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The Pathways to Reconciliation Summit follows on from a series of previous events we have organized with a reconciliation focus: Melbourne, London, New Delhi, Sarajevo and Amman. Here reconciliation focuses on the promotion of communication and dialogue across cultural, racial, religious and political difference. The Summit has been organized as a response to the paradox that political violence and insecurity have been intensifying across the world despite the expansion of security regimes and other short-term solutions. The objective is to explore alternative pathways to peace, pathways which emphasize informal reconciliation processes operating beneath the radar of conventional regimes. Previous events in this series have generated ongoing collaborative projects in a number of areas, including health care, the arts and sport.
The summit will be hosted by HRH Prince Hassan of Jordan. It is being organized by a group led by Melbourne’s RMIT and Monash Universities. It will bring together 200–300 delegates from around the world, including individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to reconciliation, representatives from NGOs, activist organizations and bodies such as the United Nations, as well as academics and the media. The summit’s patrons include The Reverend Desmond Tutu, The Honourable Sir William Deane, Aung San Suu Kyi (not in current communication), President Jose Ramos-Horta, Professor Bernard Lown, Professor Amartya Sen, and Dr Lowitja O’Donaghue.
The summit in December is of particular importance because it will launch the Global Reconciliation Desmond Tutu Fellowship Scheme and the Global Reconciliation Living Archive. The archive will occupy both physical and virtual locations and will become a place for registering and learning about exemplary grass-roots reconciliation projects.
In addition to the Global Reconciliation Forum, the other practical outcomes which the summit aims to produce include the publication of a major book based on the conference proceedings and the creation, or extension of support for, selected exemplary reconciliation projects in a number of areas or ‘themes’ which will extend the work already undertaken in our recent work Pathways to reconciliation: theory and practice (Ashgate, 2008). The summit (and subsequently the permanent Global Reconciliation Forum) will initially concentrate on a number of life-world themes (everyday things that people respond to and enact in their own lives). These are points of activity where people can come together and work across boundaries of tension:
These themes will be addressed by separate working groups throughout the Summit but will also reconvene after the event. Each theme has a convener and working group engaged with its development. Although there is not room for their substantial inclusion in this year’s summit, two additional themes (Place and Environment; and Justice and Ethics) will also be developed over the long term as part of the ongoing Forum.