International Steering Committee Members

Kevin Clements, Chair
The Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies
The University of Queensland
Brisbane, Australia

Kevin Clements is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and the Director of The Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. This is a postgraduate research and practice programme aimed at producing reflective practitioners and practically oriented theorists.   They have been working on development and security issues through the human security lens in collaboration with International Peace Academy and are producing a book on "Development and Security in Pacific Island Countries" in July. They have also been investigating ways of strengthening regional organizations, early warning systems and conflict prevention. The Pacific Island Forum has asked them to do some base line analyses of a number of micro- states to understand challenges to structural stability and where each country lies on different conflict cycles. They are also looking at justice processes and post-conflict reconstruction in East Timor, and monitoring the peace process in the Solomon Islands. Interestingly, they are comparing and contrasting traditional and modern styles of conflict resolution, revisiting the progressive roles of tradition and analyzing the relationship between customary and introduced law in relation to the settlement of land and other conflicts within the Pacific.

Interview of Kevin Clements on his religious background and early interest in peace studies and conflict prevention.

Mariano Aguirre
Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dialogo Exterior (FRIDE)
Madrid, Spain

Mariano Aguirre is former Director of the Centro de Investigación para la Paz, in Madrid, and former Coordinator of programmes on peace and conflicts at the Ford Foundation, in New York. Author of several books and essays, Mariano Aguirre publishes articles in various media in Spain and internationally such as OpenDemocracy, Le monde diplomatique,  El Correo, La Vanguardia, Maniere de voir, AlertNet, Enjeux Internationaux, Temas, El País, Política Exterior, Debate, BBC World Service, Radio Netherland, Radio Nacional de España, Radio France International, Mediterranean Politics and CNN Spain. He has received several awards for his works on human rights and analysis of armed conflicts.

Lois Barber
Earth Action Network
Amherst, MA, USA

EarthAction is a13-year-old global network with 2300 NGOs in 163 countries. They have systematically built the network by conducting 83 global campaigns. Each campaign has its own Information--Action kit, including activities that can be done by an organization, by an individual, by a journalist, and by a member of parliament. These kits are disseminated to everyone in the global network. Every campaign is framed within a call for reformed international institutions and global governance. For instance, a recent campaign helped pressure 45 countries into signing a convention raising the conscription age, thereby dealing with the issue of child soldiers. EarthAction is at GAPW's disposal for carrying out global campaigns on GAPW issues, including the UNEPS.

EarthAction has recently helped create a 'Council of 100' that will provide the kind of moral and ethical leadership they feel the world is lacking. They are seeking NGOs to host 24 Expert Commissions that will deal with major global issues, such as Conventional, Biological, and Chemical Weapons and Nuclear Disarmament, Conflict, and Healing.   These Expert Commissions will advise the Council of 100 by submitting actionable proposals to them. EarthAction is looking for organizations to adopt an expert commission and house it, and wonder if GAPW might be interested in being host to an expert commission.

Walden Bello
Focus on the Global South
Quezon City, Philippines

Alejandro Bendana
Center for International Studies
Managua, Nicaragua

Joerg Calliess
Evangelische Akademie Loccum
Loccum, Germany

Calliess works at the Evangelische Akademie, where their main activity is organizing conferences. They participate in an important open network with more than 60 organizations and 120 individuals. This network is building a platform for conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and has created a program with a huge variety of projects to bring forward civilian conflict management, post-conflict peace building and conflict-transformation (www.konfliktbearbeitung.net). They encouraged the German government to promote civilian action in peacekeeping and the outcome was a federal Plan including cooperation and discussion between state and non-state actors. (Action Plan "Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Resolution and Post- Conflict Peace-Building", available on the web at www.auswaertiges-amt.de) Now they are working to get the Plan implemented and to a point where it cannot be repealed, as the Government may change.

They are also assessing the impact work done in various conflict regions, including the Balkans, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, by different organizations over the past 6-8 years, regions to see whether their analysis is accurate or is missing things. Their next Platform conference will address these issues.

Joseph Camilleri
Professor of International Relations
La Trobe University

Joseph Camilleri has written and lectured extensively on international relations, governance and globalisation, human rights, North-South relations, international organisations, the United Nations, and the Asia-Pacific region. His most recent books include: States, Markets and Civil Society in Asia Pacific (Edward Elgar 2000), Regionalism in the New Asia Pacific Order (Edward Elgar 2003), co-edited Democratizing Global Governance (Palgrave Macmillan 2002), Asia-Pacific Geopolitics: Hegemony vs. Human Security (forthcoming) and edited Religion and Culture in Asia Pacific: Violence or Healing? (Vista 2001).

Professor Camilleri is actively engaged in international research, education and advocacy on issues of human rights, civilisational dialogue, global governance reform, peace and security. He is the recipient of St Michael's Award for Distinguished Service to the Community, and Australian President of the International Christian Peace Movement, Pax Christi.

Merav Datan

Datan has been in New Zealand doing postgraduate legal studies in international law, focusing on peace and security, disarmament issues, the Middle East, and using Security Council Resolution 1325 as a tool of international law. She currently works with the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and WILPF, both of which are involved with GAPW. Most of her work has to do with the global rule of law, and she is increasingly interested in concepts of self-defense, as this is the legal rationale for national security policies. Datan thinks the GAPW plan could benefit from a closer analysis of self-defense and the impact of national security on individual security. She is also extremely interested in how the Israel-Palestine confrontation figures in the GAPW plan and believes there is a need for a dialogue on history and narrative among people in the region.  

Datan recently taught a course at Rutgers Law School on the Iraq War and international law, and found that despite the skepticism among the students toward international law, they really want it to work.

Charles Danquah
Global Action-Ghana
Accra, Ghana

Jonathan Dean
Union of Concerned Scientists
Washington DC, USA

In his work with the Union of Concerned Scientists, Dean has been very active on Item 43 of the GAPW program, the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS). He went to Geneva last year to convince Russia, China, and France of this necessity, and Russia made a declaration in the First Committee this year that it would not be the first to deploy weapons in space. UCS is publishing a primer on space weapons this year. The US already has 2 potential space weapons: one, NFIRE, is supposed to be deployed next year, the other is to be deployed 2 years later. Once the first one has been deployed, we will no longer be able to work to stop space weapons, but instead to control them as we control nuclear weapons. That is why we have to stop this development.

Nick Dunlop
E-Parliament
Kent, United Kingdom

Rolf Ekeus
Chairman
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Randall Caroline Forsberg ( --October 19, 2007)
Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies
Cambridge, MA, USA

Felicity Hill

Felicity Hill works for Medical Association for Prevention of War, the Australian Affiliate of IPPNW.  Before taking up this post, Felicity was the Greenpeace International Political Adviser on Nuclear and Disarmament Issues, and before that was a Peace and Security Adviser to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), responsible for the Fund's work on conflict prevention, field testing and developing gender-based early warning indicators, and providing technical advise and guidance to practitioners planning and executing disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes in post-conflict settings so they adequately take gender issues into account and benefit women combatants and dependents equitably. She was also responsible for creating and maintaining a web portal www.WomenWarPeace.org designed to ensure targeted information to the UN system on the impact of conflict on women after the adoption of the Security Council's historic resolution on Women, Peace and Security in 2000. As the Director of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom's UN Office in New York from 1997-2001 she created the Reaching Critical Will and PeaceWomen projects focused on enhancing NGO preparation and participatoin in security and disarmament fora. 

Wade Huntley
Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada

Dr. Wade L. Huntley is Director of the Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research, in the Liu Institute for Global Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Previously he was Associate Professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute in Hiroshima, Japan, and Director of the Global Peace and Security Program at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development in Berkeley, California. He received his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley Department of Political Science in 1993, has taught at several universities, and has published work on US strategic policies, East and South Asian regional security, and international relations theory. Recent publications include the co-edited volume, Nuclear Disarmament in the 21st Century (Hiroshima Peace Institute, 2004) and two chapters; “Threats All The Way Down: U.S. Nuclear Initiatives in a Unipolar World,” Review of International Studies (forthcoming, January 2006); “On the Verge: Implications of a Nuclear North Korea,” Global Dialogue (forthcoming, 2005/6); “Nuclear Threat Reliance in East Asia,” in The Iraq Crisis and World Order, Vol. II: Arms Control, Disarmament, and Proliferation Challenges (United Nations University Press, forthcoming 2005/6); “Where No Bomb Has Gone Before: US Space Weaponization Planning and its Implications,” in Douglas Ross, ed., The Future of Canadian-American Strategic Cooperation (Royal Canadian Military Institute, forthcoming 2005); “The NPT at a Crossroads,” Foreign Policy In Focus (Silver City, NM & Washington, DC), July 01, 2005; “Ostrich Engagement: The Bush Administration and the North Korea Nuclear Crisis,” The Nonproliferation Review 11:2 (Summer 2004).

Rebecca Johnson
Acronym Institute
London, United Kingdom

Robert C. Johansen
Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
University of Notre Dame

In his work as a Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Johansen uses the GAPW Program Statement in his master's program classes. Students generally respond well to the GAPW program, and the most common criticism is that there is not enough on poverty, development or the environment. Perhaps the importance of these issues could be acknowledged in a future edition, even if they are not central to the statement.

In addition to teaching, Johansen is engaged in four main strands of work. He is conducting a project on the International Criminal Court, through which he has tried to demonstrate that US fears about the ICC are unfounded. Holding individuals accountable for crimes in the ICC changes illegal activities from being classified as war to a violation of international law. He is also creating an online Inter-parliamentary Forum (e-parliament.net) to include all democratically elected legislators in a discussion on how to address global problems. Right now the e-parliament serves as a way to trade best practices, with the possibility one day of becoming an organization with revenue-collecting and law-creating powers. They just had an encouraging meeting in Brussels, where many of the dozens of parliamentarians were interested in GAPW issues. Johansen is also acting as rapporteur for the UNEPS project, which will be discussed on Saturday and Sunday.

Vincent O. Makanju ( --September 2006)
The Peace Education Centre
Ile Ife, Nigeria

Saul Mendlovitz
Rutgers University School of Law
Newark, NJ, USA

Saul Mendlovitz is Dag Hammarskjold Professor of Peace and World Order Studies, Rutgers School of Law. He held the Ira D. Wallach Professor of World Order Studies at Columbia University School of International Affairs (1979-87) and was visiting Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School. He has written and spoken extensively on international law and the promotion of a just world order. He has published and edited ten volumes on these matters, including: A Reader on Second Assembly and Parliamentary Proposals (edited with Barbara Walker); Preferred Futures for the United Nations; and A U.N. Constabulary to Enforce the Law on Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity with John Fousek. Professor Mendlovitz is the founding director of the World Order Models Project and a founding member of Global Action to Prevent War. He represents four organizations at the United Nations: The International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, The Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, The International Peace Research Association, and The World Future Studies Federation.

Bjoern Moeller
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)

Bjoern Moeller is a senior researcher at DIIS, an independent but government-funded research institution in Copenhagen. His interests and expertise relate geographically to Europe, the Middle East and Subsaharan Africa and thematically to conflict and security theory, alternative defence, the links between religion and conflict, the United Nations and regional organisations, and terrorism. He is the author or editor of ten books and the author of numerous articles and reports. For more information see http://www.diis.dk/sw22140.asp.

Manuela Mesa
Centro de Educación e Investigación para la Paz (CEIPAZ)

Manuela Mesa is currently the coordinator of Centro de Educación e Investigación para la Paz (CEIPAZ), the director of the quarterly Papeles de Cuestiones Internacionales, published by CIP, and the director of the Spanish edition of the journal Alternativas Sur . She was previously the director of the Centro de Investigación para la Paz (CIP-FUHEM). Mesa holds a Ph.D. in Sociology of Education (Universidad Complutense, Madrid) and a B.A. in Educational Sciences (Universidad Complutense), and specializes in conflicts, conflict prevention and rehabilitation, security issues, Latin America, global trends and development education, a topic in which she contributed to the Spanish National Plan on Development Cooperation (Plan Director de la Cooperación Española 2005-2008). She has broad teaching experience in university courses, conferences and seminars, and has accomplished field work in Central America and Palestine.

Some of Mesa's recent publications include:
"Los nuevos mapas del poder","The new maps of power" en Cartografías del poder. Hegemonía y respuestas. Anuario CIP 2005; "Evolution and Future Challenges of Development Education" en: La educación para el desarrollo en la Comunidad de Madrid. Tendencias y estrategias para el siglo XXI: Informe a la Dirección General de Cooperación y Voluntariado de la Comunidad de Madrid - July 2005; "International Peace and Security","Paz y seguridad internacional", published in Revista INETemas Nº 31 , in June 2005; "Educar para la ciudadanía global y la democracia cosmopolita","Educating for Global Citizenship and Cosmopolitan Democracy", en Educar para la ciudadanía y la participación: De lo local a lo global, Guías didácticas de educación para el desarrollo, CIP, 2003; "Terrorismo y globalización: propuestas para la prevención", Papeles de Cuestiones Internacionales Nº 85, Spring 2004; "Educación para la paz en el nuevo milenio" en Jose Manuel Pureza (org). Para uma cultura da Paz. Quarteto, Coimbra 2001; "Paz y conflictos en un mundo en cambio. Veinte años de Investigación para la Paz", Le Monde Diplomatique en español, October 2004.

Radmila Nakarada
University of Belgrade
Belgrade, Serbia

Nakarada teaches political science in University of Belgrade, and includes GAPW in her courses. She has worked on projects dealing with regional 'good-neighborhood' and weak/fragmented states, as well as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission founded by the Yugoslav president. However, despite all their work, Montenegro decided the Commission was not needed because of the existence of The Hague.

Ricardo Navarro
Friends of the Earth

Navarro is the former head of Friends of the Earth International, and continues to work as the head of Friends of the Earth in El Salvador. Friends of the Earth does conflict resolution from an ecological standpoint. For example, hydroelectric dams displace 80 million people, which is violence. One World Bank funded dam caused 400 people to be killed because the natives refused to make room for the dam. The displacement of people and waste due to the economic system is intrinsically violent. In a world where governments are increasingly the tools of large corporations, war is not just the continuation of politics by other means; it is also the continuation of business by other means. Although Navarro understands that development issues are not addressed in the GAPW Program as a conscious decision, he insists we need to be concerned that the demand for resources is bringing cultures more and more into violence.

William Pace
World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy
New York, NY, USA

William R. Pace has served as the Executive Director of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, a 59-year old peace movement dedicated to promoting international democracy, global justice, and the rule of law, since 1994. In 1995, Mr. Pace was asked to serve as the Convenor of the NGO Coalition for an International Criminal Court, an international network which has grown since that time to comprise more than 2,000 organizations. Mr. Pace served as the Secretary-General for the Hague Appeal for Peace civil society conference in 1999, a monumental gathering for peace in the city of The Hague in the Netherlands. From 2002 through 2004, Mr. Pace also served as the President of the Center for United Nations Reform Education. Mr. Pace is a co-founder of numerous NGO networks and steering committees, including the NGO Steering Committee for the UN Commission on Sustainable Development; the Washington Coalition for Human Rights; and the International NGO Task Group on Legal and Institutional Matters.

Vandana Shiva
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy
Dhera Dun, India

Hussein Solomon
Centre for International Political Studies
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa

Hussein Solomon is Professor and Director of the Centre for International Political Studies. He lectures in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He speaks and writes extensively on African international relations and security issues. He is also an Executive Committee Member of Global Action to Prevent War. His research interests include conflict resolution, multilateral security institutions, and religious fundamentalism. His most recent publication is entitled Exploring Islamic Fundamentalist Ideologies in Africa published by the Africa Institute (Pretoria,
South Africa, 2006).

Alejandro Soto Romero
Medicina Integral Dhamma
Mexico

Majid Tehranian
Toda Institute for Peace
Honolulu, HI, USA

Ramesh Thakur
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Paul van Tongeren
European Centre for Conflict Prevention
Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict
The Hague, The Netherlands

Paul van Tongeren worked many years as a programme manager for the Dutch National Committee for International Cooperation and Sustainable Development (NCDO). He has been involved in the activities of numerous Dutch NGOs in the field of development cooperation, peace and environmental organisations. He established the ECCP (European Centre for Conflict Prevention) based in the Netherlands, and an European Platform on Conflict Prevention in 1997.

Under his leadership, the ECCP undertook several activities, including the “Searching for Peace” series, which documents analysis of conflicts and peacebuilders in different continents; the “People Building Peace” books, describing inspiring civil society stories worldwide; and the establishment of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, the first global network of peacebuilders. ECCP organized, in partnership with the UN Department for Political Affairs, the first civil society conference at the UN Headquarters in New York in July 2005.

Carlos Vargas
Interlaw Consultores Juridicos
San Jose, Costa Rica

Christopher G. Weeramantry
Weeramantry International Centre for Peace Education Research
Colombo, Sri Lanka

Sharon D. Welch
Provost
Meadville Lombard Theological School
Chicago, Illinois, USA

Dr. Sharon D. Welch is Provost at Meadville Lombard Theological School, a Unitarian Universalist Theological School affiliated with the University of Chicago. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the ethics of peacebuilding. Among her most recent works are After Empire: The Art and Ethos of Enduring Peace (Fortress Press, 2004) and Real Peace, Real Security: The Challenge of Global Citizenship (Fortress Press, 2008). Welch has served as chair of the U.S. committee of GAPW and is currently a member of the executive committee of GAPW.

Bo Wirmark
Swedish Peace Council
Stockholm, Sweden

Wirmark works with a network of Swedish peace groups working on the GPPAC and other issues, financed by the Swedish government. They tried to hold a Swedish Congress on Nonprovocative Defense, but it did not fly in the wake of 9-11. Instead they have been focusing on revisiting the concept of Common Security. They have been organizing think-tank activities, such as seminars and teacher-training events for young teachers. They have noted that interest in nuclear issues has been waning among young people.

Xavier Zeebroek
GRIP : Groupe de recherche et d'information sur la paix et la sécurité

Zeebroek's think tank, GRIP, is analyzing issues of international of peace and security, publishing books and reports and advising various NGOs, and the Belgian government. GRIP advisory work for advocacy networks, including the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) and is now helping draft a convention for marking and tracing small arms.   Last year the Belgian government asked them to advise the government on whether they should grant licenses to companies for arms exports.

GRIP is interested in the reduction of arms production and trade, Conflict Prevention, like a UN civilian aid corps, and improving peacekeeping operations, like the UNEPS. GRIP can assist the GAPW network with consultation and advice.