The Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD, Vasu Gounden, will be in Amman, Jordan, from 26 October to 1 November, where he will be a resource person at a leadership course hosted by the United Nations University’s International Leadership Institute (UNU-ILI), based in Amman. The title of the course is “Non Violent Approaches to Conflict Resolution, Peace Building and Reconciliation”.
The course will bring together about fifty delegates from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and other parts of the world, to explore reasons why non-violent approaches to handling conflict have not been deployed to a much greater extent thus far, and to look at what can be done to resurrect and reinstate them as a means of peace building and reconciliation. The main themes that will be addresses during the course focus on: philosophy and impact of non-violent approaches; peaceful approaches to conflict resolution; the contribution of the Abrahmic faiths to non-violence; looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and a look at case studies of global conflicts. Mr Gounden will deliver two presentations as part of the session that will look at “Peaceful Approaches to Conflict Resolution”. In the first Mr Gounden will discuss ACCORD’s involvement in the peace processes in Burundi and the DRC as case studies of conflict resolution in Africa, and in the second he will discuss the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Mr Gounden visited the UNU-ILI in January 2006 where he had discussions with the Director of the Institute, ACCORD Trustee Professor Jairam Reddy, to explore areas of collaboration between the Institute and ACCORD’s Leadership Programme. ACCORD is currently working with the United Nations University on a book project entitled “The Unintended Consequences of Peacekeeping.”
