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Meeting overview:
“If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart,” said President Obama. The world can be a dangerous and unpredictable place. Are things getting worse, or, does it just seem and feel like that? Every week seems to bring more bad news as violent conflict and instability increase. Are there themes or threads that connect these conflicts? What is the role of the peacebuilding community, and of the U.S. government, in terms of analysis and addressing both prevention and resolution?
The September CPRF is bringing together thought leaders on peacebuilding, religion, social science, anti-corruption, and violent extremism.
Speakers:
Ambassador Rick Barton is the Assistant Secretary of State for Conflict and Stabilization Operations and the Secretary of State’s senior advisor on conflict and stabilization. The Bureau is responsible for driving the State Department’s efforts to improve U.S. government effectiveness in preventing cycles of violent conflict, through developing innovative strategies, broadening partnerships, strengthening local initiatives, and using advanced analytics and mass communications. Previously Amb. Barton served as U.S. Representative to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC), working on development, peacebuilding, climate change, and human rights, where he was actively engaged in the creation of UN Women, the advancement of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, the Millennium Development Goals summit, the suspension of Libya’s voting rights on the UN Human Rights Commission, Haiti’s post-earthquake reconstruction, Democracy Fund initiatives, and efforts to better align U.S. and UN development country programs. Mr. Barton has worked to improve the U.S. and international response to conflict in more than 40 of the world’s most unstable places while he was Co-Director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Deputy High Commissioner of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Geneva, and Founding Director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI). Mr. Barton taught for five years at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, where he was the Frederick Schultz Professor. Amb. Barton has a BA from Harvard College, an MBA from Boston University, and an honorary doctorate from Wheaton College of Massachusetts.
Sarah Chayes is a Senior Associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program and the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she works on the correlation between acute public corruption and the rise of militant extremism. She is an expert in South Asia policy, kleptocracy, anti-corruption, and civil-military relations. A former reporter, she covered the fall of the Taliban for NPR, then left journalism to remain in Kandahar to contribute to the reconstruction of the country, living there fro 10 years. Chayes launched a cooperative that produces skin-care products for export from licit local agriculture. The goals were to help revive the region’s historic role in exporting fruit and its derivatives, promote sustainable development, and expand alternatives to the opium economy. Deeply embedded in the life of the city and fluent in Pashtu, Chayes gained a unique perspective on the unfolding war. In 2009, she became a special adviser to Generals David McKiernan and Stanley McChrystal, commanders of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). In 2010, Chayes became special adviser to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, contributing to strategic policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arab Spring. She is the author of the forthcoming book Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security. She is the author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban (Penguin Press, 2006).
Marc Gopin is Director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Gopin has taught conflict resolution throughout the world as well as at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and numerous other academic institutions and has trained thousands of people in peacemaking strategies for complex conflicts in which religion and culture play a role. He conducts research on values dilemmas as they apply to international problems of globalization, clash of cultures, development, social justice and conflict. He is the author of Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence and Peacemaking (Oxford University Press, 2000); Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2002), a study on what was missing from the Oslo Process, and what will be necessary culturally for a successful Arab/Israeli peace process; Healing the Heart of Conflict (Rodale Press, 2004); and To Make the Earth Whole: The Art of Citizen Diplomacy in an Age of Religious Militancy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). Gopin has engaged in back channel diplomacy with religious, political and military figures on both sides of conflicts, especially in the Arab/Israeli conflict. He has appeared on numerous media outlets, including CNN, CNN International, Court TV, The Jim Lehrer News Hour, Israel Radio, National Public Radio, The Connection, Voice of America, and the national public radios of Sweden, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. He has been published in the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, and his work has been featured in news stories of the Times of London, the Times of India, Associated Press, and Newhouse News Service.
George A. Lopez became Vice President of USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding in 2013 after 27 years at the Joan B. Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame where he held the Theodore M. Hesburgh Chair in Peace Studies. Lopez’s research on state violence has been published in a wide range of social science and policy journals. He has been a frequent commentator about war and peace issues in the national and international media. He has co-written or edited six books and more than 40 articles and book chapters on economic sanctions, and has advised international agencies and governments on sanctions issues, ranging from assessing and limiting humanitarian impact to the design of targeted financial sanctions. In 2010-2011, he served on the United Nations Panel of Experts for monitoring and implementing U.N. Sanctions on North Korea. During 1988-1998 he chaired the Selection Committee of the Research and Writing Grants of the MacArthur Foundation’s Program in Peace and International Cooperation. In 1997, he served as interim executive director of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and chaired its board of directors until 2003. In 2001-02 he was a senior research associate at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in NYC. He was a Jennings Randolph fellow at USIP in 2009-10.
Welcome and Opening Remarks by P. Terrence Hopmann, SAIS Conflict Management Program Director.
About This Forum:
Since 1999, the Conflict Prevention and Resolution Forum (CPRF) has provided a monthly platform in Washington for highlighting innovative and constructive methods of conflict resolution. CPRF’s goals are to (1) provide information from a wide variety of perspectives; (2) explore possible solutions to complex conflicts; and (3) provide a secure venue for stakeholders from various disciplines to engage in cross-sector and multi-track problem-solving. The CPRF is traditionally hosted at SAIS and organized by the Conflict Management Program in conjunction with Search for Common Ground and is co-sponsored by a consortium of organizations that specialize in conflict resolution and/or public policy formulation.
For more information on the CPRF, including links to forum principals, click here.