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• Provide timely access to the content as well as context underpinning the bi-communal projects in Cyprus, monitor their results and disseminate their potentials to a wider audience both in Cyprus and overseas.
• Define, promote and intensify new peace pathways as they pertain to Cyprus by determining the conditions by which these can be achieved.
• Promote cross-cultural, international interaction, potential cooperation and involvement between individuals and organized groups and improve their response times.
• Push forward the idea and principles of Peace, frame the leads and potentials for Cyprus peace and tackle the challenges facing us.
• Provide an active interface to access all information and incorporate TFP content with content available outside the project.
• Extract valuable lessons and insights for future training of Peace builders, whether in government, international organizations or the private sector.
The TFP initiative provides a body of material and knowledge relevant to the peace efforts in Cyprus on which new initiatives can be built. It makes available online, an entire spectrum of information, which gives the broader profile of the Cyprus situation and the range of peace building efforts and related culture. It has become a vital reference point for all those interested in, and working with, the Cyprus problem ranging from Greek and Turkish-Cypriot citizens, professionals, academics, educators, students, policy makers, and third parties.
A similar initiative, albeit with a narrower mandate, has been setup in Sri Lanka to disseminate information regarding the peace process in Sri Lanka. The website of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP), at www.peaceinsrilanka.org, was launched in response to the need for accurate and timely information regarding the peace process. The well designed site offers daily updates, and is the repository of documents, press releases, and other information related to the on-going peace process. However, a major failing of the site, till date, is that it does not include the URL’s of NGOs which play an active role in conflict transformation. Nevertheless, the site is presently the best online resource for information related to the interventions on the ground by donors, the government and the LTTE. One hopes that the site will mature into an information portal, with features like online polls management, user groups, and calendar and link sharing, along the lines of the TFP initiative in Cyprus.
The website of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in Sri Lanka is an example of an NGO using the Internet and ICT for advocacy and the dissemination of information related to conflict transformation and governance. The Centre for Policy Alternatives was formed in 1996 in the firm belief that the vital contribution of civil society to the public policy debate is in need of strengthening. Focusing primarily on issues of governance and conflict resolution, CPA is committed to programmes of research and advocacy through which public policy is critiqued, alternatives identified and disseminated.
CPA’s website (www.cpalanka.org) functions as an important channel of disseminating policy papers and other documents to advocate issues that range from the Freedom of Information to conflict transformation in Sri Lanka. Recording an average of 1,800 hits a month, the website is visited by policy makers, government ministers, NGO and peace activists, civil society actors and bi-lateral and multi-lateral donor agencies.
CPA also functions as the Secretariat for the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV). During the General Election of 2001, the CPA website recorded approximately 1000 visitors per day for a week. The CMEV was able to utilise ICT to bring out multiple reports of election violence daily, which were then posted on CPA’s website. Since election violence easily shapes the contours of ethno-political war, CMEV was able identify those who were inimical to conflict transformation by highlighting their brutality during the General Elections.
Known as a think-tank and a public policy advocacy organisation, CPA has the largest collection of policy papers, research papers, reports, surveys and draft laws available for free download of any NGO in Sri Lanka. However, more content needs to be added in the vernacular (Sinhala and Tamil) since documents and information in English are of little value to the hundreds of peace activists who are not conversant in the language, but have access to the Internet.
Problems of Online Conflict Transformation
Before using ICT for online conflict transformation strategies, there are five key attributes of online communication that must be taken into consideration:
• Lack of physical communication cues - We cannot utilize the huge range of non-verbal cues we use during the course of conversation to discern if our audience is agreeing, disagreeing or getting uncomfortable. In cyberspace, we must explicitly ask for this information or proceed on potentially erroneous assumptions. MSN Messenger and online bulletin boards are not yet a replacement for people-to-people contact.
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Writer Profile
Sanjana
Sanjana Hattotuwa is a Rotary World Peace Scholar presently pursuing a Masters in International Studies from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. The views expressed here are his own. He can be contacted at hatt@wow.lk.
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Comments
wonderful article Laurent Straskraba | Apr 7th, 2003
thanks sanjana for this wonderul article. it shows so many objectives and possibilities of the net and related issues. the most important fact in my opinion is that the tool is not the solution itself ... there has to be content, people who train others and many other criteria which are necessary for "good governance" and high value impact of information and communication.
kind regards,
laurent
thanks sir Shakti Ghimire | Aug 17th, 2003
thanks sir Shakti Ghimire | Aug 17th, 2003
i want to more artical than that
please send me releated artical (computer)
apexnepal@hotmail.com
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