Summer Institute on Conflict Transformation across Borders, Quito-Ecuador

Check out this exciting opportunity for hands-on learning in Latin America this summer!

The McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies of the University of Massachusetts-Boston, FLACSO-Ecuador, and the Center for Mediation, Peace, and Resolution of Conflict (CEMPROC) are pleased to announce:

The 3rd annual Summer Institute on Conflict Transformation Across Borders will take place from June 26-July 14, 2017 in  Quito, Ecuador at FLACSO, with graduate-level credit issued by UMass Boston. The program will focus on conflict and peace in border regions, including immigration and refugee-related conflict. More info and application instructions are available at http://www.caps.umb.edu/conflict_transformation.  The application deadline is April 1, 2017.

This 3-minute video is a great way to get a quick feel for the program: https://youtu.be/pubS4Jf7D80

The program will feature a series of high-level guest speakers (past years have included a former Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Relations, former ambassadors, UNHCR officials, ambassadors to UNASUR, UN peacekeeper involved in the Nicaraguan demobilization process, military officers in the border region, refugee leaders, NGO activists, and more).

This course is designed to equip early-career professionals, graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and other future peacebuilders with practical tools, knowledge, and hands-on experience to understand the complexities of conflicts in refugee communities and across border regions, and the types of interventions that can be used to transform these conflicts.

The program will include classroom learning; trips to the Amazon cloud forest and the northern border region; practical skills training workshops on conflict analysis, negotiation, cross-cultural communication, and proposal writing; and participants will design their own proposal for a peacebuilding project, receiving feedback from a panel of experienced experts in the field.  In this sense, the Summer Institute is not just a learning or training opportunity, but a platform for action that connects a cohort of future peacebuilders and empowers them to address the complex conflicts related to borders, migration and refugees, and transnational environmental challenges that face the world today.

More details and applications are available online at http://www.umb.edu/academics/caps/international/conflict_transforma... (the deadline to apply is April 1, 2017). Questions can be directed to Dr. Jeff Pugh at Jeffrey.pugh@umb.edu and Dr. Cecile Mouly, camouly@flacso.edu.ec.

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Representative Topics

-Human security vs. national security in border regions
-Transnational dimensions of conflict and peacebuilding
– Skills workshop: Conflict analysis
-Border disputes and binational dialogue/peace processes: the cases of Ecuador-Colombia and Ecuador-Peru
-Forced migration and social conflict in immigrant-receiving communities
-Skills workshop: Negotiation and mediation
-Environmental challenges and transnational resource conflicts
-Skills workshop: Project development and proposal writing
-Indigenous identity, ethnicity and conflict in border regions
-Skills workshop: Cross-cultural and non-violent communication
-Security sector reform; disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) and the Colombian armed conflict
-Nonviolence and civil resistance

Check out the outcomes, student reflections, published articles, and photos from the past years’ Summer Institutes at https://conflicttransformationborders.wordpress.com/conflict-transf....

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Jeffrey D. Pugh
Assistant Professor
Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance
University of Massachusetts, Boston
https://um-boston.academia.edu/JeffPugh

Executive Director
Center for Mediation, Peace, and Resolution of Conflict (CEMPROC)
Quito, Ecuador