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McCormack Graduate School professor leads secret Iraq peace talks
September 4, 2007 – After four days of discussions in Finland, 16 delegates from Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq have agreed to a 12-point framework intended to guide Iraq to a lasting peace.
The secret talks were organized by the University of Massachusetts Boston’s John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies and Helsinki-based Crisis Management Initiative. Helping lead the discussions were several veterans of the peace processes in Northern Ireland and South Africa, including McCormack Graduate School’s Padraig O’Malley, holder of the John Joseph Moakley Chair of Peace and Reconciliation.
“The road to reconciliation in Iraq, like in any fractured society, is long and tortured,” said McCormack Graduate School Dean Steve Crosby, “but we hope that Padraig O’Malley can use the expertise that he’s gathered in Northern Ireland and South Africa over the years, and the legacy of Joe Moakley, to get the journey on that road started.”
Congressman Moakley was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972 and served until his death in 2001. In addition to serving as chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, Moakley’s investigation of the murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador opened the way to a peaceful settlement between the rebels and the Salvadoran government.
O’Malley, the founder and editor of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies’ New England Journal of Public Policy for more than 20 years, has also authored many books, among them the award-winning Uncivil Wars: Ireland Today, Biting at the Grave, and Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa, which was published in April.
The framework for peace, titled the “Helsinki Agreement,” includes recommendations on non-violence, independent and effective courts, the protection of human rights, and the creation of a truly inclusive political process—all things, said Dean Crosby, that need to be in place before a nation can move forward.
“This is representational of the kind of work that we think a public policy school should do,” said Crosby. “The university believes that a public policy school should be deeply involved in public policy issues, and this is one of the most profoundly troubling public policy issues, and one, principally through the Moakley chair, that we want to be very much involved in.”
July 2008 Boston Globe
Op-Ed by Professor O'Malley
UMass Boston wins grant for Nigerian Youth Leaders Exchange Program
The University of Massachusetts Boston’s Graduate Program in Dispute Resolution will be hosting an exchange program to connect Nigerian youth leaders and members of civil society organizations working to bridge the country’s Muslim-Christian divide with American experts in conflict management and resolution. The exchange program will be led by Assistant Professor Darren Kew, and is being supported by a grant from the US Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
“Building Citizen Engagement and Conflict Resolution Skills in Civil Society: An Exchange Program for Nigerian Youth Leaders” is broken into two main phases. First, the Nigerian youth and civil society leaders will spend 3 weeks in Boston as they participate in workshops and site visits, working with American conflict resolution professionals experienced in interfaith and intergroup dialogue and consensus building. In addition to UMass Boston, American professionals will come from partnering organizations including Public Conversations Project, the Consensus Building Institute, the Massachusetts Office of Dispute Resolution and Public Collaboration, The Mediation Group, and CDA Collaborative Learning Projects.
Six months after the Nigerians visit Boston, American conflict resolution practitioners will travel to Nigeria where they will meet and conduct training programs with Nigerian partner organizations including Academic Associates PeaceWorks in Abuja, the Interfaith Dialogue Center in Kaduna, the Centre for Democratic Research and Training of Bayero University in Kano, and Settlement House in Abuja.
Darren Kew specializes in the connection between institution building in Africa and the development of political cultures that support democracy, particularly in terms of the role of civil society groups in this development. He has worked with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Preventative Action to provide analysis and blueprints for preventing conflicts in several areas around the world, including Nigeria, Central Africa, and Kosovo. He has also been a consultant to the United Nations, USAID, the US State Department, and to a number of NGO’s, including the Carter Center in a 1999 effort by former President Carter to mediate the Niger Delta conflicts and a 2007 effort to improved the Nigerian election process. His work on how conflict resolution methods promote democratization of national political cultures is one of the first of its kind in linking these important fields.
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