SAP-NEPAL - Just society with peace

Events Happening

1. INTRODUCTION

Peace is a beautiful word in any language. Each and every word carries different sensations to different group of people. The meaning of love is different for romantic lovebirds, affectionate parents and caring staff. Similarly, peace also has different connotations to advocating civil society, powerful government institutions, fighting guerrillas, dedicated priest. All within there own territory. Peace can also be defined as the absence of chaos, confusion and conflict. It encompasses democratic ideals and protection of human rights. Not only does the lack of peace often lead to poverty, it is as well one of poverty's many symptoms. Building peace and cultivating democracy prevents conflict and instability, improves governance, and strengthens the rule of law. When citizens are empowered, they use their voices to influence policy, protect human rights, and hold their governments accountable. Right to live is the basic human right, which is not possible to be guaranteed in the absence of peace. Today the intensifying internal armed conflict and cross border terrorism has deteriorated the environment of amity and social harmony prerequisite for peace at the global level. Even the local communities who once were used to be rich in social capital now are involved in different types of violence. Internal violence has arisen from gender, caste and ethnic discrimination, exclusion, unequal distribution of power and resources, illiteracy and exploitation of disadvantaged groups. People are fed up of the issues related to poverty, discrimination, exploitation and so on. Individuals are frustrated due to bad governance and corrupt nature prevailing in world. There is war everywhere. People see war in their country, own home and also within themselves. Therefore, people are now craving for peace.

2. RATIONALE

Different countries in South and Central America, Africa and Europe have experienced various forms of insurgencies/terrorism and protracted armed conflicts that have caused heavy loss of human lives and infrastructure damage. Similarly Asian countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and India have been besieged by similar problems of insurgency and terrorism. The proliferation of small arms, the development and distribution of weapons of mass destruction, conflicts, racism and communal violence are widening gap between the North and the South/the rich and the poor. South Asia is affected by various forms of conflict. Development budget of the region has been allocated to defense budget. This has encouraged militarization process in the region that has affected negatively in hindering development process of marginalized people and communities. Retrospective it has helped arms mafia to siphon development budget to control over the course of region. Peace is most desired situation in this world including South Asia. There are lots and lots of people and organizations working for peace building. The number is increasing day by day. Do we feel that we sense peaceful situation? Do we see the difference from our childhood memory to present context? Answer to most South Asian adults would be “No”. Why is this negative change in this part of the world? There are different queries in the minds of people. Collective efforts at the national and regional levels are required to transform the present turbulent situation into a rights based participatory inclusive culture. An analysis of the root causes has to be shared among the professionals across the countries. Civil society leaders need to be accountable to the people in order to achieve peace with justice. Therefore, a sharing of research, education, training, policy advocacy and knowledge is essential for the sustainable resolution of conflicts, injustice and partisan politics. Therefore, there is a need for a network to facilitate the sharing of information, experiences and knowledge by organizing conferences, seminars and workshops for national and international professionals and activists in
peace, justice and democracy. There are different organizations and networks working in the arena of peace
promotion in South Asia region. These institutions have their own experiences for managing chaos, confusion and conflict. Some have come through the path of success and some are still in struggling phase. There are different sensations both in case of success and failure. These varied experiences should be shared for providing guidance to other organizations that are working for managing conflict on their own. These fragmented power of peace volunteers needs to be unified. There is need of developing mechanism to bring these organizations and networks together in a common platform. As the principle of Knowledge Sharing (KS), all the approaches of KS have one thing in common: people must meet and take their time to talk. In this context, Bellasap, SAP International and SAP Nepal is organizing this event entitled “Knowledge
Networking for Peace: Rhetoric or Reality?” during July 27-29, 2005 at Katmandu. The organizers will be making attempt to create an enabling environment to understand peace in a way that will facilitate process of improving governance, preventing conflict and strengthen rule of law. However, we should not be expecting miracles to happen. We all have dedicated most of our energy in building peace but why this new interaction with other South Asian stakeholders? We are not trying anything new; we are just analyzing peace with different modality named as Open Space Technology. Open Space Technology is very simple approach that creates enabling environment to group of diverse nature to express their views and concerns. It helps group of people to analyze chaotic, confusing and conflicting issues in a peaceful fashion. We are just attempting to bring like-minded peace south stakeholders together to share their experiences and promote knowledge networking of these peace stakeholders.

3. GOAL , OBJECTIVES AND EXPECTED RESULTS

The goal of the workshop is to build community of practice for peace.
The specific objectives of the program are to:
· Share knowledge and experiences of peace, and
· Discuss about philosophies and practices of Open Content.
Expected Results that has been anticipated from the interaction are:
· Promoted network of Peace practitioners of Nepal with other peace activists
and practioners in South Asia
· Initiated collaborative actions for sharing knowledge on peace
· Practiced Open Content philosophies for dissemination of knowledge on
peace and conflict resolution
· Promoted online resources on peace content

4. THEMES:

We will be discussing following themes in the workshop:
· Peace Knowledge Sharing
· Online Networking for Peace
· Open Peace Content

5. METHODOLOGIES TO BE ADOPTED

This event will be innovative in a sense that we will be adopting new approaches of knowledge sharing during the workshop. Some of the methodologies that would be followed are as follows:
· Open Space Technology
· Story Telling
· Peer Assist
· After Action Review
· Action Plan Formulation

6. PARTICIPANTS

The interaction will be participated by different nature of people working for peace promotion in their respective countries. The participants will be belonging to all sectors of peace and conflict resolution, viz;
· Government Bureaucrats
· NGO Representatives
· Peace Experts
· Media
· Academicians
· IT professionals
During the selection process, the balance would be maintained between ICT professionals and peace promoters.

7. CRITERIA OF PARTICIPANTS

The participants of the workshops should have:
· Experiences in dealing with peace issues and contributed towards conflict resolution process
· Knowledge of using different ICT tools for development
· Contributed in using ICT as a tool for Peace promotion/ conflict resolution

8. QUERIES WE WANT TO RAISE

· What are the successful approaches that have been adopted for promoting peace?
· What are different challenges in peace building process?
· How do you share your peace building experiences with other stakeholders?
How does this experience sharing process helps you to update yourself?
· How are you using different Information and Communication tools for managing conflict in your country/region?
· What are different challenges of online networking with regards to peace building?
· Do you feel that peace content should be available openly? How are you disseminating your peace content with other peace actors?
· What are different open content philosophies that seem more appropriate for sharing peace content worldwide?
· What are different creative online peace resource centers you know of? Why do you think these centers as successful?

9. REGISTRATION FEE

Local: Nepali Rs. 3,000 (networking lunches and a solidarity dinner included)
Regional: Us $ 100 (networking lunches and a solidarity dinner included)
10. ACCOMMODATION CHOICES
Participants have to cover their own traveling expenses. The organizers can manage accommodation to the participants as per their choices. Recommended hotels for the participants are:
· Kathmandu Guest House (US $15- US $ 60 plus tax)
· Blue Star (US $ 25 plus tax)
· Hotel Himalaya ($ 40 -42 plus tax)

11. ABOUT ORGANIZERS:

Bellasap was established in Kathmandu with the objective of promoting and facilitating effective collaboration among development community within South east and South Asia. Bellasap is a joint initiation of Bellanet and SAP system. Bellanet is the organization committed for promoting cooperation among development stakeholders by strategic use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).(www.bellenet.org). The
organization wants to share its knowledge and experiences of using ICT in the field of development.

SAP International (SAP I) is an international non-governmental organization with its Secretariat in Kathmandu, Nepal. SAP I was created in 1995 by its constituent national SAP organizations in six countries - including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Canada - that had worked together since the early 1980s. SAP I's purpose is to focus the aggregate SAP work in the region, strengthen and support the SAP organizations, and promote regional programming. SAP Nepal one of the members in SAP system had worked in the field of development since 1985. The major thirst of the organization is sustainable development of poor and marginalized community members. It has extensive network both at grass root and international level. (www.sapnepal.org) .

Venue: SAP Falcha, Babarmahal, Kathmandu, Nepal
Phone:977-1-4223230/4223050 (See Location Map)
Download in PDF: Concept Paper
Registraion Form