Vasu Gounden, the Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD was in Burundi from the 11-14 May and again from the 16-18 May, where he had meetings with various role players, including President Nkurunziza, related to ACCORD’s ongoing post conflict reconstruction activities in Burundi.

ACCORD’s Training for Peace (TfP) Programme will host a Civilian Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Course (CPPC) in Pretoria, South Africa, from 21-25 May. The course will involve approximately 25 participants selected from across the continent, and is a key component of the TfP. It aims to prepare experienced civilians, working in various relevant fields of expertise in Africa, for service in peacekeeping and peace building missions.

On 8 May ACCORD hosted its inaugural trustees’ EXCOM Meeting at ACCORD House. At the ACCORD Board of Trustees Meeting held on 30 November 2006, the Board approved the creation of the EXCOM, which will meet twice a year.

On Sunday, 6 May the 3rd Annual Mahatma Gandhi Salt March was held in Durban. The Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD, Vasu Gounden, who is a trustee of the Gandhi Development Trust, was invited to be the co-director of programmes for the event. The 22km march began at the Phoenix Settlement in Inanda and ended at Battery Beach in Durban, where Gandhi’s ashes were immersed into the sea.

ACCORD recently ran a conflict management training for diplomatic cadets at the Congolese Diplomatic Academy of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The training was run over four days from 26-29 April, and focused on conflict analysis, negotiation and mediation, and strategy design.

Cedric de Coning, Research Fellow at ACCORD, will be co-facilitating an UN OCHA Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination (UN-CMCoord) Course from 22-24 May in Starum, Norway. The UN CMCoord Course is aimed at familiarising representatives from the humanitarian and military community with UN humanitarian policies on civil-military coordination. 

The Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD, Vasu Gounden, was invited by the United Nations’ ‘Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People’, to be a resource person at the United Nations’ ‘Public Forum in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace’, which was held at the University of Pretoria, in South Africa on 11 May.

On 7 and 8 May the Director of Operations from the Centre for Peace Initiatives in Africa (CPIA), Rev. Max Chigwida, visited ACCORD House accompanied by Petronella Mapfiro, the CPIA’s Culture of Peace Programme Officer and Executive Assistant.

On 8 May 2007, Cedric de Coning, a Research Fellow with ACCORD’s Peace Operations Unit, will deliver a presentation on “the Future of Peace Operations in Africa” at the Geneva Center for Security Policy’s New Issues in Security Course (NISC). 

On Thursday, 26 April and Friday 27 April ACCORD hosted separate visits from parties from both sides to the conflict in Sri Lanka.