On Monday, 18 June 2007, the Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD, Vasu Gounden, welcomed the South African Ambassador to Indonesia, H.E. Ambassador Memela, to ACCORD House. During his visit His Excellency was briefed on ACCORD’s current activities as well as the Africa Peace Centre project.
Richard Kamidza, a Senior Researcher at ACCORD, has been invited to participate in the Regional Information Seminar on the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) Trade Negotiations processes between the European Commission (EC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) configuration.
The Angola Country Programme at ACCORD will be hosting a one-day dialogue session for civil society on 2 July 2007, under the theme Conflict Analysis and Peace building in Angola. Thirty participants from the provinces of Lunda Norte, Lunda Sul, Moxico and Luanda are expected to attend the session; among them will be civil society members and conflict resolution practitioners and experts.
The Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD, Vasu Gounden, was invited by the British High Commission to South Africa, The Rt Honourable Paul Boateng, to attended a reception to mark Her Majesty The Queen’s Birthday. The reception was held on 1 June in Pretoria and coincided with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s visit to South Africa.
ACCORD celebrated Africa Day, 25 May 2007, with a short symbolic ceremony on the Bluff Headland in Durban, future site for the Africa Peace Centre (APC), a NEPAD approved project. ACCORD's current five year vision (2007-2012) is focused on "Encouraging and consolidating dialogue towards the prevention, management and transformation of conflict" with the aim of affecting a paradigm shift towards dialogue.
A two-day dialogue session with the theme ‘Conflict Analysis and Peace Building in Angola’ was successfully hosted by ACCORD’s Angola Country programme from 2-3 May 2007 in Luanda, Angola.
The Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD, Vasu Gounden, was invited by the Commonwealth Secretariat in London to be a resource at the Eighth Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers Meeting (8WAMM), which was held in Kampala, Uganda from 11–14 June 2007.
The Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD, Vasu Gounden, was recently invited by the Dutch United Nations Student Association Utrecht (DUNSA-Utrecht), to be the Keynote speaker at their conference on international conflicts, entitled ‘A Struggle for Peace’. The conference was organized by DUNSA, in collaboration with the Netherlands United Nations Association (NVVN).
Cedric de Coning, Research Fellow at ACCORD, has been invited to present the main findings of the book - Unintended Consequences of Peacekeeping - which he co-edited with Chiyuki Aoi and Ramesh Thakur, at the 9th Workshop of the Norwegian Atlantic Committee regarding civil-military cooperation on Friday 8 June, in Oslo, Norway.
On Wednesday, 23 May 2007, the Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD, Mr. Vasu Gounden, welcomed Mr. Steven Uhlfelder, the Chairman of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarships Board (FSB), to ACCORD House. Accompanying Mr. Uhlfelder was the United States Consul General in Durban, Mr. Eugene Young and Ms Lucy Hoffman, the Coordinator of Fulbright Programmes at the United States Embassy in Pretoria.
On Friday,18 May 2007, the Project Director from Freedom House Southern Africa, Vukasin Petrovic, and Helen Barnes (their Senior Programme Officer) visited ACCORD House where they met with ACCORD staff headed by the Deputy Director of ACCORD, Jerome Sachane.
