Our programme associates
Tahir Aziz
taziz@c-r.org
Tahir Aziz has worked for five years as a Senior Associate at the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, an NGO based in Washington DC where he was closely involved in conflict transformation activities in Kashmir. Previously he was Director of the Human Rights Commission of the Government of Pakistan–administered Kashmir and a Visiting Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London, under its South Asia Programme. Tahir holds two Masters degrees – one in Anthropology awarded by the Quaid-e-Azam University, Pakistan (with a thesis based on field research with the Kashmiri community in England) and the second in International Peace and Conflict Studies at the Joan B. Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, USA. Tahir has written papers on Kashmir for international organizations including IISS London, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), Washington D.C. and Voices, a US-based online journal.
Catherine Barnes
Catherine was CR’s policy adviser from September 2006 - December 2009. She is a freelance consultant working on conflict issues through training, facilitation and research. She was Accord Series Editor / Programme Manager in 2000-2001 and has worked on Accord issues on Tajikistan, public participation in peacemaking and, most recently, incentives, sanctions and conditionality in peacemaking. She has also served as a strategic reviewer for our programme work on the Georgian-Abkhaz and Nagorny-Karabakh conflicts.
Catherine holds a doctoral degree from the Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in the USA. She spent her early professional life as a community activist and social worker in rural West Virginia and then as a campaigner with the Mental Health Law Project. She has worked with the Institute of World Affairs and Minority Rights Group International. Among other consultancies, she was an adviser to the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict. Catherine has written widely on the roles of civil society in peacebuilding and has produced several training manuals on conflict resolution, negotiation and advocacy skills.
Diana is a former President of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and former chair of the Committee for Conflict Transformation Support. In the past she managed CR’s Balkans Programme and more recently has worked with the Caucasus Programme. As a freelance facilitator, trainer and consultant, she works with people trying to address political and inter-ethnic conflict. She has experience in many countries, including those in the European post-communist world, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Diana also acts as a facilitator for organizations wishing to evaluate and plan their work, strengthen external and internal working relationships, or deal with conflict constructively.
Her doctorate was based on four years of action research into the theory and practice of training for conflict transformation, including conflict resolution, conflict analysis and strategy for non-violent action for change. This work formed the basis of her first book, People, Peace and Power: Conflict Transformation in Action (Pluto Press 2002) She has since published two more books, Rethinking War and Peace (Pluto Press, 2004) and From Pacification to Peacebuilding: A Call to Global Transformation (March 2010).
Clem McCartney
Clem is an independent consultant on conflict and community issues. His work with CR since 1997 has seen him provide ongoing support on many issues and regions, from Fiji to the Caucasus. Clem’s interests include how to create conditions for negotiations, dialogue processes and the problems of implementing peace agreements, and conflicts during the post-settlement phase. In his work with the Caucasus Programme, Clem has been a co-facilitator for the Schlaining dialogue process between Georgian and Abkhaz politicians and civil society activists, jointly organized by CR and the Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management. In 2002-03 he organized the Northern Ireland aspects of our five Georgian-Abkhaz study visits to the UK. He wrote the lead article for the 2003 update of the Accord publication, ‘Striking a Balance: The Northern Ireland Peace Process’, which he edited in 1999 along with its education pack. Other Accord project work has taken Clem to Bougainville to help develop a critical literacy kit.
Clem is also an associate of the Berghof Center and acts as a resource person for its Sri Lankan programme. He maintains an interest in his home area, Northern Ireland, and helps with the conflict resolution activities of Quaker Peace and Social Witness, especially in South Asia.
Guus Meijer
Guus was Chair of CR’s Council when it began in 1994 and later became Co-Director for five years between 1997 and 2002. As Co-Director he was responsible for organizational development and oversight of CR’s work in the Balkans, West Africa and the Media & Conflict programme. He equally managed CR’s support to its Angolan partners and served as the Issue Editor and Project Coordinator for the Accord project on Angola.
Guus has organized and conducted conflict resolution training programmes in different parts of the world and for different constituencies. He was Training Director at INCORE in Northern Ireland (1995-97) and Training Officer at International Alert in London (1993-95). Before this he worked in the 1970s and 1980s as a lecturer in socio-linguistics at universities in the Netherlands and Mozambique, and as coordinator of the Eduardo Mondlane Foundation in Amsterdam. Guus is a graduate of the University of Amsterdam and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, where he now lives and works as a freelance consultant and trainer in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, with a focus on Africa.
Jenny Norton
jnorton@c-r.org
Jenny is a journalist with the BBC World Service and has spent much of her career following developments in the former Soviet Union, especially in Central Asia and the Caucasus. She studied Russian at Leeds University and spent nearly three years in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in the late 1990s running the BBC's Central Asia bureau. She has returned to the region many times since, most notably in 2005 as one of the few western journalists to report on the violent crackdown on demonstrators in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan. Jenny has worked with CR since 2001 when she produced the first ever joint Abkhaz-Georgian radio series about the legacy of the conflict. Current projects include Dialogue Through Film for young Azeri and Karabakhi filmmakers, and People and Times - a local newspaper for Abkhazia's Georgian community.
Thomas de Waal
Tom de Waal is a writer and analyst with particular expertise in the conflicts of the Caucasus, currently working as a senior associate in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment. His new book, The Caucasus: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010), will be released summer 2010. From 2002-08 he worked as Caucasus Editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and in 2009 as an associate at Conciliation Resources. Tom completed a degree in Russian and Modern Greek at Balliol College, Oxford, before working as a journalist in London and Moscow. He is co-author with Carlotta Gall of Chechnya, A Small Victorious War, (Pan, 1997 and NYU Press, 1998) and sole author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan.
