Program

Creating Sustainable Peace

The Building and Sustaining Peace Track or “Peace Track” will address innovative and alternative approaches and sustainable means for building a global culture of peace. In light of the overall SR2004 focus on addressing world poverty, this track will deal with the economic and social justice issues underling peace and conflict throughout the world. This will include both theoretical and project-based presentations and demonstration of best practices in peacemaking, conflict resolution and community building.

We propose that the Peace Track will consist of several stand-alone events and a Peace Track module within all of the other tracks. For example, there could be a Peace Track module in the Digital Divide Track. The idea is that the organizers and presenters of a track, such as the Digital Divide Track, will design a module in their track to explore and address the peace, conflict, and community building issues within the specific aspect of sustainability their track is addressing. The Peace Track committee will offer assistance and a module coordinator to help each track (to the extent they need assistance) develop and present this module. The stand alone and imbedded Peace Track modules will all be scheduled so that a conference participant could attend all these Peace Track modules and receive training in a variety of conflict resolution methods as well as understanding the issues from the perspective of each of the other tracks. Thus if you could imagine all the Track presentations arranged in vertical columns, the Peace Track would look like a diagonal line running through all the tracks from the upper left to the lower right. In addition, at this point we have Bernie Glassman and Ariyaratne already scheduled to give talks at the plenary level. The final event of the conference will be a summary presentation from the chairs and/or facilitators of all these modules representing all the tracks in the context of peacemaking.

The Peace Track is organized around three major themes of building a sustainable culture of peace in the world:

1) seeding the world (mainstream and alternative structures) with the best practices and technologies for peacemaking, conflict resolution, and community building;

2) genuinely addressing economic and social justice issues across the world and especially as they affect the Global South;

3) building the foundation for a global paradigm shift from the currently predominating zero sum game, winner-take-all, dominance systems paradigm based on scarcity/survival mindsets to a paradigm and shared culture of abundance and win/win strategies for sustainable and equitable living on this planet.

Examples of Peacemaking, Conflict Resolution and Community Building technologies include:

Peace Circles
The Way of Council
Nonviolent Communication
Compassionate Listening
Partnership Models of Conflict Resolution
Integral theory as applied to peacemaking
Nonviolent Peace Forces and Witnessing Programs

Examples of Economic and Social Justice issues include:

Inequitable distribution of food, capital, and the means of production
Exploitation of resources by dominant economic systems
Global dept and exploitation of developing countries
Privatization of water and other natural resources
Inequitable availability of housing, education and health care
Discrimination and oppression based on race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, economic status, education, and sexual preference
Exploitation of immigrant workers, legal and illegal
Exploitation, oppression, and destruction of indigenous peoples and their lands
Exploitation of women
Exploitation of children

Paradigm Shift Ideas include:

Integral Theory
Spiral Dynamics
The Peacemaker Circles Indra’s Net Model
Sociocracy

Each Peace Track module would be organized and presented in such a way as to model best practices in peacemaking, conflict resolution, and community building. Examples of processes to be employed in the modules include:

Fishbowl and/or Spiral Councils
Dialogue (Bohmian)
World Café, Idea Café, or Conversation Cafe
Peace Circles
Listening Circles
Open Space