A delegation from the African Hebrew Israelite Community, also known as the African Village of Peace, the largest organized group of Africans living in Israel, led by their anointed Spiritual Leader, His Excellency Ben Ammi Ben Israel, visited ACCORD House on 07 April 2011.

ACCORD’s successful partnership with the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) continues to support the United Nations to define and strengthen its work on the Protection of Civilians (PoC). In the partnership’s latest initiative, ACCORD and NUPI co-hosted a UN feedback session on current PoC training modules in Kampala, Uganda from 28-29 March 2011.

A sharp increase in numbers of repatriated refugees entering Western Burundi from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has led ACCORD to open a new field office in Bubanza province, as part of its Legal Aid Clinic Project (LACP). Funded primarily by The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the LACP accommodates the growing need for land mediation work, following the UNHCR’s decision to repatriate 15,000 refugees from the DRC.

Dorcas Ettang, ACCORD Peacebuilding Unit Analyst and Security Sector Reform (SSR) specialist, represented the organisation at the 3rd Annual General Meeting of the Association for Security Sector Reform Training and Education (ASSET) in Antigua, Guatemala from 7-9 March, 2011. The meeting served to understand and analyse the regional dimensions of SSR with the main purpose of informing the other participants of developments in the various regions with regard to SSR, and the evolving strategic and policy frameworks.

Professor Jannie Malan, senior researcher at ACCORD and co-editor of the African Journal on Conflict Resolution, has contributed an article to The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace, a four-volume scholarly reference designated the CRS Book of the Year 2010 by the Council of the Conflict Research Society (CRS).

A 'Peace Agreement and Durable Peace in Africa' workshop will be jointly hosted by the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) and Uppsala University in April 2010. ACCORD's Knowledge Production Department (KPD) will be hosting 10 authors from around Africa, who will contribute to an edited volume on peace agreements in Africa. The aim of the workshop is to discuss why some peace agreements fail while others succeed, and assess the contribution of these agreements to durable peace.

“Peacebuilding challenges are not technical, they are inherently contradictory”, writes ACCORD’s Advisor for Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding, Cedric de Coning, in a recently published article in the quarterly journal, African Security Review.

ACCORD’s Knowledge Production Department (KPD) recently hosted an internal staff seminar with Dr William Tsuma, the Programme Manager of Action Learning from the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) in The Hague. Dr Tsuma gave a talk on preventive action, focusing on bridging the gap between early warning and response.

ACCORD’s Deputy Director, Jerome Sachane cemented the organisation’s relationship with the Government of Sierra Leone by visiting with government officials and influential members of the peacebuilding environment in Freetown from 21-25 February. The visit comes a year after ACCORD signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of Sierra Leone in April 2010, following the country’s acceptance of ACCORD’s 2010 Africa Peace Award.

ACCORD recently hosted a two-day workshop to enhance the writing skills of staff and encourage their contribution to academic and popular debates on African peace and conflict issues.