ethnic or religious strife, and violence.  Migration intersects with other fields, such as race, economics, culture, and demography, and cannot be dealt with thru simplistic or uniform responses.  This course covers labour migration, population movements and development, migrant rights, and problems of integration. It offers insights into how these issues are analyzed and lead to policy choices, examines international and regional responses, and explores the possibility of a coordinated global response.

The advent of new technologies has fundamentally changed the capacity for processing and exchanging information in the 21st century. NGOs and governments, and companies alike are just beginning to understand the potential that these tools and systems can have in analyzing and addressing a range of social problems.  This dynamic one-week course will explore how technology is being used to transform conflicts, build more sophisticated statistical models, fight diseases, monitor elections, distribute food, design better economic development measures, and much more. It will also consider some of the key challenges related to access, implementation, scale, and evaluation that working with technology presents. The course is designed for professionals from both the private and public sectors to assist them in developing strategies and skills to benefit their organization amid this rapidly evolving landscape.  Participants can expect a hands-on and interactive learning environment with exposure to a variety of real world examples from organizations working in the field.

Ameena Alrasheed Ph.D candidate at Leeds University the UK, worked as Teaching Assistant at the Department of Political Science, Khartoum university, Sudan, TA at Leeds University, Middle Eastern Studies, Trainer and consultant with the UN and international organizations in Kosovo, Iran, Indonesia. Researcher on women’s refugees and immigrants in the Netherland and women and domestic violence in the UK at the National probation centers, West Yorkshire.

Dr. Abdalla is Professor and Vice Rector at the United Nations-mandated University for Peace (UPEACE).  Before arriving at UPEACE, he was a Senior Fellow with the Peace Operations Policy Program, School of Public Policy, at George Mason University, in Virginian, USA.   He was also a Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Leesburg, Virginia.
 
Both his academic and professional careers are multi-disciplinary.  He obtained a law degree in Egypt in 1977 where He practiced law as a prosecuting attorney from 1978 to 1987.  He then emigrated to the U.S. where He obtained a Master's degree in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University.
 
He has been teaching graduate classes in conflict analysis and resolution, and has conducted training, research and evaluation of conflict resolution and peacebuilding programs in several countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas.  He also authored, and co-authored, several research and evaluation teaching manuals including: Doing What You Want With Your Data, A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning and Implementing Evaluation Strategies, and Qualitative Evaluation: The What and Why.

He has been an active figure in promoting effective cross-cultural messages within the Islamic and Arabic-speaking communities in America through workshops, T.V. and radio presentations.  He has also been actively involved in inter-faith dialogues in the United States.  He pioneered the development of the first conflict resolution training manual for the Muslim communities in the United States titled (“…Say Peace”).  He also founded Project LIGHT (Learning Islamic Guidance for Human Tolerance), a community peer-based anti-discrimination project funded by the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ).
 

John King is currently a Disarmament Consultant to the UN-mandated University for Peace as well as an adjunct professor of International Relations at Webster University in Geneva.  After military service with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he joined the U.S. Foreign Service, serving in a variety of posts specializing in NATO and European political military affairs.  He also served in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency as the Deputy Assistant Director for Multilateral Affairs, and then in Geneva as Chief of Staff (Executive Secretary) for the U.S. Delegation to the Conference on Disarmament.  In the latter two roles he had major negotiating responsibility for the Chemical Weapons Convention and later on, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.  He was also served on U.S. delegations to various Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty meetings and review conferences.  Mr. King is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and holds a Ph.D. degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. 

Juan M. Amaya-Castro (Doctorandus Public International Law, Leiden University).

Since April 2009, he is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Migration Law of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Between 2004 and 2009 he was Acting and Deputy Head of the International Law and Human Rights Program and Assistant Professor at the University for Peace. He has lectured on various international law and human rights topics. Between 2003 and 2004 he was Visiting Researcher with the European Law Research Center at Harvard Law School. He has been a member of several editorial boards, including the Leiden Journal of International Law and the Board of the Stichting NJCM-Boekerij. For several years he worked as correspondent on the European Court of Human Rights for the NJCM-Bulletin. He is the co-founder and Secretary of the Foundation for New Research in International Law (FNRIL).

Ph.D., Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands, 2007. EPU Certificate for Advanced International Study Programme in Peace and Conflict Transformation, European University Centre for Peace Studies (EPU), Austria, 1997. MA Politics of Alternative Development Strategies, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1996. M.Sc. Political Science, Graduate College, University of Khartoum, 1995. B.Sc. (Honours) Department of Political Science, Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, University of Khartoum, 1988.

Marion Keim Lees is an associate professor in the Institute for Social Development at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, lecturing in Conflict & Diversity Studies at the Honours level, in Sport & Community Development on Masters level and in Conflict, Diversity and Peace, Conflict Transformation as well as Leadership and Social Transformation both Masters level for the Law Faculty as well as for ISD in cooperation with the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre. She is also the International Relations Officer of the Institute which is located in the School of Government and the Coordinator of the Social Transformation and Peace Programme of the university.

Marion Keim Lees has a PhD with the focus on Social and Behavioural Sciences from the University of Heidelberg, Germany (1997), and a LLB from the Law Faculty of the University of the Western Cape focusing on Human Rights Law and Family Law ( 2001). She is an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa (since 2002) and used to be the National Training Coordinator for a bi-national project, the Peace and Development Project, between Germany & South Africa, focusing on conflict resolution, crime prevention, and youth development from 1999-2005.

Marion Keim Lees has published nationally and internationally. Her research interests are wide ranging and include: social transformation, community development, multiculturalism, conflict transformation and peace building, crime prevention, youth development and sport sociological issues (including sport as a means for peace building and integration, racism, gender & sport).

Mihir Kanade is the Director of the UPEACE Human Rights Centre and is an Academic Consultant to the Department of International Law and Human Rights at UPEACE. Prior to the present position, Mihir practiced for 6 years as a lawyer in the Supreme Court of India and the Bombay High Court, focusing on issues of fundamental human rights violations. He holds a LL.B. from Nagpur University and a Masters degree in International Law and the Settlement of Disputes from UPEACE. He has served as a legal advisor to many human rights organizations in India and has represented them before different courts and tribunals in criminal, constitutional and labour cases. His principal area of academic research and study is Human Rights and International Trade Linkages, on which he has also worked as a consultant with the United Nations University, Tokyo.

Nick is the Executive Director of UPEACE/US and has been with the organization since graduating from the Peace Education Masters program at UPEACE in 2006. Nick oversees all activities of the organization, both programmatic and operational, and is the chief liaison with the senior administrators at the University. His favorite role however is helping out with the DCPEACE afterschool program in local elementary schools. Nick is passionate about ideas and projects that connect the fields of education, peacebuilding, technology, and global citizenship and, over the past few years, has worked with closely with a number of organizations including Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-NET), the United Nations Association for the United States (UNA-USA) and the Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI). Nick holds a BA with honors from Swarthmore College and was recently selected as a 2009 Global Fellow by the International Youth Foundation for his track record as a young social entrepreneur.

Heads the Department of Environment Peace and Security at UPEACE. He worked for 12 years in international research centres in Africa and Central America in the development of livestock and agroforestry production systems and for another 12 years as an international consultant for bilateral cooperation agencies on subjects of rural development, social forestry, institutional strengthening and environmental conflict management. In the last 10 years, he has coordinated research and training activities in environmental conflict management involving local communities and he is being involved in mediation between environmental organizations. Dr. Borel was trained as an agronomist (Dipl. Ing. Agr. ETH, Zurich), with a specialization in livestock farming (Mag. Sci. IICA, Turrialba, Costa Rica) and further specialization in pasture agronomy (Dr. sc. Tech. ETH, Zurich).