This year in the UK we are celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, or “Great Charter”. Signed in 1215, it remains one of the most famous documents in the world, and central to the…
I was all set to write about climate change and, more particularly, to reflect on some excellent writing on that subject which addresses so-called climate change sceptics or deniers. It seems to me…
“The key to doing well lies not in overcoming others,
but in eliciting their co-operation."
Robert Axelrod
“Although negotiation takes place every day, it is not easy to do well. Standard strategies…
Last month, Al Jazeera carried a piece called “‘Mama Boko Haram’ grasps for peace in Nigeria”. It detailed the activities of Aisha Wakil (pictured above), a Nigerian lawyer who has become a de…
Recently my good friend Canon Andrew White (aka “the Vicar of Baghdad”, as he is the Anglican priest at St George’s Church, Baghdad) convened a meeting of religious certain leaders from Iraq and…
Like many of us, I listened with rapt attention to the reporting from Geneva of the Syrian peace talks last week. So much is at stake. And so much of it feels very familiar to me as a mediator…
I’m not sure conflict resolution is quite what Guns n Roses had in mind when they wrote those lyrics but having survived the festive season, which in itself always requires a good deal of patience, I…
Six weeks ago, Ireland lost one of its greatest poets when Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate, died at the age of 74. A native of Derry, he was a member of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland and…
This is the fourth and final posting in a series written by Tina Monberg, Irena Vanenkova, Michael Leathes and Nadja Alexander. In the last posting we discussed two factors that we think are critical…