In 2012 we announced a collaboration with the Amsterdam-based Dialogue Advisory Group (DAG) to bring to our audience quarterly online symposia on topics of international peace and justice.
DAG is an organization which discreetly assists government, inter-government and other actors to confidentially manage national and international mediation efforts. Their work is by its nature confidential and therefore not well known to the public. Among their publicly known activities is DAG’s involvement in verifying the ETA ceasefire in Basque Country and the decommissioning of the weapons of INLA, a dissident Republican armed group in Northern Ireland.
DAG is directed by Ram Manikkalingam who also teaches politics at the University of Amsterdam. He advised the previous President of Sri Lanka during the peace process with the Tamil Tigers and prior to that advised the Rockefeller Foundation’s program in international peace and security.
In the DAG-3QD Peace and Justice Symposia internationally recognized figures will debate challenges in conflict resolution and human rights. One author will present a thesis in the form of a short essay and then the others will present critiques of that point of view. Finally, the initial author will also have an opportunity to present a rebuttal to the critiques.
The third symposium in this series was expanded into a full-length book which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014.
In all, six symposia were conducted between 2012 and 2014 which you can find below in chronological order.
- Evaluating the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Doctrine
- The Role of Gender in Situations of War and Conflict
- The Vexing Complexities of Drones
- The Iraq War and Democracy in the Middle East
- The Elusive Quest for Political Stability in Central Asia and Beyond
- What is the future for Colombia’s Rebels?