Workshop Targets Domestic Violence in Uganda

Domestic violence is a growing issue in Uganda, particularly in rural areas, where there tends to be greater poverty and less access to quality education.

At a three-day conference convened by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Uganda, policy makers, community leaders, and concerned citizens came together to find ways to reduce domestic violence in the African nation. The Future Search Workshop on Violence Against Children and Women utilized a community-oriented futuring method intended to prompt fast action on pressing issues.

Developed by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff, a Future Search workshop is a highly interactive planning meeting that facilitates dialogue among people who often differ in opinions and backgrounds. It gathers a wide cross-section of people over a three-day period—including people who can make change happen as well as those who express the need for change—and enables them to cooperatively plan for the future.

Future Search workshops are divided into three parts. The first part focuses on reexamining the past and creating timelines that reflect the history of the issue in question (in this case, domestic abuse). Moving on to the present, the next step is to identify and analyze key trends, see where they may be heading, and then brainstorm what can and should be done in order to move them in the right direction. The last step is to determine plans of action in order to arrive at the most desired future.

It is here, in the third part of the workshop, that participants begin building scenarios and describing their ideal future. Proposed action plans presented on the third day in Uganda included training police officers in child and family protection services.

Previously, UNICEF-Uganda has used the Future Search method to find ways to improve life in Uganda’s most poverty-stricken region, Karamoja. UNICEF has conducted future searches in many different countries around the world, including Iran, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Indonesia.

Sources: UNICEF, www.unicef.org. Future Search Network, www.futuresearch.net.

The New "Peace Building"

If the Washington, D.C., skyline seems a little more peaceful these days, there is a reason.

In March 2011, the United States Institute of Peace began moving into a new, $186-million headquarters located on the National Mall. The five-story building faces the Lincoln Memorial and is located near both the Korean War and Vietnam War memorials. Constructed on top of an old parking lot, it incorporates sustainable building methods and is conceptual in design: The translucent white glass rooftop is intended to evoke the undulating white wing of a dove of peace.

Visiting members of the public will be able to view office work taking place through floor-to-ceiling glass windows that open onto the Great Hall inside.

“The design of the new building embodies the open, transparent, and inclusionary nature of peacebuilding,” says USIP President Richard H. Solomon.

Boasting a state-of-the-art workspace, the building will also be home to the Global Peacebuilding Center, an interactive public education center geared especially toward students and young people. A rotating series of exhibitions will raise awareness of international issues and introduce viewers to various methods of preventing, analyzing, managing, and resolving conflicts. Exhibits and activities will include “an immersion theater [that] will put visitors ‘on the ground,’ transporting them from the Global Peacebuilding Center to, for example, the Cambodian killing fields,” according to the USIP’s Web site.

The building was designed by Moshe Safdie, a Boston-based Israeli architect whose many groundbreaking designs include the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and the Khalsa Heritage Memorial Complex in Punjab, India (a museum dedicated to preserving the history and culture of the Sikh people).

Established by Congress in 1984, the USIP takes a multidisciplinary approach to conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding. THE FUTURIST covered its birth from idea to Act in the early 1980s; then-Senator Spark Matsunaga, who played a key role in founding the USIP, described it in the magazine’s February 1985 cover story, “An Academy of Peace: Training for a Peaceful Future.” He noted that the idea for an academy to train Americans in peaceful resolution of conflict had been around since the aftermath of the Revolutionary War:

In first introducing legislation more than two decades ago to establish a U.S. Academy of Peace, it was my intention that the academy should train the best and brightest of America’s youth to undertake the waging of peace. … Peacemaking represents a growing body of knowledge drawn from diverse disciplines and honed to professional skills in conflict resolution techniques. It is a dynamic function, not a passive or static condition, utilizing the same human energy we observe under conditions of war, but applied to more humane ends.

The new “peace building” will open to the public in September 2011.

Sources: United States Institute of Peace, www.usip.org. Safdie Architects, www.msafdie.com.

Asia's Next 50 Years

A select group of academics, politicians, and NGO representatives from across Asia and beyond gathered together in November 2010 to project what the next 50 years may hold in store for Asia as economic and political power shifts eastward.

The invitation-only conference, entitled “Global Transitions and Asia 2060: Climate, Political-Economy, and Identity,” examined possible long-term futures of the continent. Hosted by Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of Future Studies in Taipei, Taiwan, and co-sponsored by Korea’s Kyung Hee University and the United States–based Foundation For the Future, the three-day workshop took an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving.

Much of the conversation was geared toward developing a long-term policy perspective across many sectors, with particular focus on three core issues: climate change and a shift to renewable energy, the transformation of national and regional identities across Asia, and the possible creation of a politically and economically unified Asia—in other words, an Asian Union similar to the European Union.

WFS member Vahid Motlagh, the founder and editor of Vahid Think Tank and co-author of several award-winning futures studies books in Farsi, was among the speakers who addressed the topic of changing identities. His presentation, entitled “Multiple Longer-Term Futures of Asia,” in part examined the possible impacts of breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, genetics, and biotechnology. He argued that Eastern cultures are more likely than Western cultures to accept the “benefits” of these breakthroughs (such as gene therapy, designer babies, and human cloning).

A number of speakers stressed the need for long-term economic planning with an emphasis on protecting the environment. They delved into such issues as environmental education in Korea, a switch to renewables in Oman, and freshwater scarcity and desertification in China. Economic growth and environmental sustainability go hand-in-hand, noted Kyung Hee University chemistry professor Young Sik Lee.

The likelihood that an Asian Union will emerge, with shared values as well as shared currency, seems slim, but nevertheless the scenario offers an intriguing “what-if” possibility and an avenue toward increased regional cooperation and security.

Toward the end of the conference, participants engaged in breakout sessions, dubbed “fishbowl conversations.” In small groups, they built 50-year scenarios, ranging from best case to worst case, and brainstormed ways to successfully bring about the most desirable future for Asia.

Sources: Foundation for the Future, www.futurefoundation.org. Vahid Think Tank, www.vahidthinktank.com.