MHCR Admin
Peer Learning: Indigenous Youth Championing ...

On November 9, 2023, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) hosted an “Indigenous Peace Building and Youth, Peace, Security Strategy Workshop” which gathered Indigenous youth leaders from around the world in conjunction with the White House Tribal Youth Forum. This event mindfully organized participants into tables with a mixture of Indigenous youth leaders, government representatives, and peacebuilding working professionals to open opportunities for dialogue on the meanings of peace and traditional resources for peacemaking within a variety of cultural contexts. Through conversation, participants were able to share stories about their communities including traditional spaces for dialogue, mediation, and decision-making. When discussing the meaning of peace, some common themes across the cultures represented included peace as being connected with community, related to nature, dignity, and compromise. Participants often discussed the importance of shared safe spaces and of collective decision-making, including centering traditional Indigenous practices.

Peer Learning: Indigenous Youth Championing Peace
MHCR Admin
Empowering Young Athletes, Empowering my ...

I recently conducted a facilitation on the ideas of resilience, being a good teammate and friend, and finding validation within oneself with some of the adolescents that play at the volleyball club I coach for. I was given this avenue through the Shinnyo-en Fellowship I received a year ago. During my time as a fellow, I also have to create an impact project that be related or unrelated to the work I do at the organization of my choosing. I had a couple ideas bouncing around for this project, and ultimately decided on facilitating a dialogue in the volleyball club I coach for.

Empowering Young Athletes, Empowering my Younger Self
MHCR Admin
What If We Supported Insider Mediators…

… in a responsive way instead of a directive one? If we approached local mediators as bearing duties and not just watchful spectators and advisers holding rights? If we supported reconciliation structures by putting insider mediators at their heart?

What If We Supported Insider Mediators…
MHCR Admin
Empowering Research and Collaboration: MHCR ...

In the Summer of 2022, all MHCR undergraduates were awarded research funds through the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) within George Mason's Office of Scholarship, Creativity, and Research (OSCAR). Expanding from this, these awardees–Hannah Adamson, Merisa Mattix, and Greta Roberson–applied and were accepted to present at the 2023 National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR) in Eau-Claire, Wisconsin. This conference included 3,600 undergraduate students and faculty from across the country. The MHCR students reflect on their experiences presenting and participating in the conference.

Empowering Research and Collaboration: MHCR Students’ Experiences at the 2023 National Conference for Undergraduate Research
MHCR Admin
MHCR Event Recap: Negotiating with the Terrorist

On the morning of May 2, 2023, the Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation (MHCR) hosted a webinar titled, Negotiating with the Terrorist: Lessons Learned from Mediation Attempts with al-Shabaab. MHCR Director Antti Pentikäinen moderated the event, and the panelists were individuals he had previously worked alongside during high-stakes negotiations in Somalia.

MHCR Event Recap: Negotiating with the Terrorist

S-CAR's dean briefs UN Security Council on reconciliation

S-CAR's dean briefs UN Security Council on reconciliation

What does peace look like? Is it the cessation of violence? The signing of an accord? The shaking of hands while dignitaries and media watch on as witnesses to history?

Or does it look like people in once-divided communities working together to heal their traumas, pursue justice for victims of violence, and rebuild relationships by co-writing a shared vision of the future?

Speaking to representatives of the United Nations Security Council in New York on November 19, Alpaslan Özerdem, dean of the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, said that it is “one of the tragic ironies of wars” that in order for peace to be achieved and sustained, “people on all sides must learn to live together [again].”

When a conflict comes to its end, Özerdem said that “victims, perpetrators, and others in war-affected communities [must] begin the formidable task of reconciling with one another, politically and interpersonally.”

The importance of reconciliation within peace processes was the subject of Tuesday’s Open Debate organized by the United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations, which is serving as the president of the Security Council throughout November.

Özerdem was invited by Ambassador Karen Pierce, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations, to brief the Security Council as part of the debate.

Training insider reconcilers to create sustainable peace

Training insider reconcilers to create sustainable peace

When Antti Pentikainen was early in his career as a peacemaking practitioner, his work assisting Nobel Peace Laureate and former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari took him to conflict zones and immersed him in mediation processes.

However, as he did this work, he began to notice that something wasn’t quite right.

“Although Ahtisaari was cautious of time, I saw that these processes in general drag on,” he told S-CAR News.

He noticed that these processes seemed unable to account for “the urgency of the pain people have,” and he realized that although people affected by conflict seem to know best what the problems are and how to fix them, they rarely have access to the mediation process.

S-CAR Establishes Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation

S-CAR Establishes Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation

George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) has received a generous gift from James Hoch and his family to establish the Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation. 

The center will bring scholars and practitioners together to build knowledge of reconciliation practices and apply them where needed in the U.S. and in post-war contexts abroad. The gift will fund the first years of the center’s operating expenses, the hiring of an executive director, and reconciliation research that incorporates “insider reconcilers”—people in conflict areas who understand the local context and social structures to better facilitate reconciliation.