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 second annual Summer Institute on Conflict Transformation Across Borders will take place from June 5-24, 2016 in  Quito, Ecuador at FLACSO, with graduate-level credit issued by UMass Boston. The program will focus on conflict and peace in border regions.  More info and application instructions are available at http://www.caps.umb.edu/conflict_transformation .  The application deadline is March 21, 2016.

The program is coordinated by Dr. Jeff Pugh of UMass Boston (Dept. of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance) and Dr. Cecile Mouly of FLACSO-Ecuador (Dept. of International Studies and  Communication), and will feature a series of high-level guest speakers (a former Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Relations, UN Ambassador, UN peacekeeper involved in the Nicaraguan demobilization process, refugee leaders, NGO activists, and more).

This course is designed to equip early-career professionals, graduate students, and other future peacebuilders with practical tools, knowledge, and hands-on experience to understand the complexities of conflicts within 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 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 peacebuilders and empowers them to address the complex conflicts related to borders, migration and refugees, and transnational environmental challenges that face the world today. 

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 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 migrant-receiving communities
• Skills workshop: Negotiation and mediation
• Conflict involving transnational environmental challenges
• Skills workshop: Project development and proposal writing
• Indigenous identity, ethnicity and conflict in border regions
• Skills workshop: Cross-cultural and non-violent communication as peacebuilding resource
• 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 2015 Summer Institute at https://conflicttransformationborders.wordpress.com/conflict-transf... .   This 3-minute video is a great way to get a quick feel for the program:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUO5nSFS0gM .

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Jeffrey D. Pugh
Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director of Conflict Resolution
Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Jeffrey.pugh@umb.edu

Apply today for the MA program in Conflict Resolution at UMass Boston:
http://www.umb.edu/academics/mgs/crhsgg/grad/conflict_resolution

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