ppplogoThe Peace Academy is happy to announce our partnership as part of a three-year project (2023-2026) entitled Developing and Testing New Approaches to Peace Professionalism. The project will

  1. Establish a network or a community of practice to improve our understanding of peace work and related skills, competencies, and values;
  2. Develop and test a system of assessment that can be scaled at the local, national, and international levels to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of peace professionals; and
  3. Create a platform to increase knowledge co-production, translation, and sharing about peace professionalism.

Overall, the project seeks to improve the planning, implementation, and evaluation of peace programs, and to complement curricula in peace and conflict studies.

The Contribution of Pracademics within the International Peace Architecture

This workshop aims to foster new scholarship and debates between peace-oriented pracademics (practitioner academics), scholars, civil society actors and practitioners working in and focusing on interdisciplinary fields in cases relevant to an improved understanding of the current challenges in the International Peace Architecture (IPA). Pracademics are little understood in terms of their methodological and experiental capacities, yet they bridge practice and theory. They have been responsible for significant steps forward in the historical development of an IPA.

As societies continue to fracture along political, ethnic, and ideological lines, becoming aware of and being equipped to deal with various types of trauma is increasingly relevant for all of us in our families, everyday relationships, workplaces, and communities. Trauma-sensitive peacebuilding requires that we recognize and acknowledge how individual, communal, and historical harms are root causes of communal divisions. By cultivating our sensitivity to harm and incorporating trauma healing approaches in our relationships and work, we are better equipped as peacebuilders in our interpersonal and intergroup relationships.

Essays

Videos

Ubleha for idiots

  • Implementation

    A word that came into fashion in B&H with the war.  In English, to implement means to execute, to perform or to put into, however, the use of local language counterparts is not recommended lest the mystical aura of a project (See) gets lost. The English word implement originates from the Latin verb implere which primarily means TO FULFILL, TO FILL OUT, and even TO IMPREGNATE A WOMAN. Therefore, implementation is about sex or, colloquially, about screwing someone but most of the time it is only virtual, where either there is no intercourse but there are partners in intercourse or there is only a so-called active partner in intercourse while the passive one (technical term “the one on the bottom”; See: beneficiary) does not at all exist or s/he does exist but does not notice that s/he participates in the implementation. Implementation is normally the biggest challenge for ubleha (See) but the best protection from that danger is a report (See) or, even better, a status report (See).

from Ubleha for Idiots – An Absolutely non useful Guide for Civil Society Building and Project management for Locals and Internationals in BiH and Beyond by Nebojša Šavija-Valha and Ranko Milanovic-Blank, ALBUM No. 20, 2004, Sarajevo, translated by Marina Vasilj.