Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping: Protecting Civilians WITHOUT Guns

The Center for International Conflict Resolution is pleased to invite you to the following presentation:

Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping:  Protecting Civilians WITHOUT Guns

Monday, October 1^st, 2012

4:30pm-6:00pm

International Affairs Building Room 1302

RSVP to Jessica Baen: jrb2178@columbia.edu

Unarmed civilian peacekeeping is a relatively new innovation for protecting civilians and reducing violence without the use of armed force. Tiffany Easthom is South Sudan Country Director for the Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP), an international non-governmental organization that has worked to promote, develop and implement unarmed civilian peacekeeping.  Ms. Easthom will present on the NP’s experience in Sri Lanka, South Sudan and elsewhere, with a special focus on women’s peacekeeping teams. The discussion will conclude with a panel of respondents and then open for questions.

Participant Biographies:

Tiffany Easthom is an international leader in the practice of unarmed civilian peacekeeping.  She currently serves as the Country Director for Nonviolent Peaceforce’s peacekeeping project in South Sudan supervising 8 peacekeeping teams in five states.  Her work in South Sudan has included the return and protection of child soldiers, working with women on protective strategies for gender based violence, direct protection for refugees and IDPS, inter-communal violence reduction, and, the implementation of conflict early warning early response systems. Prior to becoming NP’s Country Director in South Sudan, Tiffany served as Country Director at NP’s Sri Lanka project as well as  Country Director for Peace Brigades International in Indonesia. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Justice Studies and a Master’s Degree in Human Security and Peacebuilding from Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Responders Panel:

Dirk Salomons is the director of the Program for Humanitarian Affairs at the School of International Public Affairs, Columbia University, where he also heads the International Organizations specialization. In his research as well as in teaching, Salomons focuses on the interaction between policy and management in humanitarian operations; he has a particular interest in the transition from relief to recovery in countries coming out of conflict.

Prior to joining the SIPA faculty in 2002, Salomons served since 1997 as managing partner of the Praxis Group, Ltd., an international management consulting firm based in the USA and Switzerland, where he still plays an advisory role. Praxis works mainly with public service entities, applying its expertise in humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping, and post conflict recovery as well as in human resources management. Salomons is also a non-resident fellow at New York University’s Center on International cooperation, working mainly on post-conflict stabilization issues. From 1970-1997, Salomons served in a wide range of management, peace building, and policy advisory functions in several organizations of the United Nations system, including FAO, UNDP, UNAIDS, UNOPS, and the UN Secretariat. His most cherished assignment was that of executive director for the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Mozambique, from 1992 to 1993. Salomons received a “kandidaats” degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1964, and subsequently obtained his “doctoraal”, also at the University of Amsterdam, in 1967.

Betty A. Reardon is the Founding Director Emeritus of the International Institute on Peace Education, an annual intensive residential experience in peace education.  Since 1982 the IIPE has been held at universities and peace education centers in Asia, Europe, Latin America and Central America. For this work she received a special Honorable Mention Award from UNESCO in 2001.  Among her other initiatives in the international peace education movement, she  initiated and served as the first Academic Coordinator of the Hague Appeal for Peace Global Campaign for Peace Education. Having taught as a visiting professor at a number of universities in the U.S. and abroad, she has 46 years of experience in international peace education and 33 years in the international movement for the human rights of women. She has served as a consultant to several UN agencies and national and international education organizations. Her widely published work in the theory and development of peace and human rights education, and in gender and peace issues, recognized in the awarding of the 2008 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Peace Studies from the Peace and Justice Studies Association, is archived in the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections at the University of Toledo Libraries. She is the recipient of the 2009 Sean McBride Peace Prize awarded by the International Peace Bureau, the oldest of the many nongovernmental peace organizations, founded in 1891, awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 2010.

Kiryn Lanning is a dual master’s degree student with the School of International and Public Affairs and the Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to beginning graduate school Kiryn worked for The Food Trust and Congreso de Latinos Unidos in Philadelphia and also volunteered in Haiti working in mobile medical clinics. She is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (El Salvador). Most recently Kiryn worked with the Child Protection in Crisis Network in Liberia and South Sudan. In South Sudan Kiryn’s research focused on emergency response and its impact on the national child protection system.