Conor Houston to address the One Young World in Bogota
Conor Houston, Consultant with the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building will address the One Young World global youth summit taking place from 3 to 7 October in Bogota, Colombia.
The One Young World 2017 will bring together over 2000 young leaders from 190 countries around the world as well as international figures including Kofi Annan, Sir Bob Geldof and President Santos of Colombia.
Conor will speak as part of the ‘Peace & Reconciliation’ session and also deliver a workshop with Belfast entrepreneur Peter Edgar on ‘How to drive change: a lesson from Northern Ireland’.
The two young leaders will be appointed ‘One Young World Ambassadors’ at the event and are being supported by the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building and the British Council.
Peter Edgar said: “We are excited about the opportunity to tell the story of growing up in post-conflict Northern Ireland and will explore our work in setting up the Young Influencer network and other groups in connecting young people who are committed to Northern Ireland realising its potential through social and economic innovation.”
Conor will also launch his ‘Connected Citizens’ initiative at One Young World which seeks to connect world’s most passionate, dynamic and innovative citizens to inspire them to build a more peaceful, compassionate and resilient world.
Speaking ahead of the summit Conor said “our message is one of hope – to share the experience of Northern Ireland which is emerging from conflict towards peace. The challenge now is to ensure that everyone has the ability to benefit from the opportunities of peace.” He continued: “my generation has the responsibility to be the bridge-builders between peace and prosperity. I am proud to represent Northern Ireland on the global stage, proving we are able to lead and inspire the world.”
CDPB are launching the next phase of their EU Debate NI programme ‘Navigating Brexit: A Roundtable Series’.
Over the next 6 months, EU Debate NI will host 5 Roundtable events which will provide a space for informed discussion focused on developing flexible and imaginative solutions for Northern Ireland post-Brexit.
These Roundtable events will involve key stakeholders from across the private, public and community sectors to encourage a solutions-orientated approach, informed by leading academic expertise.
These thematic events will focus on how we navigate the Brexit process, solutions for the post-Brexit UK-EU relationship and policy priorities in the context of devolution.
The Roundtable events will include:
• Trade: retaining and enhancing the competitiveness of NI businesses
• Ensuring co-operation and strategic partnerships on the environment and agri-food sectors
• Ensuring co-operation and strategic partnerships on the environment and energy sectors”
• Maintaining the Common Travel Area, citizenship & rights
• Building our knowledge economy: the Higher Education solution
Key Observers, including representatives on the NI Civil Service, UK Government and other relevant decision-makers will be invited to all events.
The launch ‘Navigating Brexit: A Roundtable Series’ will take place at the Ulster Bank Entrepreneurial Spark in Belfast, 8-9.30am on Thursday 7th September 2017.
This event will outline the Roundtable programme and include a briefing from Professor David Phinnemore on the current status of the Brexit negotiations.
‘Navigating Brexit: A Roundtable Series’ is supported by Diamond Recruitment.
To attend the launch on 7 September please register via: https://getinvited.to/cdpb/brexit/
EU Debate NI: Professor David Phinnemore, QUB on EU/UK talks
Almost a year after the UK’s vote to leave the EU, Brexit negotiations began in Brussels on 19 June. Under the terms of Article 50, an initial agreement has to be reached by the end of March 2019. There is no deadline for a longer-term trade and partnership deal. Professor David Phinnemore explains what are the key issues and deadlines in the EU/UK talks and what is at stake for Northern Ireland.
Scissor Sisters Ana Matronic set for TEDxStormont Women event later this year
Ana Matronic from the world-famous band Scissor Sisters is set to address TEDxStormont Women taking place at Parliament Buildings, Stormont on 2 November.
The Scissor Sisters frontwoman and robot obsessive, Ana Matronic has written about her love of robotics in her book ‘Robot Takeover’ which looks at 100 of the most iconic robots from popular culture. The book also explores robots in music, art and fashion.
The third in the series of TEDxStormont Women events is organized and curated by CDPB’s CEO Eva Grosman. The theme this year is ‘Bridges’ and will bring some of the high profile speakers from varied backgrounds such as journalism, music, business and the arts to Belfast for the nearly sold out event. 12 speakers in total are lined up to take part with over 250 guests expected to attend on the evening.
Standing on the iconic red dot, speakers will have 12 minutes or less to share their ideas about the ways in which we build bridges, traverse them, and sometimes even burn them, for better or worse.
Other speakers announced so far include:
The event will be compered by former broadcaster Sarah Travers.
The event, which is locally and independently organised, brings the TEDx brand back to the iconic Stormont. Started as a four-day conference in California in 1984, TED and the TEDx programme has grown to support world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives.
Tickets can be purchased at http://www.tedxstormont.com/ and further updates can be found on Twitter @TEDxStormont.
Crans Montana Forum: Changes, Populist Upheavals and the World of Tomorrow
On the occasion of the Crans Montana Forum’s 28th Annual Session, a Special Programme of the New Leaders for Tomorrow took place in Barcelona (Spain) on July 6th, 2017.
CDPB Chief Executive Eva Grosman spoke at the special session on “Changes, Populist Upheavals and the World of Tomorrow”. Among the topics addressed were the European Union, the Brexit and the Turkish Situation as well as the first few months of the American Presidency.
The Crans Montana Forum is a Swiss Non-Governmental International Organization established in 1986. Its oldest Forums are held each year in Crans-Montana (CH-VS) and Geneva (CH-GE). The Forum works with major international organisations, governments, businesses and NGOs.
The Crans Montana Forum works to build a “more humane and impartial world” and encourages international cooperation and growth. It also works to promote best practices and to ensure a permanent dialogue between high-level stakeholders.
The first annual Crans Montana Forum, in 1990, was dedicated to political and economic reconstruction in a Europe then open in the aftermath of the Cold War. The various Forums organised worldwide (Brussels, Geneva, Rabat, Dakhla, Vienna, Crans-Montana, Bucharest, Baku, Zagreb, Roma, Sarajevo, Tirana, Athens, Malta, Bahrain) represent exceptional opportunities for businesses and government officials to develop and strengthen relationships with partners across the globe.
More information at: http://www.cmf.ch
Lord Alderdice: Change and Challenge
Chairman’s Remarks – CDPB Annual Report 2017
Change and Challenge
The last year has again seen a remarkable level of activity for the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building, from the excitement of our Van Morrison fund-raiser, to our rapidly expanding international activities and our engagement with ground-breaking digital developments. However across the world, it has been a disturbingly challenging time for those of us committed to democracy and peace building.
Our EU Debate NI initiative was an enormous success, but while Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU the people of the United Kingdom as a whole voted to leave. So now we face a new challenge – how to get the best outcome we can for the people of Northern Ireland – and CDPB is making its contribution to the thinking necessary in London, Dublin, Belfast and Brussels.
On its own Brexit would have been a major challenge, but the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the second in less than a year, were another watershed. For the first time since partition in a province-wide election the unionist parties saw their majority melting away, and instead of the election enabling a return to a functioning Assembly and Executive, it resulted in more uncertainty. Unless agreement can be reached by the Northern Ireland parties before the end of June, the snap Westminster General Election may well be followed by yet another Assembly Election in the autumn, and neither of these contests is likely to improve relationships at the top political level nor bring a clear resolution of the problems.
Our on-going community programmes like Music Unite continue to do excellent work, but we are faced with the same financial challenges as others in the public and community sectors largely because the absence of a functioning Executive makes significant resource decisions impossible. We have been cooperating with others, and especially with British Council, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in April 2018, and if our plans come to fruition we hope that we will be celebrating in the context of more hurdles overcome in the Peace Process and new lessons learnt.
Whatever the challenges at home, they pale in significance against the global canvas. While President Santos received the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership of the Colombian Peace Process, and we continue to work with our colleagues there on the implementation of last year’s agreement between the Government and FARC, there is no hiding the difficulties faced from the beginning of the implementation of the accord. That said, it is one of the few significant peace processes anywhere in the world that is still making progress. Democracy, peace building, and even truth in the public space have faced serious challenges across the world, not just in the descent into chaos in the wider Middle East, but in the unravelling of the European Project, the loss of by the United States of America of any sense of moral leadership, and the host of other crises and conflicts that have arisen on land and sea and in cyber space. Nowhere seems immune or entirely safe.
The Board of CDPB is determined to ensure that we do all we can to contribute to overcoming the problems faced by democracy and peace building at home and abroad, and in addition to internal restructuring we are engaging more closely with our partners, especially the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at based at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford. We will only be successful if we strengthen our network of relationships.
I would like to express my personal appreciation to my Board colleagues, not least Liam Maskey who was with us from the start, but has stepped down from the Board for personal reasons. I also want to note the wonderful work of Conor Houston who continues with us as Programme Director and Consultant but as his reputation has grown he is unsurprisingly in demand from many other sources, not least with his appointment as a Governor of the Irish Times Trust – congratulations Conor.
Most of all of course, I am joined by my Board colleagues in expressing our deepest appreciation and gratitude to our CEO, Eva Grosman. She carries a prodigious work load with irrepressible charm, extraordinary energy, and a serious and profound commitment to all the causes which the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building was founded to promote. All of you who know anything of CDPB, know how fortunate we are to have Eva, and as you read in this report about the work of CDPB over the past year, you will see the positive signs of Eva’s engagement in every single activity and project.
In this difficult and uncertain time you will be encouraged by what it is possible to achieve, and I hope that we can depend on you to work with us in making the next twelve months a better one for democracy and peace building.
John, Lord Alderdice
You can download CDPB Annual Report 2017 HERE.