DC event: Water, conflict and peacebuilding in development: lessons for practitioners

The Environmental Change and Security Program and Middle East Program are pleased to invite you to the Wilson Center

Join us for the launch of USAID’s Water and Conflict Toolkit for Programming, a document designed to help development practitioners gain a deeper understanding of the forces driving violence and instability related to water. Written by USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation, the Wilson Center, and Group W Inc., the toolkit provides guidance to development professionals not familiar with water and conflict dynamics, with the aim of developing more strategic and focused interventions.

Panelists will discuss what needs further investigation to inform this kind of programmatic strategy, the challenges in this field of study, and how the toolkit addresses those shortfalls.

Where: Woodrow Wilson Center at the Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
6th Floor Flom Auditorium

• Federal Triangle stop on Blue/Orange Line
• A map to the Center is available at WilsonCenter.org/directions.

When: Monday, February 24, 2014, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Featuring:

• Gidon BrombergIsraeli Director, EcoPeace / Friends of the Earth Middle East
• Chris KosnikDirector, Office of Water, U.S. Agency for International Development
• Sandra RuckstuhlSenior Social Scientist, Group W Inc.
• Aaron WolfProfessor of Geography, Oregon State University

Moderator:

• Geoffrey D. DabelkoSenior Advisor, ECSP; Director of Environmental Studies, Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs, Ohio University

<< RSVP Here >>

Note: Photo identification is required. Please allow additional time to pass through security.

Want to attend but can’t? Tune into the live or archived webcast at WilsonCenter.org (not every event is webcast live; archived webcasts go up approximately one week after the meeting date).

Join the conversation on Twitter by following @NewSecurityBeat and find related coverage on our blog at NewSecurityBeat.org.

Call for papers: Conference on Transforming Development

The Ford Family Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity and the Center for Social Concerns at the University Notre Dame in collaboration with SIT Study Abroad announce the 6th annual student conference on human development.

Offering participants the opportunity to explore interdisciplinary and sustainable research to improve livelihoods while advancing human dignity, this year’s theme is inspired by the idea that development is an evolving process. A widening set of stakeholders and rapidly advancing technologies raise new possibilities for the field. The conference will be a chance to reflect on both successes and failures in development, while analyzing opportunities created by these new trends.

With the goal of showcasing student research that investigates collaborative and innovative solutions to address human development’s most challenging issues, we welcome proposals from undergraduate and graduate students to share their research, particularly those based on experiences in the field, in a broad spectrum of topics:

• Agriculture
• Aid
• Business
• Culture
• Economics
• Education
• Engineering
• Environment
• Gender
• Governance
• Health
• Human Rights
• Infrastructure
• Migration
• Peace and Conflict
• Public Policy
• Religion
• Technology

Students interested in presenting a paper should submit their abstract (no more than 500 words) no later than Thursday, November 14.

Call for student paper proposals: 2014 conference on transforming development

The theme of the 6th annual Human Development Conference at the University of Notre Dame is Transforming Development: New Actors, Innovative Technologies, and Emerging Trends.

The conference will be held on February 28 and March 1, 2014

It will showcase student research that investigates collaborative and innovative solutions to address human development’s most challenging issues. Proposals are welcome from both undergraduate and graduate students, particularly those whose research is based on experiences in the field.

Students interested in presenting a paper should submit their abstract (no more than 500 words) no later than Thursday, November 7th.

For abstract submission please visit: http://fluidsurveys.com/s/HDC_call_for_papers/

Additional details can be found here.

On violence against indigenous women in Latin America

Karmen Ramirez Boscan is a Wayuu indigenous woman from Colombia. She has worked as a consultant for the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, Switzerland. She writes in Al Jazeera that violence against indigenous women is a the twofold challenge. One challenge is the militarization of indigenous territories that forces women to face unconscionable abuses based on gender discrimination. The second challenge is the presence of multinational companies (MNCs) in indigenous territories: “When established, MNCs were expected to greatly benefit indigenous peoples, but now they have become an endless source of frustration… Unfortunately, there are no official statistics to show the impact of these mega projects and MNCs on indigenous women. “

Cambridge IDC 2012: Ethical development?

Should government aid be conditional upon human rights or economic reform? How can a gap year truly make a difference? Do religious groups use charity as an evangelistic tool? Can Corporate Social Responsibility change the world? Is the very idea of International Development ethical?

Join the debate at the Cambridge International Development Conference this December in a conference which will examine the ethics of International Development. Be inspired by the decision-makers and thinkers of today as they explore the ways in which we can improve our approach to International Development.

1st December 2012 at Cambridge University Law Faculty.

Killing with kindness: readings in the NYC area

Mark Schuller, assistant professor of Anthropology and NGO Leadership Development at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti, is the author, most recently, of Killing With Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs (Rutgers, 2012). He will be doing readings from his book at the following locations in early November:

• Thursday, November 1, 2012 – 4:30pm – Inquiring Minds Bookstore, 6 Church Street, downtown New Paltz

• Friday, November 2, 2012 – 7:00pm – Bluestockings Bookstore in SoHo, 172 Allen Street, New York, NY

• Sunday, November 4, 2012 – 5:00pm – Grenadier Books / Haïti Liberté, 1583 Albany Avenue, Brooklyn

Japan: Looking ahead to recovery

Guest post by Jin Sato

On April 4, 2011, the Asia Society and the Japan Society co-sponsored a Japan town hall meeting in New York City to discuss questions related to the recent earthquake. Several prominent experts constituted the panel which was moderated by Fred Katayama. Topics and questions for discussion were formulated by Jin Sato of the University of Tokyo and visiting democracy and development fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University.

The event was taped and can be viewed by clicking on the image below.

Questions were clustered into three areas in order to generate broad discussion about the disaster’s impact on Japanese politics, economics and social life, as well as to assess the extent of the uniqueness and historical significance of the changes for the Japanese people, and for Japan as a nation:

1. Japan’s Reliance on Nuclear Energy: The Politics of Risk Sharing

Japan has only 20 percent self-sufficiency in primary energy supply and more than half of that is nuclear power. Historically, the main rationale for advocating nuclear power was to enable Japan to be more self-sufficient. More than 30 years ago, during the incidents of “oil shock” and petrochemical shortage in the 1970s, the Japanese people learned the lesson of dependence on fossil fuels. Given the magnitude of the ongoing catastrophe, questions such as these arise:

• Is it time to question Japan’s dependence on nuclear energy as the primary domestic source of electric power?
• Given this kind of catastrophe, is it appropriate for Japan to allow the private sector to continue to manage this kind of high-risk operation?
• What should be the role of the government?
• How do we democratically control high-risk operations?
• Will a growing awareness of the inequitable distribution of risk lead to the Japanese public questioning of the reliance on nuclear energy?

2. The Future of the Japan Brand: Economic Fallout of the Disaster

Historically, the myth of superior Japanese technology has prevailed and even in this tragic series of events, the international community was shocked to discover the failure of the “failsafe” Japanese nuclear technology and safety mechanisms. Questions include:

• Will this incident signal the beginning of the end to the myth of Japanese technological superiority?
• What will be the impact of the current nuclear crisis on Japan’s reputation as a high-tech exporter and more generally on the “Japan brand”?