Nancy Germeshausen Klavans Cultural Bridge Fellowship: Quito Summer 2006

Week two has come and gone like a whirlwind. During my time here at the UN i have been working on a conflict prevention report. It was interesting to be able to apply a few of my previous papers to a document that might become an official report from the UN.

The report had to speak about issues surrounding conflict prevention as that is rarely addressed – more often than not a conflict is dealt with after the conflict has begun. Through my research i had to delve into issues of state sovereignty, security and migration. Through our various meetings with different arms of the UN we had discussions concerning the role that gender plays in conflict prevention. Many felt that women had to be engaged in the process early on in order to ensure that they would not be marginalized throughout the whole process, nevertheless it is difficult to see how this stands out when pulling together a report that grapples with so many v. complex issues.

Once that report was over i was tasked to work on a new arm of the DPA  that is being developed – Mediation Support Unit. In essence, the UN wants to be able to provide the appropriate tools and help to UN staff and mediators in the field when engaging in negotiations, mediations and drafting peace agreements. One of the main areas i am working on is a seminar that will be hosted in Capetown this sept. The focus is to try and pull together about 30 mediators, who are engaged in mediations in different countries across Africa (everything from the Congo to Sudan) and to guage what was successful in their mediations and what was lacking.

It is a very interesting unit as we are trying to tackle how we can establish prevention as an important tool to use during mediations. One of the areas we are focusing also is establishing appropriate guidelines for how to conduct mediations. So much of it is about the personality. Another role for the mediation seminar is to focus on who should be involved in mediations and a key issue is inclusiveness of women in this role. Any negotiations taking place are reconized to have a strong impact on women and so one of the discussions we have is how women can be engaged in this process.

My time here is teaching me alot of how various multilateral and international organizations work together to achieve one goal.

In additoin to all that i get to attend a variety of meetings at the general assembly, and various conference rooms. It is amazing that at times things can take so long to get accomplished yet in the same breath there is an awe and power that comes through when we can see the number of state officials from around the world trying to debate the state of the world’s affairs.

I can’t wait to see how all this global and macro size experience will compare with my time in Quito which will be a much more focused and targeted experience.

 till next time….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.