Come join us on September 13—15!

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This fourth and final episode features Ulfat Haider. As a Palestinian in Israel, Haider was born into conflict. Despite this, her family raised her to be accepting of and open to everyone, no matter their nationality or beliefs. It was on a trip to Antarctica, after a weeks long journey, that Haider realized the power of going outdoors and facing challenging conditions. Cold and tired, finally at the top of a mountain they named the Mountain of Israeli-Palestinian Friendship, a team of Arabs and Jews found a shared experience. After this trip, Haider decided to lead expeditions with Arab and Jewish youth and women. They hike, camp, climb, and cook together on adventures in the Alps and Himalayas. She is promoting a peaceful coexistence by creating safe spaces for conversations. In addition to these expeditions, she’s program manager of Beit Ha’Gefen, an Arab and Jewish cultural center, and a member of the Access Water team. At the Forum, Haider will participate in a panel discussion concerning the ways experiences in nature can be used for peacemaking and healing. We are very excited to welcome her to the Forum.

Learn more about the Mountain of Israeli and Palestinian Friendship, Beit Ha’Gefen, and Access Water.

The Ideas to Action Podcast is available on iTunes and SoundCloud. Listen to the fourth episode:

Music in this podcast is by:

Lee Rosevere – CC BY-NC 4.0

Ingenuity

Josh Woodward – CC BY 4.0

I’m Letting Go (Instrumental)
Shadows in the Moonlight (Instrumental)

Jahzzar – CC BY-SA 4.0

The Shine

The post Idea | Action, Podcast: Episode 4 appeared first on Global Forum.

This episode features Yemi Melka. Though not a speaker at this year’s Forum, Yemi is a former Peace Scholar and an Augsburg Alum, and has since been heavily involved with peacemaking projects in her community and beyond. After Yemi graduated from Augsburg College with dual degrees in Chemistry and International Relations, she didn’t know where life would lead her. But she knew that somehow she wanted to use her voice for others. During a gap year after graduation, Yemi became passionate about energy poverty. Millions of people around the world don’t have access to energy, which means they live without light or heat. She wanted to use her skills and education to help. Yemi became a grad student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs where she led a project called SolEnergy. She and a team of students went to her home country of Ethiopia to talk with rural farmers, demonstrate solar irrigation pumps, and better understand problems so they can offer effective solutions.

The Ideas to Action Podcast is available on iTunes and SoundCloud. Listen to the third episode:

Music in this podcast is by:

Lee Rosevere – CC BY-NC 4.0 and CC BY 4.0
Ingenuity
Sad Marimba Planet
Southside
Josh Woodward – CC BY 4.0
Bloom (Instrumental Version)

The post Idea | Action, Podcast: Episode 3 appeared first on Global Forum.

This episode features Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin. Growing up in Guatemala, Haslett-Marroquin lived with his family on a small farm. After studying agriculture and business in Guatemala and the United States, he settled in Minnesota, and founded Peace Coffee, a Minnesota-based fair trade company. He also served as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program’s Bureau for Latin America and as an advisor to the World Council of Indigenous Peoples and was a founding member of the Fair Trade Federation. Through all of this, Haslett-Marroquin developed an idea to completely transform farming as we know it. This farm would produce healthy and organic food, regenerate the soil, and help farmers earn a good living. Seeking to turn his plans into reality, Reginaldo needed a team and found support with Main Street Project. Working together on this idea they found a solution centered around one powerful animal – the chicken. This method, known as the Poultry Centered Regenerative Agriculture System, has transformed the fields of food and agriculture. At the Forum, Haslett-Marroquin will lend his view to discussions on the role of worked owned cooperatives in societies around the world. We are very excited to welcome him to the Forum. Listen to this episode to hear more about Reginaldo’s theory for change.

Learn more about Main Street Project.

The Ideas to Action Podcast is available on iTunes and SoundCloud. Listen to the second episode:

Music in this podcast is by:

Lee Rosevere – CC BY-NC 4.0
Ingenuity
Josh Woodward – CC BY 3.0 and CC BY 4.0
Border Blaster
Symmetry and the Pocket of Angels – Instrumental
Perfect

The post Idea | Action, Podcast: Episode 2 appeared first on Global Forum.

The first episode features Isabel Pérez Dobarro, project leader of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Youth Initiative’s project Arts Twenty Thirty, and a concert pianist. Pérez Dobarro was in law school when she discovered the Sustainable Development Goals- a global initiative set forth by the United Nations for solving the world’s biggest problems. Arts Twenty Thirty uses the arts as a tool to raise awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals, and engages a network of artists committed to sustainable development. Through the initiative, she has organized artistic events in Vatican City, New York, and Madrid, and elsewhere, and has used art to connect with audiences to inspire global change. Pérez Dobarro represented SDSN-Youth at the Winter Youth Assembly, and at the High-Level Debate on the Sustainable Development Goals and at the High-Level Signing Ceremony of the Paris Agreement at the United Nations Headquarters, among other events. She is also the Western European Representative of the Fair Air Coalition organization. At the forum, Pérez Dobarro will participate in several sessions concerning the roles of artists and youth in creating peace, fostering healing, and engaging in dialogue. We are very excited to hear from her, and hope it will inspire others to get involved.

Learn more about Arts Twenty Thirty.

Explore the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Ideas to Action Podcast is available on iTunes and SoundCloud. Listen to the first episode:

Music in this podcast is by:

Isabel Perez Dobarro

Lee Rosevere – CC BY-NC 4.0 – Ingenuity

Josh Woodward – CC BY 4.0 – Spirit World

The post Idea | Action, Podcast: Episode 1 appeared first on Global Forum.

This year, in addition to putting together the program for this September’s Nobel Peace Prize Forum, we have had the opportunity to help facilitate a set of dialogue sessions on the challenge of nuclear security in the 21^st Century.  On May 31^st at the United Nations in New York and June 7 & 8^th at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, experts from around the world gathered for two high-level dialogues that responded to the recent Nuclear Security Summits and the current UN negotiations on banning nuclear weapons.  Working with the Foreign Policy Association and Norwegian Nobel Institute, and funded by a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, these discussions took on the crucially important topic of nuclear security in a time of dramatic political change and instability in the international arena.  Participants explored the path forward toward greater security of nuclear materials and next steps on arms control talks, including the current nuclear weapons ban negotiations taking place at the United Nations.

Speakers at the meeting at the United Nations in New York included:

• Senator Richard Lugar (click here for a link to video of his remarks)
• Ambassador Laura Holgate, Harvard’s Belfer Center
• Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
• David A. Hamburg, President Emeritus of the Carnegie Corporation of New York
• Maleeha Lodhi, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations
• Hahn Choong-hee, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations
• Vladimir K. Safronkov, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations
• Jan Kickert, Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations (click here for a link to video of his remarks)
• Christopher A. Ford, Special Assistant to the President, Senior Director for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Counterproliferation on the National Security Council
• Toby Dalton, Co-Director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Policy Program
• Kier Lieber, Georgetown University
• Daryl Press, Dartmouth College
• Mark S. Bell, University of Minnesota

Speakers at the Nobel Institute in Oslo included:

• Olav Njølstad, Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute
• Yukiya Amano, International Atomic Energy Agency, Director General
• Erlan Idrissov, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan
• Lassina Zerbo, Executive Secretary, Preparatory Commission of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
• Chris Hobbs, Associate Professor of War Studies at King’s College London
• Kenneth N. Luongo, President and founder of the Partnership for Global Security
• Jacek Kugler, Professor, Claremont Graduate College
• Laura Holgate, Fellow at the Harvard Belfer Center, Former US Ambassador to IAEA
• Tariq Rauf, former Coordinator, Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle at the IAEA
• Elena K. Sokova, Deputy Director, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
• Målfrid Hegghammer, Associate Professor, University of Oslo
• Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, Senior Fellow and Head of the Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), New Delhi.
• Anatoly Diyakov, Professor of Physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and founding Director of the Center for Arms Control Studies
• Nils Bøhmer, Managing director of the Bellona Foundation

The Nobel Peace Prize Research Institute produced two nice synopses of the talks, which can be accessed here.

Given the robust debate and progress made with these two sessions on nuclear security, we will be building on this year’s talks, and picking up on several of the key issues identified at these sessions when we reconvene in New York and Oslo in 2018.  Given the need for new perspectives on these global challenges, and in looking toward the development of new leadership in the nuclear field, we will be inviting a set of young practitioners and scholars from government, non-profit, and academic institutions from around the world to pick up the torch of these dialogues.

For the third high-level dialogue, to take place in New York the week of May 27^th, 2018, we will explore the dynamics of great power politics and nuclear policy, particularly U.S.-Russia-China relations, in shaping a new regime around nuclear security and disarmament for the 21^st Century. This first round of dialogues focused primarily on the implementation and strengthening of the nuclear security regime, in the wake of the Nuclear Security Summits and Pres. Obama’s Prague agenda.  These security initiatives are crucial to the ongoing work of minimizing risks of nuclear materials falling into the hands of extremist non-state actors, and safeguarding the whole range of nuclear materials, under both civilian and military control.

But these efforts on many fronts, whether it is in relation to the militaries’ nuclear stockpiles, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), or the Iran or North Korea nuclear programs, all hinge on greater cooperation between the great powers.  The high-level dialogues in Oslo in June 2018 will examine the Humanitarian Pledge and efforts toward disarmament.  We will report out the cumulative results of these dialogues with a panel discussion at the 30^th Annual Nobel Peace Prize Forum, to be held in Minneapolis on September 21-22, 2018.

The work of peacemaking and regime-building takes place slowly, day by day, mostly under the radar, and beyond the noise of the daily news and headlines.  It is in this difficult, painstaking work, however, that our greatest hopes lie, and we will continue to engage in this work in the months and years to come.

The post High-level Dialogue Sessions on Nuclear Security appeared first on Global Forum.

We are excited to announce that tickets to the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Forum will go on sale SOON. A notice will be sent to you in the next few weeks providing you with registration information and access! Our website is being updated with confirmed speakers and programming and will continue to do so in the months ahead. We advise you to go there often to view our updates within this year’s theme “Dialogue in Divided Societies.”

Laureate and Speaker Sneak Peak
Want to know more about our Laureates and Speakers? Each month, between now and the Forum, we will highlight speakers from our 2017 roster.

Please welcome Mrs. Ouided Bouchamaoui: 

Mrs. Ouided Bouchamaoui is the President of UTICA, the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, one of the four organizations of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet. In 2013 Mrs. Ouided Bouchamaoui was elected “Best Business Woman of the Arab World” under the auspices of the G8 Deauville Partnerships, and “Business for Peace Award” Honoree in 2014.
In January 2015, Tunisian President, Mr. Beji Caid Essebsi awarded her Grand Officer of the Order of the Republic –First Class-, and His Majesty the King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, decorated Mrs. Bouchamaoui with the Royal Order of the Polar Star in November 2015. Mrs. Ouided Bouchamaoui will join us and the three other members of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for the Opening Plenary Session on Friday September 15 at 9:00 am.

 and Professor Elijah Anderson:

Elijah Anderson is the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University. His publications include Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (1999) and Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (1990) and most recently his ethnographic work, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life (2012). Professor Anderson is the 2013 recipient of the prestigious Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award of the American Sociological Association and the 2017 recipient of the Merit Award of the Eastern Sociological Society. Drawing from his extensive resarch on race and civility, Professor Anderson will share his knowledge, perspectives and ideas in the Plenary Session titled “Peace by Design” on Friday, September 15.

Additional Confirmed Speakers 

Kåre Aas, Norway’s Ambassador to the United States
Liv Arnesen, Lecturer, Educator and Explorer
Ann Bancroft, American Author, Teacher, and Adventurer
Bill Doherty, Professor and Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at University of Minnesota
Paul Engler, Center for the Working Poor, co-author of “This is an Uprising”
Representative Gabrielle Giffords and Captain Mark Kelly
Fayçal Gouia, Tunisia’s Ambassador to the United States
Ulfat Haider, Educator and Adventurer, Intercultural Relations
Ana Patel, Executive Director, Outward Bound Peacebuilding
Alfredo Zamudio, Director of the Nansen Center for Peace and Dialogue

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Norway House Presents:
OVER THE HORIZON, EXPLORING THE EDGES OF A CHANGING PLANET
David Thoreson has sailed some 65,000 nautical miles around the globe. This exhibit shares his story and discoveries. The event is free and open to the public.
Norway House
Opening Day: Friday, March 31 • 5:00 pm (w/presentation at 6:00pm)

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The post 2017 March News appeared first on Global Forum.