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Conflict Resolution Training
in Kenya and Greece
"The teaching case puts the participants in the shoes of somebody who has to make an
important decision, . . . that's exactly what the participants will have to do in the
field."
The U.S. Institute of Peace's Education and
Training Program conducted two International Conflict Resolution Skills Training (ICREST)
sessions recently in Kenya and Greece. The first took place in Nairobi June 3-6 for the
Greater Horn of Africa Initiative (GHAI), an inter-agency effort of the U.S. Agency for
International Development (AID) and the U.S. Department of State. These training sessions
explored the ways in which the two agencies could use the concepts and skills of conflict
resolution in their political and development work. The 40 participants were drawn from U.S.
embassies and AID missions in the region, as well as from several international
nongovernmental organizations that are active in the Horn.
The second training was conducted June 11-15 in Greece in conjunction with the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. Offered for the second consecutive year, the training included 24 participants, most of them representatives of foreign ministries in southeast Europe, including Albania, Croatia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and Turkey.
Teaching Materials
As part of the GHAI program, the Education and Training Program developed two new teaching tools: a 20-page primer of conflict resolution concepts and terms and a 25-page teaching case based on the crisis in Rwanda. "In our previous training sessions, we discovered a real need for these kinds of materials," notes Eileen Babbitt, director of the program, "so we used the opportunity of working on this project to draft the primer and collaborate with AID and the State Department on writing the teaching case."
The teaching case on Rwanda focuses on issues related to internally displaced persons and
refugees in the region. "The teaching case puts the participants in the shoes of somebody
who has to make an important decision, and is useful because that's exactly what the
participants will have to do in the field," Babbitt says. "The challenge was to make the
teaching material specific enough to be useful, but generalizable enough to be applicable
to many other circumstances."
© 1996 United States Institute of Peace