Category: Event

Covid-19, Mental Health and Peace

Today, the Chair addressed the UN General Assembly High-level Week event on “COVID-19 and the role of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in building resilience and sustaining social cohesion and peace”. The event was hosted by the Kingdom of the Netherlands in cooperation with the Center on International Cooperation and the g7+. The Chair spoke on the invitation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The event was co-Chaired by H.E. Ms. Sigrid Kaag, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the Netherlands and H.E. Ms. Amina Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General.

The aim of the event was to present and discuss how Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) in the context of COVID-19 can help individuals and communities to retain or regain resilience, to strengthen solidarity and cohesion, to address trauma and to foster reconciliation. And how MHPSS can help counter social disintegration and help to support efforts to build and sustain peace. The Chair’s input focused on his work with the Netherlands government as part of their Task Team exploring the integration of MHPSS into the UN peacebuilding architecture.

The speech given by Professor Hamber can be downloaded entitled “What is known and done already on MHPSS in (COVID-) crisis response and in efforts to build and sustain peace?“.

New Permanent Exhibition

Today we launched a permanent rotating Conflict Textiles exhibit in the Ulster University Library on the beautiful Magee campus. This marks a new stage in our longstanding relationship between Conflict Textiles and the university where we have the online collection on CAIN.

Photographer Martin Melaugh

The new exhibit is done in partnership with the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace. The first two pieces connect to the forthcoming ‘Following the Footsteps of the Disappeared’ programme.

Photographer Martin Melaugh

Footsteps of the Disappeared

“Following the Footsteps of the Disappeared” is a two-day programme incorporating a textile display and 2 seminars to mark International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances 30 August 2020.

Photo credit: La Cueca Sola / Dancing Cueca alone, Chilean arpillera, Anonymous, 1989, Oshima Hakko Museum collection, Japan. Photographer Martin Melaugh, © Conflict Textiles

Programme of Events

Launch of “Following the Footsteps of the Disappeared”, 30 August 2020, 14:00pm for more information and/or register.

Seminar “Transnational Experiences of Enforced Disappearances”, 30 August 2020, 14:00pm for more information and/or register.

Seminar “The Search for the Disappeared: Textile and art expressions”, 30 August 2020, 16:00pm for more information and/or register.

Partners

“Following the Footsteps of the Disappeared” is a partnership between Conflict Textiles, the Ulster Museum and the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace, Ulster University, and also the Transformative Memory Network.

Ulster University INCORE

Reconciliation: A Global Perspective

The fifth seminar in the Dealing with the Past series entitled “Reconciliation and Dealing with the Past: A global perspective” was hosted online on 28 July 2020, 55 people attended.

The seminar was given by Dr Fanie du Toit, Senior Research Fellow and Former Executive Director, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, South Africa & Technical Advisor (Community Dialogue), and part of the In Transformation Initiative, Myanmar. The seminar discussed three prominent conceptual models of reconciliation which have been used internationally as a guiding metaphor for political transition from war or oppression to something “new”. It included references to the South African, Iraqi and Myanmar cases, each of which continue to pose their unique challenges to prevailing theories on reconciliation. The seminar explored the idea of reconciliation as understood as a complex, ever-evolving form of inter-dependence.

The seminar is part of the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) and INCORE, in partnership with Healing Through Remembering and the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace, online seminar series. The seminar was chaired by Professor Brandon Hamber.

Gender, Truth-telling and Reform

DCAF (Geneva Centre for Security Sector Reform) with UN Women organised a panel discussion on integrating gender into truth-telling to create a platform for institutional reform on 23 July 2020. Seminar is now online.


Panel Members

  • Ibtihel Abdellatif, Chair of the Women’s Committee, Tunisia Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD)
  • Professor Brandon Hamber, John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace, International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE), Ulster University
  • Farah Tanis, Executive Director, Black Women’s Blueprint (US), Commissioner BWB Truth Commission USA
  • Yasmin Sooka, Commissioner, UN CoHR on South Sudan and former Truth Commissioner for South Africa TRC, Sierra Leone TRC

Summer School Input

Today, 10 July 2020, the Hume O’Neill Chair, Professor Brandon Hamber, made an online input to the “Summer Institute in Northern Ireland: Lessons in Community Peacebuilding”. The Institute was moved online due to the Covid-19 context. The Institute is led by Professor Marie Breen-Smyth and is based at the University of Massachusetts (Boston) in partnership with a consortium of local residents and International Peace Education Resources (IPER). Professor Hamber’s input focused on the issue of Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland.

Transformative Gender and the SHA

The fourth seminar in the Dealing with the Past series entitled “Dealing with the Past and the SHA: Is a transformative gender approach possible?” was hosted online on 24 June 2020, with some 60 people joining online.

In the seminar Claire Hackett, Healing Through Remembering & Falls Community Council and Dr Catherine O’Rourke, reflected on the exclusion of women and gender from dominant approaches to dealing with the past in the Stormont House Agreement (SHA). The seminar discussed a specific intervention to remedy these absences and silences, namely the development of Gender Principles for Dealing with the Legacy of the Past by a network of women drawn from academia, the human rights and victims sectors. The seminar further reflected on the opportunity to address gender more broadly in any process to deal with the past, in particular the inclusion of LGBTQ experiences and perspectives. The seminar reflected on some of the reasons why these perspectives have been so absent from the primary debate, and considered possible strategies and approaches for devising a more gender-inclusive process.

The seminar is part of the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) and INCORE, in partnership with Healing Through Remembering and the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace, online seminar series. The seminar was chaired by Professor Brandon Hamber. The seminar can now be watched online.