COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course will focus on providing students with comprehensive views of the causes and discourses of terrorism within the Muslim context, and their implications to world peace.  The course will aim to develop students’ knowledge of the religious, social, cultural and political roots of terrorism in the Muslim context, and to provide them with balanced frameworks that may lead to its peaceful transformation. 

Finally the course will explore approaches to address those issues, with an emphasis on multilateral approaches, and ones that may lead to the peaceful transformation of the terrorism trend in the Muslim world. The course will be taught by a UPEACE professor who is a former prosecuting attorney from Egypt with extensive experience about Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups.

This is an introductory course on the linkages between environmental issues, and peace and conflict. The first week will be used to introduce and clarify basic concepts of the environment and natural resources, and peace and development nexus.  Among the concepts to be discussed are sustainable development, climate change and global warming, biodiversity loss, and poverty in rural areas, as well as deforestation, payment for environmental services, and community based conservation.

After this, the course will introduce the concepts and importance of abundance and scarcity of natural resources in armed conflicts, development and peace. Students will discuss and analyze the role natural resources play in combating extreme poverty and in securing basic livelihood, and how a healthy environment and the sustainable use and management of natural resources is a prerequisite for peace. 

The worlds of 'working for the betterment of society' and 'making money' are often seen as incompatible. This course will attempt to break-down that perception in order for participants to see the social sector as a place of opportunity, both to 'do good' but also to have a financially viable enterprise. The course suggests that the skills to get a socially beneficial idea off the ground, effectively manage and grow it, and make it financially sustainable, requires social entrepreneurs to bring business-like skills and discipline to the area of 'doing good'. However, important differences in these two worlds are acknowledged.

This hands-on, dynamic course will expose participants to a number of cases of social entrepreneurs who have converted their desire of building a better world into a reality. The course hopes to inspire participants with an entrepreneurial spirit, help gain an understanding of the challenges of the start-up process, offer space and structure for participants to begin developing their own business plan for a socially beneficial venture, and think about the complexities of growing and managing it.

The relationships between peace, conflict and development are many and profound. An examination of the current global context, which unfortunately but unavoidably characterized by high levels of protracted violent conflict and rising levels of poverty and inequality – two phenomena that are often found together and that intermingle in complex ways. For many countries and regions in conflict and transition from war to peace, the role of economics and development cannot be separated from understanding the causes of conflict and forms of building sustainable peace. Where peace and conflict resolution efforts fail to address economic and social development issues – so often the roots of conflict – the result is the building of straw houses rather than the strong institutional foundations rooted in the human security and human development needs of people, which are necessary for securing a lasting peace. From the other end of the spectrum, development policies and programmes at all levels have historically generated ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, catalysing and/or exacerbating social conflicts Designing and implementing the right post-conflict reconstruction and development policies is a requirement for building enduring peace, as such policies will simultaneously serve to address peace and development needs.

The teaching of Peace and Conflict Studies and related fields benefits from the discipline's innovation both in form and content. In relation to form, peace education pedagogy has managed to mainstream many fields that seek to promote teaching with peace, fostering co-operation and co-evolution alike. In relation to content, not only does the discipline innovate towards a transdisciplinary path, it also seeks to mainstream curricular design in order for a bottom-up generation of academic knowledge to occur. This course will seek to enable scholars from many different disciplinary and geographical backgrounds to establish curricula in peace and conflict studies related fields, so that their curricula evolve towards a custom-made form tailored to meet the needs very same academic environments in which they evolve.

The course intends to give students a profound understanding of the political, but also economic and social reasons constituing the reasons and foundation for what today is known as the European Union. Furthermore the students will learn how and why the development of the Union up until today has taken place, students will look into the diversity and similarities of the national political reasons that have taken the Union from six members to twentyseven in a span of less than half a century.

Students will be made to understand the driving political forces behind any future expansion of the Union and its possible international political ramnifications. Finally students will after the course have acquiered a profound knowledge of the political,. economic and social significane of the Union, for its citizens, its neighbours, and globally.
 

In recent decades, there has been an increased recognition of the vital role of education in meeting the urgent needs of peoples and communities affected by wars, conflicts and other emergencies, including natural disasters.  This course seeks to clarify the range of purposes that education can and should fulfill in emergency situations as part of the broader challenge of building a culture of peace.
 
Exemplars from various wars and other emergencies worldwide will be examined to suggest alternative educational stratgeies for helping children, refugees and other culnerable groups to overcome physical and psychosocial trauma and suffering caused by displacement, family destabilization and loss of regular educational provision.  Conceptual insights and "best practices" gained from the essential work of international and local humanitarian agencies and grassroots civil society organizations in alleviating the impact of wars and other emergencies will also be explored.

This course focuses on the principles and practices that underlie environmental security assessments.

Environmental security assessments combine field research and analysis of secondary data in order to identify environmental risks and vulnerabilities that have the potential for adversely affecting human security or promoting instability and conflict. They provide tools that enable policymakers to develop more effective strategies for crisis prevention and mitigation.

Environmental security assessments are by their nature interdisciplinary, calling for skills and insights ranging from economics, anthropology, and political science to hydrology, agronomy, and a variety of specializations from environmental science.

 In this course, students will be encouraged to explore from a household and community perspective the causative agents of hunger, starvation, malnutrition, and famine and their subsequent impact on people’s ability to survive and thrive. Students will examine the underlying issues that shape rural and urban food systems in terms of food supply and food entitlement (i.e. access to food and distribution of food). This will include not only looking at the dependence of household and community food supply on agricultural production and population growth etc, but also on the policy and institutional environment that constrain people’s options for dealing with periodic food shortages, and fluctuations in food prices and food entitlements etc. The course will also explore the importance and synergy of rural-urban links in enabling households to achieve sustainable livelihoods and an acceptable level of food security and well-being. Students will be introduced to methodologies to assist the prevention of household and community food insecurity crises, including Emergency Systems, Food Information Systems, Famine Early Warning Systems, as well as Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems. Associated with the examination of emergency systems will be a brief exploration of the nature of food aid and the critical importance of how it is delivered on whether it will alleviate or exacerbate food insecurity.

As well as this theoretical content, students will be exposed to some practical methods for assessing poverty and food security at household and community level. The objective will be to raise students’ awareness of the problems of identifying the poor, marginalized and food insecure within rural and urban communities. Finally, it is important to note that gender issues in dealing with food security will be covered at various points in the course because of the major role women play in household and community food security.
 

This course explores the challenges and prospects of implementing environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable tourism enterprises. Over the past thirty-plus years, tourism – now arguably the world’s largest industry – has been promoted around the globe as a strategy for economic growth and development, particularly in impoverished Southern societies where conventional development measures have not always delivered intended benefits. Yet is increasingly apparent that tourism is not necessarily the “smokeless” industry it was initially considered, and that conventional mass tourism, at least, may cause negative social, economic, and environmental impacts that many critics feel outweigh any positive benefits the industry brings.

As a result, proponents have begun to search for tools and strategies to make the tourism industry more “sustainable” in terms of all of the aspects listed above. We’ll explore the potential and pitfalls of such measures, investigating the relationship between tourism, development, conservation, and sociocultural change. We’ll also address issues of supply and demand in the delivery of tourism services, including dynamics of marketing, labor relations, and the demographics/desires of potential consumers. In addition, we’ll discuss tools and methods for assessing and certifying sustainability. Finally, we’ll critically analyze our own beliefs, values, and assumptions surrounding various tourism issues in order to become more conscientious and sensitive planners and travelers.
 

This course is a 40-hour experiential workshop in which participants use easy-to-learn techniques to master the power of heart wisdom through scientifically proven methods. Learn practical peace skills using compassionate language to resolve conflict while enriching your life and the lives of others.   BePeace is the synergy between coherence for “feeling peace” and connection to universal needs through empathy and honesty for “speaking peace.” Feeling peace is the ability to remain peaceful under stress.  Speaking peace is the ability to communicate empathically and honestly. When you feel peace and speak peace, you can BePeace. This training teaches the skills to be a true peacemaker, strengthening both personal peace and mediation abilities while transforming the way we treat conflicts in our lives and in the world. Taught by Rita Marie Johnson, founder of the Academy for Peace of Costa Rica and BePeace.

As early as in 1996, Usama bin Laden declared that his aim was to directly affect the lives of ordinary Americans in terms of human and economic costs, as well as to initiate a global insurgency against infidel regimes. More than 10 years later, and in light of an impending global economic recession, this goal seems to be in reach. While the number of terrorist attacks has slightly diminished since September 11th 2001, their intensity and scope throughout the world have become unprecedented. Whether through taking a flight or filling their gas tanks, Americans are being affected daily by the specter of international terrorism. In the last 10 years, international terrorism has mutated from a being a cluster of exclusive organizations to a grass-root dogma that possesses a global reach. How did it come to this and what role did mass communication play in all this? How did al-Qaeda become ‘al-Qaedism’, an ideological franchise that Usama bin Laden himself might be unable to stop from spreading if he ever chose to?

This course will assess the globalization of terrorism and insurgency in terms of the mass communication used by groups to grow, self-sustain, recruit militants, spread their identity and elicit support from their target audience. This will be facilitated by the analyses of five terrorist and insurgency networks: the Lebanese Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, the Iraqi insurgency and several Zionist groups that contributed to the creation of the State if Israel. The course will prepare students to think analytically about terrorism and insurgency, and use various models of mass communication to understand their dynamics and processes. At the end of the course, the students are expected to have a sound knowledge of the field of mass communication applied to terrorism and insurgency.
 

This course provides a basic framework of international refugee law, policy and practice.  The course focuses on the institutional framework of refugee protection and its relationship to the broader human rights system. The Course will be taught by a training group comprised by staff members of the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) office in San José, Costa Rica.

The course aims at strengthening the capacity of scientists, administrators and students to respond to specific donor demands to achieve complementary funding for projects (Project Funding) and institutions (Core Funding).

The course is an instrumental one and systematically developes a logical framework based project matrix, a concept paper and gives an overview about potential funding agencies and options.

The course is oriented towards the needs of the participants. They start the course with their own project idea in which external funding is required and finalize with concrete results such as a project planning matrix, project profile and potential donors identified to launch the project
 

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).
 

Head of Department International Law and Human Rights

He worked as District Judges Assessor at a civil and criminal regional court in Sweden before joining the Swedish Foreign Ministry. With the Ministry he has held various positions, among those as Director for American Affairs, as Director for Asian Affairs, and for Eastern European Affairs. Postings abroad include several in Central America, North and South America, including as Head of Mission in Montevideo, Uruguay. Furthermore Christer has served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the Swedish Embassies in Rome, Italy and Vienna. During 4, 5 years Christer served as Senior Advisor at the European Union Council Secretariat, Directorate General for International Relations. Most recently Christer served as Ambassador for multilateral co-operation in the Baltic Sea Area, holding in 2006-2007 the presidency of the Council of the Baltic Sea States, Committee of Senior Officials, and thereafter served as the representative of the local EU-presidency in Nicaragua.
 

Costa Rican. Lawyer by training, he graduated with honors from the Law Faculty of University of Costa Rica and holds an M.A. on International Law and Human Rights from the UN-mandated University for Peace. Since 2004, Mr. Martinez works as an Associate Legal Officer at the Regional Legal Unit of the UNHCR in San Jose, Costa Rica, providing trainings on refugee law to State authorities and UNHCR staff throughout Latin America. He has been invited as visiting professor at the University for Peace (Costa Rica) and guest lecturer for courses on Refugee Law at the University of Panama, the University of Chile, the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights in San José, the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo, and the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Environment, Peace and Security, University for Peace. MSc. Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University and Research Center, The Netherlands. BSc. Tropical Forestry, Technological Institute of Costa Rica, Cartago, Costa Rica. He teaches Forestry, Agriculture, the San Jose Environmental Seminar and the Natural Resource Management Field Trip. Prior to this, he worked as a Student Research Assistant in Wageningen University and Research Center, WUR, at the Sociology Department, inside the Environmental Policy Group. Research interests: Payments for Environmental Services, Forest Conservation, Sustainable Rural Development, Community Forest Concessions.

Director of Research and Studies at the Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability (FESS). From 1996 to 2003, he was the Director of Research and Studies at the North-South Center of the University of Miami, where he also was editor of the North-South Agenda Papers. At FESS, he has led environmental security assessments in Uganda (2005), the Dominican Republic (2006), the Philippines (2007), and Ethiopia (2009), as well as project activities in Sierra Leone (2006-09). He is co-editor of Fault Lines of Democracy in Post-Transition Latin America (North- South Center Press, 1998), winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Book award, and editor of The Challenge of Change in Latin America and the Caribbean (North-South Center Press, 2001). Recently, he has written on problems of environmental security in the developing world, including “Climate Change, Adaptation, and Conflict” (USAID, October 2009) and “Energy Security and Conflict” (USAID, February 2010).

Economist and FESS Senior Fellow who has worked on key projects with FESS since 2000. He has been involved in environmental security analyses of the Philippines, the Mekong River Basin countries, and Ethiopia. He served as the Associate Director for The Croft Institute for International Studies (1999-2005) at the University of Mississippi, where he taught global economic issues, international trade, and microeconomics for both undergraduates and graduate students. His research interests focus on mechanism design in an asymmetric information environment. In the past, he worked on East Asian security and economies, renewable energy, environmental security, and defense procurement issues. He taught economics at the California Institute of Technology, UCLA, Monterey Institute for International Studies (MIIS), the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, and the University of Mississippi. Outside the academic realm, he served as a senior economist and a chair of the Economics Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (renewable energy system project), a senior staff member at the Caltech Environmental Quality Lab (LA basin air pollution abatement project), and a senior economist at the RAND Corporation (government procurement project, energy issues, and U.S./Japan Relations Center). Dr. Terasawa was born in Nagano, Japan and raised in Tokyo where he attended Keio University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas.

Director of the UPEACE Centre for Executive and Professional Education and a faculty member at UPEACE. Prior to this position, he served as Education Programme Manager of the Earth Charter Initiative, an international nonprofit organization. Before his 4-years in the non-profit sector, he worked both in the private sector and also as a high school teacher in Ecuador. He has a Bachelor's degree from Stanford University and his Master's from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

University instructor in food security and community development and natural resource management consultant working on community development and food security issues for international development organizations such FAO, DANIDA, DFID, GTZ, OXFAM, UNESCO, UNDP etc.

In 1997, he became a founding member of a nonprofit association of development professionals, the International Support Group (ISG) and was on the board of the association from 1999 to 2005 working as treasurer and member of ISG's strategic planning team. In addition to membership of ISG, Reg Noble is also a research associate for the Centre for Studies in Food Security at Ryerson University (Toronto) and Academic Coordinator for the postgraduate program in food security at Ryerson where he teaches three of the program courses: Food Security Concepts and Principles; Research Methods and Evaluation in Food Security; and Community Development and Food Security. His skills include: Workshop facilitation with community members and their service providers (from government, non-government and private sectors) to assist them forming multi-stakeholder learning groups for community development planning; Design of collaborative processes for policy development with regard to natural resource management (NRM) and food security; Stakeholder analysis; Design of client-led research approaches for community development; among many other fields of experience. Reg Noble has undertaken his work mostly in Africa (where he lived for 17 years in Malawi) dealing with development issues such as decentralization of agricultural planning in Uganda; impact of integrated rural development on rural livelihoods in Ethiopia and ecologically-based smallholder farming development in Malawi. Reg Noble holds a Ph.D. in Ecology, awarded in 1981 from the Chelsea College of Science, University of London, UK.

Rita Marie Johnson came to Costa Rica in 1993 to help strengthen its national model of peace. As a result, a new “peace package” is now being created: a Ministry for Peace that collaborates with a national Academy for Peace, which trains peace teachers in the schools to teach the practice of BePeace in each community. This new government infrastructure, coupled with grassroots peace skills, is inspiring hope around the world as people realize that similar models could be replicated in their countries.
In 2002, Johnson discovered a powerful synergy between coherence for “feeling peace” and connection to universal needs through empathy and honesty for “speaking peace.” Inspired by this combination, she developed the practice of BePeace. She founded the Academy for Peace of Costa Rica as a project of the Rasur Foundation, with the vision of developing masterful peace teachers, called “Rasurs,” to provide BePeace training in every community. In 2009, Rasur Foundation International began supporting other countries to establish their own academies, which include developing “Rasurs” and teaching BePeace.
 

Assistant Professor of Natural Resources and Sustainable Development in the Department of Environment, Peace and Security at UPEACE. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of California at Santa Barbara with an emphasis in Global Studies. Dr. Fletcher has conducted ethnographic research in Chile and Costa Rica concerning the cultural dimensions of ecotourism as a strategy for environmentally-sustainable economic development. In addition, he has worked for many years as a professional ecotourism guide and planner in a variety of locations

Toh Swee-Hin (S.H.Toh)

Toh Swee-Hin is Distinguished Professor and long-term Consultant, Office of the Vice-Rector, University for Peace.  He graduated with a Ph.D. in International/Intercultural Education & Sociology of Education, and a Master of Education in Educational Administration from the University of Alberta, Canada after undergraduate studies in Chemistry & Education at La Trobe University in Australia.  Prior to his UPEACE appointment, Prof.
Toh was the founding Director  of the Multi-Faith Centre, Griffith University, in Australia, which seeks to promote inter-faith dialogue towards a culture of peace. Born in Malaysia, he has  taught in universities in Canada and Australia and served as visiting professor in the interrelated fields of education for a culture of peace, human rights, justice, multiculturalism, sustainability and interfaith dialogue in North and South contexts.  He has contributed to several international networks and organizations including UNESCO, the International Institute on Peace Education, World Council for Curriculum & Instruction, Asia- Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding, and the Parliament of the World’s Religions and Religions for Peace. In 2000, he was awarded the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education.

Tony Karbo is a Program Officer at the University for Peace Africa Program based in Addis Ababa. He is a graduate from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Prior to joining the UPEACE Africa Program, Tony worked as a Senior Lecturer with the Institute of Peace, Leadership and Governance (IPLG) at Africa University in Zimbabwe. He is a Certified Mediator and Conflict Resolution, Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding trainer. He has worked extensively in Africa with numerous organizations working in conflict zones conducting and facilitating training in conflict resolution and peacebuilding and monitoring and evaluating election processes and programs.
 

Director for Academic Development, and Associate Professor, Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, University for Peace

Doctor of Education (candidate), Universidad De La Salle, Costa Rica; PhD, MA, Peace and Development Studies, University of Limerick, Eire. BA in Politics, University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Disciplines: quantum theory, terrorism and insurgency studies.

Resident Associate Professor, Department of Gender and Peace Education

Virginia Cawagas is a resident Associate Professor in the Dept. of Gender and Peace Education. Previous to this appointment she was Visiting Professor of UPEACE and a Senior Fellow since 2004; Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Education & Professional Studies, Griffith University (2004-2009), and the Faculty of Education, University of Alberta (1995-2010). From 2003-2005, she was a visiting professor and academic consultant of the Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU), a centre established by the Agreement of UNESCO and the Government of the  Republic of Korea, to promote education for international understanding (EIU) towards a culture of peace  in the Asia-Pacific region. She edited the first APCEIU teachers’ resource book for Asian and Pacific countries for integrating EIU toward a culture of peace in social studies. She has been editor of the International Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, since 1998. Prof. Cawagas has an Ed.D. in peace and development education (meritissimus) and has extensive teaching experience in the field of peace education, human rights education, and multicultural education in both formal and nonformal modes. She teaches, lectures, and conducts workshops in these fields for students, teachers, academics, school administrators, community leaders, soldiers, and civil servants in the Philippines, Australia, Canada, China, Jamaica, Japan, South Pacific, South Korea, Thailand, Uganda and the US.