Day 11, and everyone was pretty keen for today’s speaker. To kick off proceedings Gareth Evans spoke to us on: nuclear proliferation, R2P and peace v justice. GREAT! Its exactly what we needed, after a week long session on theory, the practitioners were really starting to show practical examples of what we’ve learned thus far.
The point that stuck to me most, in this session, was that “justice does not always follow peace in on-going conflicts”. People who are not familiar with conflicts often believe that justice and peace are often intertwined, but as Mr Evans explained sometimes justice is an abhorrent to peace. For example the ICC’s criminal warrants against Sudan’s President Omar al-Hassan Bashir. (For further notes, you’re going to have to attend next year ; P)
Just to conclude on Mr Evans, if you ever want to hear someone speak frankly on politics and international relations, he is the dude!
Next we had another inspiring speaker, Ambassador Oudh Abdullah, who was the former UN’s Special representative to Somalia. He explained to us that Conflict is normal, but “what is not normal is violence”. He then went on to explain the Somalia conflict and the issues of religion and caste that has exacerbated that conflict. I liked how he also categorized the different mediators he has experienced in his extremely long career: diplomat, career diplomat, power player and the priest.
Both speakers had extremely long careers, and as young peacemakers we really needed to learn from the experiences of these people that are pioneers in their field.
After an extremely long and mentally exhausting day, we went back to the hotel, bought some pizza and hung out on the roof top, watching the hot…hot sun set on the red roofs of bologna.
Bologna the Red
Bologna the Fat
Bologna the Wise
Today was definitely a great day!
Arunn Jegan, Australia