Past Events
Event summaries, where available, can be found by clicking on the event title.
Academic Year 2022-2023
Humanitarian Congress Vienna
University of Vienna, Main Ceremonial Hall
The Humanitarian Congress Vienna brings together international stakeholders from humanitarian aid, politics, media, academia, civil society and business to engage in dialogue on policy, good practices, recent developments and future visions in the field of humanitarian aid. Join us to shape the debate on the future of the Humanitarian Imperative and the Humanitarian Principles, the guiding stars of our work and engagement. Engage with leaders, experts and practitioners, contribute your experiences and insights, and participate in peer-to-peer networking: 6th Humanitarian Congress Vienna.
Keynote speaker: Alex de Waal
Moderator: Elisa Vass
Panel members: Alex de Waal, Brian Lander, Lusine Stepanyan, Nyachangkouth Rambang Tai
Sudan: Making Sense of a Senseless War
History, Resistance, Prospects
Tuesday, May 23, 2023
Join co-authors of Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy: The promise and betrayal of a people’s revolution for a panel discussion on the crisis in Sudan today.
Moderator:
Justin Lynch, Researcher
Panelists:
Dr. Willow Berridge, Senior Lecturer, Newcastle University
Alex de Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School
Raga Makawi, Democracy Activist and co-editor, African Arguments
Traumatic Decarbonization: What happens in fragile states when oil revenues collapse?
12:00pm – 1:50pm EST
As the world transitions away from hydrocarbons, fragile states dependent on oil and gas revenues face a difficult adjustment. In the last decade we have witnessed the political systems of various countries. (among them South Sudan, Sudan and Venezuela) struggle with forced, long-term collapse in these revenues, while others (among them Ecuador, Iraq and Nigeria) try to cope with short-term downturns in oil prices and production. This panel explores the political implications of “traumatic decarbonization” in fragile countries, focusing on openings for political reform.
PANELISTS:
Katrina Burgess, Director of the Henry J. Leir Institute and Associate Professor of Political Economy at the Fletcher School, Tufts University
Aditya Sarkar, Ph.D student at the Fletcher School, Tufts University and independent researcher
MODERATOR:
Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Great Decisions | Global Famine
6:00pm – 7:00pm EST
Hosted by WorldBoston
Fears of global food shortages have followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has disrupted grain shipments from the major grain producer. But what about countries and regions that were suffering before this impending shortage? How is famine defined, and how is it different from simple food shortages? What if any remedies are there?
Learn more about global famine and hunger by participating in this virtual discussion with Kimberly Flowers, international development consultant and former Director of Global Food Security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation.
Hunger in War Economies: Geo-Strategic Burden Shifting and the Politics of Faminogenesis
6:00pm GMP | 1:00pm EST
Annual Distinguished Lecture of the SOAS Food Studies Centre
Speaker: Professor Alex de Waal
Hunger is an instrument of war in diverse ways. This lecture examines contemporary world food crises as a product of three distinct kinds of war economy. At a geo-strategic level, the instruments used by the G-7 and its Chinese and Russian-led rivals are shifting the burden of war financing onto the Global South, in different ways. Rulers in poor countries, unable to deliver developmental outcomes, are reverting to the transactional politics of regime survival including seeking strategic patrons. This is akin to a war economy that deepens livelihood crisis and tolerates weaponized starvation.
What are Starvation Crimes?
14:00-15:00 GMP | 9:00am-10:00am EST
Hosted by the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University
Keynote:
Dr Bridget Conley, Research Director of the World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School and a Research Associate Professor at the Fletcher School, Tufts University
Beginning in the 1990s, there was a revolution in political, public and legal understanding of and willingness to prosecute violations of international humanitarian law and the laws of war. But it did not treat all crimes equally. One area that was largely left behind were starvation crimes – various acts that intentionally produce conditions in which people are deprived of not just food and water, but also other objects and activities indispensable for life. Yet starvation is weaponized in many conflicts. Political and military actors know well the power and influence they can wield through systematic deprivations. This talk will provide a conceptual and historical overview of starvation, addressing the uses of starvation, how these acts are already criminalized, and why they have not been prosecuted.
What you should know about starvation crimes: Advancements, strategies, and tools
09:00 – 10:00 EST
Hosted by the Feinstein International Center
An expert panel will explore recent developments in recognizing and addressing mass starvation. They will look at issues related to law, humanitarian response, protection, gender and sexual-based violence, and documenting and prosecuting starvation crimes. Cases from Yemen and Ethiopia will be used to illustrate the current challenges and advances.
Panel:
- Bridget Conley (moderator), Research Director, World Peace Foundation
- Alex de Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School, Tufts
- Catriona Murdoch, Partner, Global Rights Compliance
- Dyan Mazurana, Research Professor Fletcher School and Friedman School; Research Director Feinstein International Center, Tufts University USA
- Ali Jameel, Accountability and Redress Director, Mwatana for Human Rights
- Tom Dannenbaum, Associate Professor of International Law, The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts
IFIAD Annual Conference
A food secure future for everyone
09:00 – 21:00 GMT
IFIAD Annual World Food Day Conference 2022
2022 marks the 175th anniversary of Black ’47 of the Great Irish Famine, and its dramatic impact on the course of Ireland’s political and social development. In 2022, issues of conflict, inequality, and climate change continue to drive food insecurity and famine. 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021 and it is projected that 8% of the world’s population will face hunger by 2030.
In partnership with the Irish Forum for International Agricultural Development (IFIAD), Self Help Africa, and University of Galway, Galway City will host a conference on global food security. Looking from the past to the present, and forwards to 2030 and beyond, the conference will provide perspectives on hunger and food security from leading Irish and international speakers and experts.
Speakers:
Alex de Waal, Tufts University
Prof. Sayed Azam-Ali, Crops for the Future
Breandán MacSuibhne, University of Galway
Dina Esposito, USAID
Theresa Liebig, CGIAR Climate Security Program
Lalini Veerassamy, IOM Chief of Mission in Ireland
Ronald Vargas, FAO
Kevin O’Sullivan, University of Galway
What Justice for Famine Crimes?
Annual Harrell-Bond Lecture 2022
5:00pm-6:30pm GMT
Hosted by Refugee Studies Center
Speaker:
Alex de Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation and a research professor at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, USA. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarship and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peacebuilding.
Accountability for Mass Starvation: Testing the Limits of the Law
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
5:30-7:00pm EST
Join us to mark the publication of our new volume, “Accountability for Starvation: Testing the Limits of the Law” (Oxford University Press, 2022), eds. Bridget Conley, Alex de Waal, Catriona Murdoch, and Wayne Jordash. The book demonstrates how international law might be brought to bear on situations of mass starvation. Addressing the law, cross-cutting themes and key cases, the volume provides a timely overview of one of today’s most pressing issues.
It is the culmination of a multi-year research project that involved several Tufts colleagues.
Panelists:
- Bridget Conley, Research Director of the World Peace Foundation
- Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation
- Aditya Sarkar is a Ph.D student at the Fletcher School, Tufts University and an independent researcher
- Dyan Mazurana, Ph.D., Research Professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and at the Fletcher School at Tufts University
- Daniel Maxwell, Henry J. Leir Professor in Food Security at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, with a secondary appointment at the Fletcher School.
Discussants:
Tom Dannenbaum, Associate Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy
Paul Howe Director and Irwin H. Rosenberg Professor of Nutrition and Human Security, Feinstein International Center
Academic Year 2021-2022
Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy
Tuesday, May 20,2022
Hosted by The Royal African Society
Join us for an important analysis of politics in modern Sudan with the launch of Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy. This book tells the story of the Sudanese revolution of 2019; of how it succeeded in bringing down the long-standing rule of President Omar al-Bashir; and of the troubled transitional civilian-led government that was installed in his place.
Speakers:
Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation
Justin Lynch, writer and researcher living in Sudan
Arms Exports to Conflict Areas: Engaging Youth in Countering Militarism
Thursday, April 28, 2022
Despite state commitments to upholding the protection of human rights and international humanitarian law, the outbreak of war or conflict has little or no restraining effect on US, UK, or French exports – even when blatant violations of human rights and humanitarian law are documented. This is the key finding of a series of three seminal reports published last month by the World Peace Foundation’s program, “Defense Industries, Foreign Policy, and Armed Conflict,” funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
In this panel, we explore how activists might leverage these insights to advocate for change.
Panelists:
Ruth Rohde, Founder & Manager, Corruption Tracker
Alice Privey, Research & Events Officer, Stop Fueling War
Mélina Villeneuve, Research Director, Demilitarise Education
Greta Zarro, Organzing Director, World BEYOND War
B. Arneson, Outreach Coordinator World Peace Foundation, “Defense industries, Foreign Policy and Armed Conflict.”
Housing & Health: Re-Entry Obstacles
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Hosted by TUPIT, The Petey Greene Progam, and Kappa Alpha Theta
Learn from Leslie Credle, executive director of Justice4Housing, and Monik Jimenez, Assist. Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Assistant Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, as they share their stories and address the impacts of discriminatory housing and health care policies on formerly incarcerated people. How can we expand access to safe housing, quality healthcare, and other vital resources to humanize our approach to re-entry?
Capitalizing on Conflict: US Arms Sales to Conflict Zones
Thursday, April 14, 2022
In partnership with OpenSecrets.
Join OpenSecrets and the World Peace Foundation for a discussion of how and why the U.S.— with sales over $10 billion each year — sells weapons to countries involved in armed conflicts. Our experts will explore how the role of industry influence, export controls and the government’s geopolitical goals all contribute to the spread of armed conflict with a special focus on conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa.
Speakers:
Jennifer Erickson, an associate professor of Political Science and International Studies at Boston College
Dan Auble, a Senior Researcher at OpenSecrets
These reports are part of a project of OpenSecrets and the World Peace Foundation/Tufts University supported in part by funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The project is investigating the effects of defense industry influence on policy and conflict and why the global arms trade has proven remarkably resistant to effective controls.
US REPORT LAUNCH
How the U.S. arms conflict zones: a discussion with Jennifer Erickson
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Jennifer Erickson will present insights from her new report, “On the Front Lines: Conflict Zones and US Arms Exports” (World Peace Foundation, March 2022). In the paper, she details US domestic and international arms export controls, and what actually happened in five conflict zones: Libya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
Dr. Erickson is an expert on conventional arms transfers and arms export controls, sanctions and arms embargoes, and new weapons and the laws and norms of war. She is the author of Dangerous Trade: Conventional Arms Exports, Human Rights, and International Reputation (Columbia, 2015).
UK REPORT LAUNCH
Missing in Action: UK arms export controls in war and armed conflict
Report by Prof. Anna Stavrianakis
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Hosted by Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT)
This report is part of a project led by the World Peace Foundation, and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, “Defense Industries, Foreign Policy, and Armed Conflict“.
This event explores the patterns of UK arms exports in the last two decades, with particular reference to arms exports to India and Pakistan in relation to Kashmir; to the Sri Lankan armed forces in the civil war; to Israel, used in the occupation of Palestine; and to the Saudi-led coalition in the war in Yemen. Speakers from CAAT, Mwatana for Human Rights and Palestine Solidarity Campaign will reflect on the role of the arms trade in sustaining these wars, and on avenues for progressive change.
Book Launch/Panel Discussion of Kerry Whigham’s Resonant Violence: Affect, Memory and Activism in Post-Genocide Societies
Friday, February 24, 2022
Hosted by the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention
Join us for a panel discussion marking the launch of the new book by Kerry Whigham, Assistant Professor of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at I-GMAP, Resonant Violence: Affect, Memory and Activism in Post-Genocide Societies. Our two distinguished panelists and Prof. Whigham will discuss the new book and take questions from the online audience.
Speakers:
Bridget Conley is associate professor of research and research director at the World Peace Foundation.
Ernesto Verdeja earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in political science (political theory) from the New School for Social Research in New York City.
Finding a pathway to peace and dialogue in Ethiopia
Thursday 03 March 2022
Hosted by the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa
The crisis in Tigray and northern Ethiopia has forced prime minister Abiy Ahmed to declare a nationwide state of emergency, as the spectre of a regime change looms over Addis Ababa. This puts the country at a critical juncture, as the prospect grows of an expanding civil war, raising fears the situation could tip into genocide. An immediate ceasefire, unhindered humanitarian access and a comprehensive national dialogue on reconciliation have never been more urgent. This event will seek to unpack the current situation in Ethiopia and the competing narratives about its past and future.
Speakers:
- Dr. Safia Aidid
- Emebet Getachew Abate
- Dr. Mebratu Kelecha
Chaired by Professor Alex de Waal
2022 LIEBERT LECTURE: NEW PANDEMICS, OLD POLITICS WITH PROF. ALEX DE WAAL
Friday, February 18, 2022
Hosted by Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft.Myers Florida
We urgently need a redefinition of “pandemic” to look beyond the individual pathogen itself and understand the societal ecology in which pandemic diseases evolve, and the societal impacts that they have. In this lecture Professor de Waal will examine how the concept of “pandemic” has been shaped by positivistic science and the attendant concept of “conquering” disease, and how this overlooks alternative understandings of health crises and approaches to health that combine human rights with evolutionary science. He critiques the pervasive notion of a “war” on disease and explore how the concept of “one health” can become an emancipatory social project.
Human Rights Day: Time For Reparations
Friday, December 10, 2021
Hosted by the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights at Harvard University
The FXB Center will host a conversation on “Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective.” The book includes case studies of state injustices from around the world—from slavery to forced sterilization to widespread atrocities—and interdisciplinary perspectives on the potential impact of reparations.
WPF Executive Director, Alex de Waal and Research Director, Bridget Conley join the conversation on state injustices and the potential impact for reparations.
Trauma, Collective Trauma and Refugee Trajectories in the Digital Era
Friday, December 3, 2021
Eritrean activist, researcher, and psychotherapist, Selam Kidane, presents her newest book, Trauma, Collective Trauma and Refugee Trajectories in the Digital Era: Development of the Trauma Recovery Understanding Self-Help Therapy (TRUST). This book sheds light into the psychological impact entailed in refugee trajectories. With findings mainly from Eritrean refugee communities in multiple locations, the research reveals alarming levels of individual and collective trauma.
Another Coup d’état in Sudan: An Exploration of the Prospects of Democracy and Human Rights
Sponsored by Harvard Law’s Human Rights Program and the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World.
November 22, 2021
Speakers:
- Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and a research professor at The Fletcher School at Tufts University
- Gerald L. Neuman, J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law, and Director of the Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School
- Hala Al Karib, Regional Director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA)
- Abdelkhalig Shaib, legal counsel at an international bank in Bahrain
- Mohamed Osman, Researcher in Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division
Moderator: Abadir M. Ibrahim, Associate Director of the Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School
November 15, 2021
Women and Children in Conflict
Part 1: War and Famine
Monday, November 15, 2021
6:30pm-7:30pm
Speakers:
- Laura Hammond, Professor of Development Studies, SOAS University of London
- Bridget Conley, Research Director, World Peace Foundation
- Dyan Mazuara, Director, Feinstein’s Research Program on Women and Children and Armed Conflict
Chair: Tajer Qassim MBE, Public Health Specialist
October 21, 2021
New Pandemics, Old Politics
Ginn Library at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy hosts Alex de Waal on a discussion of his new book.
Thursday, October 21, 2021
12:10pm – 1:20pm
Cabot Room 702 or via Zoom.
New Pandemics, Old Politics explores how the modern world adopted a martial script to deal with epidemic disease threats, and how this has failed—repeatedly. Europe first declared ‘war’ on cholera in the 19th century. It didn’t defeat the disease but it served purposes of state and empire. In 1918, influenza emerged from a real war and swept the world unchecked by either policy or medicine. The biggest pandemic of the century defied the script and was scrubbed from history. Forty years ago, AIDS challenged the confidence of medical science. AIDS is still with us, but we have learned to live with it—chiefly because of community activism and emancipatory politics.
Academic Year 2020-2021
The humanitarian crisis in Tigray, Ethiopia
June 17, 2021
Hosted by the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa and the Department of International Development, London School of Economics
Chair: Professor Christine Chinkin, Professorial Research Fellow, LSE Centre of Women Peace & Security
A Pandemic of Hunger: Implementing UN Security Council Resolution 2417
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Hosted by Global Rights Compliance
To mark the third anniversary of the adoption of landmark UNSC Resolution 2417, GRC is pleased to convene a webinar on 19 May 2021, at 16.00-17.30 (CET) on the implementation of Resolution 2417 with a focus on South Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia, and broader UNSC action.
The webinar will coincide with a digital symposium on Opinio Juris on the implementation of UNSC 2417 kicking off on May 17 and featuring written think pieces from the World Food Programme, Mwatana for Human Rights, Alex de Waal, Chris Newton, Yousuf Syed Khan, Jared Miller and Emanuela-Chiara Gillard.
Starving Tigray Mass atrocity and humanitarian emergency in Ethiopia
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
The war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia has unleashed a major humanitarian emergency. With most of Tigray off-limits to humanitarian agencies and journalists, the true dimensions of the crisis are hard to determine precisely. The World Peace Foundation report, ‘Starving Tigray’ documents what is known about the causes of the food crisis, its scale, and its possible trajectory.
Panelists discuss the findings from the report “Starving Tigray: How armed conflict and mass atrocities have destroyed an Ethiopian region’s economy and food systems and are threatening famine” and debate what can be done.
Prosecuting Starvation Crimes in Yemen’s Civil War
Hosted by Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Monday, April 19, 2021 4:00 – 5:30pm EST
The Yemen Accountability Project’s release of its white paper “Prosecuting Starvation Crimes in Yemen’s Civil War” examines the use of deliberate attacks on food, water, and objects indispensable to survival as part of the Saudi-led Coalition’s attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The white paper outlines the evidence of these crimes and makes the case for bringing charges against perpetrators of starvation crimes in Yemen. The panelists will explore the challenges of bringing charges against perpetrators and the potential avenues of accountability.
- Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and a research professor at The Fletcher School at Tufts University
- Laura Graham is executive director of the Yemen Accountability Project (YAP)
- Milena Sterio is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Enrichment at Cleveland State University’s Marshall College of Law.
- James C. Johnson is the Chief Prosecutor of the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone
Defining an Unimaginable Crime: The Story of Raphael Lemkin
Hosted by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Wednesday, April 7, 2021 at 11:00 AM EDT
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer, escaped the Nazis but lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust. He coined the word genocide in 1944 to describe the deliberate attempt to wipe out a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Lemkin devoted the last 15 years of his life to lobbying governments to recognize genocide as an international crime and changed the legal landscape. Despite his impact, he died alone and penniless in 1959.
Speaker: Dr. Bridget Conley, Research Director, World Peace Foundation, and Associate Research Professor, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Moderator:
Dr. Edna Friedberg, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Tree and Tupit Speaker Series
How Mass Atrocities End: Military Interventions and Withdrawals
Conversation with Professor Bridget Conley, Research Director, World Peace Foundation
March 30, 2021 5pm EST
Join TREE and Tufts University Prison Initiative at Tisch College (TUPIT) in speaking with Dr. Bridget Conley, Research Director of the World Peace Foundation about what incarceration looks like in the time of COVID-19 and the pandemic’s effects of incarcerated populations
Understanding Violence and Political Markets in Africa and the Middle East: Conclusions from the Conflict Research Programme
Hosted by the Conflict Research Programme at LSE IDEAS
Monday, March 15, 2021
The Conflict Research Programme has been investigating the logics of war and peace across five countries in the Middle East and Africa over the last four years. Findings cover the link between extremist identity politics and political marketplaces, the countervailing role of civicness, and ‘what works’ external interventions in such areas as security, humanitarian need or localised conflict resolution. Producing high-quality research published in academic journals alongside policy analysis to the UK government, the programme boasts a range of outputs that has the potential to shape academic debate and the development landscape.
Arms Sales to Conflict Zones
Business as Usual: How major weapons exporters arm the world’s conflicts
Hosted by the Forum on the Arms Trade and sponsored by the World Peace Foundation, Center for Responsive Politics, and Program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
Join in a discussion for the launch of “Business as Usual: How major weapons exporters arm the world’s conflicts” — the initial report at the midpoint of a two-year project examining defense industries, foreign policy and armed conflict.
- Sam Perlo-Freeman, Research Coordinator, Campaign Against Arms Trade and Fellow, World Peace Foundation
- Dan Mahanty, Director, US Program, Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC)
- Molly Mulready, Lawyer, formerly of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office
- Emma Soubrier, Visiting Scholar, Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington
- Nathan Toronto, Commissioning Editor, Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center (moderator)
This report is part of the WPF research program, “Defense industries, Foreign Policy, and Armed Conflict,” support for which was provided in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The Effects of Military Interventions: Taking Stock
How Mass Atrocities End: Military Interventions and Withdrawals
Hosted by the Royal Holloway University of London
February 20, 2021
1: 20GMT Dr. Bridget Conley
This conference will bring together scholars from multidisciplinary backgrounds to take stock of theoretical and empirical knowledge on social, political, economic and strategic effects of military interventions.
In Their Presence: Debates on the Dignity, Display, and Ownership of Human Remains
This series of panels brought together leading international voices in areas of forensic ethics to address the materiality of post-life. Organized by Diane O’Donoghue (Tisch College) and Bridget Conley (WPF) through the support of Tufts Collaborates Seed Grant Program/Tufts Springboard, The Diversity Fund and the World Peace Foundation.
Session One: De-Colonized ‘Objects’
Session Two: Recovery and Reclamation
November 18, 2020
Session Three: The ‘Life’ of Museum Objects
February 11, 2021
Session Four: Mourning Remains
March 16, 2021
Session Five: The political economy, ethics and practices of displaying human remains
April 14, 2021
The Norris and Margery Bendetson EPIIC International Symposium
Preventing Genocide and Mass Atrocities
October 10, 2020
11:00am: Memory, Survival and Genocide, Bridget Conley
Institute for Global Leadership, Tufts University
The international symposium is an annual public forum designed and enacted by EPIIC students. It features international practitioners, academics, public intellectuals, activists and journalists who come to Tufts each year for three days of discussion and debate in panels and small-group discussions determined by students in the EPIIC course. Students who conduct research projects also have the opportunity to present alongside the invited experts.
Humanitarian Crisis and Response in the Context of the Political Marketplace Framework
October 20, 2020
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM EDT (GMT-4)
This webinar will present findings from recent research on understanding humanitarian crises and responses through the lens of the political marketplace. This research is based several countries across Africa and the Middle East: DRC, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. The webinar is hosted by the Conflict Research Programme at the London School of Economics with the World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School and Feinstein International Center, Tufts University.
Panelists:
Moderated by World Peace Foundation Executive Director, Alex de Waal.
War crimes & catastrophe in today’s global crisis: Is anyone responsible?
A Symposium On Law, Rights, and Humanitarianism
Thursday Sept. 24, 2020, 1:00 pm
Hosted by American University
Keynote Address “Starvation Crimes: Prospects for Political Action in the Current Crises”, WPF Executive Director, Alex de Waal
This event is sponsored by the Historical and International Studies Faculty Research Cluster, the Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace; AU programs in Ethics, Peace and Human Rights and Environmental Sustainability and Global Health and Islamic and Middle East Studies, and additional support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Click here for more information and to register.
Academic Year 2019-2020
Forged in Fire? Rohingya’s Impossible Identity Amidst Mass Violence and Deterritorialization
CANCELED
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
12:00-1:30pm
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Speaker: Elliott Prasse-Freeman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. He received his doctorate in anthropology from Yale University. He is working on a book focusing on Burmese subaltern political thought as adduced from an extended ethnography of activism and contentious politics in the country’s semi-authoritarian setting. Dr Prasse-Freeman is also currently studying Rohingya political subjectivity amidst dislocation and mass violence.
Rehumanizing the Dead of Anthropology: Museums and Societies after Colonialism, with Ciraj Rassool
March 25, 2020
Tufts University
Human Remains from African Societies are found in a number of museum collections in Europe and South Africa. Ciraj Rassool, Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, will address what it means for all these societies to do the work of human remains restitution and reburial, and how this contributes to rethinking the museum after colonialism. A leading voice in museum and heritage studies, and memory politics and visual history, his publications include, Skeletons in the Cupboard: South African Museums and the Trade in Human Remains, 1907-1917 and The Politics of Heritage in Africa: Economies, Histories and Infrastructures.
The Norris and Margery Bendetson EPIIC International Symposium, presented by The Institute of Global Leadership
Preventing Genocide and Mass Atrocities
March 17, 7:00pm : “Memory, Survival and Genocide”, WPF Research Director, Bridget Conley
Full program details available here.
The international symposium is an annual public forum designed and enacted by EPIIC students. It features international practitioners, academics, public intellectuals, activists and journalists who come to Tufts each year for three days of discussion and debate in panels and small-group discussions determined by students in the EPIIC course. Students who conduct research projects also have the opportunity to present alongside the invited experts.
European Conference 2020, hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School
March 7, 2020
11:30-12:45pm
The Conference will take place at both the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (6 & 7 March) and Harvard Graduate School of Design (8 March).
The European Conference is an annual conference on European and Transatlantic Affairs convened by students from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan School of Management and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
WPF’s Executive Director, Alex de Waal will join Carmen Csernelhazi, Julien Serre and Raymond Gilpin for the panel “Fostering a Sustainable Africa: The EU-Africa relationship”
Click here for for the full program.
Laying the past to rest: Challenges of the TPLF/EPRDF state building project
Monday, March 9, 2020
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe, Senior Fellow at the World Peace Foundation will discuss his recently released book, ‘Laying the past to rest: Challenges of the TPLF/EPRDF state building project’, Hurst publishers, London.
Drawing on his own experience as a senior member of the TPLF/EPRDF leadership, and his unparalleled access to internal documentation, Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe identifies the organisational, political and sociocultural factors that contributed to victory in the revolutionary war, particularly the Front’s capacity for intellectual leadership. Charting its challenges and limitations, he analyses how the EPRDF managed the complex transition from a liberation movement into an established government. Finally, he evaluates the fate of the organisation’s revolutionary goals over its subsequent quarter-century in power, assessing the strengths and weaknesses the party has bequeathed to the country.
Laying the Past to Rest is a comprehensive and balanced analysis of the genesis, successes and failings of the EPRDF’s state-building project in contemporary Ethiopia, from a uniquely authoritative observer.
Transnational Conflict
Introducing the Transnational Conflict in Africa Dataset
Monday, March 2, 2020
12:00-1:30pm
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
160 Packard Avenue, Cabot Room 702
Medford, MA 02155
Speakers:
Noel Twagiramungu, World Peace Foundation Fellow
Alex de Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation
Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe, Senior Fellow at the World Peace Foundation
The panel will examine new data that show that most conflict in Africa is internationalized and not solely internal. This establishes a new paradigm that places the inter-state and transnational elements of African conflict firmly at the center of explanations. The paradigm shift has far-reaching implications for how we study African conflicts, and the kinds of interventions necessary to reduce them.
This research was conducted as part of the World Peace Foundation project on African peace missions, funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as part of the Conflict Research Programme at the London School of Economics, funded by the UK Department for International Development. Their support is gratefully acknowledged.
OxFID 2020: Beyond Pledges in partnership with UNDP & NYT
Hosted by Oxford Forum for International Development
February 8-9, 2020
Blavatnik School of Government
Radcliffe Observatory Quarter OX2 6GG
Executive Director Alex de Waal will be speaking on the panel, “Global Responses to Genocide”.
The need to protect people from acts of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing is a global responsibility. This panel will look at what can be done before such atrocities are carried out so that states can focus on prevention rather than response, examining international inactivity, proactivity and reactivity in response to atrocities. Where the principle of ‘responsibility to protect’ confers no legal obligation, it has succeeded in creating an emerging norm that acknowledges a political commitment to a collective approach to preventing atrocities.
Program details available here.
Starvation as a Crime in Armed Conflict
Utrecht University
Hosted by the Center for Conflict Studies
February 13, 2020
Drift 21, Room 0.32, Utrecht University
Starvation is a time-tested method of war and genocide throughout history. The current scale of suffering and death as a result of the use of starvation is unprecedented in modern history, with a number of present conflicts embroiled in acute food insecurity that has threatened famine. Yet recognition of the deliberate nature of famine, attribution of fault and accountability has remained, until recently, elusive.
Keynote speech by Prof. Alex De Waal, Famine: How it can still be Eliminated through Political Action
Why Judgments Are Not History: the limitations of courtroom contributions to the historical record in Africa
Monday, November 4, 2019
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
160 Packard Ave. Cabot 703
Medford, MA
A central claim of international criminal prosecutions is that they contribute to fact-finding and establishing a historical record. But do they? In this presentation Dr. Thijs Bouwknegt addresses the process of legal-historical truth finding, the use of witness testimonies as historical sources, and the legacies of international trials in the wake of the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991-2002), the genocide in Rwanda (1994), and contested leadership change in Côte d’Ivoire (2010 -2011). He raises important questions about the discrepancies between prosecutorial and historical endeavors.
Thijs Bouwknegt is a researcher and lecturer at the Netherlands Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD). He specialises in transitional justice, international criminal justice, mass violence in Africa and comparative genocide studies.
Overcoming Extreme Inequality and its Evils
Presented by Yale Global Justice program and Quinnipiac Albert Schweitzer Institute
November 1-November 3, 2019
‘Inequality’s Evils’
November 1, 2019
Faculty Room, Connecticut Hall, Yale University
New Haven, CT
Panelists:
Alex de Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation : Famine
Bridget Conley, Research Director, World Peace Foundation : Mass Atrocities
Michal Apollo, Pedagogical University of Cracow
Chair: Anat Biletzki, Albert Schweitzer Institute / Quinnipiac University)•
Full program available at Yale Global Justice.
Agency of Bones Marginal Memory
a talk with Bridget Conley
October 28, 2019
Bard College
30 Campus Rd.
Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504
The Hannah Arendt Center
Contemporary efforts to answer the question, ‘Why memorialize Atrocities’, usually begins with the question, ‘For whom is memory?’
Prospects for Democracy in Sudan
Friday, October 11, 2019
Hosted by the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit
London School of Economics
Old Theatre, Old Building, LSE
Houghton Street, London
The panel will discuss the dynamics of the 2019 Sudanese revolution, characterised by both non-violent civic mobilisation and the fast-evolving transnational and mercenarised political marketplace.
Panel:
Alex de Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation, Research Programme Director, Conflict Research Programme
Raga Makawi, Sudanese Activist and Editor at Zed Books & African Arguments
Dr Rim Turkmani, Research Director, Conflict Research Programme – Syria
Law, Justice and Civicness: lessons from South Sudan
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Hosted by the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit
London School of Economics
Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building
The panel will discuss the efforts of civil society actors campaigning for systematic change despite being a part of a system that profits from their oppression.
Panel:
Alex de Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation, Research Programme Director, Conflict Research Programme
Rachel Ibreck, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Goldsmiths University
David Deng, Human Rights Lawyer
Red Flags and Red Diamonds: the warning signs and political drivers of arms trade corruption
Thursday, September 19, 2019
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
160 Packard Ave., Mugar Room 231
Medford, MA 02155
Why is corruption so prevalent in the international arms trade? And what are the key warning signs or “Red Flags” that an arms deal might be corrupt? Dr. Samuel Perlo-Freeman, Program Director of the World Peace Foundation program on Global Arms Business and Corruption presents his latest report for World Peace Foundation, “Red flags and Red Diamonds – the warning signs and political drivers of arms trade corruption”, which discusses some of the key red flags relating to the buyer, the seller, and the details of the deal itself; but also challenges the discourse of corruption “risk” or “vulnerability”, which often seems to present corruption as a pitfall into which companies and governments may accidentally stumble. On the contrary, it is often an active choice by both arms companies and recipient governments, and in “Red Flags and Red Diamonds”, Perlo-Freeman analyses the political and economic drivers that make this a choice they are all too often willing to make.
Memory from the Margins:
Ethiopia’s Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum
This book asks the question: what is the role of memory during a political transition? Drawing on Ethiopian history, transitional justice, and scholarly fields concerned with memory, museums and trauma, the author reveals a complex picture of global, transnational, national and local forces as they converge in the story of the creation and continued life of one modest museum in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa—the Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum. It is a study from multiple margins: neither the case of Ethiopia nor memorialization is central to transitional justice discourse, and within Ethiopia, the history of the Red Terror is sidelined in contemporary politics. From these nested margins, traumatic memory emerges as an ambiguous social and political force. The contributions, meaning and limitations of memory emerge at the point of discrete interactions between memory advocates, survivor-docents and visitors. Memory from the margins is revealed as powerful for how it disrupts, not builds, new forms of community.
Book events:
August 21, 2019
Hilton Addis Ababa
Menelik II Ave, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
August 23, 2019
Mekelle University
Adihaki Campus
‘The Missing Picture’: Rethinking Genocide Studies & Prevention
14th Conference of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
July 14 – 19, 2019 Phnom Penh, Cambodia
https://www.iags2019.com/
July 16, 2019 15:30 – 17:00
Panel: Missing Pictures: Critical Genocide Studies and Prevention, ‘Missing the Point: Deconstructing Genocide Memory’
Bridget Conley, World Peace Foundation, Tufts University
July 17, 2019 9 – 10:30
Panel: Representing Violence and Suffering: Linguistic, Artistic and Conceptual Frameworks as Limits and Opportunities
Chair: Alex de Waal, World Peace Foundation; Tufts University
July 18, 2019 11:00 – 12:30
Panel: Starvation Crimes as Part of the Missing Picture in Genocide Studies and International Criminal Justice
The Fear of Famine: Why do International Criminal Justice Actors Avoid Addressing Starvation Crimes Randle DeFalco, University of Liverpool
The Seven Uses of Mass Starvation Bridget Conley, World Peace Foundation, Tufts University
Starvation Crimes Alex de Waal, World Peace Foundation; Tufts University
Academic Year 2018-2019
The End of Famine? Prospects for the elimination of mass starvation by political action
October 25, 2018
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
John Snow Lecture Theater
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)
CAS Lecture Series: Pax Africana or Middle East Strategic Alliance in the Red Sea
October 10, 2018
Council on African Studies Lecture Series, Yale University
Henry R. Luce Hall (LUCE )
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
Academic Year 2017-2018
The Return of Famine
Friday, May 4, 2018
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
160 Packard Avenue
Medford, MA 02155
Between 2000 and 2011 there were no famines, and deaths in humanitarian emergencies had been much reduced. Yet today famine has returned to the world stage. In 2017, the United Nations identified four situations of acute food insecurity that threatened famine or breached that threshold—in north-eastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.
Drawing on Tufts University’s distinguished record of scholarship and public engagement on the subject of famine, this conference will bring together faculty and researchers from across the University, in conversation with outside experts. Panels will address why famine has returned, today’s humanitarian challenges, legal and political issues related to criminalizing famine, and the most pressing famine of today, Yemen.
Panel One: Why has Famine Returned?
Panelists will address the way in which humanitarian action has become more extensive, ambitious, complex and professional than ever before, with a wider than ever number of actors. They will examine the nutritional, public health, logistical, informational, coordination and security challenges of mounting humanitarian responses.
Chair: Diana Chigas
Panelists: Dan Maxwell, Bill Moomaw, and Luka Kuol
Panel Two: Challenges of Humanitarian Action
Panelists address the way in which humanitarian action has become more extensive, ambitious, complex and professional than ever before, with a wider than ever number of actors. They will examine the nutritional, public health, logistical, informational, coordination and security challenges of mounting humanitarian responses.
Chair: Dan Maxwell
Panelists: Erin Boyd, Patrick Webb, and Jennifer Leaning
Panel Three: The Politics and Law of Starvation
Panelists will address the question of starvation as a war crime or crime against humanity, and as a political failure, and the measures that could be undertaken to enhance political will to prevent famine and legal and political actions to ensure accountability for starvation crimes.
Chair: Bridget Conley
Panelists: Alex de Waal, Rhoda E. Howard–Hassmann and Tom Dannenbaum
Panel Four: The Crisis in Yemen
The humanitarian crisis is the biggest disaster of food crisis, health crisis and the massive destruction of livelihoods of our time. It is largely a man-made disaster, perpetrated on a civilian population as a byproduct of the conduct of war—a war in close western allies have a leading role. Panelists will discuss the Yemen crisis and what should be the international response.
Chair: Greg Gottlieb
Panelists: Monica Toft, Martha Mundy, and Dyan Mazurana
Inaugural Conference: Frontiers of Prevention
Binghamton University, Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention
Friday April 13, – Saturday April 14, 2018
Binghamton, N.Y. USA
If Not Now, When?
Saturday, April 14, 2018
“Starting with the Conclusion: Prevention Lessons from Atrocity Endings”
Bridget Conley, Research Director, World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Economists for Peace and Security
January 5 – 7, 2018
Panel Discussion:
Are Trump Administration Policies Improving International Security?
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, Meeting Room 306
Chair: Kathleen Stephansen
Linda Bilmes, Harvard University
US Security budget
Jennifer Olmsted, Drew University
Immigration
Sam Perlo-Freeman, World Peace Foundation
Transatlantic relationships
David Firestein, East West Institute
Transpacific relationships
The New Barbarianism
An original documentary film by the Center for Strategic and International Studies(CSIS) examining rising levels of violence targeting health workers worldwide.
Monday, November 27, 2017
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Hosted by the Center for Strategic Studies at The Fletcher School and the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), co-sponsored by World Peace Foundation, Feinstein International Center, Institute for Human Security and the International Securities Studies Program.
Presented by WPF and Fletcher Global Women
After Rape: Violence Justice and Social Harmony in Ugandaa
Moderated by Kimberly Theidon, Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
The Silent Genocide: Rohingya Muslims and the Crisis in Myanmar
Tuesday, November 28th
The Fletcher School, Cabot building, Room 205
Despite their multigenerational history within Myanmar and centuries of coexistence with the Burman majority, violent conflict between Rakhine Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya erupted in 2012 and has persisted. The humanitarian crisis has left hundreds dead and roughly 140,000 Rohingya internally displaced in refugee camps, and cast a pall on Myanmar’s peaceful democratic transition.
Panelists Include:
Roksana Jahan, Bangladeshi MAHA student, Feinstein International Center, Freidman School of Nutrition Science and Policy
Ken MacLean, Associate Professor of International Development and Social Change, Clark University
Charles Carsten, Ph.D. candidate in the Study of Religion at Harvard University
Shadow World Premier on PBS
Based on the The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, the acclaimed book by Andrew Feinstein, Shadow World explores how governments, their militaries and intelligence agencies, defense contractors, arms dealers and agents are inextricably intertwined with the international trade in weapons, and how that trade fosters corruption, determines economic and foreign policies, undermines democracies and creates human suffering. Directed by Johan Grimonprez Premiered on PBS, November 20, 2017
Fourth Annual Civil Military Affairs Conference
Hosted by Tufts Institute for Global Leadership
November 10-11, 2017
The conference will focus on the defense industry, global arms trade, and foreign intervention. Through hearing from experts on the global arms trade, weapons procurement, and aspects of foreign intervention, with the aim to explore the inner workings of and key drivers behind these issues and to be able to apply lessons to mitigating and preventing political and humanitarian crises across the world.
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Friday, November 10, 2:00pm
Panelists:
Sam Perlo-Freeman, Program Director, Global Arms and Corruption, World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School, Tufts University
Jeff Abramson, Head, Forum on the Arms Trade
Miriam Pemberton, Director, Peace Economy Transitions Project, Institute for Policy Studies
Sarah Detzner, Ph.D. Candidate, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Emerging Consequences: Aesthetics in the Aftermath of Atrocity
Dr. Bridget Conley will be joining the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies for Salem State University’s two-day Symposium: Emerging Consequences: Aesthetics in the Aftermath of Atrocity(November 3- 4, 2017). She will join a panel on Saturday, “Artistic Interventions and Memorialization”. Her presentation “Utopia Lost: A Study of the Political Aesthetics of Memorial Museums through Ethiopia’s Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum,” discusses the mix of aesthetic choices made by the museum’s architect, exhibition curators, and survivor groups to convey this history of violence.
Saturday, November 4, 2017
Tackling Corruption in the Global Arms Trade
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Center for International Policy
As the Trump Administration seeks record U.S. arms sales and renewed military engagement in places such as Afghanistan, there are increased risks of corruption undermining U.S. foreign policy and national security goals. Globally, the arms trade is highly prone to corruption, and there have been several high-profile cases in U.S. courts of bribery in the defense sector.
While U.S. law enforcement is increasing its efforts under the
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it appears U.S. regulators are weakening
some key anti-corruption measures. This will put extra pressure on the
U.S. officials and companies that are attempting to address domestic and
foreign corruption as well as to ensure weapons transfers are not
diverted to criminal or terrorist organizations. Experts with
experience in U.S. export enforcement, tracking the U.S. and global arms
trade and corruption, and U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan
will discuss these challenges and trends. They will also offer new
recommendations on what can be done to counter corruption in the arms
trade.
Speakers:
- Sam Perlo-Freeman, Program Manager, Global Arms and Corruption, World Peace Foundation
- Steve Pelak, Partner, Holland and Hart; former Department of Justice National Coordinator Export Control/Economic Sanctions Enforcement
- Lt. Col. (ret.), Jodi Vittori, Senior Policy Advisor, Global Witness; former head of NATO counter-corruption task force in Afghanistan
- Colby Goodman, Director, Security Assistance Monitor (moderator)
This event is co-hosted by the World Peace Foundation, Security Assistance Monitor, and the Forum on the Arms Trade.
The role of media in the rise of populism
Discussion with Haggai Matar, Israeli activist and journalist
Monday, October 30, 2017
The Fletcher Building
Mugar Hall, Room 231
160 Packard Ave., Medford, MA
Haggai Matar is the executive director of 972, an organization that publishes +972 Magazine and was a co-founding editor of Local Call , the news and commentary sites covering Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The sites were created to provide fresh, original, on-the-ground reporting and analysis of current events, with a strong focus on human rights, progressive activism, and the effects of the occupation on both Israeli and Palestinian societies. The sites are run by Israeli and Palestinian journalists, and have broken countless major stories in recent years and are visited by tens of thousands readers a month, including diplomats, and policymakers.
International Conference “Dirty Peace”? The Political Economy of Peacebuilding
October 19, 2017
Organized by Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC)
Universitätsclub Bonn
Konviktstr. 9 53113
Bonn Germany
Alex de Waal, Keynote
Scholars and practitioners alike have known for long that peacebuilding is about payoffs and expected gains for key stakeholders rather than mere goodwill. Although conflict research has spent considerable efforts on discerning “greed” or “grievance” as conflict drivers, it has so far not adequately addressed the political economy of peace processes. Peace processes are at times seen as an open competition of well-meant ideas in public discourse. This reasoning is in part responsible for the glaring gap between ambition and reality in peace processes. The conference aims to bring together analysts and practitioners who are experts in conflict regions and have insider knowledge on bargaining. At the conference, we are planning to discuss the political economy of expectations, the logics of participation and consequences for setting priorities and for sequencing in peacebuilding processes. The overarching question is: Which incentives could make a difference during negotiations?
View the additional event information at the BICC webite.
Festival for New Economic Thinking
Economists for Peace and Security
Institute for New Economic Thinking
October 19 – 20, 2017 Edinburgh, Scotland
EPS will be exploring the economic impacts of security policies, and the security impacts of economic policies with an informational stall and a panel discussion. War and violent conflict disrupt the social and economic fabric of societies and interfere with the well-being of individuals; and economic policies and institutions can either prevent or mitigate violence or can contribute to it. We as professional economists believe that our discipline has a positive contribution to make to peace and human welfare.
Panel Discussion
Peace Economics: How Economics Can Contribute to Peace
Chaired by Thea Harvey-Barratt, Economists for Peace & Security
- Sam Perlo-Freeman, World Peace Foundation, Tufts University
- Ron P. Smith, Birkbeck, University of London
Academic Year 2016-2017
Indefensible: Seven Myths that Sustain the Global Arms Trade, a book and web project of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts, critically examines the U.S. and global arms industry–in particular the public corruption it so often engenders at home and abroad. Bringing together a experts and activists, Indefensible deploys statistics, case studies, and evidence to pierce common beliefs about the arms trade. Far from protecting the United States or driving job creation, this collective finds that poorly overseen and bloated military spending actually undermines security and stifles economic growth.
Indefensible Book Launch Events
WASHINGTON, DC: “Corruption, Jobs and the Arms Trade: Indefensible Book Launch and Panel Discussion”
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Open Society Foundation
An expert panel discusses the risks and tradeoffs of President Trump’s proposed military buildup and budget rebalancing away from international assistance and foreign aid, not just for American democracy but also for the U.S. economy and national security.
Speakers:
Bridget Conley*, Research Director, World Peace Foundation and Assistant Research Professor, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
William Hartung*, Director, Arms and Security Project, Center for International Policy
Sarah Chayes, Senior Fellow, Democracy and Rule of Law Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Mark Thompson, National Security Analyst, Project on Government Oversight
Audio of the event is available here:
LONDON: Seven Myths that sustain the global arms trade
February 27, 2017
London School of Economics
JSRP will host a panel discussion to launch the new book: ‘Indefensible: 7 myths that sustain the global arms trade‘ (Paul Holden et al, Zed Books).
Panelists: Paul Holden and Andrew Feinstein (Corruption Watch UK), Nick Gilby (author and researcher), and Sam Perlo-Freeman (World Peace Foundation).
Moderator: Prof Mary Kaldor (LSE).
STOCKHOLM: Arms trade: myths and reality: Screening of Shadow World film and Book launch: Indefensible: 7 myths that sustain the global arms trade
February 23, 2017 Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society
Klara konferens, Klarasalen
Stockholm, Sweden
Panelists:
Andrew Feinstein, author of ‘The Shadow World’, former ANC Parliamentarian, Executive Director, Corruption Watch.
Samuel Perlo-Freeman, researcher and Project Manager for the WPF project on Global Arms Business and Corruption World Peace Foundation.
Linda Åkerström, Head of Disarmament, Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society. Author of “Den svenska vapenexporten”.
Moderator: Penny Davies, Policy advisor, Diakonia
Hosted by the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society and Diakonia.
BOSTON: Book Launch and Discussion
February 15, 2017
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Panelists:
Paul Holden, Corruption Watch. Paul is a South African-born and London-based historian, researcher, writer and activist. He has published four books to date on issues related to corruption, governance and democratic practice in South Africa.
Sam Perlo-Freeman, Project Manager Global Arms Business and Corruption. He was previously Senior Researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. From 2007 to 2016 Sam worked at SIPRI on issues of military expenditure, arms industry and arms trade, and in particular was head of the SIPRI Military Expenditure project from 2009 to 2016.
Bridget Conley, Research Director of the World Peace Foundation and Assistant Research Professor at The Fletcher School. At WPF, she is the lead researcher on the Mass Atrocities program.
Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation, Professor at the Fletcher School and is considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa.
Sarah Detzner is a Ph.D. candidate at The Fletcher School of Law and diplomacy. Her research is focused on exploring mechanisms for more effective international cooperation in joint conflict prevention, stabilization, and security sector reform missions.
NEW YORK: Myths of the Global Arm Race: A Reading and Discussion of Indefensible: Seven Myths that Sustain the Global Trade
Monday, February 13, 2017
University Center
Panelists: Paul Holden, Sam Perlo-Freeman, and Bill Hartung (Center for International Policy).
Moderator: Peter J. Hoffman
Techniques of Power and the Rise of the Grotesque
Friday, March 3, 2017
Tufts University
Join us for a special opportunity to engage with one of today’s leading critical theorists about the state of global democracy and how its dysfunctions manifest in new forms of national leadership, new modes of disrupting opposition, and in everyday encounters between the state and those who live under its various jurisdictions
Veena Das is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University. Her theoretical and fieldwork research have made a profound impact on how the violence of the everyday is understood and studied. Her most recent books are Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (2007) Affliction: Health, Disease, Poverty (2015)and three co-edited volumes, The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy (2014), Living and Dying in the Contemporary World: A Compendium (2015) and Politics of the Urban Poor (forthcoming).
Moderated by Alex de Waal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation
Reiner Braun: The US, EU, and Russia: Militarism, Nuclear Threats and the Trump Administration
Co-sponsored by WPF, Tufts Sociology, and Peace & Justice Studies
March 8, 2107
Reiner Braun has been actively involved in the Peace Movement since 1982, beginning in the office of the “Krefelder Appeal” against new nuclear weapons in Europe. He has been the Executive Director for Scientists for Peace and Sustainability (Germany) and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES). He is currently Director of IALANA, the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms. He is author of several books, including “Einstein- Peace Now!” and a biography about the Peace Nobel Laureate Joseph Rotblat.
Additional details also available on Facebook.
Boston Launch of African Politics, African Peace
October 4, 2016
ASEAN Auditorium
The Fletcher School
Tufts University
On July 21, 2016, the World Peace Foundation (WPF) submitted its landmark report, African Politics, African Peace, to the African Union’s Commissioner for Peace and Security, Amb. Smail Chergui. The report charts an agenda for peace in Africa, focusing on how the African Union can implement its norms and use its instruments to prevent and resolve armed conflicts. An independent report of the WPF, supported by the African Union, it is the most extensive review of the African Union’s peace missions ever conducted. It is based on detailed case studies and cross-cutting research, and draws on consultations with leading experts, peacekeepers and mediators. The Report covers African peace and security norms and mechanisms, including conflict prevention, conflict mediation, political missions and the spectrum of military peace operations.
Speakers include:
Alex de Waal, WPF Executive Director
Mulugeta Berhe Gebrehiwot, WPF Project Director, Peace Missions in Africa
Abdul Mohammed, Chief of Staff, African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan
Additional information on the African Politics, African Peace report can be found at africanpeacemissions.org
Staying safe in armed conflict contexts: What do crisis-affected people prioritize and does it work? Do humanitarian actors and others take note?
Friday, September 23, 2016
Barnum Hall, 163 Packard Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
Very little scholarship pays attention to the priorities and goals of people in situations of crisis: we know little about how they identify threats and circumstances which put their lives at risk, how they seek to protect themselves and the strategies and coping mechanisms they actually use, which result in both positive and negative outcomes for them. Instead, civilians are seen as passive recipients of international protection efforts; those in need of protection are rarely seen as key players in their own futures. Join us as the panel discusses civilian self-protection and its implications for humanitarian response.
Speakers Include:
Dan Maxwell, Acting Director, Feinstein International Center, Tufts University
Edward Thomas, Author, former head of UNICEF Child Protection in South Sudan and Nepal, and former adviser for the International Commission of Inquiry on Syria
Norah Niland, Center on Conflict Development and Peacebuilding, The Graduate Institute, Geneva and former Director of Human Rights in UNAMA and Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Afghanistan
Dyan Mazurana, Associate Research Professor Fletcher School, Research Director, Feinstein International Center, and Senior Fellow, World Peace Foundation
Legacies of Political Violence in Latin America
Presentation by Roddy Brett
Discussion by Dr. Kimberly Theidon
Thursday, September 15, 2016
Dr. Brett will discuss his recent book on Guatemala, which builds on over a decade of ethnographic research, including in survivors’ communities, and documents the historical processes that shaped the genocide. It analyses the evolution of both counterinsurgent and insurgent violence, focusing above all on the impact upon the civilian population and the strategies civilians may adopt in order to survive. Brett is Professor of International Relations at the Universidad del Rosario (Bogota, Colombia) will place this history in the larger Latin American context.
Dr. Theidon’s research addresses political violence, transitional justice, reconciliation, and the politics of post-war reparations. She is currently completing a book manuscript Pasts Imperfect: Working with Former Combatants in Colombia which isbased on her research with former combatants from the paramilitaries, the FARC and the ELN.
Academic Year 2015-2016
Book Lecture: Bridget Conley-Zilkic discusses the newly released, How Mass Atrocities End: Studies from Guatemala, Burundi, Indonesia, the Sudans, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq
Friday, April 8, 2016
Ginn Library, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
Transforming Violent Masculinities
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Asean Auditorium Cabot Intercultural Building
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
This event will explore masculinity as a critical and under-examined factor for understanding pathways to participation and non-participation in forms of violent activity. Panelists will analyze the mechanisms through which harmful notions of masculinity can lead men to violence, and in turn how experiences of violence can shape men’s identities. The discussion will compare the connections and differences between pathways across contexts, and explore possibilities to promote healthier forms of manhood, with the ultimate aim of creating more peaceful and gender-just societies.
Panelists:
Gary Barker, Founder and International Director of Promundo
Kimberly Theidon, Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Curt Rhodes, Founder and International Director of Questscope
The Past is Present: Mass Atrocities and Intergenerational Trauma
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Barnum 008
Sponsored by IMAGE
Researchers who study mass atrocities have long understood that the consequences of violence continue to impact communities even as decades pass. New scientific research suggests that not only are there social, political, financial and historical affects, but there are also changes in the DNA of those who experience trauma. What is more, these changes are passed on to subsequent generations. Join Tufts faculty in a multi-disciplinary discussion of the intergenerational effects of trauma. Panelists will reflect on “The Science of Suffering,” New Republic article detailing the new research on DNA and trauma, as it relates to their own research.
Panelists include:Kendra Field, Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies; Barbara Grossman, Professor of Drama in the Department of Drama and Dance; Dyan Mazurana, Research Director, Feinstein International Center and Associate Research Professor, The Fletcher School; Lisa Shin, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology.
The Nigerian-Cameroon Border Conflict Settlement and Matters Arising
Kenneth Nwoko, World Peace Foundation Fellow
Thursday, November 12, 2015
12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
Mugar Hall, M231
Book Lecture: Alex de Waal discusses his new book, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power
Friday, November 6, 2015
Ginn Library, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
Alex de Waal’s latest book (Polity Press, September 2015) draws on his thirty-year career in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, including experience as a participant in high-level peace talks, to provide a unique and compelling account of how these countries leaders run their governments, conduct their business, fight their wars and, occasionally, make peace. In The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa, de Waal discusses how leaders operate on a business model, securing funds for their political budgets which they use to rent the provisional allegiances of army officers,militia commanders, tribal chiefs and party officials and how this political marketplace is eroding the institutions of government and reversing state-building.
Alex de Waal is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and Research Professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
Video of this lecture is available here.
Rebuilding adolescent girls’ lives after conflict
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Overseas Development Institute (DFID, UNICEF, the Carter Center)
This event will focus on the psychosocial dimension of rebuilding adolescent girls lives in post conflict settings. A neglected area, even within SCR 1325, psychosocial elements need to be a central component of policy and programming if women and girls are to be active agents in change processes, especially in post-conflict settings. Drawing on findings from a 2year Rebuild/DFID-funded study exploring psychosocial support services for adolescent girls in the post-conflict settings of Gaza, Liberia and Sri-Lanka, this event will explore the kinds of psychosocial stresses adolescent girls face as well as the kinds of psychosocial support services available to them in these contexts. Study findings show that in these country contexts, not only does the category of adolescent girl often fall through the cracks in programme and policy responses, but psychosocial needs are often not recognised and that even where appropriate services exist, usage is limited due to gendered social norms affecting attitudes and behaviours both around service uptake and service provision.
Book Lecture: Advocacy in Conflict: Critical Perspectives on Transnational Activism
Monday, October 26, 2015
6:30pm-8:00pm
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Cabot Building, 7th Floor
160 Packard Avenue
Medford, Massachusetts, 02155
Conflicts in Africa, Asia and Latin America have become a common focus of advocacy by Western celebrities and NGOs. This provocative volume delves into the realities of these efforts, which have often involved compromising on integrity in pursuit of profile and influence. Contributors and editors Jennifer Ambrose and Trisha Taneja are joined by authors Anat Biletzki, Laura Seay and Alex de Waal as they discuss the often controversial subject of transnational advocacy.
Anat Biletzki is the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Philosophy at Quinnipiac University and Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University.
Laura Seay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Colby College, Maine.
Alex de Waal is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and Research Professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
Making and Unmaking Nations
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Cabot Building, Room C205
In Making and Unmaking Nations, Scott Straus seeks to explain why and how genocide takes place—and, perhaps more important, how it has been avoided in places where it may have seemed likely or even inevitable. To solve that puzzle, he examines postcolonial Africa, analyzing countries in which genocide occurred and where it could have but did not. Grounded in Straus’s extensive fieldwork in contemporary Africa, the study of major twentieth-century cases of genocide, and the literature on genocide and political violence, Making and Unmaking Nations centers on cogent analyses of three nongenocide cases (Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and Senegal) and two in which genocide took place (Rwanda and Sudan).
Academic Year 2014-2015
Why Can’t We Stop Genocide?
A Zócalo/UCLA Event
Monday, May 4, 2015
Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
5750 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 100
Los Angeles, CA
Pope Francis made headlines when he used the word “genocide” to describe the killing of 1.5 million Armenians under Ottoman rule in World War I. The United States has yet to use that designation officially, despite the fact that Armenians globally just commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. What is genocide, and why does the world have so much difficulty identifying where and when it occurs? It took five years for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to be charged with genocide in Darfur. Although human rights advocates have been calling attention to a possible genocide in Syria for over two years, the international response has been muddled. And indeed, the world often has been powerless to stop genocide–from the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Nazis in Europe to slaughterings of Tutsis in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia–in its tracks. What instigates the mass killings of certain groups of people? And how can these acts of brutal violence be prevented? UCLA historian Richard G. Hovannisian, University of Wisconsin political scientist Scott Straus, World Peace Foundation research director Bridget Conley-Zilkic, and Sudd Institute co-founder Jok Madut Jok.
Book Lecture: Edward Thomas discusses his new book, South Sudan: A Slow Liberation
Wednesday, April 15, 2015 Cabot Intercultural Building
160 Packard Avenue, Room C205
In 2011, South Sudan became independent following a long war of liberation that gradually became marked by looting, raids and massacres pitting ethnic communities against each other. In his remarkably comprehensive work, Edward Thomas provides a multi-layered examination of what is happening in the country today. Writing from the perspective of South Sudan’s most mutinous hinterland, Jonglei state, the book explains how this area was at the heart of the country’s struggle. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and a broad range of sources, this is a sharply focused account of South Sudan’s long, unfinished fight for liberation.
Water Securities and Insecurities
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
5:30pm-7:00pm
ASEAN Auditorium, The Fletcher School at Tufts University
160 Packard Avenue
Medford, Massachusetts, 02155
Intensifying water stress is one of the key trends of the 21st century. As scarcity of fresh water intensifies, there are fears that conflict over water resources will emerge as a threat to world peace. However, leading experts highlight that historically the management of transboundary waters leads to cooperation instead of confrontation, confronting the view of those who have argued that the wars of this century will be over water. Thus the panel will address the following question: will water stress lead to water war?
Panel Speakers:
Ken Conca, American University
Andrea Gerlak, University of Arizona
Bruce Lankford, University of East Anglia
Lawrence Susskind, MIT Moderated by William Moomaw, Tufts University
Memories of Violence
Friday, October 24th, 2015
3:00 – 4:45pm
Cabot Intercultural Building
ASEAN auditorium
The inaugural event of the Initiative on Mass Atrocities and Genocide (IMAGe), a new collaborative effort between Fletcher and the broader Tufts community will feature four professors from across disciplines at both Fletcher and the School of Arts and Sciences, each bringing a different lens to the topic of how we manage memories of violence:
Bridget Conley-Zilkic from The Fletcher School and World Peace Foundation will speak to her work on memorial museums including the US Holocaust Memorial Museum where she worked for a decade
Rosalind Shaw from the Anthropology Department will speak to how memory practice has been shaped by the political economy of post-conflict reconstruction in Sierra Leone
Noë Montez from the Department of Drama and Dance will speak to how theater artists are engaging with the transitional justice process in Argentina Kamran Rastegar from the Department of German, Russian and Asian Languages and Literature will speak to how memories of violence are represented through film and literature with a focus on the Middle East
Dyan Mazurana from The Fletcher School and Feinstein International Center (and Co-Chair of IMAGe) will moderate.
Academic Year 2013-2014
Global Arms Business Researchers Round-table
May, 8, 2014, 4:00p.m.-5:30p.m.
Cabot Intercultural Center, 7th floor
Participants:
Andrew Feinstein is author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade and co-founder of Corruption Watch-UK.
Paul Holden is a South African-born and London-based historian, researcher, writer and activist.
Leah Wawro is Civil Society Lead with Transparency International-UK’s Defence and Security Programme.
J. Paul Dunne is Professor of Economics at the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town
William Hartung is author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex(Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War(Paradigm Press, 2008).
Sam Perlo-Freeman is Director of the SIPRI Programme on Military Expenditure and Arms Production.
Youth, Conflict & Governance in Africa
Friday, February 28, 2014
10 Sachem St., Rm. 105
Dept. of Anthropology at Yale University
New Haven, CT
This workshop is convened to assess how young people are currently changing the nature of governance in Africa. Youth are capitalizing on new mechanisms for interaction: the deregulation of internet, phone, global television, and social media communication has profoundly altered the political terrain. This is especially true in conflict settings, where youth can drive overt political violence. To break new ground, the workshop will integrate analysis across anthropology, media studies and communication, politics and economics, fields that have been working largely in parallel rather than in collaboration.
Co-organized by Catherine Panter-Brick (Yale University) and Alex de Waal (WPF). Keynote addresses by Alcinda Honwana (African Open University) and Philip Thigo (Social Development Network. Discussants are Merlyn Lim (Arizona State University) and Brian Barber (Center for the Study of Youth in Political Conflict).
Unlearning Violence: Evidence and Policies for Early Childhood Development and Peace
February 13-14, 2014
ASEAN Auditorium
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
This inter-disciplinary conference showcased the best ongoing research in fields related to early childhood development and violence and peace and charted directions for future research and policy.
Panel 1: Can we become a more peaceful species? [summary, video]
- Steven Pinker, Department of Psychology, Harvard University
- Daniel Dennett, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University
- Moderator: Alex de Waal, World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Panel 2: Undoing the impacts of violence?: Perspectives from neuroscience and education [summary, transcript]
- Regina Sullivan, Emotional Brain Institute, Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University
- John Lawrence Aber, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University
- Maryanne Wolf, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, Tufts University
- Moderator: Jayanthi Mistry, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, Tufts University
Panel 3: Violence and abuse against children [summary]
- Theresa Betancourt, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University
- Michael Wessells, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
- Moderator: Dyan Mazurana, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Panel 4: Translating evidence into policy [summary]
- Jennifer Batton, Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict
- Lorraine Sherr, University College London
- Yasemin Sırali Altuğ, ACEV – Mother Child Education Foundation
- Rima Salah, Early Childhood Peace Consortium, Yale University
- Moderator: Jacqueline Bhabha, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University
Keynote: Ethical education [summary]
- Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi Rinpoche, Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values, MIT
- Introduction and Moderator: Maryanne Wolf, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, Tufts University
Keynote: Ethical education [summary]
- Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi Rinpoche, Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values, MIT
- Introduction and Moderator: Maryanne Wolf, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, Tufts University
It Began in Boston: Celebrating a Century of Peace Work in Massachusetts
Monday, January 13, 2014
6:00 p.m.
Edwin Ginn Library
The Fletcher School at Tufts University
When Edwin Ginn died on January 21, 1914, his bequest of a million dollars to the World Peace Foundation created an enduring contribution to peace. Ginn, like ourselves today, had the honor of working and living in a community rich with individuals and organizations dedicated to world peace. This event celebrates that community and its shared goal, and launches the WPF’s program of centennial events looking forward to the next hundred years of working for world peace.
James Shannon, Trustee of the World Peace Foundation. Comments available here.
Laura Roskos, President, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, U.S. Section. Comments available here.
J. Bryan Hehir, Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Clan Cleansing in Somalia
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Mugar 200
In 1991, political and military leaders in Somalia, wishing to gain exclusive state control, manipulated clan sentiment to mobilize their followers in a campaign of terror which expelled a vast number of Somalis from Mogadishu, south-central, and southern Somalia. Join us as Lidwien Kapteijns discusses her book that analyzes this campaign of clan cleansing in the context the collapse of the Somalia’s government and how it relates to the militia warfare that followed in its wake.
Academic Year 2012-2013
Advocacy In Conflict: Do international public advocacy campaigns make an impact?
Thursday, February 28, 2013
12:30 p.m. EST
Cabot, 7th Floor
A panel discussion moderated by Alex de Waal featuring:
Rony Brauman,
former President of Doctors Without Borders, current Director of
Research at the Doctors Without Borders Foundation, and Associate
Professor at Sciences Po.
Laura Seay, Assistant
Professor of Political Science at Morehouse College, expert on African
politics, conflict resolution, and state reconstruction, and author of
the Texas in Africa blog.
Amanda Taub, Adjunct
Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Fordham University,
co-author of the Wronging Rights blog, and editor of Beyond Kony2012.
Can Social Media Bridge Divides Between Diverse Muslim and Western Communities?
Monday, January 14, 2013
@WorldPeaceFdtn, #tweetingforpeace
6:45 p.m. EST
Social media is today a critical platform where global youth communicate and express their political interests. But can these new technologies also play a role in bridging divides between communities? Posing this question in the crucial context of relations between diverse Muslim and Western communities, the World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School welcomed guests speakers:
Farah Anwar Pandith (@Farah_Pandith), U.S. special representative to Muslim communities
Riyaad Minty (@Riy), head of social media at Al Jazeera (@AJArabic & @AJEnglish)
Roundtable on the Crisis in Mali
November 15, 2012
Cabot 7th Floor
12:30pm EST
Area experts discuss the evolving crisis in Mali. The panel was moderated by WPF Executive Director Alex de Waal and included:
Jeremy Swift, author and scholar of nomadic pastoralists in and around the world’s great deserts, focusing on the pastoral Tuareg in Mali. Read Jeremy Swift’s blog post about Mali.
Roland Marchal, senior research fellow at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, with extensive publications on conflicts in the Greater Horn of Africa (from Chad to Somalia) and the policy of international actors on the continent;
Jeremy Keenan, social anthropologist and professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, focusing on the Sahara, North Africa and the Sahel region.
Libya Today
November 15, 2012
Barnum 104
6:00 p.m. EST
Area experts provided up to date analysis of conditions in Libya today. The event was moderated by Hugh Roberts,
Professor of History at Tufts University, formerly the North Africa
Director for the International Crisis Group. Panelists were:
Faraj Najem,
a widely respected Libyan author, lecturer, historian, political
commentator and advisor on Libyan matters, and a leading member of the
Libyan diaspora in the UK;
Dirk J. Vandewalle, an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, and a leading expert on Libya.
Wandering Jews: American Jews, Human Rights, and Humanitarianism
Sponsored by the Tufts Seminar Series: “Exploring the History of Humanitarianism and Development”
November 14, 2012
Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Hall
5:00 p.m. EST
Michael Barnett, Professor International Affairs and Political Science at George Washington University, and author of Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism delivered remarks and a response was given by Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation.
The New Peace: A Presentation by Mary Kaldor
Co-sponsored with the Institute for Global Leadership
October 30, 2012
Cabot ASEAN Auditorium
5:00 p.m. EST
Mary Kaldor discussed the third edition of her landmark work on New and Old Wars. Kaldor’s work on new wars, first published in 1999, crystallized thinking about the changing nature of war in the globalized post-Cold War era, in particular focusing on the proliferation of non-state actors and the systematic targeting of civilians, the importance of identity politics, and the inter-relationship between private and often criminal interests and political conflict. As this book enters its third edition, Kaldor has further developed her thinking, updating her material to include Iraq and Afghanistan, responding to some critiques and providing a richer conceptual and evidence-based backdrop to explain “new wars.”
Getting Somalia Wrong?: Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State
The Fletcher School
September 25, 2012
Cabot 206
5:00 p.m. EST
Mary Harper, author of Getting Somalia Wrong?: Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State,
discussed how this “failed state” is far from being a failed society,
as alternative forms of business, justice, and local politics still
flourish. Arguing that there is a lot to be learned from the Somali way
of doing things, Harper’s examination of Somalia sheds light on why
international engagement has had limited impact. Copies of the book were
available for purchase.
Academic Year 2011-2012
Conflict in the 21st Century
Institute for Global Leadership
Tufts University
February 22 – 26, 2012
WPF’s Alex de Waal was among the speakers in the the 27th Annual Norris and Margery Bendetson EPIIC International Symposium sponsored by the Institute for Global Leadership. For more information, visit their website.
Inauguration of the African Union Human Rights Memorial
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
January 28, 2012
The African Union headquarters inaugurated a new human rights memorial dedicated to the memory of the victims of Alem Bekagn central prison, creating permanent memorials to the Rwanda Genocide, Apartheid and slavery. The inaugural event commemorated those who perished during the Red Terror campaign and victims of other human rights violations. For more background information, see Alex de Waal’s article on Alem Bekagn.
A Celebration of 101 Years of Working for Peace
By invitation only
January 17, 2012
The January 17 reception marked the official launch of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School.
How Mass Atrocities End
November 17, 2011
Cabot Intercultural Center, Room 205
6 p.m. EST
There is perhaps no other phase of mass atrocities that is less studied yet more debated than endings. An idealending
dominates policy and activists’ imaginations – victims saved,
perpetrators defeated, and some form of transitional justice
accomplished.
But this rarely occurs. Actual endings are little researched, yet provide a rich field of study and valuable arena for policy development. Scholars and policymakers have developed tools for defining when a genocide is happening – but not for when it is over. For example, can we say that the mass atrocities in Darfur have finished or not?
Speakers:
Alex de Waal, Director of the World Peace Foundation
Jens Meierhenrich, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science
Bridget Conley-Zilkic, Research Director, World Peace Foundation