Strategic Courses: Concepts, Tools & Skills

Identity-based conflicts rooted in ethnic or religious differences pose distinctive challenges for third-party mediators and other advisers. The course will outline strategies for addressing these issues, including responding to leaders who enflame identities, approaching the touchy issue of religion—both your own and local people's, building relationships through dialogue and ritual, and making use of indigenous or traditional reconciliation measures.

Explore concepts from ranging from policy coordination to crisis negotiations in the field to high-level diplomatic encounters. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, participants master a 15-point framework that encourages improvisation and helps overcome barriers to agreement.

Explore the conditions for achieving a successful inter-agency process and outcome and refine your "lateral" leadership skills , i.e. leading teams or groups in situations where there is no established authority.

Learn about the causes and effects of trauma and how this manifests itself in human behavior. Students will learn how to recognize trauma affected behavior and will learn strategies and tools to more effectively work with these populations.

Explore the importance of public health in fragile and conflict-affected states and understand how equal access to good health care is a critical component of post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding.  Analyze short-term delivery of public health in conflict situations as well as long-term development of the public health sector.

Take on the roles of mediators and conflict parties in simulations and role-plays, as you learn what it takes to structure a successful mediation effort, as well as what a third party needs to do when deciding to get involved in a peacebuilding effort.

Learn how to strengthen the capacity of individuals, institutions, and society as a whole in post-conflict environments. Master the transfer of knowledge including adult learning principles, building rapport, developing conflict sensitivity, assessing local capacity, and supporting local ownership and sustainability.

Learn how to better grasp and respond to cultural differences, improve situational awareness in post-conflict environments, and build up abilities in empathy and emotional intelligence for different cultural settings. 

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping technologies can empower conflict management practitioners by providing timely and detailed information both to international actors and to residents in conflict zones. Focusing on case studies in Sudan and Central Africa, this workshop explores how GIS technologies can support early warning and prevention efforts as well as community-level security initiatives.

An in-depth and multi-disciplinary perspective on civilian-based movements and campaigns to defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world. This course will focus on governance, civil society, grassroots movements, and human rights.