Press Release: International Day of Peace
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- by CSVR
The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) is joining citizens and organisations globally to observe International Day of Peace on September 21 with a call to renew efforts for peacebuilding.
The theme for International Day of Peace 2017, on Thursday September 21, is Together for Peace: Respect, Safety and Dignity for All by the United Nations.
CSVR aims to use its expertise in building reconciliation, democracy and a human rights culture and in preventing violence in South Africa and other countries in Africa.
"Our work toward achieving sustainable peace can be seen through the Innovations in Peacebuilding Initiative," said Masana Ndinga-Kanga, research manager at CSVR.
The two-year research, dialogue and policy project explores innovative ways in which international organisations, donors, governments and local non-governmental organisations conduct activities aimed at conflict prevention and management, peacebuilding and reconciliation.
Over the past year, CSVR has hosted peacebuilding workshops in partnership with the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Norway, and the Nepal Peacebuilding Initiative (NPI).
"The workshops are aimed at understanding how peace is built in local communities and around particular key community priorities. How civil society uses international norms helps us understand links between what happens in these local spaces and the global agenda promoted by the UN and international community," she said. "International Peace needs to be built through and experiences as local peace."
Case studies of local peacebuilding include Khayelitsha and conflicts over the right to sanitation, #FeesMustFall and the right to decolonised higher education, the Community Works Programme and the right to work, the right to reparations for victims of apartheid and women's rights in democratic South Africa.
Other programmes run by CSVR are:
- Community Intervention Programme – through the programme, CSVR is able to directly engage with people affected by violence and conflict.
- Clinical Intervention – which offers psychosocial counselling support to survivors of violence and conflict, who are willing to engage in the counselling process.
- Advocacy – which was established to influence policy and institutional development at local, national, regional and international levels.
- Research – which studies, analyses and generates knowledge on violence and conflict.
- Learning and Knowledge Management – which allows the organisation to constantly learn from its work and share knowledge with its partners and the public.
After a series of practitioner workshops in South African, researchers from the project will now be sharing lessons from these processes with peacebuilders and policy makers in New York and Oslo.
For more information and interviews, contact:
Boitumelo Molusi
Tel: +27 11 888 0140
Cell: +27 79 713 5953
bmolusi@frayintermedia.com
CSVR is a multi-disciplinary institute that seeks to understand and prevent violence, heal its effects and build sustainable peace at the community, national and regional levels.
