Supporting Women in Aceh

The objective of the Women, Peace and Security in Aceh project has been to promote inclusive processes to strengthen peace and facilitate the establishment of amore democratic and equal Acehnese society, to support and empower Acehnese women in the aftermath of conflict, and to identify and improve knowledge on good practices and mechanisms for involving women in post-conflict peacebuilding processes.

The project has supported and has been implemented through a network of Acehnese civil society organizations working in different areas of the Aceh province. This network, called Jaringan Perempuan untuk Perdamaian (JPuP)- the Aceh Women Peace Network - consists of over 20 organizations who have a long tradition in training local women leaders in their own societies.

Initiative for Peacebuilding

Advancing the practice of mediation as an acceptable and workable conflict resolution tool for the European Union has been one of CMI’s core work areas in 2009. As the mediation cluster coordinator for the EU-funded “Initiative for Peacebuilding”, uniting ten specialized peacebuilding NGOs and think tanks, CMI brought together experts from NGOs, governments, UN, OSCE and EU institutions.

In addition, CMI participated in high level briefings with the Council of the EU. Many of the eight research papers produced are used as reference sources for mediation, peace and justice. To portray talent and personalities in mediation, CMI has also produced four video clips. Developed in October 2009, the joint Council and Commission “Strengthening EU mediation and Dialogue Capacities” concept is now the policy basis for EU engagement in the area of mediation and dialogue.

http://www.initiativeforpeacebuilding.eu/

FORESEC

FORESEC is a European-wide participatory foresight project on Europe’s evolving security, its drivers, trends and scenarios.

In 2009, CMI continued to coordinate the FORESEC project - the first pan-European participatory foresight project on civilian security. Over a period of 20 months, FORESEC engaged over 500 civil servants, policy makers, researchers, industrialists, and civil society representatives from all European countries on building a vision of shared security.

Through a participatory foresight process, the project fostered a shared understanding and a coherent approach to current and future threats to European security. The work was built on efforts to tie together the multiple threads of existing workloads on European security, as well as on the identification of new threats and novel perspectives.

The main activity of the FORESEC project was the Delphi study, a series of national scenario workshops and a Europe-wide scenario workshop. Overall, the Delphi study produced highly relevant and timely results, and most notably information on the European security landscape, debate on new concepts and analysis of national security perceptions. These results were published in several in-depth reports that were disseminated in a final conference held in Brussels.

www.foresec.eu